Tag Archives: place

You Are Here, but We’re on Sabbatical

Posted on by under Sabbatical

Dear Friends,

You Are Here is a bit more than two years old now, and it has been a privilege during these past 26 months of themes to step into the shoes of story-tellers from all over the country. Together we’ve explored the endlessly inspiring topic of “place” in the context of everything from travel and food to mess, gender, memory, and laughter, and our minds and hearts have expanded along the way.

During this short time, members of the administrative team have shifted and changed, as is the case with many volunteer-driven projects. So too has YAH’s vision and reason for being—we started mostly as a group of writers who wanted some company in the blogosphere, adding guest writers, peer editing, and a group of fabulous Writing Fellows along the way.

It’s been fun. It’s been inspiring. And it’s been a lot of work.

Now with just a handful of people working behind the scenes—with other writing and editing projects that need attention (in addition to things like jobs and children)—we have decided to take a break. The blog is on sabbatical, which offers us both a moment of respite as well as space to more fully consider possible next steps.

While we don’t have a timeframe for this sabbatical, we do have a goal—we’re going to compile and publish a Best of You Are Here anthology. This gives us an opportunity to celebrate the great story-telling that so many people have shared here, and to re-set our course in the light of our best work. Look for announcements and updates about this project throughout 2017.

And, in the meantime, there are 297 stories—297!—in the archives (organized by theme). That should keep you busy for a few months!

Until then,

YAH

 

We Could Do Anything For Indian Food

Posted on by under Food & Place

During those four years that we lived in England, we specialized in the overnight flight from Newark to London, the flight I slept on but never really slept on. The flight attendants moved silently up and down the aisles while passengers murmured to themselves in their sleep and children cried out randomly. A cup of tea. An extra blanket. The person in front shifts in their seat and jams my knees. For 6 hours, 200 of us soared through the sky, racing through the night.

When we finally caught the sunlight, it slanted in through the oval windows, crept in under the small cracks where people had not pulled their blind down all the way. Our eyes were not ready for morning. Our brains told us we should still be sleeping. More tea. Hastily filled out customs forms. Stretching limbs. Out into the jet-fueled air of Heathrow Airport.

b3ed8fdfOn our first return to England from the U.S., we made the mistake of giving in to jetlag. On that particular trip, we arrived at our Wendover home and slept all day, a gorgeous, indulgent, heavy sleep that felt more like drowning. We slept from 10am until 4pm in the afternoon.

But that day of sleep had disastrous consequences. For the next three weeks, we could not turn the clock around. We were awake all night, groggy all day. I almost fell asleep in meetings. I watched 2am turn to 3am turn to 4am. We vowed to never do it again. We could be disciplined. We could stay awake until bedtime.

Then we arrived home from the US on the next trip, exhausted and blurry-eyed.

“Just a little nap,” I begged Maile.

“No, don’t do it,” she said, her head drifting back on to the couch cushions, some invisible weight pulling down on her eyelids. “Remember what happened last time?”

But by then her voice had a smoky quality, ephemeral and fading. It was like we had taken some enchanted potion. I could picture the witch waiting just outside our window, rubbing her hands together and cackling.

“We can’t do this,” I said. “C’mon. Get up. We have to stay awake.”

“What are we going to do?” Maile mumbled from some far off dream world.

“First, we’re taking a walk. And if we can stay awake until The New Akash opens, then we’ll reward ourselves with Indian food.”

She sat straight up, shaking her head to clear the haze.

“Indian food,” she said. “Deal.”

We managed to put on our hiking boots and wander up the hill from our small cottage to where a main footpath went from west to east. It was part of the old Canterbury Trail, and so many people had walked it that the path itself was pressed three feet deep into the ground. You had to climb down into that path. You almost needed help getting out.

We walked to Wendover, the closest village. The mist clung to the trees and the fields. Lonely cars traveled slowly down the narrow roads, off in the distance from where we walked. We could have been the only two people in the world. This is how the afternoon passed.

Finally, early evening. We showered. We drove to town. We walked into the garish gold and red decorations of The New Akash, smothered ourselves in the irregular Indian music, and smiled through our delirious exhaustion as the waiter brought us lamb tikka bhuna and shrimp vindaloo, so spicy it made my eyes water before I even tasted it.

It became our new tradition, our new reward. Stay awake for the Indian food.

Nails in the Wall

Posted on by under Creating Place

I was on the phone with a friend of mine. She quipped, “You and I—we’ve just got a nomadic spirituality.”

Her tone was half-joking and not necessarily complimentary. Nonetheless, something in me latched onto it.

We joked about our nomadic ways for years. Because giving a gift to a nomad is hard, I made her a playlist of songs about wandering one year. There are a lot of options to pick from.

At the time, I was moving a lot, living wherever was most convenient for the ministry that I was doing.  Because the charitable work was connected to many properties, I had many options. I became the master of the power move—the quick pack without boxes, the shift to the adjacent neighborhood, as few trips as possible.

A friend needed a place to recuperate after serious illness. I moved out.

A donor made a house available. I moved in.

A friend’s husband was writing his dissertation and their family was on a serious budget. I moved out.

The home for homeless mothers was understaffed. I moved in.

And so on.

The moves were a form of loving. If it made more sense for someone else to be living where I was living, I would move. If I was needed somewhere, I would move. If a good opponail-sticking-out-of-wallrtunity opened up, I would move.

Settling in meant hanging pictures.  Forget buying furniture, putting a nail in the wall evoked a sense of stability.

