the whole way

Epilogue.    Back in Bandon.   Tuesday October 26

True Voyage is Return

This is a quote from Ursula K LeGuin, one of her books somewhere.    The actual quote is "To be whole is to be part.  True Voyage is return".     The first part of that quote did not resonate with me when I first read the book 40+  years ago, so I fairly quickly forgot about it.    The second part though has always been with me.

What it means to me - that second part - is that  when we travel, changes occur within us that we never notice, and it is only upon returning back home that we see that the person we have become is not the same person that we were when we left.   That the journey in between has changed us.    We have become someone or something different.    That the voyage we have been on is not fully understood until we compare and contrast these two different people.    Once Was is not Now Is.

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The drive back from Prescott AZ to Bandon OR was 1,250 miles and Tamale slept on my lap the whole way.   30 hours.  How can cat's do that?  We stopped in Novato California for the night, parked on the side of some dark coastal road somewhere, and I slept in back of the car, and Tamale laid watch all night on the dashboard.   Like last time in Tehapachi, the place where she sat when I fell asleep was the same exact place she was sitting when I woke up.    Sitting calmly, looking out the window, eyes alert.  Keeping Guard.

Big news this morning was the "bomb cyclone" aka the atmospheric river that California Sunday and Monday in which we drove straight through.    Eight inches of rain in 24 hours.   Massive rain.  Awesome rain.  Rain so heavy during the drive that I just slowed way down and trusted that the tail lights of the car 50 feet in front of me in which I maintained a safe distance would keep me going forward without disaster.  Cheap Thrills.

on forgetting

I am not sure how to think on this yet, but I am surprised by how much I have forgotten of my 4 years of life here in Bandon, and it is very strange for me to be back in it once again.  4 summer months away should not be that long.  

Living alone with Tamale here in this 3 bedroom house that is way too big for me.  I have forgotten people's names.  Many Other things.    I struggled in the drive up to pull from memory the names of towns that lay along the coast near Bandon.   It is like a lot of my previous 4 years of life here just fell down a hole somewhere.   I went away for the long 4 months of the summer - end of June to end of October - and a lot of my life here just faded away, and now I am struggling to recover it all.  

Now that I am back, and I am left wondering about what that forgetfulness means, whether it is just another indication of the early Alzheimer's in which I am always picking up clues, or whether this speaks to what my feelings are about my life here in Bandon.

It is certainly not the people.   I love the friends that I have here.    Nor is it the fact that I could probably never find a more beautiful town to live in.       I think it has more to do with a question of fulfillment and purpose, and the issue lies more in the realm of personal responsibility that even moving to a new house or a new town would still not satisfy.

This is such a strange part of my life.   Kids grown.  Family split up. Retired.    The MAIN parts of my life, the frantic, scary, fulfilling parts,  now in my the past.  The constant ringing in my ears is not from the actual sounds of my life, but from their echoes.

I constantly go back to something my father never told me, but probably would have if he had thought of it.    Keep moving, and putting one foot in front of the other, and your direction will find you.

My daily prayer.   That my kids are safe and happy, and that the journey I am on contains some meaning that I can eventually figure out.    Maybe that is more a testament to the human condition than anything else.