A felt sense of home
intuitive hits, bodily sensations
Welcome to Wandering Grace, especially if you are a newer subscriber! We are only 6 people away from 100 subscribers! Please help me grow by sharing with friends and kindred spirits. I write essays exploring the themes of place and (be)longing 1-2 times a month, and sometimes bonus snapshots from the road. Read more about the project here. See an archived list of essays in-order here.
Looking back at the last two essays, I realized they became a map of the subtle differences between the postures of “making do with less” and “pulling something off with what you have” — one unsustainable as it depletes and the other energy-giving if done in collaboration. It’s an ongoing inquiry into what it takes to stay idealistic, hold onto values, and not negotiate away your own needs+desires whilst still being adaptable, willing to compromise, and in gratitude with enoughness in an under-resourced world.
I also posted a bonus little zine about rooting that starts with a quote from @thebreathactivist who reminds us to stay tender and tenderize through the brutality of ongoing genocide.
It’s May 2023.
This year’s LA Zine Fest in Long Beach is my favorite show of the year — the best vibes and the best sales. I leave abuzz and promptly crash.
I am staying at my friend Phuong’s house in Long Beach while she’s out of town. Another friend of theirs is also staying as a guest, but we only overlap a bit before he leaves town. He’s the gregarious type who can dominate a conversation with very little encouragement. He was convinced that I was a quiet mouse hiding out in my room all day when I was in fact out of the house working the fest.
He asks to see some of my zines, and I tell him that connecting with readers at shows gives me energy and motivation to keep making more zines. Keeps me going for months. During our dining table conversation, he repeatedly jokes about how he was sure I was hiding out the whole day because I was so quiet. Ha ha ha, I laugh and work to keep a smile on my face.
The day after the Fest, the other friend has left, and I spend all day hiding out. ^__^ Although I had scheduled in this pre-planned recovery day, the torpor of a no-nothing day still throws my mood off-balance.
It’s on this day that I discover Phuong’s glorious sunroom-slash-office addition appended onto the back of the house. I might audibly gasp. I definitely text photos to my crush.
Look at this place!!! I might never leave!
LOL You’d turn into a plant.
At least plants have roots. XD
***
I have been keeping a list of what home feels like, ever since Phuong said that home to her was ‘cut fruit and noodle soup’ back at the Asian Diaspora Jam where we initially met.
A creative coach advises me to practice nurturing a felt sense of home inside of myself instead of questing outwardly and constantly assessing whether this place or that place is the ‘right’ place or the ‘wrong’ place. With practice, felt sense of home can become a compass. With practice, I will more easily recognize and be drawn towards things in the external world that resonate with what’s right for me.
Midway through my Migration Tour, my therapist asks me if I’ve felt that bodily hit of ‘home’ anywhere on my travels yet.
No, not yet, I tell her…though I don’t tell her that I don’t expect to either.
It’s never that simple.
***
It’s December 2023, and I’m explaining this very concept of nurturing a ‘felt sense of home’ inside of yourself to someone I like a lot, and their eye contact full of affection and tenderness is exactly what I have been desiring for oh so many moons.
We gaze at each other in silence across the table, smiling steadily.
…But I can’t live off that look for months in-between long-distance encounters, can I?? I write in my journal later that night.
***
It’s my last few days at Phuong’s before departing for my next spot in North Hollywood, and the music video for Conan Gray’s “Never Ending Song” is playing on the television as part of Asian American Heritage month.
When I started my Migration Tour, Bird Body made a map, all mountain tops and oceanside hello’s, so I might as well say hello to the ocean while I’m still on the westside.
I arbitrarily pick the Korean Friendship Bell as a destination, as it’s nestled in a swathe of green on the map which I figure might contain trails. Once off the highway west, I drive south towards the ocean on one of those straightshot Los Angeles thoroughfares with a million red lights, stopping-and-going past strip malls, chicken joints, and parking lots.
I walk up the grassy hill towards the Korean Friendship Bell and glance at the plaque but am more interested in:1
a film crew and their trailer in the parking lot
a couple salsa dancing to music from an unseen speaker
a couple studying the horizon at picnic’s end
an Asian family with ambling elders
I pick a path towards the cliff’s edge — stepping between the chatty friends taking photos of golden hour and some teenagers clutching fast food bags roaming for a spot — gauging where people are headed with their various motivations — wondering whether my knees are up for these steep trails, debating whether I should keep driving to another spot for my walk.
I look up and warmth floods me with a jolt: a bodily sensation of belonging that suffuses my torso, gapes open my jaw, and stops me in my tracks.
The water below, the horizon beyond, the way the ocean curves north and hugs this particular shore.
I’m in awe for half a second before thinking, I’m not ready.2
I refuse to grok what it means. It can’t mean anything…can it?
Of course not.
I rush away from cliff’s edge, drive away from the bell, and find other trails further west to ramble along whilst my mind swirls with all the reasons I shouldn’t or don’t want to or can’t move to LA. The sun sets as I try and fail to suppress the smile on my lips.
as evidenced by zero photos of the actual bell on my camera roll, lol.
This one’s a complete tangent, but the comic artist EK Weaver visually captures this moment of realization plus “not ready” really well in her comics The Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal and Sweet Abilene. And I will take any opportunity to point people to her work. (All of it NSFW, gay AF, and sweet AF <3 enjooooy)