A place
“I need to live in as many places as possible”
“I am a traveller, not a tourist. I will try to move to the place instead of visiting the place. ” ( This sort of travel is harming locals by gentrifying neighborhoods and making housing unaffordable. Opting out. )
“I need to stretch my comfort zone and try out various kinds of living.”
“I am a climate activist. All lands are my home. I have to see more. ”
“Let me try living in my car.”
“Let me try community eco village.”
“Let me try tiny home.”
“Let me try loft living.”
“Let me move neighborhoods in the same city, every year.”
“Let me live in an environmental justice neighborhood.”
“Let me try the suburban McMansion living.”
“Let me get a roommate from every nationality, race and walk of life possible.”
“Where is the farthest from here I can move where I know no one and start again?”
“Where are the maximum diverse professionals per square inch and least number of tech folk, in this city ? I need to move there.”
– me.
These narratives are great to explore the world around me and gather experiences. However, at some point, I got to stop being the perpetual tourist who eventually leaves. People can no longer count on you to be there for them. Organizations cant count on you to do deep work over a period of time. Lot of local climate work is being done by volunteers/poorly paid grant dependent professions, folks with children who carve out the time and it’s very dehumanizing when projects stall. To belong, one has to become a native, with deep knowledge of the land and ties in the community. This realization is in stark contrast to my younger individualistic self who though she exists as an atomic unit and can float around the world. Too much Ayn Rand during childhood clashes philosophically when trying to solve for a problem like climate change which requires collective cooperation, to care about humans who aren’t my immediate kin and to think beyond my personal comfort/desires/wealth. To want a democracy, is to NOT sleep walk towards “survival of the richest” scenario as an inevitable outcome of climate change. When I was struggling philosophically, I discovered Wendell Berry, a poet farmer from Kentucky.
“If you belong everywhere, you belong nowhere”.
“There is no such thing as a global village. No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one’s partiality.”
“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”
“There comes . . . a longing never to travel again except on foot.”
“The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life.”
“The difference between a path and a road is not only the obvious one. A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual of familiarity. As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape. It is not destructive. It is the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place; it obeys the natural contours; such obstacles as it meets it goes around.”
“The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating.”
“A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has his mind precisely against what is wrong with us… What I am saying is that if we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of earth, but also the earth’s ability to produce.”
I started craving a marriage over one night stands, with a place. I started seeking everything local. Wanted to stop moving around and settle in. Wanted to go from seeing places to being a part of a place. I started craving “my place” that I knew in and out. Reading Wendell Berry and Vandana Shiva changed me deep down. Mary Oliver and Matsuo Basho slow travelled locally, learnt to see the world around them and produce such brilliant work modeled after their deep observations. I learnt about walking meditation. I started reading about pleasures of walking and the art of walks. I started walking and wearing out shoes. It dramatically altered the meaning of travel for me. I now get to slow travel every single day and don’t crave mindless vacations anymore. It now frustrates me when I only pass by places and leave without a deeper understanding of it. I cant hike without trying to learn the plants on the trails. I cant walk my neighborhood without planting gardens in my head on the land I see. Travel isn’t something that only starts when one gets on a plane and ends on a return flight. Deep curiosity and the gift of seeing, isn’t a switch that only turns on after burning a shit ton of fossil fuels on a plane. As I discovered literature by Native Americans, this craving for deep knowledge of a place strengthened. I want a village of my own and deep wandering. In the patriarchal culture I was born into, being a part of a community as a woman meant : being a cheerful domestic servant to the ones above me in the patriarchal ladder, to serve them lavish food, to clean up after them as they lounge on the couch, to be a martyr for their needs, to “adjust”, to run a house as a hotel, to not question patriarchy, to be a conservative, to never push back and to be an obedient daughter. I could never seamlessly fit into such communities. To know that other kinds of community can exist and that “service to community” can be defined outside the confines of patriarchy, made me stop running.
Around this time, I was learning about climate impacts on Connecticut for my organization. Started with geology when the glaciers retreated, evolution of ecology, economy, health of ecosystems, key species, jobs, environmental justice neighborhoods, budget allocations by county, impacts on every sector for 1.5 C and 3C warming, …. requiring 100s of hours of study. This is the first time I really learnt a place and our interconnections. This was the first time I stopped being a tourist. This was the first time I could be left on any unglamorous corner of the land and I found myself curious about everything there. We were doing work which required us to respect every citizen and ask them to vote for climate. It is not possible to make progress without zooming in and understanding a place. To leave again was painful given how much work I put in, the projects I was a part of and the friends I made. Shallow work, superficial tinkering with problems and excessive job hopping, can not be my work ethic.
We wanted to find a place where we could stay in the long term, in a safe environment given the political climate in the country for immigrants. During a pandemic, the need for our closest friends and a garden to retreat into, over rode exciting cultural experiences in new places. We moved back to our old house in California. A place to love and one that loves me back, economy I contribute to, ecology that I see as a mother, communities I am a part of, villages in which I am a favorite aunt, bookstores that welcome us with water-bowls for our puppy, neighbors who are musicians, street art on every corner, a affordable neighborhood with trees, diverse professionals, .. – what more can I ask for from a place ? We initially assumed that this house would be a place holder or a “starter home” that we move out of as soon as we can afford something “better”. Life taught me that no place is bad or good by itself, as long as my human rights aren’t trampled upon. Moving to a richer neighborhood and a larger house, isn’t what finding a house means for me anymore. This is my place. I am a pilgrim on the San Lorenzo Creek.