I'm already gone

I’ve gone on about this before, but it’s a feeling that’s so strong, it’s hard to ignore as I do with all the other fleeting realizations, memories, potential posts that I push out of my lazy mind until they whither into forgotten possibilities, too busy with books and work and life. But this? This feeling, this moment is when I realize I need this space to eject something, and my guilt about not being good to you all is overridden by my need to slough something off, whether or not it’s even read, a need to dissect meaning and pore over fibers of sound and play with syllables and scrutinize the allegory of words until I am satisfied in my mind that what I’ve written is really how it is inside here, this place I want to understand, so my brain can call it a day and can stop being harassed by something I can't pinpoint.

I booked a flight to Phoenix (you know, to that one place where I grew up, that place I’m refusing to call home anymore), and as is always the case, from the moment I decided to go, my head has become filled with its every smell and tone and hue and nuance and I ache for it in ways that I didn’t allow myself to when I knew it was out of reach. I don’t call it home anymore because it feels ungrateful to allow myself the luxury of continuously claiming that the true fit, the realer real is taking place somewhere I am not, especially when this city is throbbing with spring like it is, true to how I remember it throughout these many years.

Besides, isn’t home supposed to be a place where there is warmth under my feet, where my sheets are blazed in sunshine in the morning, where a rogue strand of hair gets pushed behind my ear sending delightful shivers curling around my neck, where my toes get the lint cleaned out of them one by one, where daily negotiations on who will make morning tea get played out with kisses and promises of ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’? Yes.

Isn’t home where people, acquaintances I have not chosen to befriend but who have appeared in my life, have persistently gouged away at my heart by approximation until they have succeeded in finding a pulsating soft spot in it beneath all the barricades of bored sighs and disinterest due to hyperbolized cultural difference? Yes.

I felt it, home, I was sure of it, just the other day when for once it had stopped raining and the sun made a shy gesture from behind the clouds and so we (me and these people I'm discovering I might love) went outside to live in these streets again and drank and drank and we continued as the day turned into the dusk that only required a light sweater. And in changing from one bar to another, we had to stop and order beers in small glasses and bring them outside to the middle of the street. There we stood, leaning against a badly parked car, slippery thumbs fighting for their grip on cold beers, thanking Christ or somebody for having given us a sunny day, in the middle of Calle Mateos Gago, the street that leads to the heart of the Giralda. There we humbled ourselves before that radiant stone giant towering over all of Seville in all her raw beauty, the nimbus of dusk surrounding her. And as we inhaled the orange blossoms that bejeweled the trees lining the street down to her gothic door, we jumped slightly on tip toes and bumped into each other warmly, silly and cozy inside from the day of drinking, cheeks aching from smiling, and feeling, above all, lucky, and I thought, “Fuck yes this is home.” Where else on earth could it possibly be?

Tourists frantically snapped pictures of the Giralda with their cell phones trying to capture her perfection in the early evening light and they stared up at her as I would the Taj Mahal or the Empire State Building, admiringly but as a jewel in someone else’s jewelry box. But this, I own her. I see her as I turn in to bed and she lights up my skyline. Those morning teas that get negotiated? I drink them with her, quiet but there. But it’s not just now that I see her more often, from a fortunate vantage point now that we moved into the house of windows. I also have endless memories across time at her feet in the twisted labyrinth of streets surrounding her, and this time is what confirms what I already know: that this is as home as home gets, complete with a long trail of memories, good and bad, following from behind.

But why then, if this is the case, just when I hesitatingly click 'OK' to confirm the charge to my credit card for my flight purchase, does my mind open up and a flood of mountains and heat and freeway traffic juggernaut into it and a landscape, a cityscape, a housescape snaps hard into focus and reminds me that, while maybe not home home anymore, surely Phoenix is something, and that something feels like it’s bruising me as it ironically gets further and further out of reach the closer I get to my travel date, because the closer I get to my travel date, the closer I actually am to my return travel date, and thus the further away any of it is altogether (Noble Savage wrote beautifully once on this very strange phenomenon).

