Who are you when you are away from home?
Do you feel like you carry yourself intact – your own little bubble bouncing within the big blue marble – wherever you are? Or do you feel the edges start to blur and shift as they tend to when you are picking your way through an unknown forest, senses alive and prickling?
I have been away from Provence – and from Remi and the dogs – since May 28th. My Mom took time off to be with me for a week and we all helped my Sister move into a beautiful new home. During those busy days, filled with action and movement, I strode forth as Heather Who Lives in France, carried by the song of my life there. But now my Mom and Sister have gone back to their normal schedules and I am spending quite a bit of time alone.
Already, I have found the ground to be a bit slippery underfoot. The tune of “Who I Am” is slowing down and in the quiet of this undefined environment, certain notes are hanging off the bottom of the scale. I don’t particularly mind.
When Remi and I were travelling for our work, I came to relish that stripping down process. The rich simplicity of directly and continually encountering something new. There is usually little room for the noise in our personalities during such experiences.
Here too I see how malleable I am. To pick me up and put me down somewhere else, amidst other loves and interests feels like an opportunity, not only to express other aspects of who I can be – such as being literally and culturally understood – but within the remove of my daily definitions to remember the core of my heart.
Step by step, I crunch across the leaves, I lift my legs over the fallen branches and rise up on tip-toe to try and take in the view.
Even within such seeming stillness, much is happening…
