Vabagond: On Home

Home. Home is a fire, a burning reminder, of where we belong, love. With walls built up around us, the bricks make me nervous, they're only so strong, love. Plates they will shift, houses will shake, fences will drift, we will awake, only to find, nothing's the same as yesterday.
-Death Cab for Cutie "Home is a Fire"

I have been slightly homeless as of late. Not that my family isn't taking care of me, that's not a problem. In fact, the problem has less to do with a lack of a physical center as much as it does a lack of some emotional centrality. Allow me to give a bit of back story. You see, I am currently living between two cities that are about an hours drive from one another. Seeing as how this particular epoch is following one of bumming off of some friends on their couch, in their home office, etc, for a few weeks, it gives a particular sort of ambiance to my life that I find both liberating and dissolving, diluting--depleting, perhaps. What a paradox. As I come to know my own self, and find respite in 'doing my own thing', I almost have a sense of a dissolving, diluting, and depleting of the things that once held a great deal of value to me. It is like pouring liquid from one vessel to another. One fills while the other depletes. There is no replenishing effect at work.

Yesterday morning I boarded a plane in San Francisco that was bound for Long Beach with a connection to SLC. As the plane taxied around the runways, I decided to listen to Death Cab for Cutie's latest album "Codes and Keys" in its entirety. I bought that album a while back, during a very different time in my life, and have connected with the album a very distinct and vivid set of memories. As the music and then lyrics of the first song (quoted above) came through my headphones, I let the rhythm drive the words into me, and began to think about the concept of "home". What does "home" mean? Really. What does it mean? People have been writing about it, speaking about it, singing about it for centuries, so what has anyone actually learned? A few contemporary music examples that immediately come to my mind follow here:

Another summer day
Has come and gone away
In Paris and Rome,
But I wanna go home
Mmm I've got to go home.
-Michael Buble "Home"

Well I'm going home,
To the place where I belong,
Where your love has always been enough for me...
These places and these faces are getting old,
So I'm going home.
-Daughtry "Home"


Peel the scars from off my back.
I don't need them anymore.
You can throw them out or keep them in your Mason jars.
I've come home.
-Radical Face "Welcome Home"

Of course I cannot forget what is, perhaps, the most personally poignant of all of the songs dealing with the concept of home. It has particularly been on my mind as of late for various reasons:

And I have torn my soul apart from
pulling artlessly with fool commands.
Some nights
I just never go to sleep at all,
And I stand,
Shaking in the doorway like a sentinel,
All alone,
Bracing like the bow upon a ship,
And fully abandoning
Any thought of anywhere
But home,
My home.
Sometimes I can almost feel the power.
And I do love you.
Is it only timing,
That has made it such a dark hour,
Only ever chiming out,
"Cuckoo, cuckoo"?
-Joanna Newsom "In California"

For Buble and Daughtry, home is the place that surpasses everything else that once seemed more interesting. It is the place we never ultimately tire of, and where we find the love we need. To Radical Face it is a place where we take off our baggage (in probably a literal, but mostly a psychological sense) and abandon the harmful things we picked up on our travels. "Scars" that we thought, perhaps contentedly, were permanent parts of us. Death Cab paints home as both powerful and dangerous, comparing it to a fire that pulls us in. Ben's song is uncharacteristically (I should specify that I mean uncharacteristically for this album) somewhat pessimistic. I say that it is pessimistic because it suggests that home cannot last. It pulls on us, and then it falls apart, or threatens to fall apart "[the bricks] are only so strong, love." For Joanna (and this whole song should really be included here to get a definitive idea of her full and complex feelings on her home, California) home is like a gravitational energy that we cannot escape. Her home is both wonderful and awful in that it holds and comforts her, but takes her away from the other things she loves--things that are incompatible with home (e.g. in this song as well as others on the album, the narrator shows a great deal of reluctance to bring any non-native love into the sanctuary). Thus she feels she cannot leave her home, but "Must stay [there] in an endless eventide." Paradoxically, she suggests that once we have been outside, we are forever changed, even in trying to return. Her narrator states that "I am no longer afraid of anything, save the life that, here, awaits." We go out, we see the world, we overcome all fears, and then the only thing that scares us is returning to where we were before this happened. We only fear the life we knew and loved so purely in childhood, and the near-emptiness of those memories when we return.

I have learned from my own experience, as well as the experience of artists, that home is infinitely more complicated than we wish it were. Kitschy phrases like "home is where the heart is" have so little meaning for me now, in this odd stage of my life.

