This entry has been at least a month in the making, and is dedicated to the voyager family far and wide, because YOU know what I am talking about. For some, coming home is a dream come true - returning to family and friends, home and "normality". Ahhhh...normality. What is that? For some of us, coming home means not feeling like you belong in your skin. Literally ITCHING. It means looking at your life and wondering what in the world you are doing with yourself. It means aching for the sound of the sea and for the voyaging family you left behind. A counselor I spoke to said it is a grieving process, like losing a loved one.
Spending time in Whatawhata was a blessing indeed, as it was truly a halfway house; connected to the voyage, yet separate. While there, I was in constant contact with the voyagers in Vanuatu, and then in New Caledonia while they were there. And then I left. My first experience in an American airport nearly made me sick to my stomach, The blatant consumerism in all the airport shops made me want to run as fast as I could in any other direction. I longed with all my heart to be on a small island, where life is SIMPLE. The noise! The waste! Rubbish carelessly tossed aside...excessive water use...things I had developed an acute awareness of. I felt completely alone, especially as I had left someone I loved behind. Yes, my fellow sailors, I know the rule...no fraternizing. However, you know as well what kind of a crucible a voyage is: intense, surreal, a time that only those there understand. And so it was. In New Zealand, I learned firsthand what it meant to be left on land waiting for word from the sea.
Home was just as difficult. Although I knew that, in time, I would readjust to "routine", I wasn't really sure I wanted to. Would that be giving in to American greed and excess? Would I become merely complacent again? I promised myself that I would not, but the fear remains...a tiny little stone in my gut, reminding me of where I've been and what I've seen. All the pressures and stresses of land that I had detached myself from fell around me like bars in a cage, and claustrophobia set in. Ironically, I found, and still find solace in Facebook. Where once I laughed at the "addicts", I have found the value in it as it is the best means of keeping our family together. It has been therapy for many of us to chat and commiserate over our journeys and our losses. It has also been a means of discovering which relationships are truly worthwhile, and which are not (my sailor boy, unfortunately). He, a typical sailor boy, discovered that when girls from multiple ports (or canoes) are in the same place, worlds collide. Another lesson of the sea.
I just watched TV for the first time tonight. Again, it shows the extent of our drift from what really matters...reality shows?? Come on, people! Trash!! Even watching someone win money on a show, I thought about what good that money, so freely given, could do in so many other places! I also haven't been able to read a newspaper at all. Don't know why...maybe it's like the Beatles' song "A Day In the Life" ("I read the news today, oh boy..."). I thought I could jump right back into work with no problems. HA. As 'Onohi Paishon commented in reference to a few of us, "I don't know why you guys thought you could go back to work right away." his advice? "Go away for two weeks." Luckily, I have 62 students this year who are thoroughly distracting, and who need me. They have dragged me back into some semblance of a normal routine, although I still feel like I am running to keep the pace at school.
I still want my small island...within reach of the sea, where I can walk across a road and throw my one-man canoe into clear waters for a paddle. Life on my dream island is simple indeed; the inhabitants live close to nature and only within their means. They fish, they farm, they walk through the rain, they care for each other like family and don't let anyone slip through the cracks. Someday, I'll be there. One of the hardest lessons was realizing that the changes I desire, in my life and in the world, won't come immediately. I need to work for them, and be patient with myself. As long as I keep the goal in mind, it will come. As I return to daily life, I am so grateful for the opportunity to have seen that much more of the world. We ARE tremendously complacent in our routines...only by getting out there, going past the edge of comfort, can we see what IS. And knowing that is the first step in making it better.
But yet...no one knows desire like the sailor for the sea. NO ONE. And I thank Billy Richards for this (another benefit of FB):
The Sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark.
For, to stay , though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be bound in a mold.
Fain would I take with me all that is here. But how shall I?
A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether.
And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun..."
Kahlil Gibran "The Prophet" 1923
and from Joy Ancheta...also Gibran:
"And his soul cried out to them, and he said:
Sons of my ancient mother, you rider of the tides,
How often have you sailed in my dreams.
And now you come in my awakening,
which is my deeper dream.
Sons of my ancient mother, you rider of the tides,
How often have you sailed in my dreams.
And now you come in my awakening,
which is my deeper dream.
And so those of us who "lived the dream" now must seek the deeper one.
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