Wanderings

I am home. I am here. The era that I have been dreaming about, creating, in my fantasies and downtime over the past three months, has arrived. I am lying on the oriental rug in my living room and the clock ticks and papers shuffle in the dining room where my father is filing income taxes. I used to play Barbies on this rug, or dinosaurs, but dinosaurs were usually on the basement stairs. With Barbies, each square of the rug would be a different house, or room, or business, and the avenues in between would be the roads. It was perfect, really. A perfect rug for playing on. Sometimes I would put on Carmen or Peer Gynt or a compilation of famous marches and dances, and twirl around. The places the music always took me to in my head were castles, high on hills, with soldier entourages ascending the valleys. And now when I think of my trip and what I saw I feel better, like maybe it did all make sense, because those were so many of the kinds of places I went to.

I remember the first day in Paros, coming over a hill, my back to the ocean, and there was a warm breeze and dogs barking in the distance and a rooster's crow, and I had an overwhelming pang in my heart, and my eyes even teared up even though I immediately laughed at myself for being so cheesy. But it was incredibly real, this resonation that came deep from the soul, my soul, a soul of walking, alone, endlessly, over hills and valleys. Sometimes coming into contact, linking up with other traipsing bands, laughing, celebration. But always returning to that feeling of bittersweet solitude once I took up the path again, searching anew, fleeing anything established.

Yet funnily enough, the theme of my musings today was community; how in all these village towns in Greece and Italy, I was the lone tourist who stuck out like a sore thumb. I watched the others going about their daily routines, gossiping in their native language, indulging me with bemusement when they had to and most likely wondering; why? What is there to see in this very average lifestyle? This very average town? I didn't know either, except that the countryside was alive and beautiful and I could breathe more deeply than in Athens and Rome. So I was an oddity, a bulls-eye at the same time that I was invisible, and I was mute, and insignificant. Over time, after a certain number of almost silent days and walking, walking, I began to feel like nothing except for the experience that was in front of me. I had no agenda, no real purpose, except to observe. And I liked it.

Once I reached the art monastery, the ego, the idea of myself, began to strengthen again, and then it really returned in Paris. But in Paris it was joyous, and pleasant to be with, because it was shopping and picking out pretty patterns and speaking charmingly in French. At the art monastery, where the environment was more intimate, the ego felt threatened, inadequate, insecure. And now, home, taking a long walk on the road I have walked as long as I can remember, stopping to talk and catch up with familiar faces along the way, seeing how people, houses, times have changed, smelling the spring breeze come up through the woods and hearing the snow melt and trickle down toward the river, I feel a deep and steady comfort, a sense of belonging. All of this belongs to me, somehow, and I belong to it, and the neighbors are like family in the sense that no matter how much time passes, or how much things change, we are loyal to one another and engaged and supportive. I tell our neighbor Randy about all the trees that are down on our lawn and he offers to help my father chop them into wood. We talk about having a spring solstice bonfire. Alan, who was always the cry-baby kid brother of my friend Chelsea, pulls up into the driveway across from us and waves. We wave back; he gets out of the car and he's about half a foot taller than I am. None of it is glamorous or beautiful or exciting and I know that it's only a matter of time before I feel ready to burst and need to flee again, take off down the open road. But I'm glad to know that all of this is here, as it always has been, as it always will be. Every time that my adventures have taken me too far, too close to the brink, I've come here to come down... and then start plotting the next adventure. There is so much I'm thinking about, but at the same time, there is the afternoon sun and the rug under my belly and the steady, ticking clock, and so maybe during this stay I can begin to see the balance that I need... between putting down roots, and continuing to grow.