As Phoenix pulls and tugs and begs and pleads and scratches and reminds and blames and guilt-trips with endless memories of its orderly grid of me flying through it with my window rolled down, I realize there are more memories there than can fill these labyrinthian streets. It lectures me, telling me that it’s definitely something if not my home and it’s more than just a place in my past or a holiday. And no matter how much I tell myself that I prefer the Giralda to Camelback Mountain, the lively plazas with cervesitas to the half-vacant strip malls of neglected Subways and derelict Jiffy Lubes and the cobblestone streets over sardine-packed freeways, a visit there is still akin to breathing and eating and human contact.

And I begin to find it odd and in some ways shameful that the sense of missing and nostalgia as an expat at least in my experience and the definition of home is sometimes not at all focused on people and relationships as one would expect, as it should be, as maybe some fault in my character or some coldness in my heart doesn’t allow it to be, as I often claim it is. Rather the missing is all intertwined with a way of living, a way of experiencing urbanization, a way of merely travelling through one's day, and sadly a way of consuming. And a feeling of panicked urgency to be coddled in that urban space once more invades my mind and takes hostage of my ability to look out the window and realize what a beautiful month I have ahead of me in Seville.

I stare out at those lone palm trees that are so very familiar to me, virginal from the sad winter but now spreading up and open in celebration to be penetrated by that hot Spanish sun, that are scattered across this city stuffed between baroque churches; they are normally reminders to me of the Arabia that once dwelt here that I get to contemplate because this is part of me and this is my home but now they only yank me back to that sun-scorched desert valley where I dread going because I dread having to leave.

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Can't I just post an audio clip of myself groaning and you'll know what I mean?

I miss being able to write. I'm blocked and I know that it's mostly just the not doing it that's making me not do it. I see some of you are blocked like me. But say you're not quitting for good. That would be awful and it would force me to think about that one time when it was really cool, back in the day of good blogging. Nostalgia is my worst enemy right now, so please don't do that.

My reading is suffering. Pretty lame of me to beg you to not quit when I haven't even remotely done my part to encourage you.

Other times, when I can, I carry on across your blogs like we're still in touch, like you're in my head and you too have read that pretentious post that went through me just the other day that lingered there in the center of my nervous system, playing Double Dutch with my neurons. I played with it and tapped at it and scratched and tortured it, the poor stupid thing. None of this happened with my pen, which would have required entirely too much effort. I pulled its little legs off of its twitching corpse and carried the carcass around the house in my mouth until its gut juice seeped through the incisions my teeth had made and its bitter taste made its way to my tongue. And then I didn't like it anymore and how could I give you such a foul cliche in hopes that you would praise me for killing it?

I know I should have some things to say about home, other than the cheap overview I gave you a couple of weeks ago.

I suppose I should tell you how it takes going home to realize that home's definition has apparently been revised in the 2009 edition of My Mind and that I actually feel the calmest and best in the anti-home, the scapegoat and seed of all of my turmoil. My inner dictionary has been rewritten, without consultation of its primary user. That thing had always been so reliable up until now.

Home is apparently not where one is safe and secure and comfortable and at peace. It's a place of confusion where I'm no longer cut to that mold and when I leave I'm relieved to say goodbye to release the pressure and intensity surrounding the visit, to let home fall into the background of memory and fuzziness and distance where it now resides permanently, quieter and quieter, its unbearable decibels turning to a light hum.

I fall into non-home and the excited pace of 'see this, go there, enjoy! Enjoy! It will all be over soon!' ceases and the heart goes back to a healthy steady pace feeding oxygen to the cerebral cortex again, a bit less frantically now, but certainly providing all that is needed to keep those synapses from going on strike.

And now I think I can make it through the winter without you, you infidel of synonyms. I won't be flying over your mountains and swimming pools and palm trees any time soon because I'm to the gills with you. I'm ignoring your threats that the longer I am away, the less you'll resemble what I thought you were. We were separated for so long and you became so perfect and tender in my mind and then you go and throw a fucking antonym at me right when I'm trying to cuddle up in your arms? That's lame.