Ingrid Michaelson seems to agree with me on that point:

They say that home is where the heart is. I guess I haven't found my home. We keep driving round in circles, afraid to call this place our own. Are we there yet?
-Ingrid Michaelson "Are We There Yet?"

How am I to use my heart as a compass when I am not even sure where my heart is? I guess I am learning the hard way that you're never really lost until you've lost your compass. Is that irreparable? I'd like to think that it can be redeemed. I'd like to think it could be fixed, but I do not know where to begin. I will illustrate with a story.

Last Sunday I attended a church meeting to support a friend of mine who recently completed an LDS mission in Latin America. Her house happens to be close to the house where I lived when I started high school. When my family left that place, we put in a lot of renovation work, so I take a certain pride in the off-beat beauty of it. I would describe it as a quirky house; blue with an interesting slanted roof, but there is a small wrap-around porch and a lovely three-paneled white door. I drove by the old house on my way out of town; drove around it several times as a matter of fact, circling the neighborhood, listening to "In California". Those brief minutes were filled to overflowing with thoughts, feelings and emotions. I pondered the very musings that are finding public voice here, as well as a more concrete realization: how can you say a house is just a house? I don't think it is. That wood is in my blood. I worked for that place, so many long hours, and I cried and cried at the thought of beautifying it just to sell it and leave it. It isn't 'just a house', for as I drove by, I saw a little piece of myself in it.

The problem is, that is not a piece I can retrieve. It does not belong to me any more than any part of that house does. The family that lives there now seemed, judging by the outside decor, enthusiastic about the ensuing holiday. They were probably inside, listening to music, surfing the web, making lunch. They were blissfully unaware of my small agony as I circled, as I thought, as I wished.

And so it is with many houses, and people, and situations, and dreams, we leave them and they take little pieces of our hearts with them, and we hope that in our generosity we do not deplete the essence of who we are.

I retract. It is not born of generosity, but of necessity. The necessity to be a part of that which is around us. The necessity to give of what we are to what we are not, in the hopes that what we are not will become more like we are and what we are will become more like what we are not.

You say you're not interested in that sort of an exchange? To that I would reply that we can try to keep things from changing us, but we will find that in doing so, we are a great deal more than simply selfish, we are delusional. We come to this world to change, and to be changed. There is no place for holding tight to everything that we feel we "are".

I am changing. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes (like now) I feel that I have given away too many bits of myself, and that in my inability to reclaim those pieces, I am somehow rendered un-whole. I am still waiting on redemption. I am still waiting on a reciprocation that will make up for all of the missing pieces. Perhaps home is where the very most of you is collected. Perhaps home is your head, where all of the memories are stored. I do not merely want to look at home as a concept, more than a place. I have to. I have to see home non-conventionally in my present circumstances. Home as a state of being. Home as a little box of all of my most treasured memories. Home as a place of personal and powerful worship.

I want to experience a new level of worship, of love. A love that allows me to pour my heart out and find it filling to the brim in return. I want to change in the holiest of all avenues of change: the give and take, the ebb and flow, the exchange, the barter between a human being and that someone/something they love, that someone/something they dedicate to, in every moment, waking, sleeping, breathing, fighting, living, dying...

And when I come up for air, and glance around, I want to find that the object of that love is Home; and know that I have found it at last.

Is This Real Life?: David After the Dentist, Existentialism, and Living Inside a Vacuum

I did a little break check last night on the freeway. The person driving in front and to the left of me gave me this lovely opportunity by coming over into my lane and then proceeding to quickly come to a stand-still for no apparent reason. I learned a few things in that moment. a) My breaks do, in fact, work. b) There is nothing quite as surreal as that moment of pure silence when you first slam on the breaks and see that you're not stopping fast enough. c) That the surrealism only increases in intensity from there, for the harder you press, the more deafening that silence is--until it gives way to that hideous, ear-splitting screech.

I learned that either that screech will be followed by more silence, meaning you are saved, or it will be followed by the sound of shattering glass and crunching metal, and you'll want them to carry you away on a stretcher because you just bought the car last weekend, and it's your first one, and... the world can't be that cruel.

Anyway. No breaking glass. We were fine. But the experience was sort of indicative of all of life right now. There has been the most terrible karma going around lately. Cars going in ditches; accidentally driving without license plates, insurance, or a driver's license; people going to jail and getting hideous divorces; insurance being randomly revoked; ex-lovers coming out of nowhere; psychotic and abusive X-husbands ruining people's lives; driving to Elmo instead of Manti; being homeless; siblings falling off the wagon... I could go on forever. Please keep in mind, not all of these things have happened to me personally, but one so often feels the weight of the troubles of those one loves, and so the karma that affects one does seem to affect the whole. "One bad apple spoils the bunch."

