For most of my journey, I have tried to avoid "going back," at least in any literal sense. When I was doing a lot of driving across country, if I missed an exit on the highway, I just kept going. I haven't felt led to attend many college reunions ("re-live the fun times of the '70s!") or to move somewhere just because I lived there before. However, I have "gone back" -- to the east coast, to England -- usually with a specific goal in mind. Life is a series of crisscrosses and spirals, and it's my linear, left-brained self that may be trying so hard to avoid duplication.
And in this blog, I have rarely made specific reference to place, probably because the three years since starting it have been so constantly transitional. I've identified places I love, such as King's College, Cambridge and Westminster Abbey but not the places in-between. It may be a measure of how non-transitional I hope this step will be, and how much I love this area, that I say that I have "come back" to Duluth, Minnesota, where I lived in the nineties and about which I wrote back in October.
There is no question that my experience here will not be the same as my experience twenty to thirty years ago. The place has both changed and not changed. The same is true with me. I won't lie -- there is a part of me still wishing that I could have figured out that ideal existence in London. I don't think in this lifetime I will ever get over my intense feeling of exile. But two months ago after my dad's death, I found myself mulling over that sense of love being reciprocated. What place had its metaphorical arms open to me? What place was big enough for me to "rise rooted" (to use Sharon Blackie's term)? Where was the ideal place for me to bring together a life experience as varied as mine? Where might I be most uninhibitedly creative? I think I could literally feel the welcoming waters of Lake Superior beckoning. After all these water, beach and harbor metaphors, a literal harbor.
I went swimming in the lake two days ago. Well, swimming is a bit of a misnomer for the dunking and splashing around that I did. It was cold, but not unbearably so. I rejoiced that I was still alive to feel these waters baptizing me. Later that day, I played C. H. H. Parry's "I was glad" at full volume. I guess I have covered all my bases. I will slowly but surely rise, and, in "going back," move forward.