There -- I went and brought you a carcass and placed it in your shoe, a hunted token so you know I love you, and I looked up at you blankly. I know. It's not as good as new and its legs are missing and it has teeth marks in it and one of its filmy wings is down the hall near the bathroom. But it's the only kill I could find in this lifeless, quiet place.

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I went on a hike this weekend, that's what I'm trying to say

I have this thing.

This perpetual thing that is hardened to me from over-use that I sometimes call "homesickness". If it is a sickness at all, it is most certainly improperly diagnosed.

Truthfully, homesickness was what I felt my first semester of college, when I had to say goodbye to the home I had finally found after having put a stop to my parents bouncing me around in a ping pong match. Homesickness was what I felt when I spent a few weeks too many in the Amazon jungle, bathing in a fucking river and trying to determine where the tribal folk took shits and had sex. Homesickness was what I felt as a study abroad student, completely out of my element and way, way, way before the assimilation of culture.

True homesickness only happens when you know for sure, beyond any doubt, that you don't belong.

Herein lies my problem. When I go home, my suspicions that I might belong here are supported. And shadows of doubt hover over my fantasies of belonging there, only there.

No, this...this is not homesickness.

Call it perpetual maladjustment (cultural or otherwise) or incessant emptiness or constant unease. Or something.

"I'm homesick". This just makes me not have to deal.

It will be eight months of not being near my organic place. Eight months in what feels like a plant pot that's way too small for me. Eight months away from my original soil, away from my familiar precipitation and that sunlight that I've been perfectly acquainted with all my life touching me just so, just the same way as always, photosynthesizing me from within just as intended, allowing me to flourish as I was meant to, as I was taught to subconsciously, through gestures and symbols, language and allegory, and place, oh, especially place.

This misnomer is an unscratchable itch-inducing bitch that doesn't hide, and whenever I hit a wall, as I am wont to do, it's often the delinquent responsible for my misfortune or discontent. Problems don't exist for me here that are separate from this one problem, see, I don't let them.

How ridiculous. How irresponsible of me to attribute everything to this misnomer. Doesn't hate exist anymore? Or pure loneliness? Or pure disappointment? Or pure wrong-doing, independent from this worn out crutch?

This thing I've mislabelled is difficult to alleviate, mostly because I am constantly concentrating on the banana skins that exacerbate it, like being hogtied by red tape. I stop on my path and pick up the stones I've tripped over despite having seen them.* Then I study them under microscope and determine their mineraloids, whether they are sedimentary or metamorphic, noting their texture and chemical composition, when all I really had to do was kick them the fuck out of my way to begin with and keep moving.

Until last weekend.

When we went for a hike.

When I left my misnomer somewhere and I left the stones I had tripped over in my fucking geology lab of doom and we sat on a rock near a waterfall and had our lunch.

Suddenly, my roots were nourished in soil that felt damn near original. The sun shone on him and me bright as ever, but it was actually raining at the same moment; one of those impossible moments in nature, one of those impossible moments that happen all the time in Arizona. And then the rain cleared away and the sky held the horizon sharply in focus from the dryness in the atmosphere so much like home. I looked out at the leaves, grateful that they moved in just the same way as I knew they would, that the water flowed just as it was supposed to, that gravity held me down on the rock like it always had before, and that the birds sang those same songs I remember from the warm spring days from long ago and far away.

And I felt my inner photosynthesis happening in it's old way, it's familiar way. For a few hours, I flourished and I knew I belonged to that place at that moment, without tripping stones or dangerous banana peels, or crutches to blame.

*this comes from something Denise sent me that says "La experiencia me sirve para reconocer la piedra con la que volver a tropezar" - Experience is good for recognizing the stone that you will continue to trip on. I think I translated that right. Thanks Denise, if you had a blog, I'd link to it.

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