My family has been sending me pictures of home, as if trying to entice me back for the holidays. I think they miss me. Which is fair this time of year. It’s hard to not want to be in your own childhood home, reading a book by the lights of the tree and the fire. A picture of mom’s homemade cookies, though?
To understand the place this image took me to, you have to understand the following: First, the stares and audible exclamations of “外国人“ （wàiguórén! Foreigner!）and “很高啊！” (Hěn gāo a! So tall!) that trail me whenever I’m in public have passed into the subconscious. They still leave some small but lasting impression, though. And they build.
Second, everyone who’s traveled in a foreign cuisine knows the deep-seeded link between food and the comfort of home. I still remember that night my friend Richard and I found french fries in a night market in Thailand. In the US I ate french fries at the rate of any pediatrician’s son–approximately never–but somehow these ones spiked my primary-school brain with endorphins in a way that 3 weeks of delicious new food could not.
I do not easily turn to homesickness, but that picture wove together all the longing and frustration that had slowly built over weeks. That’s how travel tends to be, though: Minor daily struggles and eventual, unexpected catharsis.
On a cold, clear day earlier this week, I awaited the arrival of a miscommunicating tutee in a hospital classroom, watching a lively game of basketball through an open window. All of them primary-school aged, the older players exhibited their extra 2 years of wisdom by stopping the game for an impromptu screening lesson. The youngers either listened respectfully or rolled their eyes and made known what I’m sure was their desire to play the game already.
The world slipped into focus, and the feeling that had haunted me ever since I arrived in China was gone for a moment. The foreignness fell away, and the truth that my conscious brain had been preaching for months became real. I forgot where I was for a few reverent moments. I felt how life fit together here, and the players’ out-of-breath shouts were both incomprehensible and easy.
Walking home that night after dinner with my tutee’s family, that feeling came back. I was a child, not understanding the world around me, but feeling it move. I was not scared, not uneasy, but comfortable in my not-yet-knowing.
It’s moments like these that make me keep on down this path. You can be comfortable when you’re lost, if you believe that you don’t want to be found. “The Idea” by Mark Strand, for me, is about the tension inherent in pushing ourselves beyond what we were. Becoming is inhospitable, but it’s what humans are all about. The minute we are found, the minute we take respite, three things happen: change becomes hard, being becomes comfortable, and having the comfort loses its importance.
Last week was a resettling of the becoming-tension, my mother’s cookies the north wind (I feel closer), and “The Idea” a timely reminder of the need to push on.
And that’s exactly what I’ll do when we’re done with finals here. This next week I have the bulk of my finals to give and grade, and I want to give the Lima/Paris talks the time and research they deserve, so keep an eye out next week for that and my travel plans for the coming two months.
360 by bike 
Those cookies have long been symbols of our family and warmth. We still store the oatmeal in the plastic Costco dishwasher detergent container that we bought when you were a baby, and the recipe is still taped to the lid. As you and Maia grew older, it was one thing that I could still do for you, that would not interfere with your independence. I could still send them to you when you were at college. Now I can just send you the picture. It is kind of like standing outside the window of the warm cabin in the snow. You can see it, but not feel or taste the warmth.
Gram and Grandad were over last night for dinner. We talked about “The Idea.” Grandad, as always, has an amazing memory, and remembered that Strand was the author of a previous poem that you had on your blog. Grandad commented on the sense of absence in the poem. Dad wondered if the cabin could represent a resource that we choose not to exploit (thinking of oil and other world resources). I thought of the poem as a journey toward some ideal, with warmth and satisfaction at seeing the ideal clearly, even if we can never actually arrive.
We do miss you, a lot, but love you and support you in your heart-filled journey.
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Thanks. I love that poetry like strand’s can be meaningful for many people without having the same meaning for them all. I drew my interpretation from my life, but also the earlier lines of the poem, where he places the
“…wish to possess
Something beyond the world we knew, beyond ourselves
Beyond our power to imagine, something nevertheless
In which we might see ourselves…”
within the cold and barren landscape. The cabin then contrasts with that landscape, creating an alternative to life in the cold and presenting a choice. The poem suggests that we do have the choice to enter the cabin, to live in the world that we know, that we understand, that we belong in. The choice not to is the choice to push on to new worlds not yet understood, to become what “we” never were before. I think the ambiguity of “we” really suits the poem, as it makes it both personal for the reader, having a connection with the poet, and generalizes to humanity as a whole, suggesting that we are becoming something we never were before.
Just my ideas, though.
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