Month: May 2019

We move out of D.C. this week. Being in this state of transition has me investigating what it means to “miss” something, in this era where so much is fleeting. I’ve had best friends move away from me, and I’ve done the same in return. I’ve moved out of countless homes, and out of just as many cities. I’ve grown accustomed to traveling to new places, making friends within a few days, and then saying goodbye not knowing if I’ll ever see them again. A seven-year stretch in D.C. is, of course, more profound than a seven-day trip somewhere. But what is it about something lasting long that makes me feel like it should last longer? Does the longevity of an experience convince us that it is more deserving of permanence?

I’ll of course miss my friends here, even though I’ll probably continue seeing them once every couple of months. I’ll miss my apartment, but even in the past few weeks of packing up, it no longer looks or feels like home anyway. Home is not made of one’s objects, but it is in the curation of them. With all my things tucked away in boxes, I also feel tucked away in a box.

I’ll miss my routines. My bike route, even the part where I sneer at the White House and grumble at the waddling tourists. I’ll miss going to Hana market to pick up onigiri, Firehook to pick up an olive loaf. But even that’s just empty carbs. The life I’d supposedly miss will still be with me, if not revisited often then encapsulated in memory of my D.C. years.

We’re not living in the times of covered wagons and the Pony Express, where “so long” actually meant such, when embarking a few hundred miles away meant you were leaving a life behind for good. I have the great luxury of knowing I’ll be back, that not being here daily doesn’t mean that I won’t be here forever. I carry the experiences of this city in my bones, and it’ll be with me everywhere I go.

The first city I fell in love with is Chicago. It was 2003, and I hadn’t traveled all that much yet. All I knew about the Bay Area cities I grew up around was that I was bored of them – I was a teenager ready to escape. Being in Chicago helped me feel a sense of locality in a place where I wasn’t one. I learned that I could get to know roads and routes, become a familiar face, and even learn to embody certain tropes of the cultural landscape. But mostly, it was about the people. Once most of my Chicagoan friends left, I didn’t really have a reason to go back. Last year, I made a day-trip and hardly left the Loop. I ate at steakhouses and sandwich spots surrounded by tourists, I stared at my phone screen during the cab rides back and forth from the airport. Sometimes you can feel so familiar that you no longer even notice it.

Over the past couple of years, some cities have nestled into my heart – the places where I’ve actually called home; Oakland, New York, D.C. And then Honolulu, New Orleans, the vastness of New Mexico. None of those are places I’m moving to. My next venture to L.A. feels strangely predictable. I know it well enough to see beyond its vanity. I might even be able to catch the slow pace that I’m looking for, but who knows. I might get swept up. I won’t be settling in until the end of the year (or later) and in the meantime and preparing for several months of vagabonding. While I’m out at sea, or air, or concrete, I’ll be exposing myself to new cities but I’ll miss all my beloved places the same. How much room do I have in my heart for so many locales? When does a constellation decide to connect its last dot with the first?

I ended my most recent project in New Orleans last week, and as I boarded the aircraft I wondered when I would return. “The door’s always open for you,” various friends said in various ways. What does it mean to be always passing through? How do I find a sense of home in my transience?

Lately, when people ask me how I’m doing, my response is either trying to catch up or trying to slow down – either way, it means the same thing. I recognize a misalignment between the pace of the universe and that within my self. The earth has been spinning steadily for billions of years. Even more billions of life forms have ascended and descended back into the soil, most thriving perfectly without a sense of time or scale – yet somehow I’ve spent the majority of my existence convinced that I’m supposed to cram more, faster, bigger into my life than the rest. You’re meant for so much more, I told myself throughout my 20’s, as if life itself wasn’t already enough, beyond, overwhelming.

But how limited my notion of more has been – achieving certain incomes, performing in certain venues, being validated by certain institutions, associating with certain individuals, proving it on certain platforms. How liberating it is, then, to turn 36 today with the recognition that it’s all just molecules, pixels, or even less.

A few weeks ago my white blood cell count came in low. I spent a few days scared and saddened shitless. “It turns out it’s just stress,” the doctor told me on my follow-up appointment. “Try not to stress about it.” Just stress struck as an odd and paradoxical phrase. It made me think of all the things in my life that would benefit if I shrugged them off the same, placed the word just in front of them instead of acting like they were the cores of all gravitational pull. My body is literally, on a cellular level, struggling to catch up with my life, my ambition for that limited and minuscule more.

If life is a roller coaster, then being 36 is like being at the very top – having gone uphill for that tense first half of the ride with all the cranks wound up. You grip the handle until your knuckles are white and brace yourself for the descent, hoping the camera doesn’t catch you freaking the fuck out. But fortunately, life isn’t a roller coaster. The world doesn’t spin faster or slower for anyone. The universe is very anti-climactic. I aspire to live accordingly.