Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Dec. 16th, 2003 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
judecorpI’m never really one to think that I go through any grand-scale changes. In fact, I tend to think that in a lot of ways I’m still the same person that was sitting at a random desk in a Calculus classroom at a pretentious private Catholic high school. I mean, sure, life has a way of forcing a person into little adaptations, but I really did believe that underneath life, I was the same goofy kid. I don’t feel particularly different, my views on most of the world’s events hasn’t changed, I have the same basic spiritual philosophy (though perhaps a little more mature), and I like most of the same stuff.
In the last handful of weeks, I’ve gone back to and spent small amounts of time in two of the most formative places in my life, and the reality of the situation is that I guess I have to concede that I have changed. It’s not like I can say that the places aren’t the same, because they are – my hometown looks and feels exactly like the prison of my adolescence, and New York may be the City That Never Sleeps, but it’s also the City That Never Changes. Really, you can move the homeless people, take away the strip joints, and permanently alter the landscape, but the City just keeps on moving with the same attitude it’s always held. That might actually be one of the things I love most about it.
But kicking me back to the Sesame Street days of old, both trips left me with a strong sense of "one of these kids is not like the others." It’s not that I had bad experiences necessarily, or altercations with people in my former stomping grounds. It's possible that the whole situation exists only in my head. Regardless, I felt out of place, and I suppose the only logical explanation for this feeling is that I’ve changed.
I could take the lazy way out of this analysis and suppose that the changes follow from marriage, divorce, and a lengthy and frustrated second coming out process, but not only am I not inclined to be lazy in my introspection, I don’t think it terribly true. While those events feature fairly prominently in where I’ve spent emotional energy in the past ten years, I don’t think they necessarily changed me. Not inherently, I mean. Sure, ending a major relationship changed the way I conduct relationships, but it didn’t change my approach to love, or my desire to care for another person. These were changes, yes, but not capital-C-Changes, the sorts that would find me delving into myself instead of my City a la Bill Murray in Lost in Translation.
So what is it, then, that brought about this dissidence? I spent most of Sunday thinking about the platitude "you can’t go home again," and almost wondered if perhaps I had crossed a point where it had been too long. I mean, I last visited the City two years ago – maybe I’d let too much time pass? Maybe I’d lost that connection, that spark? Driving toward the Midtown Tunnel with Princess and seeing that beautiful, glittering skyline assured me that the spark was still within me. Driving to Columbus from Kentucky, I realized I’d been going about this contemplation all wrong.
The phrase "you can’t go home again" is misleading, because it assumes that "home" is an unchanging thing, a place that always acts as a baseline from which you measure your entire life and everywhere you’ve lain your experiences. Having one benchmark labeled "home" is like turning your life into a giant treasure map, with one great big X signifying, "You Are Home." For me, at least, this idea is not terribly realistic.
Instead, I have several homes, several Xs, and you can mark your dashed "go this way" lines between them all. Up until age 17, home was a little city in Rhode Island full of disgruntled workers, discarded mills, and senior citizens. It was the only place I’d ever lived, the only streets I knew like the back of my hand, and the only area I knew to come back to. It was "home" in the sense that my family lived there, that my high school was there, and really, that the foundation of all of my independent thought was right there on the Massachusetts border.
And then I went to college.
I didn’t realize it, really, until Sunday night as I was fleeing Cincitucky, but I recreated "home" in New York – hence my draw to it, the appeal, and the feelings of safety. College was the first place I embarked on my own – meeting new people, establishing an identity and a place in the social order, and, more importantly, learning the ins and outs of a place on my own. Sure, my father knew the quickest route from our apartment in RI to my dorm room in NY, but did he know where the mall was? The restaurant where Jennifer and I celebrated our birthday in 1996? The place where I rented videos, or got my hair cut, or bought body jewelry, or where I liked to sit and read? No one at my previous "home" knew the Subway as well as I did, crossed the streets that I did, made the friends that I did. Heck, I (like many other people) became a new person at college and laid down god’s-honest roots. And it is /those/ roots that keep calling me back to the City over and over, despite downed planes and bad weather and crumbled buildings and misunderstandings. I formed roots there, roots named “favorite restaurant” and “best place to read” and “best friend” and “college suitemates” and “silly songs” and “final exam rituals” and “avoiding eye contact” and “drinking buddies” and “self-exploration.”
