Living in Provo with the brain I have is kind of like living in a house made entirely of television sets. And all of the TVs are on different stations and all of the stations are showing reruns of my life. Driving up University Avenue feels a little something like this:
I see me running across the street on my way to Smith's and finding the couch of destiny (which got Amanda and John engaged, which I moved from an old apartment of theirs with Trevor who I didn't date during my dating break the fall after Nick, and I stole the couch from that house with Lina at midnight and couldn't kiss Tim #2 on it because it was so busted up and I had to cajole some friendly ward members to finish moving it to my school where, after it turns out stuffed furniture is banned, it disappeared forever), or eating with Margaret Robertson at Bombay house when she was on a break from law school. She taught Sunday school when I was 15 and sent me a very considerate letter which kind of changed my life. She kind of changed my life. Or driving by Lina's place and the Burrow where so much of my life happened last year, or by Provo High, or by Hogi Yogi where I used to stop after bikerides last summer for a Yoasis with mango, and don't even get me started on passing by the Glenwood and Alta...
So heavy. I read The Shipping News a couple of summers ago and was struck by the idea of roots. What are the pros/cons of living in a place where people know you, where, when you say this or do that, they think it's just like your grandfather or uncle? Where you don't have to explain personality quirks or wonder about them because everyone already knows that your dad was a bastard and your mom drinks too much and flirts with the mailman.
On the one hand, there's something so stabilizing about that. Safe-feeling. On the other, though, when and how do you decide who you are and what choice is there but to act out? It would be exhausting.
For some reason I'm preoccupied with remembering. And not everything: I'm a terribly inconsiderate friend. I forget birthdays and parents' names and allergies to chocolate. But everytime I step into the JFSB I'm flooded with memories about this corridor or that doorway or this computer lab. Memories like guard dogs and suddenly I'm intruding on someone else's territory. The whole of east Salt Lake, from I-215 to Cottonwood Heights belongs to an ex-boyfriend and I feel like I'm intruding everytime I drive through.
I'm trying to leave, but suspect that that's not the answer. So.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
So much past
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Deep thoughts. There's a sort of homesickness that isn't homesickness for a place, but for a time. Nostalgia of place. It's that whole "can't step in the same river twice" thing; you just keep making new memories where you are and are surprised when you find out that what you're doing right now is anything memorable.
I talk with my friends a lot about what it means to have your last baby. And when/how to know if it's your last or if there is one more who will suckle and cuddle and nuzzle. And somewhere someone said or wrote the idea that when you think you are longing for one more child you are really just feeling an ache for your children when they were babies... That the memory of your beautiful babies (now grown, with voices deepening) is the ache. And that ache is often mistaken for "baby hunger," and so another baby is conceived. So. Remember to be careful to precisely identify this ache. Is it the roots or the memories or the potential not yet realized?
PS This is Rachel but I'm too lazy to change accounts.
Funny how one single letter, or a comment written on a paper, or a sort of objective statement about something you knew but didn't believe about yourself can make you change your life in ways you never anticipated.
I liked this post a lot. Actually, I've liked all of your recent posts a lot. I wish we still had class together. :S
Wow, you phrased that rather perfectly. I think those are very human...things, both those comfortable or uncomfortable feelings of having roots in a place and the question of when it may be right to leave such a place.
I think this applies to people, too. Certain memories belong to certain people in my life, for better or worse, and I think one of the hardest things ever is knowing when to stay or leave (yeah, Dave Matthews (and now that I think of it, that song is strangely fitting here...)). Hopefully that's not a decision that anyone has to make too often--about places or people. But when it does come up, and if those roots have grown deep enough, the idea of uprooting myself from a place or a relationship becomes so painful that I'd almost rather just stick with something that isn't working than start all over again, even though I know that can't be healthy. The other danger, though, is never setting down roots in the first place. I guess it comes down to being careful to avoid making decisions motivated by fear, something I may always struggle with.
I don't really know where that came from or where it's going, but I leave it with you nonetheless.
Is that couch really gone forever? It was such a beautiful piece of furniture.
My parents left California so my mom could escape the roots that were strangling her and they ended up in Washington where I was born and where I lived in the same house for 14 years and made and lost best friends. Then we lost the house and moved to a condo, which was no longer home by the time I came back from my mission in Arizona to a basement in American Fork, Utah. I think I stayed in the same house in Provo for three years to create the illusion of roots, but it's hard to feel rooted in a community when it keeps eroding and getting repotted.
And now I live in another place that sometimes feels like that place at the edge of the waves' reach, where you think you're outside of where they can knock you down, but still you feel the sand sucking away from under your feet and you realize that the beach you're standing on isn't quite the same beach you were standing on five seconds ago.
I've spent the last couple of years trying to figure out what it will take for me to feel rooted again. Nothing feels like home.
On the other hand, I too am preoccupied with remembering. I've secretly saved some of my roots and stuck them in pictures and journal entries, in songs on CDs from 1994 and in the smell of binding glue that fwips out of certain books when I fan their pages. I think that remembering is good and healthy, as long as I don't obsess over it and try to reach backwards (which never yields any kind of firm grasp). Remembering is best when it helps me deal with now, or enjoy the present more because of a richer context that I appreciate.
And I think I wasn't very helpful. But I wrote it, so I'm posting it...
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