A Sense of Place-Part 1
 
May 3, 2008
 
“Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk.” N.Scott Momaday
 
We have been in our new house for 5 months.   It is only 40 minutes away from our previous home, but the atmosphere is completely different.  The first day I made a  trip to the post office, the clerk knew exactly where I lived.  That was scary, but quaint.  It is quiet here... just a welcoming peace and quiet.   My vision is no longer obstructed by buildings and layers of rooftops, but is allowed to roam over large fields with leaning old trees skirting the edges.  
 
 
This restfulness has put my body at ease and in turn it has begun to speak to me in its own physical language of the landscape it once knew.   The silence was broken the first evening I cooked a meal in our home.  It was a warmer than usual October evening.  Night had just fallen and through the open window I heard the sound of crickets and the rushing rise of a breeze moving through the trees.  In that instant my body spoke through a sudden wave of sorrow in my heart.
 
In the first few weeks after the move my husband and I would take long Sunday drives to get familiar with the area.  I would stare out the window and feel the same haunting as we passed  a  lone farm house with a simple front porch sitting far off the road.   My body was also triggered to speak through things unseen that whispered through the air- transmitted through light and shade.  The sound of bird wings fluttering, the buzzing of insects-sounds that were drowned out in my previous residence by urban white noise.
 
 
They say all of our life experiences are written not only in our memory, but in our bodies too.  Our body is there for things we are unaware of in consciousness.  It is still awake through surgeries when the mind has been put to sleep.  It is awake  during our infancy before we were able to put conscious language to our experiences. It is awake during our dream time, experiencing the terror of our nightmares.   It processes the experiences of our life in a completely different way from the mind- with an innocence that is almost childlike  carrying sounds, visions and feelings in every cell.   “The body knows a language the mind never wholly masters.......“Seasons of the Body” by Brenda Miller).  Our bodies also forms relationships with the nature and energy of the places we live and listening deeply to the feeling tone of the body can bring us into the most complete sense of healing.    
 
 
 
I have lived in 3 northeastern states: New Jersey, upstate New York, and Pennsylvania.   The environment varied from suburban, urban to town and country. In one I was a child in another I was a teenager and in all three I was a young woman.  I was happiest and saddest in Pennsylvania and that is where my body seems to be traveling back in  visceral memories to close some open ended circle and find a familiar comfort.  Most moves have some logic behind them: a better job market, better housing, family, relationships etc.,  We get our things in order and go, but sometimes we are so busy closing the old life and establishing the new, that we forget or don’t realize that there is a need to allow ourselves time to grieve the places we’ve left behind-but our bodies don’t forget.      
 
“The definition of the word “cleave” is twofold and contradictory: to cleave means both to split apart and to adhere. Perhaps one is not possible without the other. Perhaps we need to break open before anything can enter us. Or maybe we have to split apart that to which we cling fast”........Brenda Miller “Seasons of the Body”
 
Visceral memories eliminate the linear aspect of time.  Past and present sit in the same room with no barriers.  They are palpable, eliciting the clearest images and emotions of the past.   They break the heart open and  point with true accuracy to the people objects or places we cling to.  We feel what we refuse to see and find what we need to comfort.  I am happy to feel that time and the nature of my old landscape so immediately in the present.  I have forgotten many things and I think these spontaneous memories are a call for a fuller integration and wholeness- a call to embrace everything and everyplace I’ve been along the path with a gracious acceptance, acknowledging that not everything has a resolution.    I find myself traveling deeper and deeper into the center of the wounded heart knowing it is a vital key to awakening compassion.  My body has been missing the nature of the north, its landscape, its scent and angles of light.  It has  placed all the women I’ve been before me, allowing me to see beauty in a whole different way.