When “home” was New York, it wasn’t any fault of Rhode Island’s. It was just time, and energy, and space, and life. And similarly, while I was looking for the changes in New York, and in myself, what I found was just that I’ve gone and done it again. I said it would never happen, and I thought it was just another in a string of moves: Massachusetts, New Mexico, Maine. But, through no fault of New York’s, I’ve made another X on my treasure map.
I wasn’t fleeing Cincitucky, necessarily, more than I was heading home. Sure, it’s easy to say, “I want to go home,” or some other quick sentiment, but I think we all know the difference between saying the word “home” and meaning “temporary apartment” and saying the word “home” and meaning “this is where my life is.”
I have roots here, not necessarily because I’ve spent almost four years here now (wow), but because I have experienced so much life and poured so much of myself into Where I Am At This Point In Time. I’m surprised I didn’t realize it before, what with how I was unable to pack up and move East after graduation like I’d said I was going it. I have roots here, things like “favorite place to eat vegetarian chili” and “quickest way to get to work” and “knowledge of all interstates” and “loving the way the purple lights look under the Broad Street bridge” and “watching the twins grow up” and “Columbus Women’s Chorus” and “memories of kickboxing” and “the social work graduate program” and the whole gigantic chapter of my life entitled “my experiences working at GLBT Student Services.” I don’t know when it happened, and I don’t even really know /how/ it happened given my reluctance to let it, but Columbus is my home right now, for better or for worse and everything in between.
And while it’s easy to pinpoint a major change on a relationship, I don’t think it’s really fair to say that my relationship with Jennifer is the cause of any sense of misfit or discomfort. I’ve been in serious relationships before and it’s not the /relationship/ per se that is changing anything. It’s just that in the Home Treasure Map of my life, there’s also a big fat X smack in the middle of That Girl, because when it comes to laying down roots and building a sense of “home,” it’s just plain not going to happen anywhere that she’s not standing.
Yes, this relationship is different, not because we both have vaginas (and therefore everything must be different, apparently), but because we both have future plans. I was in a relationship for almost six years and never felt that click that comes when two people really are in sync with what they want from the future. Aaron and I supported each other’s goals 100%, and we were there for each other and cared for each other in very powerful and amazing ways, but we were more like best friends than life-mates, because we were living our separate lives together, not living our together lives separately. And that’s a difference, a real, tangible difference. And maybe that separates me from some people a little bit, and while that saddens me, it’s also a big positive in my life. It’s been said that “marriage” (in whatever form: legal, spiritual, or otherwise) is the Western path to enlightenment, that holding something that powerful together is the modern, impersonal world’s quest for Nirvana. I’ve marked my X and now I’m working on something big.
So while my trips to Rhode Island and New York weren’t everything I was expecting them to be, nor everything I was hoping them to be, it was only because I was expecting and hoping for unattainable things. I was looking for that feeling of “home,” when in actuality, that was what I’d left behind when I went on vacation. I think that the next time I attempt either of these locations (and I suppose the same could be said of Philmont, or Maine, or Boston as a visitor rather than a resident), I need an attitude shift. I need to remember that “home” is something I’m not searching for, that “home” is not something I will find in that glittery skyline anymore, that “home” for me is different than “home” for them. And next time, of course, I’ll have the foresight (and the privilege) of taking home along with me.