During this season, space and place weren’t interchangeable. My “place” was the community of service that I was a part of. I belonged there. I was rooted in the work.  In all its beauty (and rough edges!), it reflected a big part of me. “Space” was where I happen to live at the moment.

But, something shifted.

Early this summer, I pulled up the dirt driveway of my childhood home with my car full of belongings.  I made the decision to return home and live with my parents, at least for a season.

As I went to fill the closets of my bedroom, I found box after box of childhood trinkets, school memories, and college mementos.

Little yellow baby shoes with daisies. My class photos from elementary school. My sequined costumes from dance classes. An enormous quantity of t-shirts. A binder of research from my college capstone.

Sorting through it all had a weightiness that was hard to bear.

But it made it evident. Here space and place intersect.

Here my hands were pressed into concrete as it hardened. The image remains. Here I notice that the roadrunner population seems higher than normal. I have watched the trees grow; I can see the shift in my own body, aware that I can no longer work as hard as I once could. Here pets are buried in the yard and the turtles return to the porch each season to be fed a piece of fruit.

I’ve been helping my parents with some building projects.  From their imagination and sweat, they are calling into being a place that can welcome others, a place of celebration.  We have different approaches toward meeting the goal.  We’ve bickered and hurt each other feelings as we try to work together.

Maybe I bring city ways to getting things done—I want to work a timeline, not waste people’s time, and stay a step or two ahead.  It’s not clear if I am helpful or annoying.  Maybe both.

Nonetheless, I’ve arranged all the furniture upstairs to suit my sense of form and function. I recently bought a bookshelf and I’ve been eyeing the sales on papasan chairs.

My artwork, however, is still piled up on the table, waiting to be hung.

It’s just so hard to put a nail in the wall.

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Welcome: We’re Glad You’re Here

Posted on by under Welcome to You Are Here

“Seeing your photographs last night reminded me of home,” I stammered, shifting my weight to balance my cafeteria tray. I didn’t want to inconvenience the famous man who stood before me, but I needed to say thank you. He smiled graciously. “We come from the same kind of place then,” he agreed. “Yes,” I said, glancing at the steam rising from his clumpy yellow eggs, “and thank you.”

As we nodded and smiled and walked off to our respective tables, I thought about his photographs–photos that saw light in the crumbling walls, vacant houses, and highway overpasses of urban Cincinnati. It was strange how these images of rust-belt decay sparked a kind of nostalgia for my own city of Pittsburgh.

I sat to eat, looking out over the high desert of Santa Fe. “And we are so far away from home,” I said quietly, my mind stretching over the unfamiliar landscape and gathering myself and mr. famous photographer together under this one thought.

****

It was August, and I was in Santa Fe for the Glen West conference, a week bringing together artists who desire to integrate faith with art. We were a motley and spirited crew—writers, musicians, painters, poets, and photographers from zip codes across the U.S. and beyond. We were old and young. Some of us were well-established in our fields, others were just beginning to explore, and many of us were somewhere in-between.

We were, in so many ways, from all over the place.

The larger crowd was divided into groups, according to our workshops. On the first morning I entered my class and met a group of writers. We were all working on creative non-fiction, and most of us were just-a-little-bit nervous. We settled in as we introduced ourselves around the table.

Among our class of fourteen: Sam from Dallas. I would later call him “my first friend from Texas” and liked him all the more when I saw a Flannery O’Conner book tucked between the seats of his SUV. Kristin from Urbana, Illinios. At first her writing talent and experience intimidated the heck out of me, but when we discovered mutual friends I found a kindred spirit. Mary, living between D.C. and Arizona. Her gentle demeanor hid her radical convictions and extensive background in non-profit leadership. As soon as she introduced herself I was determined to get to know her. And finally Lisa from Memphis, whose enthusiastic southern drawl spilled from her mouth and charmed the whole class, “Y’all, I am so thrilled to be here.”

I did not know it at the time, but these four people would become not only friends, but co-conspirators.

****

Our conspiracy was born at a museum cafe over too-sweet Chai milkshakes and green bottles of Perrier. We were talking about blogging, and then we were talking about our frustrations with blogging: It could be lonely. It felt like a popularity contest. It was a lot of weight for one person to carry. It was hard to stay motivated. It was like writing into a void instead of having a conversation.

And I remember when Kristin asked it:

What if we were to blog together?  

Our eyes lit up, and ideas spilled out as naturally as Lisa’s southern drawl. A map began to form in our collective imagination, with little push-pins sticking up from Memphis, Dallas, Pittsburgh, D.C. and Urbana. We could write from our particular places on common themes. We could tell stories. We could respond to one another. We could discover shared threads while digging into our own spots on the map.

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We could call it, “You are here.”

“And”, (this was Kristin again) “I know this guy.  Well, I don’t exactly know his name because he never wears his nametag, but I’ve had two conversations with him, and he’s a writer from Alaska.  He strikes me as someone who might be a good fit.”

We nodded, and agreed that Kristin could approach “Alaska-guy.”

Jonathan

His name is Jonathan, and he said yes (with only minor coercion).

In October we’ll begin by introducing ourselves and our places, posting about “Where We Are” and “Where We Came From.”  November will be about food, and in December we’ll talk about what it means to be “Out of Place.” Look for several posts every week from a group of writers who are quickly becoming some of my favorite people across four time zones.

And so for Mary from D.C., Kristin from Urbana, Sam from Dallas, Lisa from Memphis, and Jonathan from Anchorage; and for myself, Jen from Pittsburgh, I would just like to say: 

We are here.  You are here.  And here we go.