This morning my roommates and I had to watch something to lift our spirits. There was a terrible mood over the entire apartment. No one slept well. I was too hot, so eventually I had to open a window, and subsequently had my ear-drums blasted out all night by the sound of passing trains. Not that I don't like the sound of passing trains-- on the contrary, I love it. But it seemed the last straw. Perhaps it may only suffice to say that this morning brought with it the despondent feeling that one had "stayed up all night playing hopscotch."

So the three of us sat around in our "Mac Lab" as we affectionately call it, and watched You Tube's infamous "David After the Dentist". As we watched, I thought: that is philosophy. That is an existential crisis. That is beautiful.

And I couldn't help but want to write about it.

Do you know that feeling that life has taken on a new flavor? I actually hate it--that transition between the old, familiar, and the new, undecided. It is as though the last two months of my life have been one giant page turn and I've been lost in that shuffle; trying to paste together the little scraps I have salvaged and saved, in order to make something of sense and order. Really I just want to ask, as David did, "Why is this happening to me? Is this real life?" and, like David, scream wordlessly at the injustice and insanity of it all. It's Waiting for Godot. It's living inside a vacuum. It's waiting for an open window, and it's as stifling as these last few August days have been.

So, we seek redemption. We seek the other perspective on the story. There has to be that fatherly-figure in the background, unseen, reassuring and answering the question, "is this going to be forever?" with a little chuckle and a simple, "No. No, it won't be forever." The father who knows why his child is going through what he is going through, and knows that things will get better soon.

What to do? Be patient, and wait, and try to change the things that I can change, and forget about the things that I cannot. Try to be grateful that we didn't hit the car in front of us, and that AAA has roadside assistance, and that I have the faculties, resources, and health to help me to find better situations for myself.

In the meantime, I un-apologetically declare, along with David's dad, that "This is real life". Every moment one lives is "real life" and I hate any paradigm that seeks to destroy the necessity of every moment--the sanctity of every moment-- in a real life. Every flavor, every experience-- jealousy, anger, elation, boredom, frustration, fear, anguish, angst, foolishness, nostalgia, love, passion, pain and pleasure-- has a place in "real life". But, we may rest-assured that anything that "feels funny" or that makes us feel like we "can't see anything" won't be forever. We have to believe that eventually we will turn a page, walk into a new room, taste a new flavor; we'll "pull the curtains and blinds to let the light in."

"Oh what a beautiful view", my friends. God willing, it will be sooner than later.

Father Time

"And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time."
- "What Sarah Said" Death Cab for Cutie Plans

I'm feeling a little angst-y tonight-- a bit restless. I (deep breath) am leaving Eagle Mountain this week--in a few days. Trouble is (hoping to save face) when asked to produce a reason for doing so by a friend at church today, I could only shrug, look her in the eye and (forgive me) state simply, "because I'm 21 years old."
So I will go back to Provo. Nine months ago I left Provo, for seemingly no reason, now I return with seemingly no reason... Plans.
Sometimes, life produces a day that demands an inventory. That was yesterday for me. June 18, 2011. It marked two years since the day that I flew back to the US after my Study Abroad in Spain. I was a different person that day than I am now, which is so obvious a statement I am blushing for the stupidity of having typed the words, and the further-felt stupidity and embarrassment for not changing them now.
I remember it well, returning back to Eagle Mountain for a quick two-month visit. I remember many things, but much of it is a blur. Just water under the bridge. A whole string of events that, "Are what they are, do not blame [insert here anything we try to blame the past on]".
You know, there is no point in trying to change things. It's the "if we had cake we could have cake and ice cream... if we had ice cream" way of thinking. Sometimes something just isn't meant to be. When something has found turned up with enough missing parts that a favorable resolution is not even in the cards, wishing never does anything but make one sound desperately ridiculous.
Speaking of "meant to be" things... I was laughing today at a fortune from a restaurant that I have stuck in the corner of a big picture frame in my room. The fortune reads as follows:
"Like the river flow into the sea. Something are just meant to be."
Clearly good Asian to English translations are not one of those things that are meant to be. In defense of the Asians... these translations do lead to some truly good laughs over here in the Western Hemisphere.
I'm being sassy tonight. There is nothing flip about wanting so badly to change something you would give everything you were to change it.... if you had anything left to give. I sound like I have it all together, like I have it all figured out. Really I am writing for myself. Really, this is all deeply, personally, horrifically resonant. Really, I just keep mentally looping another line from the above-mentioned song:

"It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds."