Aside from all of this contemplative rambling, I had some really excellent experiences this past weekend. I reunited with Princess and had a long, honest, intense conversation about everything that had happened between us /and/ everything that’s happened since. I had a crazy night in a college reunion of sorts where I got to see Jodie and Louise and Jessica and Ronnie and Stefan and Anthony and Vicky and Jeannette and Chrissy and Rick and Amy, and got to meet Lee and Doug. I got to watch Louise and Jessica in the midst of some drunk girl drama, and though it was a little awkward, it was so much a part of their twinnish solidarity and their strong personalities that it was uplifting. I got to walk around the City with my Jodie like old times, talk about things that only we talk about, and shopped around Union Square. I found a holiday gift for my brother. I met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cappucinogrrl finally, after 2+ years of online correspondence, and learned that she is exactly the intelligent, poised, caring, and beautiful person I’ve always known she was. (And she’s cute, too!) I also got to bask in the energy and glow of one Ms. stacy for a short time, and as cliché as it sounds, it’s like I got to check off a box on the To-Do List of life. Seriously. I think you should all add “Meet Stacy P.” to your lists – not only is she Just That Fun, I really don’t think you will ever, and I do mean EVER, meet another person quite like her. (And /she’s/ cute, too!) I had people show me tremendous hospitality, and I got to eat delicious Italian take-out, and I got to eat at diners, and drink beers with old friends, and ride on the subway and see the skyline and avoid eye contact and just soak in the City, because it once was my Everything. So thank you, a big, hearty “THANK YOU” to Jodie and the Hofstra gang, to Princess and the rides to/from Islip, to Emmy and Stacy, and to New York City, who will always have a giant X on my treasure map (even though it’s faded a bit).
But I didn’t get to catch up withmurnkay. Which is still on the To-Do List. Which means I have to go back.
Note: pictures of Jodie and Emmy and Stacy to follow. They’re hiding out in the camera.
In the last handful of weeks, I’ve gone back to and spent small amounts of time in two of the most formative places in my life, and the reality of the situation is that I guess I have to concede that I have changed. It’s not like I can say that the places aren’t the same, because they are – my hometown looks and feels exactly like the prison of my adolescence, and New York may be the City That Never Sleeps, but it’s also the City That Never Changes. Really, you can move the homeless people, take away the strip joints, and permanently alter the landscape, but the City just keeps on moving with the same attitude it’s always held. That might actually be one of the things I love most about it.
But kicking me back to the Sesame Street days of old, both trips left me with a strong sense of "one of these kids is not like the others." It’s not that I had bad experiences necessarily, or altercations with people in my former stomping grounds. It's possible that the whole situation exists only in my head. Regardless, I felt out of place, and I suppose the only logical explanation for this feeling is that I’ve changed.
I could take the lazy way out of this analysis and suppose that the changes follow from marriage, divorce, and a lengthy and frustrated second coming out process, but not only am I not inclined to be lazy in my introspection, I don’t think it terribly true. While those events feature fairly prominently in where I’ve spent emotional energy in the past ten years, I don’t think they necessarily changed me. Not inherently, I mean. Sure, ending a major relationship changed the way I conduct relationships, but it didn’t change my approach to love, or my desire to care for another person. These were changes, yes, but not capital-C-Changes, the sorts that would find me delving into myself instead of my City a la Bill Murray in Lost in Translation.
So what is it, then, that brought about this dissidence? I spent most of Sunday thinking about the platitude "you can’t go home again," and almost wondered if perhaps I had crossed a point where it had been too long. I mean, I last visited the City two years ago – maybe I’d let too much time pass? Maybe I’d lost that connection, that spark? Driving toward the Midtown Tunnel with Princess and seeing that beautiful, glittering skyline assured me that the spark was still within me. Driving to Columbus from Kentucky, I realized I’d been going about this contemplation all wrong.
The phrase "you can’t go home again" is misleading, because it assumes that "home" is an unchanging thing, a place that always acts as a baseline from which you measure your entire life and everywhere you’ve lain your experiences. Having one benchmark labeled "home" is like turning your life into a giant treasure map, with one great big X signifying, "You Are Home." For me, at least, this idea is not terribly realistic.
Instead, I have several homes, several Xs, and you can mark your dashed "go this way" lines between them all. Up until age 17, home was a little city in Rhode Island full of disgruntled workers, discarded mills, and senior citizens. It was the only place I’d ever lived, the only streets I knew like the back of my hand, and the only area I knew to come back to. It was "home" in the sense that my family lived there, that my high school was there, and really, that the foundation of all of my independent thought was right there on the Massachusetts border.
And then I went to college.
