“Funny, the way we come to understand a place by wanting to escape it” ( 29).
Jenny Xie’s Eye level would have been the book of my dreams when I was traveling Asia by myself five years ago. A lot of her themes ( observation, truth seeking, identity, travel, loneliness, place and perspective) connect so much with me now but very much so in what I was looking for as a 27 year old Diné girl going through her twentieth identity and cultural crisis. I was looking for how I fit in this world and also searching for place, place of self, place of identity, place of calm, place of spirit, place of observation, the list went on and on as to why I was traveling and why I left my job and my hometown. The first quote above is something I feel like I hear and read in different styles from countless traveling blogs and quotes I used to subscribe to, it never gets old to me because there is so much truth to it.
I read Eye level while I was on a plane from Oakland to Phoenix to visit my partner and my family. My partner and I took a day trip yesterday to visit my family and grandma in northern Arizona. It was easter Sunday so most stores were closed. We went to a museum to see a poem of mine hung on the walls with other Indigenous poets for poetry month. I mainly went to show my grandma the poem because the poem was about her. She had to travel 3 hours to meet me in my hometown. While I waited for her my partner and I went on a nature hike though the forest, we sat for awhile and talked. I was telling him how I worked so hard to get out of this town and this place that has caused me so much distress because of their treatment towards native american people. But it was funny because as we were sitting there and while I was holding his hand watching the trees blow in the wind, I said to him, “As much as I couldn’t stand this town, I do love the trees and the wind here.” Every time I find a minute or two of peace in my hometown I savor it, I remember it because it is very rare, it makes me remember my bitterness didn’t eat me alive. With this simple quote, once you leave a place you’ve been wanting to escape your whole life you do come to an understanding with it or at least a few minutes of piece with the inner turmoil of wanting to leave or escape. I always thought I knew my hometown and cultural and having that feeling of wanting to escape and once I did I always find my land and culture calling me back. These days when I hear it, I have started listening and I have starting coming back with less anger and confusion in my heart. I had to travel to see a different perspective of who I am and where I come from.
“She had trained herself to look for answers at eye level” ( 73).
Xie's travel poems also reminded me of my own experiences traveling - I think she tapped into something really core about the experience of being a tourist / not fitting in / living in motion.
ReplyDeleteYour post made me think about all our different selves and the parts of us that are called away from a place and the parts of us that are changed and called back and how the before / after might seem at first to be straightforward (Phoenix vs. Oakland, for example), but how how we are simultaneously all of these selves at once and changing and unchanging all the time, and so the question of transformation is so much richer & less linear & more complicated.