Forever saying goodbye

My slow travel guru is always so contemplative. She recently sent me the following:

"Who am I now? How have my values changed?"
Do you ask yourself those questions when you are leaving a place?

One has to be fairly self-aware to  even ask those questions, much less come up with an answer.  I don't know who I was when I started this journey, how could I know who I am on each leg of i?  Can I see any change?  Not really. My values seem to be fairly constant, although my plans necessarily change, and sometimes I think wistfully about older aspirations.

For example, I recently found myself revisiting an old dream to study in Oxford, but it was more about snobbery than scholarship. I want to be able to go into the Bodleian reading rooms and READ! And to be able to enter colleges as one with the right, not as a tourist.  But study?  No.  I no longer have an idea about what I want to learn, and the idea of being a scholar no longer resonates.  I'm too slapdash in my approach to ideas. I've been infected by the soundbite, by the quick and facile connections. Not only am I currently unable to think  deeply about my experiences, I no longer have the urge to do so.  The idea of turning my blog into one of slow journalism does not resonate.  Nor do I want to write a book about my travels.  Do I really want to research the places I visit?  Do I want to know the crime rate of Macclesfield?  Or its history?  Do I want the daily pressure of recording impressions?  Do I want to focus and analyze?  A resounding no to all of that.

So, I am clearly not thinking about growth or change or lack thereof.  I do think about the fact that this gig has me constantly falling in love (with a dog or with a view or an activity), and then saying goodbye. Right now  I miss Lolli and Pop, my Oxford companions: they curled up so sweetly against me and made little whiffling snores.  And Lolli had the sweetest expression, looking up at me and then bounding forward to sniff at the verge of the footpath.  Yes, I miss her, and I have that feeling every time I leave a sit.  The annoyances go away, and I just see those faces looking at me sadly as I wave goodbye.

However, there’s still that lure of constant discovery. I find myself creating micro-homes and establishing temporary routines, and then I abandon my creation. The act of exploration is about exploring my hosts’ lifestyles, not their locations. It reminds me of Andy Goldsworthy or the builders of the Icehotel in Sweden; for the artists it’s all about the act of creation. They love the transitory nature of the product. But it’s rather presumptuous to compare myself to them. My creations are so involuntary, so small, so unplanned. I don’t know if I’m an artist of domesticity or a peeping Tom. 

Today I came across the following:
Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. -William James, psychologist and philosopher (11 Jan 1842-1910) 

James is talking like a psychologist, of course. The root connections are dark unconsciousness, and our lives are the whispering leaves.  But it's a metaphor that may help me answer my friend's question. Each home is like a island or a tree, connected deep down, inside me, whispering through my letters and pictures.   Who am I now?  I'm a collection of trees on an archipelago of islands.  Each journey adds another tree, or maybe just another branch......or maybe a rock on the beach.  Yes maybe I'm just that rock, traveling from beach to beach.  Now that I come to think out the psychological metaphor,  I think that is so:  I'm not quite as rooted and connected as the first image implies.  And I doubt that I contain those dark depths. 

In fact, I'm a simple soul, one who never puts down roots, who is forever saying goodbye.  But then again, I'm also forever saying hello.  Which is the yin and which the yang, I do not know.