I didn’t realize it, really, until Sunday night as I was fleeing Cincitucky, but I recreated "home" in New York – hence my draw to it, the appeal, and the feelings of safety. College was the first place I embarked on my own – meeting new people, establishing an identity and a place in the social order, and, more importantly, learning the ins and outs of a place on my own. Sure, my father knew the quickest route from our apartment in RI to my dorm room in NY, but did he know where the mall was? The restaurant where Jennifer and I celebrated our birthday in 1996? The place where I rented videos, or got my hair cut, or bought body jewelry, or where I liked to sit and read? No one at my previous "home" knew the Subway as well as I did, crossed the streets that I did, made the friends that I did. Heck, I (like many other people) became a new person at college and laid down god’s-honest roots. And it is /those/ roots that keep calling me back to the City over and over, despite downed planes and bad weather and crumbled buildings and misunderstandings. I formed roots there, roots named “favorite restaurant” and “best place to read” and “best friend” and “college suitemates” and “silly songs” and “final exam rituals” and “avoiding eye contact” and “drinking buddies” and “self-exploration.”
When “home” was New York, it wasn’t any fault of Rhode Island’s. It was just time, and energy, and space, and life. And similarly, while I was looking for the changes in New York, and in myself, what I found was just that I’ve gone and done it again. I said it would never happen, and I thought it was just another in a string of moves: Massachusetts, New Mexico, Maine. But, through no fault of New York’s, I’ve made another X on my treasure map.
I wasn’t fleeing Cincitucky, necessarily, more than I was heading home. Sure, it’s easy to say, “I want to go home,” or some other quick sentiment, but I think we all know the difference between saying the word “home” and meaning “temporary apartment” and saying the word “home” and meaning “this is where my life is.”
I have roots here, not necessarily because I’ve spent almost four years here now (wow), but because I have experienced so much life and poured so much of myself into Where I Am At This Point In Time. I’m surprised I didn’t realize it before, what with how I was unable to pack up and move East after graduation like I’d said I was going it. I have roots here, things like “favorite place to eat vegetarian chili” and “quickest way to get to work” and “knowledge of all interstates” and “loving the way the purple lights look under the Broad Street bridge” and “watching the twins grow up” and “Columbus Women’s Chorus” and “memories of kickboxing” and “the social work graduate program” and the whole gigantic chapter of my life entitled “my experiences working at GLBT Student Services.” I don’t know when it happened, and I don’t even really know /how/ it happened given my reluctance to let it, but Columbus is my home right now, for better or for worse and everything in between.
And while it’s easy to pinpoint a major change on a relationship, I don’t think it’s really fair to say that my relationship with Jennifer is the cause of any sense of misfit or discomfort. I’ve been in serious relationships before and it’s not the /relationship/ per se that is changing anything. It’s just that in the Home Treasure Map of my life, there’s also a big fat X smack in the middle of That Girl, because when it comes to laying down roots and building a sense of “home,” it’s just plain not going to happen anywhere that she’s not standing.
Yes, this relationship is different, not because we both have vaginas (and therefore everything must be different, apparently), but because we both have future plans. I was in a relationship for almost six years and never felt that click that comes when two people really are in sync with what they want from the future. Aaron and I supported each other’s goals 100%, and we were there for each other and cared for each other in very powerful and amazing ways, but we were more like best friends than life-mates, because we were living our separate lives together, not living our together lives separately. And that’s a difference, a real, tangible difference. And maybe that separates me from some people a little bit, and while that saddens me, it’s also a big positive in my life. It’s been said that “marriage” (in whatever form: legal, spiritual, or otherwise) is the Western path to enlightenment, that holding something that powerful together is the modern, impersonal world’s quest for Nirvana. I’ve marked my X and now I’m working on something big.
So while my trips to Rhode Island and New York weren’t everything I was expecting them to be, nor everything I was hoping them to be, it was only because I was expecting and hoping for unattainable things. I was looking for that feeling of “home,” when in actuality, that was what I’d left behind when I went on vacation. I think that the next time I attempt either of these locations (and I suppose the same could be said of Philmont, or Maine, or Boston as a visitor rather than a resident), I need an attitude shift. I need to remember that “home” is something I’m not searching for, that “home” is not something I will find in that glittery skyline anymore, that “home” for me is different than “home” for them. And next time, of course, I’ll have the foresight (and the privilege) of taking home along with me.
