Gotta keep moving
Generally why I like being back. Or, at least why being here now matters so much. I’ve gotten a weird sense of picking up where I left off by being in Austin again. I don’t believe I find an authoritative, real sense of who I am here, but I know that the sense of place I have developed here brings out certain qualities and feelings that I need to stare down to understand what I need in my life in a more general sense. Who ‘I am’ can’t really be found or known, and I want to make everything that pisses me off about living as me to drive me towards a better sense or approach to the world.
It helps me figure out what’s missing, in a lot of senses. I guess this refers back to certain times in my life when I’ve been really happy, or at least happy and comfortable at the same time, which has some particular value.
In Athens – Austin is a sense of where I was, what my future requires. I think finding some reason for my comfort level gives me a base to work from to develop an activist/progressive future. Actually, no. I think being comfortable is the wrong approach, the times when I’ve had the most energy is when I felt the least comfortable, the most ‘off’ from myself. Knowing what made me comfortable and at least happy here makes me want to develop that sense of community/feeling again. Getting here, just smelling the weird stuff about Austin gave me a picture of what I love. The smells, experiences are tied into everything about my life that I miss, don’t always get elsewhere. Knowing it again makes the absence more pronounced, which makes me more focused in the drive to create. The ‘recharge’ I get isn’t physical or energetic, it helps me focus the energy I have again towards something else. Austin gives me the feeling of demanding satisfaction from the world, feeling good enough to stand on what I think is right to demand change.
Part of being here gives me a sense of misdirection and overstability. I know there are certain qualities to my life that my life in Austin meets. I know I have a home, certain privileges that afford me a sense of stability that I don’t feel elsewhere. Having this causes me to seek relationships with qualities I don’t think I could discover were I anywhere else. Knowing the places to be, the basics of living that can only be afforded through time, gives me a certain restlessness and particular purposelessness that searches for connections beyond the basics – I have a home with certain people and places, my desire to expand elsewhere extends to new types of feeling you don’t get when just searching for an initial sense of placement. There is a different kind of isolation attached to being here, which is isolation though my past. It’s easy to avoid human contact because of the nature of my home, and comfortable places that I developed here. This is different, and perhaps more dangerous than the isolation that comes with a new place and not knowing what to do. With the isolation by your past, it’s possible to miss out on your life and not know it, or care about it. My fear with being here is that I’ll become complacent with existence as me, when I don’t think the person I find here really represents the calling or sense of self I desire ultimately. That’s why I need to keep moving and driving for something greater.
I’ve been attracted to creeks lately. I like creeks in cities because they mix the human with the uncontrollable. Creeks remain because waterways are difficult to change or pave over, and they become built around. They can’t as easily be owned or directed, and the lack of a human element makes them ideal spaces to wander though. In our developed lives, walking through one will take you to places you may not otherwise be able to get – the means of a creek (or sometimes powerline right of way, or railroad tracks) provides access to places you ignore without the intent to, so they provide the ability to experience the in between in a way that other transportation (car, sometimes bike) wouldn’t. They provide a mix of the known and controlled with the indeterminate, which suits my approach to the world right now.
Duncan
It helps me figure out what’s missing, in a lot of senses. I guess this refers back to certain times in my life when I’ve been really happy, or at least happy and comfortable at the same time, which has some particular value.
In Athens – Austin is a sense of where I was, what my future requires. I think finding some reason for my comfort level gives me a base to work from to develop an activist/progressive future. Actually, no. I think being comfortable is the wrong approach, the times when I’ve had the most energy is when I felt the least comfortable, the most ‘off’ from myself. Knowing what made me comfortable and at least happy here makes me want to develop that sense of community/feeling again. Getting here, just smelling the weird stuff about Austin gave me a picture of what I love. The smells, experiences are tied into everything about my life that I miss, don’t always get elsewhere. Knowing it again makes the absence more pronounced, which makes me more focused in the drive to create. The ‘recharge’ I get isn’t physical or energetic, it helps me focus the energy I have again towards something else. Austin gives me the feeling of demanding satisfaction from the world, feeling good enough to stand on what I think is right to demand change.
Part of being here gives me a sense of misdirection and overstability. I know there are certain qualities to my life that my life in Austin meets. I know I have a home, certain privileges that afford me a sense of stability that I don’t feel elsewhere. Having this causes me to seek relationships with qualities I don’t think I could discover were I anywhere else. Knowing the places to be, the basics of living that can only be afforded through time, gives me a certain restlessness and particular purposelessness that searches for connections beyond the basics – I have a home with certain people and places, my desire to expand elsewhere extends to new types of feeling you don’t get when just searching for an initial sense of placement. There is a different kind of isolation attached to being here, which is isolation though my past. It’s easy to avoid human contact because of the nature of my home, and comfortable places that I developed here. This is different, and perhaps more dangerous than the isolation that comes with a new place and not knowing what to do. With the isolation by your past, it’s possible to miss out on your life and not know it, or care about it. My fear with being here is that I’ll become complacent with existence as me, when I don’t think the person I find here really represents the calling or sense of self I desire ultimately. That’s why I need to keep moving and driving for something greater.
I’ve been attracted to creeks lately. I like creeks in cities because they mix the human with the uncontrollable. Creeks remain because waterways are difficult to change or pave over, and they become built around. They can’t as easily be owned or directed, and the lack of a human element makes them ideal spaces to wander though. In our developed lives, walking through one will take you to places you may not otherwise be able to get – the means of a creek (or sometimes powerline right of way, or railroad tracks) provides access to places you ignore without the intent to, so they provide the ability to experience the in between in a way that other transportation (car, sometimes bike) wouldn’t. They provide a mix of the known and controlled with the indeterminate, which suits my approach to the world right now.
Duncan
posted by Duncan at 7:53 PM
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