Where We Traipse and Meander

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

I sometimes wonder what life would’ve been like for me had I stayed in one place and not viewing my last home from a rear view mirror. What would it be like to belong to a community; a place where everyone knew each another?

As a woman who has moved more than most, I often look at the life my sister led with envy. She had life-long friends, book clubs, and neighbors she knew well. I suppose I did some of that, stayed put while my kids were young, and I did try not to disrupt their lives like our mum and dad did ours. I still think eight grade schools in eight years is beyond too many.

But that aside, it’s more of a kinesthetic question, I think. Maybe there’s a German word for it like fitting in or acceptance or maybe more like that feeling you get knowing there’s a community behind you that you can call on if you need to, but knowing you probably won’t because you’re too private. Now that sounds more like a German word.

We watched an Icelandic TV series recently —Trapped—and it confirmed pretty much what I suspect is correct about my sentimental longings. The police officer in the series is investigating a series of crimes in a snow-bound coastal town. He is not from there. He enjoys a certain distance but enjoys the way people look after one another. They give him a ride when his car breaks down, direct him to a mechanic, loan him a bike while in the repair shop. All very cordial. But the people who live there find the town suffocating. They are fixated on how people pry, carry rumors, do not forget old grudges.

So I suspect my wish for something I’ve never had, is just a sentimental yearning…and there is a German word for that; the longing for a thing or things missed or incomplete in your life: Sehnsucht. The Portuguese call it saudade, which sounds softer to my ear. Romanians call it dor. It’s not surprising that societies that traveled extensively would have words for the homesickness we all feel from time to time.

It’s not a specific place or a thing that I miss, though, because if I travel back to places I think I’d love to stay forever, they have changed, or I have. No, it’s more of a general headset. As the poet, Ira Sadoff, put it so very well when speaking about one of his poems, “It turns out I wasn’t longing for the past but for a state of mind, the capacity to feel the full force of being alive.” Exactly.

I would post his wonderful poem, A Few Surprising Turns, here, but I don’t want to violate any copyrights. You can click on the link above or search for it on Poems.org. It’s worth it. Like most poets, Sadoff is able to capture in a few lines what took me several hundred to spit out here.

Kingfisher

An essay I started a few years ago is in the current Bluestem online quarterly. “Kingfisher” stemmed from a sighting of  one on a morning walk in Costa Rica, where I now live.

It is interesting to me how essays evolve. That one started out as pure observation and a memory from my childhood. The piece sat in my Scrivener project titled Essays in Progress and there are quite a few in that file. I’d pull it out now and again and look at it.  I felt it lacked focus and really, taken on it own, it had no point. I have a lot of those kinds of pieces, too. Over time, though, it began to dawn on me that the sighting and the memory did have a point, and the essay grew from there.

I cannot imagine trying to crank creative essays out on a schedule or deadline. Mine seem to have a life of their own and their evolution is slow. Three, four or five drafts is not uncommon for me. And, even when I think they have a point or they are finished, editors do not always agree with me. So, I was very happy this one found a home.

I am in quite good company at Bluestem. The spring issue is full of wonderful poetry, fiction, and, of course, nonfiction.  Click here to see all the contributors.

 

Book Review: The Tenth Parallel

My review of Eliza Griswold’s book, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Christianity and Islam, is live at The Internet Review of Books.

“Journalist and poet Eliza Griswold spent seven years investigating and reporting on religious conflict around the globe. That she lived to tell about it is remarkable. Her travels took her to some of the most troubled, and often violent, countries in the Eastern Hemisphere: Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, as well as Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.” To read more….

While I found the majority of the book to be a fairly bleak forecast due to politics, global climate change, not to mention religious intolerance, I was heartened this past week when thousands of Egyptian Muslims stood watch as human shields so Coptic Christians could celebrate their Christmas worship without fear of violence. To see a modicum of tolerance and unity among differing faiths was uplifting.

Perhaps the United States could take a cue from that event.