Aside from all of this contemplative rambling, I had some really excellent experiences this past weekend. I reunited with Princess and had a long, honest, intense conversation about everything that had happened between us /and/ everything that’s happened since. I had a crazy night in a college reunion of sorts where I got to see Jodie and Louise and Jessica and Ronnie and Stefan and Anthony and Vicky and Jeannette and Chrissy and Rick and Amy, and got to meet Lee and Doug. I got to watch Louise and Jessica in the midst of some drunk girl drama, and though it was a little awkward, it was so much a part of their twinnish solidarity and their strong personalities that it was uplifting. I got to walk around the City with my Jodie like old times, talk about things that only we talk about, and shopped around Union Square. I found a holiday gift for my brother. I met
cappucinogrrl finally, after 2+ years of online correspondence, and learned that she is exactly the intelligent, poised, caring, and beautiful person I’ve always known she was. (And she’s cute, too!) I also got to bask in the energy and glow of one Ms. stacy for a short time, and as cliché as it sounds, it’s like I got to check off a box on the To-Do List of life. Seriously. I think you should all add “Meet Stacy P.” to your lists – not only is she Just That Fun, I really don’t think you will ever, and I do mean EVER, meet another person quite like her. (And /she’s/ cute, too!) I had people show me tremendous hospitality, and I got to eat delicious Italian take-out, and I got to eat at diners, and drink beers with old friends, and ride on the subway and see the skyline and avoid eye contact and just soak in the City, because it once was my Everything. So thank you, a big, hearty “THANK YOU” to Jodie and the Hofstra gang, to Princess and the rides to/from Islip, to Emmy and Stacy, and to New York City, who will always have a giant X on my treasure map (even though it’s faded a bit).But I didn’t get to catch up with
murnkay. Which is still on the To-Do List. Which means I have to go back.Note: pictures of Jodie and Emmy and Stacy to follow. They’re hiding out in the camera.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 09:17 am (UTC)Isn't that *exactly the point* of the phrase? Its point is that home is a concept involving both time and space and while you can go back physically, you can never get back to the exact circumstances that you once felt were the core of your existence.
You can never go back to the past -- for good or ill. All you can do is recreate the emotional circumstances in different times and spaces. You can't GO home again, but you can FIND home again.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 09:22 am (UTC)Your post is /so good/, any further commenting by me would soil it, and I don't want to do that. Thanks.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 10:26 am (UTC)But you're right, when I go back there, it amazes me that this city that is always in progress (we joked when I was in grad school that the city was never "done"... there was always scaffolding up, something new being fixed, being changed) felt the same to me. The Upper West Side felt the Same. Crazy. But it didn't feel like home. Driving back over the mountain to Santa Cruz from the airport, seeing that first crest of redwood trees, feels like home. It's a drop in the pit of my stomach, an awe that I get to live here.
Having said that, it sounds like you've discovered something important for yourself. And I'm glad for you.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 01:30 pm (UTC)xoxo.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 07:58 pm (UTC)it will always amaze me when i read my thoughts coming out of someone else's head.
thanks for sharing that.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 08:24 pm (UTC)<3
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 08:30 pm (UTC)Next time.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 08:31 pm (UTC)True, but it's more than that for me. Yes, you can FIND home again (as you say), but then /that/ becomes your home... so you're not really GOING anywhere.
While trying to GO home, I'd actually LEFT home. How confusing.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 08:32 pm (UTC)You soil nothing with your presence.
Except maybe my pants.no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 08:35 pm (UTC)I'd love to see this Santa Cruz of yours sometime.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 10:20 pm (UTC)Now, where's that picture?
no subject
Date: 2003-12-17 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-17 11:34 am (UTC)You are my home too.
<3
no subject
Date: 2003-12-17 12:12 pm (UTC)Also, what night/day/afternoon is free to have cookies and milk with us?
no subject
Date: 2003-12-18 03:18 pm (UTC)I am On Call this weekend, though, so I might get interrupted.