My hometown
Today i wandered the streets of my hometown, the city of Traverse City, on the shore of the West Arm of the Grand Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan... and i am stuck with a dilemma.
What do you do when the people who are supposed to be your people, your Volk, suddenly no longer feel familiar to you in anyway, and feel just as foreign and weird as the strangers you saw on the streets of Dublin, Ireland just a couple days before...
What do you do when your hometown, the place you lived for 18 years, the place that raised you, the place where you roots, feels as unfamiliar as any random medium-sized city in Germany or France or Armenia or anywhere else...
Is it a sign i have been travelling too long? No seriously, i was wondering down Front Street today, and nothing seemed familiar- new buildings everywhere, gigantic cars, huge lanes on the asphalt streets, concrete sidewalks, the overheard snatches of conversation that seemed so trivial and superficial in a dialect of English whose rates of nasality are notorious among linguists... the Northern Cities Vowel Shift now has Traverse City firmly in its grasp. The foods seemed all like gift boxes and not real foods, the fashion seemed different, even the hills that once seemed to me so large and awe-inspiring and beautiful, even the azure expanse of the bay, with the turtle shaped island in the middle of it... all these things felt rather small and understated compared to the cliffs of Ireland, or the Caucasus mountains... people say my town has a "european feel" in its downtown. I have no idea what they mean...
and these aren't Americans- i expected to be somewhat shocked by americans behavior on arriving in chicago... these aren't just Michiganders, my home people, but these are NORTHERN michiganders, my home tribe, the people i always felt such a close affinity with when i met one at Michigan State University... And even THEY feel weird to me. What do i do now?
i tried to exchange 100 Euro today, and the lady at the bank just laughed and said there was no bank within hundreds of miles that would exchange Euros....
even my parents house seems totally different to me...
and yet... i appreciated the friendliness of people, and the very interesting conversations i was able to get in on the sloooooooooooow amtraaaaaaaaaaak train to Grand Rapids.
I was in some sort of existential crisis today about homelessness (6 weeks in the US is long enough to feel the full shock of readjusting, yet not long enough to feel like i should fully readjust)... until....
.... I went on a walk in my neighborhood. When i saw a painted turtle sunning itself on a floating birch log, surrounded by lilypads, and the deep earthy smell of a forested, sand-bottomed northern inland lake... when i heard its plunk as it dove into the water, when the mini black squirrels rushed infront of me up into the branches of a white pine, when the hammering of a pileated woodpecker resounded across the coves and stream bed.... then i felt home. My friend Casey wrote in his blog that he felt frustrated by america, until he came to tennessee and felt the true south, and then he felt home.... i guess for me, the painted turtle, mkinaak, sitting on a log of wiigwaas, in the small gaami, the wind sighing in the zhingwaakaag , is what it took to make me feel like home.
a lot more to blog about- had a two day whirlwind tour of Ireland, etc... but my jetlagged self must go to bed...
Today i wandered the streets of my hometown, the city of Traverse City, on the shore of the West Arm of the Grand Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan... and i am stuck with a dilemma.
What do you do when the people who are supposed to be your people, your Volk, suddenly no longer feel familiar to you in anyway, and feel just as foreign and weird as the strangers you saw on the streets of Dublin, Ireland just a couple days before...
What do you do when your hometown, the place you lived for 18 years, the place that raised you, the place where you roots, feels as unfamiliar as any random medium-sized city in Germany or France or Armenia or anywhere else...
Is it a sign i have been travelling too long? No seriously, i was wondering down Front Street today, and nothing seemed familiar- new buildings everywhere, gigantic cars, huge lanes on the asphalt streets, concrete sidewalks, the overheard snatches of conversation that seemed so trivial and superficial in a dialect of English whose rates of nasality are notorious among linguists... the Northern Cities Vowel Shift now has Traverse City firmly in its grasp. The foods seemed all like gift boxes and not real foods, the fashion seemed different, even the hills that once seemed to me so large and awe-inspiring and beautiful, even the azure expanse of the bay, with the turtle shaped island in the middle of it... all these things felt rather small and understated compared to the cliffs of Ireland, or the Caucasus mountains... people say my town has a "european feel" in its downtown. I have no idea what they mean...
and these aren't Americans- i expected to be somewhat shocked by americans behavior on arriving in chicago... these aren't just Michiganders, my home people, but these are NORTHERN michiganders, my home tribe, the people i always felt such a close affinity with when i met one at Michigan State University... And even THEY feel weird to me. What do i do now?
i tried to exchange 100 Euro today, and the lady at the bank just laughed and said there was no bank within hundreds of miles that would exchange Euros....
even my parents house seems totally different to me...
and yet... i appreciated the friendliness of people, and the very interesting conversations i was able to get in on the sloooooooooooow amtraaaaaaaaaaak train to Grand Rapids.
