time travel

I’m traveling through time. Over one body of water, from one piece of land to another. I’m high up, in the air, where there is no time, where there is no ground, and I’m thinking about how I know not what’s next, except for the obvious, the concrete, the empirical. 

 

I consider NYC my home and yet it’s been years since I physically inhabited it. Since I walked its streets daily, hourly.

I’m going to NYC for practical reasons. It’s closer to Europe, to London, where I’ve lived for the past year, albeit tenuous, precarious.

When you travel you lose yourself. You lose mirrors and memories and history. You step into another history, another language, another neighborhood. You’re just around the corner and no one can find you. You can’t find yourself. You have this whole life behind you, but you left it at the airport gate.

 

While it’s impossible to become someone you’re not, it is possible to re-invent. Perhaps you were stuck where you lived before you traveled, and after doing, what you had always done, you wanted to do something new, and getting the upstart to kick a transformation into gear felt like molasses stuck to an elephant walking through swampy mud.

Traveling sheds. The airplane takes off and your feet can’t touch the ground. You are a child in a big seat. You swing your legs, feel lighter, float in the seawater. The sky looks so different from here.

 

It feels possible, whatever the it is you want to get to. Even if you’re not sure what it is, you know you need to make a big change.

 Or maybe the move came to you and you just followed the breadcrumbs.

 

Risk.

Adventure.

Spontaneity.

Making it up as you go along.

You are one or the other: Roadrunner, Coyote. And whether you stop just short of the canyon, fall over it’s edge, or make it to the other side because you’re moving cartoon fast, it’s a journey you must make.

       Got dusty? flattened yourself in a ravine?

No matter.

This is what transformation is about. It’s about the sun being so high in the sky, shadows appear to disappear. You are your shadow. Your compass is broken.

The people you love are left behind. They write and you write, they call and you call, they plead for you to come back, but you stay.

Some chapters are better saved before published, indexed before edited. Some chapters are better written by hand.

People ask you, when you go to New York, 'Are you moving there?'

You make a joke. {You think it’s really funny.}        You say you don’t know if you’re moving to New York. You say you’ve asked g-d, but he hasn’t replied. You say that if anyone who has a direct line to g-d, can you please let me know, because as far as you know, {the only thing you know} is you are moving, Officially,

 

To Limbo.

O. And there are a few complicated pieces. Secret Lovers. Old loves. Loveletters. A flat you secretly rent in a place you’re not supposed to be living.  A {restaurant} kitchen you’re not supposed to know as well as you do.

Because you’re going back to the place you’re from, you plan on looking for work. Postman’s Holiday. You can’t wait to work there again. It’s been over 10 years. You never meant to be away this long. In fact while you were living on the completely other coast, in the most rural setting you had ever come across, you lost your desire to live in a major city. You decided to make Northern California your permanent home, and even called it that.

Until you moved to London exactly one year ago. And everything changed.

I’m traveling through time. Time Travel.

The question is: am I going from my future to my past; my future to my future; my recent past to my stopover, and then back to my past; my past to my past; or my question mark to my question mark?

 

I don’t have any answers.

Just questions.

Comments

[Janis Tester]

Change is good. Scary but good. When I left San Francisco for Boston I had no idea what was going to happen. It made me feel younger to start on a new adventure. It has been a wild ride.

[jennywenny]

Good luck in New York, I hope you find what you're looking for!

[Mike]

FYI, I'd love to meet up and talk/babble and enjoy good food together... Keep me posted (i'm sure i'll read your occurances as you tweet them...) But let me know :)

[Janice]

Oh Shuna! You make my heart leap every goddamned time.

[Alexis]

Welcome back to NY! If you stay, let us know where you are cooking so that we can come taste your food!

[Kristin]

Even if the big change is desperately needed, it can still be painful to uproot, so it was good to read your words today. Congrats on heading back to NYC!

[Hilda]

Most times it's so much more interesting to have just questions and no answers. Waiting eagerly for your further adventures. (btw, I said something about the recipes vs. intuitions but was having problems with the comment posting, so I think it just got swallowed by the interwebs).

[Helen]

Your prose gets me everytime. I hope you find what you are looking for wherever you go be it NYC or London or wherever you go. I can't wait to see the beauty that comes from your new experiences.

[Gabriel]

I know how you feel. I just moved from my home, SF, to Baltimore...Im in the "what the hell did I just do!" stage. The next question is where am I going to cook!?...When you get the direct line to g-d, let me know!
Thanks for your sharing...

[msmarmitelover]

Once an ex-pat always an ex-pat. I don't think you can leave London really Shuna...you are part of the community here now!
x

[Victoria]

Welcome back.

[Malini]

Wishing you all the best.

[sonya]

shuna, another "welcome back to nyc"! i concur with the comment above: hope you find a job here as i'd love to taste your cooking. speaking of which, chocolate + licorice?!?! wow. that's a combination that's never occurred to me, yet are two of my absolute favourites - sounds phenomenal. happy travels in that airplane seat.

[Jamie]

Lovely. My husband and I, both men without (emotional) countries, feel the urge, the need to move to reinvent (exactly) every 5 years. Run, change, experience. And our time here is up and we don't know who to become next. Good luck with yours. And I say worry neither about the past or the future, just live the present.