moving out without leaving

Recently I spent four days in the driver's seat from the crashing coast of southern California to the sliding coast of South Carolina islands.

Only one scene remains clear: bumping over a small town railroad crossing and suddenly feeling dissonance. The "buildings" next to me focused into metal sheet walls lifted by tornados and dropped here and there, crumpled around the town. Stores and houses gaped with holes, folded into piles of walls, tilted wildly. More people than usual milled around, many wearing fluorescent vests, standing behind tables of water and basic foods, carrying clipboards and cameras, driving equipment that sorted and organized debris. Apparently I had not been listening to news over the previous two days of driving.

Aside from those two twister-torn minutes in Selma, Alabama, the days flowed as the road flowed, sun here, clouds there, flickering forests, wide open flatlands. Then more dissonance, and more as I hummed eastward: so many car-killed foxes, racoons, deer, hawks, cats.

The nudges (glances, shouts) grew into a sentence that kept welling up from deep in me: We have overstayed our welcome. 

Not because we make our smooth, speedy, disconnected way across the country, animals in our wake. Because we have built, bulldozed, eradicated, and manifested, ignoring the predictions of consequences, the actual consequences, and the people, land, ecosystems "in our way."

In fact, welcome was invented.

At least four decades ago I was reading predictions that English would not be the majority language in the U.S. by the 2030's - which date felt impossibly futuristic at the time. 

Why is it that "those who decide" did not start planning 50 years ago for the fissures of the past decade? Why did I not jump into that arena when I was 20? Why were we not proactively handing power over to those who speak more languages than one, those younger, not white, more creative, with more energy, decade by decade? 

Why did we think we could hang on to our primary language, our ways of thinking, doing, being, until our fingers are forced open? Why did we want to?

My fingers don't need to be forced open - but they need to know where to be, for this time, in this place.

All that I was born into, benefit from, and support (as hard as I try not to) has been trembling as those consequences become real, whether from approaching tornado or daily, minute-by-minute deep in the ground quakes is unclear. It lived the fury and fight of being created for centuries, was somewhat stable for a portion of us for a few tiny decades, and has been crumbling as it came into being. 

I was taught young that our systems provide stability (for everyone, of course, right?), have always provided stability (ditto), and that everything will fall apart if they fall apart. I accepted the first two parts young but haven't for years, and I never subscribed to the last part. 

It's not true that everything will fall apart as things change. Some things might - and that's ok.

New things will be built, and we have the chance to perhaps pay attention to the foreseers this time. Some among us have been building for decades in preparation, and more are building in the in-between time so that as the old sifts away the new emerges. 

In my international decades I wasn't paying attention here at what is now again home. For the past decade my anger has grown, at being duped, at not having paid attention, at finding myself - now distinctly middle aged and past the energy and intelligence that creates change - in the group that has held on too long. I once again assumed things were smooth; I once again wake up late to the dissonance I felt.

This is nothing new. I don't feel sorry for myself, with the privileges I hold, and I don't blame. I do feel the heartbreak, trauma, and frustration that didn't have to be, and I do ask myself questions.

What does it look like if I refuse to remain too long?

Who is building, quietly or unobserved or loudly? What does it look like to help them do what they do, if help is needed? What am I learning from them? 

If my help is not needed, where can I work to add what is valuable from the side?

What should stay? What should crumble? What can be repurposed or re-formed?

With my increasing limitations and my choices to limit myself, how do I use who I am, where I am, in the building of "something here" as the old things return to dust or re-form?

What other questions do I need to be asking?

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Some places of contemplation:

adrienne maree brown's questions, and her encouragements to build connections that create sustainable patterns

Sandra Maria van Opstal's reminder that her community had networks in place building their city's strength when the COVID pandemic sparked suburban partnership

Krista Tippett's musings on how to live into the coming decades.

Be the Bridge's direction to continue listening to the young with no expectations (including that of being included)