I was in some sort of existential crisis today about homelessness (6 weeks in the US is long enough to feel the full shock of readjusting, yet not long enough to feel like i should fully readjust)... until....
.... I went on a walk in my neighborhood. When i saw a painted turtle sunning itself on a floating birch log, surrounded by lilypads, and the deep earthy smell of a forested, sand-bottomed northern inland lake... when i heard its plunk as it dove into the water, when the mini black squirrels rushed infront of me up into the branches of a white pine, when the hammering of a pileated woodpecker resounded across the coves and stream bed.... then i felt home. My friend Casey wrote in his blog that he felt frustrated by america, until he came to tennessee and felt the true south, and then he felt home.... i guess for me, the painted turtle, mkinaak, sitting on a log of wiigwaas, in the small gaami, the wind sighing in the zhingwaakaag , is what it took to make me feel like home.
a lot more to blog about- had a two day whirlwind tour of Ireland, etc... but my jetlagged self must go to bed...
posted by Thor @ 11:06
3 Comments:
At 7:45 AM,
Jen said…
Hey fellow jetlagger...
Your post made me think of a saying I once heard (Stephen Benet, I think) that is, "the longer European peoples are in the New World, the more Indian they will become." What he meant was that the sense of connection to the land will grow stronger in us, the way it supposedly was for the Native Americans.
I don't feel at home in my hometown of Greeley - I hate it, in fact, with the strip malls going up everywhere. But put me knee-deep in one of the rivers in the mountains, and then I'm home again. Maybe it's because the houses and people change, but nature somehow doesn't, even if we compare her to other places. Who knows, it's late, I should be sleeping, but instead I'm still on North American time and feeling verbose!
At 11:01 AM,
Anonymous said…
While in Grand Rapids visit the Church of Sts. Peter & Paul. Mišios kalboje lietuvių. Sunday 9:30am
Go up the the Traverse peninsula and find some yellow sweet cherries for sale, buy 'em, and take 'em to your family remembering that they are the image of God: for God is not a singularity but a family... And your relationship is familial not merely personal. You are son and brother to both Jesus and your family and perhaps someday father to your own family... Image God to others...
At 2:40 AM,
Anonymous said…
Hey, Thor...just re-read this again today (August 5), and although I'm not 'home' yet (whatever home is), I can feel your disillusionment. So thanks for being a person who understands what I'm going through, even though we do not really know each other. It helps to know I'm not alone in my restless homelessness.
My reading of choice during this time in Saint Petersburg is a book called The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge. Great read. Thought I'd share a few quotes that struck me, considering what we (or mostly, I) had been talking about on your 'liberal' post:
We are born into this world to love truth and be free, and ultimately nothing will keep us from either. [Sunday Mirror, 1968]
AND
[Jesus'] famous answer to the trick question whether the Jews should pay tribute to Casesar - that they should render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's and unto God the things that were God's - removed him for ever from the role of freedom-fighter in our modern sense. He was no Garibaldi or Tito or Gandhi. What he offered was a larger freedom of the spirit, available even - perhaps especially - to slaves. He proclaimed as the only true freedom THE GLORIOUS LIBERTY OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD. He called men to a service that is, itself, perfect freedom, releasing them from the gruelling enslavement to their own egos and appetites. All other freedoms, once won, soon turn into a new servitude. Christ is the only liberator whose liberation lasts for ever. [Commentary, BBC2, 1968]
So there you go. Hoping your packing and preparations and once-again-good-byes are all going well, and that your travels across the big pond are somehow a source of blessed adventure. May the Lord take care of your heart in transition.
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