Secrets and Pieces

I always feel sad when I come here. 

I am in the City, in San Francisco, the only city that I have ever known intimately.  I know many secrets of this city, especially secrets about the dark underbelly, the shouting that goes on at night, the faces that are slammed into fences and gates.  I also know good secrets, like where to get the best coffee and pizza, and which streets to travel on when you are in a hurry.  I know no other city in this way.

But it never did let me in. 

Now, I am staying overnight in the big sprawling flat where I lived before I moved to the Land.  I don't know what it is about places that gets into me this way, I only know that I grip things, and my knuckles are tired. 

I remember walking up the back steps, the old wooden steps that are ridiculously steep and that smell like pee, with YaYa, barely four hours old.  I was a little unsteady, but glad to be coming home from the birth center to go to bed. It was about 10:00 at night.  I sat on the couch and someone fixed me some cereal, probably my mom.  They all sat around me, all my friends, on the couch, around me and on the floor beneath me, and some perched above me, on the arms of the couch. They stroked me and touched me and of course, held tiny YaYa, who just hours before had revealed that she was a daughter, not another son. 

These are the kind of memories I am gripping, here.  And although now, years later, I have become so accustomed to the woods that I am sort of blinky and stunned in the City, coming here is sharp and poignant.  This was home.  It belongs to other people now, people who are kind enough to have me come and stay with them.  But my memories of the last couple of years are not of here.

This is the way of things.  And I want to hold on.  But people are the same way, as elusive as the specks of dust that Leafy and I tried to catch, on the day he was sick.  You love them and love them, but you can't keep them.  Even our children will grow up and go. 

I have somehow entwined myself in the land under my feet.  I feel as though small birds have pinned me to the ground, and when we break away, small pieces of myself will break off, too.  The other day I was talking with Chinua, trying to figure out how to bring the woods and hills with me.  "Maybe a tattoo of a Redwood.  Or a Madrone," I suggested.

"Definitely a Madrone," he said.  "A Redwood would make a horrible tattoo."

Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn't.  But I have to let go. Somehow. 

And then I remember that I always feel this way.  And I find a poem that I wrote, when I lived here in this house that I feel nostalgic for now.

***

you struggle

 

when you have left pieces of yourself

around the earth,

in this village

and that one.

you’ll find sometimes

that your edges don’t meet

the sides don’t match.

your skin doesn’t stretch to cover

all of you. 

a slight ringing of bells is enough to

draw you halfway around the world

to call you away from your children

splashing happily in their bath.

 

or a stop at the curb

an otherwise annoying smell from

the sewer

sends you rocking into boats

sends you into the warm air.

when you have left pieces.

tan faces, bits of amber

the rush of a crowd in the market

meat on a stick, the cockroaches

your hurriedly made bed

deep in the cold of air conditioning.

 

when you have left pieces of yourself

with people, in this city and

that one,

you’ll find that you can’t

keep your thoughts with you

sometimes

they have taken you on a journey

a musing, winding road, many trees

thick forests.  you struggle

to put a key in the lock of

your front door

with clumsy fingers. 

 

you trip, stand catching your breath

head down, looking at cracks

in the pavement. head in your hands

draw yourself back.

pieces of you, here and there

making small light patches

on a grey and rushing landscape.

***

It is the same.  I am the same, wanting to own what I cannot own, finding it difficult to say goodbye.  And I will get through.

Comments

[melissa douthwright]

i love your poetry,
thank you for sharing it,
it has been so long since i have seen your poems.

"wanting to own what i cannot own,
finding it difficult to say good bye,"

i feel this through your words,

my family has moved at least once a year since the birth of my first daughter, and evertime we are in a new place, i say similar things to myself, it is hard to say good bye, and we find our selves still longing to own what we cannot.

you have come a long way Rae!
love and respect!

[Melissa]

"I only know that I grip things, and my knuckles are tired."

Sometimes being tired can be a blessing. Let it help you to let go. That was a wonderful poem. Take care, M

[Jennifer]

Lovely writing as usual. Wonder what you will love about your next home with that white-knuckled grip- not wanting to release? Something beautiful, I'm sure. I love how your nostalgia isn't the fake, gilded kind. You remember the comfort of friends and the new-born YaYa along with the too steep, pee-stained staircase. You're so good at making me want to laugh and cry at the same time! Thank you for your words today. They hit the spot.

[kelli lu]

de-lurking.. found you through Gretchen at Lifenut..

your post - especially the poem - is beautifully put. what a good description of the way memory braids together people/places/events - and then weaves those fibers through who we become.

all the best for your move. i hope you have all the time you want/need to spend with the places and people you love.

[jessie]

What a beautiful poem. It made me think of all the places I have been and left a part of me. We are going to the city on Tuesday and I wanted to know where that wonderful coffee shop was that you and Renee went to. If you get a chance let me know. Thanks. I hope your visit is wonderful.

[kelly]

goodness, I relate to this in a way that makes me tremble. So much.

[#1mama]

I know how you feel! I feel that way too.... so many places, so many houses and so many memories. I think though that we are on a journey, and this place is not our home, and sometimes when I just long for a place where I can make roots, I have to remember that....not that I am not aiming to have a little cottage house somewhere - possibly the island which is my base, where I can go to and fro from. But because my heart is so mission minded, I may never attain that, and because God is my home, I can have peace in that.

I love that poem!!! Thanks for sharing that! You are amazing, wise beyond your years. You don't even have the gray hair that goes with it!

[Mrs. G.]

Wow. Nice post. I love the Pacific Northwest, but I still carry around huge chunks of my childhood South. I miss fireflies, thunder, locusts, the Mississippi River and gravy.

[Lara]

Dude. Get a tattoo. Let me be there for it.
Infact get many tattoos.
Get several. Get one of the old house in SanFranciso.
Do it.
Get more and more and more.
Or just ge the one.
Just saying is all.

[bubandpie]

I love the Barenaked Ladies song "The Old Apartment" - I feel that way too, about places I've lived and the parts of myself I've left there.

[Amy]

I've posted before, I think, I found you through Lifenut. Thank you for this post. I relate. For the first 18 years of my life I lived in a town in the desert. Then I moved on to college, and moved every year I was there. After that, around the world and back, to the upper midwest, then all the way to the west coast, then around the world again, then back to the west coast, then in with my love, then moving back to that desert town, which, as it turned out, held my heart, but not my dreams, then back west, then again. I've been my most recent place for two years. All the people I have known and places I have been are inside me, but I can't always connect them to the people and place where I am right now. As a mom, I'm aware that the places I walk with my kids, this street, that park, that store are places I will not always go, or see in the same way, so even if I never move again they will be missed. Life is fleeting and bittersweet and the revolving door of experience that excited me so much in my twenties, sometimes tires me out now, I want to stand still, for longer than any moment will allow. It's impossible. So, I believe the right approach is to keep moving, making new moments, savoring connections when you can -- even though each move is harder because you have to carry the memory of your most recent place with you while you leave a part of yourself behind. I don't know you, but I gather you're on your way to your next place and I think you will do fine.

[carrien]

Exactly.

I so often feel the same.

I will miss simply knowing you are at the land, kind of like knowing there is a home to go to. It seems so vacant in my minds eye now.

Sigh, maybe in India?

LOve you.

[marian]

I wasn't able to actually open up your page to comment when I first read this in bloglines, but today I'm in... I just wanted to say that this poem is so, so lovely. I can relate. Thank you for sharing it.

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