Discovering Home

Home is the sensation of relief.

I have had a truly incredible summer of travel and escapades.  Starting with a road trip with the Razor Babes to San Francisco, then a solo return trip to the bay area for a visit and a wedding, then off to Chicago for the Jump Rhythm Jazz Project week long work shop, followed shortly by a fantastic honeymoon in the Northern Pacific (Oregon and Washington specifically) and finally a flight across "the pond" to Germany and Switzerland for more touring and yet another wedding.

It was great.
...
I am spent!

But, this is a good thing, a great thing, because now I want to be NOWHERE else be right here in the Kubocha Cottage (our affectionate name of our little house-- details later). 

Traveling is an excellent opportunity to discover the preciousness of your daily, average life. Travel is exciting and of course I appreciate all of the different views I have seen this summer: over cities, oceans, the alps!  But, travel for me often feels like I have been frozen in time.  It serves for me as an incubation period during which I am suspended from completing my everyday tasks and thus making "progress".  Travel forces me to step back and just observe.  And, as many of you know, observing the self is often uncomfortable.  It is energetically taxing and at times frustrating, irritating, and depressing to take the time to shed light on the dark and forgotten corners of the soul, sweep them out and suffer the dust cloud that follows. But, there is no better place to do exactly that than on an 11 hour flight home from Frankfurt.  

All of the waiting time, in lines, for take off, for check in, for check out, at train stations, in a car...  All of that time is incubating time.  It feels like I truly hibernated this summer, not because I closed myself in doors, but because I divorced myself from my sense of identity in the things I do at home, namely, teaching dance, choreographing, going to yoga, going to the gym, eating at certain restaurants, taking walks...  the details are not what's important. The challenge is that we become what we do, and we start to deeply identify ourselves by our habits and our practices.  Of course in the Buddhist sense we are none of this.  We are indefinite and these aspects of life are just details.

But, through our life we can gain insight and peace if we choose. Travel is just thing thing to shake up the routine, to help you question who you are and discover you are not your daily run around schedule.  I have been reminded that I choose the routines in my life and they can be deeply satisfying and rewarding.  But, being home is not about being on autopilot.  Being home is the place where the real work needs to happen. 

I am glad to be home.