more thoughts on geography
Still wondering about the idea of belonging to a place, and if there's a right answer to the question, "Where should I live?"
I was in Brisbane on the weekend, where I used to live. I hadn't been back for about three years (and first time since the Broken Heart), and while there I passed by some places I hadn't even thought about since I left, so more like 11 years.
I was there for a very special, monumental and celebratory event in a dear friend's life, about which maybe more later, so there were rivers of emotion flowing through the weekend the whole time anyway.
Also, both days were very nice, sunny and much warmer than Sydney's been, so even if I'd never been there before I would have thought it was pretty, and the air was so fresh and clean.
But wafting down the river on the Jet Cat, passing the park in West End where I used to walk, and once had a big picnic before going overseas on vacation, and used to walk a friend's dog sometimes, and a few times had Aikido class, seeing this place where I lived and significant things happened to me but I hadn't even thought about for years, I thought to myself: If I never come back here again in my life, I wouldn't mind that much. Because, on my current trajectory, I will never get back to Omaha again in my life, but that's where I spent the most time of anywhere in my life, 12 consecutive years, and they were the years between ages 2-14 so they made a bigger imprint on me that any other place probably would have. So, if I haven't been sad at all about that, why would I be sad if I never got back to Brisbane?
On the Sunday I had coffee with a friend of a friend, actually I knew him too because he was my editor during my very brief career as a rock journalist. He recently moved back to Australia after spending 8 years in Scotland, and is now thinking of moving back to Brisbane from Melbourne where he is now. So we were talking about geography, and he (in his fully Aussie voice, after spending the whole afternoon reminiscing about gigs he'd been to during the whole history of rock music in Queensland) said, "Well, my family moved here when I was 9, so I've never thought of myself as particularly Australian."
And I said in reply, there's probably a whole population of us out there of hybrids who don't feel at home anywhere.
How do you tell where you belong? How can you answer the question, "Where should I live?"
Or do you just float and go along and shit happens and you end up weird places that you never would have expected, and it doesn't matter one bit whether you "belong" there or not, you are just you, wherever you go, and your job is to get to know the place and love the people there, whoever they are. No matter how much fried food they eat.
I will let you know what I work out.
I was in Brisbane on the weekend, where I used to live. I hadn't been back for about three years (and first time since the Broken Heart), and while there I passed by some places I hadn't even thought about since I left, so more like 11 years.
I was there for a very special, monumental and celebratory event in a dear friend's life, about which maybe more later, so there were rivers of emotion flowing through the weekend the whole time anyway.
Also, both days were very nice, sunny and much warmer than Sydney's been, so even if I'd never been there before I would have thought it was pretty, and the air was so fresh and clean.
But wafting down the river on the Jet Cat, passing the park in West End where I used to walk, and once had a big picnic before going overseas on vacation, and used to walk a friend's dog sometimes, and a few times had Aikido class, seeing this place where I lived and significant things happened to me but I hadn't even thought about for years, I thought to myself: If I never come back here again in my life, I wouldn't mind that much. Because, on my current trajectory, I will never get back to Omaha again in my life, but that's where I spent the most time of anywhere in my life, 12 consecutive years, and they were the years between ages 2-14 so they made a bigger imprint on me that any other place probably would have. So, if I haven't been sad at all about that, why would I be sad if I never got back to Brisbane?
On the Sunday I had coffee with a friend of a friend, actually I knew him too because he was my editor during my very brief career as a rock journalist. He recently moved back to Australia after spending 8 years in Scotland, and is now thinking of moving back to Brisbane from Melbourne where he is now. So we were talking about geography, and he (in his fully Aussie voice, after spending the whole afternoon reminiscing about gigs he'd been to during the whole history of rock music in Queensland) said, "Well, my family moved here when I was 9, so I've never thought of myself as particularly Australian."
And I said in reply, there's probably a whole population of us out there of hybrids who don't feel at home anywhere.
How do you tell where you belong? How can you answer the question, "Where should I live?"
Or do you just float and go along and shit happens and you end up weird places that you never would have expected, and it doesn't matter one bit whether you "belong" there or not, you are just you, wherever you go, and your job is to get to know the place and love the people there, whoever they are. No matter how much fried food they eat.
I will let you know what I work out.
posted by Ellen at 5:55 pm
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