an insight

The time has come.

I’m moving to a different nation. It’s not a permanent move. No, it’s more like a vacation place. There’s so much to do to prepare and I’ve only just begun. I’m anxious but also elated. I know I’ll get there okay, even if it takes me a while. I have the best map there is.

I need a place to escape to when life gets to be too much. Or too little. Somewhere safe to go. Life is often to small to hold all that my consciousness can produce. It becomes wild and crazed. My mind needs stretching room. There is a place where I can be all that I am. I’ve been looking for it for a while. I think I have found it. The true test is to move there and submerse myself in it. It’s bigger than the world we live in and I want to consume it all.

One bit at a time.

I’m learning the language but it takes time. Sometimes it clicks into place quickly and sometimes I struggle to get the words just right. I see signs…or books I want to read…and none of it looks familiar. You can’t bring books of another language to this place. I must learn to read what is already here. I must study. At one moment I think I have it and then realize that I’m not saying exactly what I thought I was. My guide whispers the corrections to me gently and I make notes. At least I’m not completely alone. I’d never make it. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

It’s not enough to simply learn to speak. I must also absorb the culture. Why do people do things in this way? What are the rules of communicating? There is right and wrong, but it’s often ambiguous. How did these people get to this stage of civilization? It is important that I find out. Everything depends on it. I must know so that I can choose where I will spend my time. Will I be known as a resident of this village or that part of town? Which parts of this culture will I adopt as my own? Will they accept me?

And then there are the people.

I’m slowly being introduced to them. Actually, my guide points them out to me from afar. We can rarely talk to them. Not yet. However, I know about their families. Their histories. Some of their motivations for coming to this place. We’re all immigrants here. Some were younger when they arrived, some older. Some have a bigger home and some are well known. Many are like me. We come to escape and recuperate. We carve out our small space to enjoy. We are alone and connected all at once.

I have to pay attention. I am learning whose words I’d like to repeat, if only in a more inferior voice. I’m learning who will challenge me and who will calm my raging thoughts. Who will bring me joy with their words and who will travel with me as I lament? These are heavy burdens because my joys can carry me beyond what mere human life can withstand and my lamentations are greater than the ocean to a drop. These people will help me when life becomes too much to bear. They will meet me when I arrive. They will always be there.

My guide is trekking with me. He has made the journey many times. I know nothing about him but his reason for travelling must be similar to mine. I don’t know of any other reason to leave home, alone, and seek a strange new place. A familiar old place to your soul. If the need doesn’t arise from within, there is no explanation to those without. We don’t really talk, my guide and I. Not with the language of everyday life. He speaks to me in my new language. It’s good for me, but limiting. I must learn to speak faster. No. I must learn to speak clearer.

I hope that one day my guide will be one of the people I get to study and know. I trust his directions even when I’m uncertain or uncomfortable. Even when I am a stubborn sojourner he has always been kind to me, nudging me forward at the appropriate heading. Maybe this extraordinary place breeds patience in its inhabitants. Maybe I’m just fortunate to have crossed his path. Maybe it’s fate.

Thinking it’s fate makes me feel better because I know I’ll belong one day.

I have memories from childhood of the feelings I get in my new…old…home. I was here before. Even then, I travelled mostly alone. There are photos in my mind of words, books, sounds, scenes, guides, landmarks. Now and then I recognize something I see in a bookshop. My mind sometimes surprises me with its recall. It is still difficult to be present in life while at the same time cultivating my new nationality. I need both. I want both. All of my consciousness is finally engaged. For now.

At first I stalled. I tried to pretend that I didn’t need deliverance from the monotony of maintaining my piece of the human machine. I thought I could will myself into calling my journey a whim, a dance. One song and I’m healed. I now know that I must make the pilgrimage often. I must run toward this new permanent temporary habitation and I must do it everyday. This is where I will go to save myself from me. I can’t pretend I don’t need the quest anymore. It is a good need. A strong need. A wilful need. An imminent need.

The time has come.


{This is a fraction of a glimpse into a sliver of my life at this present moment. My life is a metaphor. Everything is something else.

Are you making a journey? Have you made this journey before? Do you understand? Do you know what the metaphor means?}