Loose Ends
I am accustomed to being away from home, but it is a new and tricky thing travelling so far away when one’s love is 3600 miles and 5 hours east. Conversations between hosts, friends and strangers are woven together, the beloved is included. How do we stay in communion with what and whom are not physically present? How do we do this without drifting away from the present moment, from what is close at hand? Maintaining a thread between myself and family, friends or partner has been an ongoing conundrum over the many years where touring with bands or teaching T’ai Chi took me to Poland, Canada, USA, Scotland, Sweden or elsewhere. Now, older, though perhaps only marginally wiser, I realise the importance of puncturing the mystique of that perfect distance achieved by international travel. It can attenuate connection to a point at which it breaks. I have seen friends and myself swept up in that seemingly inviolable self-contained bubble which can accompany anything other than very low-budget travel. Marriages have faltered. Bands have broken up. What starts as a semi-mystical experience soon becomes an excuse for not bringing ourselves fully back home even as we dump our dusty bags by the front door.
In the recent past I have sat on one end of a string and felt nothing but emptiness greet my hopeful pulls. At other times I have let my own loose end dangle, ignoring the tension in the line, refusing to be in connexion, and yet expecting to be able to pick it up on my return.
But these are not those times, thank goodness. So I will write of host-guesting and then of a shawl the size of an ocean.
This podcast was published first here on Substack, with full transcript, notes and links on 6t May 2024.
Episode 67: The Wondering Guest