strange places

sorting and packing is like finding oneself over and over again. today i found some notes i jotted down a few months ago – and then shoved in a drawer…… i’m putting it here for safe keeping…

we find ourselves in strange places; driving down backroads to meet lovers, in the motels of small towns, in prisons talking to the men we knew as boys in highschool, in national parks during hunting season keeping our heads low.

we find ourselves in strange places because we are looking for ourselves, and that process explored honestly takes us to niches that most people never go.

i used to believe that because i am not well-travelled in the international sense that somehow indicated me to be not interesting – that the localities one visited rubbed off and made one become “interesting”, and that staying around one area would certainly dull anything internally exotic

i find myself on stages before hundreds of people; in native sovereignty camps; in front of police lines; in the company of comrades. i find myself in the deep dark forest, on picket lines, and in meetings of fellow travellers wondering how….?

few people have a life so interesting, beyond the facade of everyday. few people have been tested so incessantly in belief, in action and in philosophy. few people have ever questioned their strange places they call home. my strange places are not half-way round the world, they are often just up the alleyway from my apartment building, or across the bridge and in the mountains.

that place that is home is where we are reflected by the people around us, by our actions and deeds. home is a place we travel to every day challenging our notion of who we are, and who we ought to be.

our strange places, though sometimes far away, are part of what home means. our strange places are our journeys back to defining the self.