For the record, the lucky numbers on that fortune are 10, 13, 19, 23, 28 and 56.
So there you have it. Something are just meant to be. And Something are not. And off to bed with me--faulty memories, angst-y Plans, and all.

Soundtrack of the evening:
"What Sarah Said" -Death Cab
"Such Great Heights--Cover" -Iron and Wine
"Different Names for the Same Thing" -Death Cab
"Rebellion (Lies)"- Arcade Fire

Unobstructed Views

I have never bought a CD the same day it was released. It's usually on an "I'll get around to it" basis. Death Cab's new CD "Codes and Keys" came out today. I bought it on my lunch hour. I have not listened to the whole thing yet, because I cannot stop listening to this one song.

There's no eye in the sky
Just our love
No unobstructed views, no perfect truths
Just our love
And there's no verse, no monument of words
For my love
For they can't hold all I know
About my love
Storm clouds break
Pools remain
Memories flood
Earthen graves
Evaporate
To up above
Where they become
New love

It is so clear. So calm. It is like a perfect escalation to the climax. And then it is over. I love it.
I had an amazing conversation today and I left it feeling such a desire to carve out for myself (with God's help, don't get me wrong) everything that I want my life to be. I don't really want my life to be what other people want it to be so much.
The best advice I ever got? Stop taking advice.
And especially don't listen to people who only want to compare their situation to yours and tell you why you're just like them.
Only you're not. You're you. And while I do not believe that there are "no perfect truths" I do believe that there are "No unobstructed views". Because the fact that we're the viewer is an obstruction. We see the world through our own lenses, our own perceptions and experiences. There is no escaping that. All of our views are obstructed to some degree. The world is more complicated than we want it to be. Which uncomplicates things... somehow, "It's not hard to grow when you know that you just don't know."
For now... I'm just me. Please be gentle to me. I'll figure it out some day.... then I'll probably die the next day, which is all just as well.

Tomorrow. Maybe, in the future.

About this time last year, all of the girls in my apartment, including myself, adopted an apartment theme song: Ingrid Michaelson's "Maybe". It has been a year now since those fall days when we used to walk into the apartment in bunches, singing the song and snapping our fingers, blasting it on ipod docks, or laptops. It doesn't feel like a whole year since we used to belt that song so loud our throats hurt, as if doing so could somehow negate or balance out the emotional stresses and struggles of young, single-adulthood packaged with its particular set of worries.

When things didn't go as we planned, when boyfriends broke our hearts, when boys who weren't our boyfriends broke our hearts, when friends passed away, or plans fell through, when days were too hot or too cold, too rainy or too sunny, when assignments kept us up until all hours, when snow came before anybody was ready, we sang,

"Maybe, in the future..."

A few weeks before the end of the semester, we decided to make a music video to "Maybe". The main focus of the video was balloons-- the perfect symbol of maybe. While the video was not professionally made, and had its cheesy moments, the project sparked a lot of introspection about the relationship between having hope and being realistic. We used to talk until all hours of the night about our project, the song, our lives, and the word Maybe. Such conversations helped to teach me important lessons about the future--that it is all just one big MAYBE. Nothing is certain, and that is why Maybe is such a beautiful concept. It is more optimistic than no, and more realistic than yes. It is the perfect blend of emotion that allows for the future to happen as it will. "Come what may and love it" if I may bring Joseph B. Wirthlin into this.

Jack Johnson is known for singing "It seems to me that maybe pretty much always means no." I believe that he is right--yet, he seems to be missing the true meaning of what he is singing: only "pretty much". There is always a chance with maybe. That is what maybe is about--chances, taking them and loving them for what they are.

"You can make a plan, carve it into stone.Like a feather falling, it is still unknown." -Bright Eyes

"Who can say where the road goes, where the day flows? Only time." -Enya

"It came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time." -Death Cab for Cutie

There are dozens of songs written about "maybe" and about the future. This shouldn't be surprising. The future is something that fascinates and frustrates us all in turn. We seem to simultaneously love and fear it because it holds what it offers tightly concealed until the present has been reached. Yet, "maybe" is an important part of everyone's lives. It is a part of my life.

"Maybe in the future" I'll have a good job that will allow me to not worry about money all of the time.
"Maybe in the future" I'll be able to get my business off the ground, and start doing what I love every day.
"Maybe in the future" I'll meet someone who will love me and help me to fulfill all of my goals, and in whom I can take pride.

