Landscpaes: Of longing and belonging
Monday, December 12, 2011 at 10:33PM 
{not Lisbon, but Boston}
When I'm walking [Lisbon's] stone-cobbled streets, catching glimpses here and there of the bordering Tejo River, or taking in, from a vista on one of the city's hills, the glorious staggered topography of the white buildings and their salmon colored tile roofs, I feel that I'm also traveling some interior landscape, that those streets are leading to a place inside myself that I haven't yet located." ~Philip Graham, "I Don't Know Why I Love Lisbon," The Moon, Come to Earth
I've been away for a few days in Boston for a mini-writing retreat with a dear friend. We spent a bit of time writing, a bit of time wandering around the city, a bit more time reading, a good bit more submitting our work to lit journals -- and many bits more talking. I count all of these bits as the necessary ingredients of my writing life.
While I was away I began reading Philip Graham's The Moon, Come to Earth, a collection of essays about the year he and his family lived in Portugal. I love the above quote for the last line, for this idea that a place -- a physical landscape -- can intertwine with our inner geography and lead us to a place of discovery, to a place that is truly and deeply home.
I'm a bit obsessed with this interplay of inner and outer landscapes.
What is this sense of belonging that is also a sense of longing?
It's this question that fuels the collection of essay I'm currently writing. I call them my "sea stories," but they're so much more than that. They explore my personal spiritual journey through the lens of seascapes. And to my keen frustration, I've been at a standstill with them for too many months now. I think it's because I've been trying to come at them straight-on for too long. So I've been letting things simmer, looking for other pieces of landscape (beyond the surf line) that can reveal myself to me, to show me the way home and the way forward. A lot places -- including the place where I live -- don't often inspire this feeling of connection within me, but I'm learning to look for the snippets that do. Big cities aren't my natural home, but I love spending time in them and looking for the pieces that feel true to me. The photo above, taken at dusk on the bridge in Boston's Public Garden, is a new piece of my internal landscape, a snapshot of what feels like a tiny piece of true home to me, an icon of how I might find my way in the world.
In The Moon, Come to Earth, Philip contemplates the Portuguese concept of saudade, which he describes as "a complicated feeling that combines sorrow, longing, and regret, laced perhaps with a little mournful pleasure." I'm not sure I understand the term in all of its fullness as the Portuguese use it, but I'm well acquainted with the braided strands of melancholy, the way I don't mind feeling happy-sad, and the way that feeling is often closest to the surface in some of my favorite places. This longing-belonging fills me up when I walk along a seashore -- almost any shore, but particularly those in New England and the Pacific Northwest. I've felt it among the interplay of wild ocean, proud mountain, and the ever-so-tall evergreens in Oregon and Washington. I've felt it in the rolling hills and postcard towns of Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales. I once felt it while standing under a gigantic outdoor Christmas tree in London's Covent Garden, and once while sitting in an old orange recliner in my senior-year college dorm room.
The longing-belonging can seep in almost anywhere, but it's the coastline that most feels like home to me. Last winter, during a lecture at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Robert Vivian quoted his friend (whom he identified simply as a Scottish poet) who said this about place:
In this life we're only given one or two true landscapes, and we can't get rid of them, even if we want to.
I keep coming back to this. It's one of those sentences that haunts me, simultaneously beckoning me to wax poetic about it and begging me to leave it as is. What else can I say about a truth so perfectly spoken?
I suspect that you read that quote and had one of these two reactions: Either you sighed with recognition and thought "Yes," or you furrowed your brow and wondered, "What?".
If you furrowed and wondered, I'm not sure how to unpack it directly. I suppose that's why I'm writing a whole book of essays about the connections among soul, spirit, and place. I guess those essays are my way of coming at the concept head-on and sideways at the same time.
Of course, I'm not sure I understand the poet's idea exactly as he intended it. Perhaps I've romanticized it, interlaced it with my own thoughts about the lands that claim us. In his lecture, Robert talked about how the landscape of his home state of Nebraska has laid claim to him in a way he can never escape, despite his fervent desire to do so. He lives in Michigan now, but Nebraska won't leave him alone. It shows up in his writing, in the way he sees the world, even in certain patches of sunlight. He can't get rid of Nebraska, no matter what he does.
Is it the same with me, I wonder? Will this southwestern corner of Pennsylvania where I live always be with me, even if I manage to move away from the dull grey of it skies? I claim the ocean as my true landscape, but what if the sad, rounded contours of my homeland have claimed me? I may breathe easier near the water, but what if that's only because I've spent my life surrounded by land? I try to discount the ways in which I've been shaped by where I grew up (and still live), but that's just naïveté and wishful thinking. Of course this landscape has shaped me, of course I can never fully get rid of it. But does that make it one of my two true landscapes? I don't think so, but I'll make room to consider it. After all, I suppose one can never have too many signposts to lead the way home.
What about you? What are your true landscapes?
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You might be interested in the Powers of Place Initiative website: http://www.powersofplace.com/index.htm
Peace & Blessings,
Tania