"Finding home."
Amid dislocation.
MAY 31—Driving back on Wednesday from a long postponed haircut—along winding route 44, through the spring green countryside of Connecticut, past white church spires gleaming in the afternoon light, down the quiet main street of villages incorporated more than a century before my home state of Washington joined the union—I felt how lost I was.
I don’t recognize my life, I thought. I don’t recognize myself.
Half of my few possessions are now in New England and the other, including my cat, remain in the Pacific Northwest. I am no longer there and yet not entirely here.
The rural land I drive and walk through, though beautiful, is not at all familiar. Even the light of the sun and the shadows it casts seem queer, while all around me unfamiliar birds sing unfamiliar songs.
I am profoundly dislocated.
What is home and how do we know it? What does it smell and taste like? How does it feel and sound?
* * *
It was 8:30 in the morning on a Friday a week ago, and I listened to the sound of Dolores’s voice through my headphones:
Sit stable like a mountain, vast like the ocean, with each breath a new beginning.
And then again, at the same time on another day, she said:
Sit with your body like a mountain, your breath like the wind, your mind like the sky.
These are among the simple and evocative instructions I hear when joining my online meditation group. Every morning, Monday through Saturday, a different person leads the practice. We listen to their guidance. Then the gong sounds, or the bell, and our twenty-minute session begins.
I have been meditating for two decades. It is delightful—easeful, relaxing—and boring. Not infrequently, it is barely bearable. In meditation there are no comforting distractions from the restless energy of mind, from all our raw and painful confusion.
The gong sounds, meditation begins, and the mind scurries like a frightened animal searching for cover. There is none to be found. You are naked and facing the wind. And you do the hardest thing: you sit, you stay, you don’t move, and you watch. And eventually, your mind settles. Your frantic heart rests. And this fleeting moment is home.