"The only way to really know, is to really let it go. Maybe, in the future..."
Now all of those roommates have gone their separate ways, becoming wives and expectant mothers, or brides-to-be, pressing forward with education, leaving on missions, or graduating from the University. Some of tomorrow's maybes have become yesterday's realities. Some of the things that were important then are no longer important. Our hearts have been broken and mended, we've lifted each other up, we've seen each other through. We're not disappointed with how our pasts turned out, and are content with our present circumstances.

Yet still, in those moments that life never fails to give out, when we are thrown curves and plans fall through, I hope we'll all always be known as the girls who learned, in the fall of 2009, in a little apartment in Provo, the invaluable lesson to size up the situation, pack away the disappointment, and hum quietly to ourselves,
"Maybe, in the future..."

And There I Knew that...Everything Would be Alright...

Anyone reading this blog thus far (sadly I have not written nearly as often as I was supposed to) will undoubtedly notice that there are several references made to the music of Death Cab for Cutie. This may come as no surprise to people who know me, and especially to those who know that of the 22 songs that are currently on the "soundtrack of my life" (that has yet to be given a proper title) 4 of them are Death Cab songs. What can I say? I appreciate when artists (as all musicians seem to be called nowadays) actually have something of art in their music.
But I must apologize, this post is not about the band or its music as much as it is about a thought that a line from one of their songs sparked in me and has continued to burn in the back of my mind for some weeks now.
The song is "Grapevine Fires" and the line "And there I knew that it would be alright, that everything would be alright" is used in the song to describe the moment in which seeing something outside of ourselves shows us that things are going to turn out in our own lives. In the song, it is a specific image and a specific situation; but that line has ignited a thought process in my mind that seems to crop up in moments of severe frustration.
For example, This morning. I was walking to my Latin American Literature class in which I knew that Dr. Cluff was going to be giving an exam. As I was walking, I was feeling a feeling that can best be described as incredibly flustered. The day had begun a little too early in order to allow for more study time, and it seemed as though not much had gone according to plan. As I walked, I tried to review the last few notes I had scribbled on the back of a sheet of paper (which notes I had been studying all throughout the Physical Science lecture, instead of listening to poor Dr. Allred!). The information seemed to be being blocked by the frustration I was feeling, and the things I was yelling to myself inside of my head: "Jose Hernandez, NOT Fernandez! Get it straight, Katie!". A line of black ink on my leg was the outward manifestation of an inner throbbing, resulting from an encounter with an unruly and uncapped pen. Even better than that, one section of my hair was a little shorter and frizzier than it should have been, due to an unfortunate hair dryer incident while I had been trying to hurry.
With all of these thoughts rattling around in my head--the exam that was beginning in five minutes, the damaged hair, the drawn-on leg-- came an overarching dread of the future, and the questions 'why hurry to class? Why take classes at all? Why are you graduating so fast? What are you moving on to? What do you think you're accomplishing with all of this cramming and rushing?" I was trying to force the questions down with more noble thoughts, but not much was helping. I rushed past the other students in the courtyard of the JFSB, hoping that nobody noticed the ink mark, the frazzled hair, the mismatched jewelry combo, the fact that I hadn't shaved my legs in 24 hours, or that my shirt was too big for me. I was hoping that it would not permanently cripple my grade to not yet have memorized the information scribbled on the study guide, and that I would be able to write clear essays in Spanish.
Then something made me look up. I don't remember now what it was. It may well have had something to do with cursing the sun for being so hot, or wishing that it were raining, or wondering if a bird was about to poop on my head, since such a happening really would have added to the moment. As I looked, instead of seeing a bird, I saw a cloud. The cloud was fluffy and white, and it would not bring the rain I wished for-- but the cloud was moving; moving mindlessly past the deep blue of the sky. I couldn't help but think about all of the days that make up a life, and how many of those days are filled with things--THINGS!!! And how many times a day do I think about just enjoying? It was a beautiful cloud, and a beautiful sky, and there I knew it would be alright, that everything would be alright.
I've often thought about the advice to "simplify" our lives. We are always being told to simplify. Well, what happens when life can't be simplified? I am not currently participating in any activities that aren't fundamental to my life, so there isn't really much I can cut out. Maybe simplifying doesn't always mean 'cut things out', maybe sometimes it means 'look at something simple and revel in its beauty.'
Drop your guard for one moment, and let the simplicity of something outside of you show you that everything will be alright.