Refections on Semester One

I am done with my first semester of grad school...well, almost. I do have to proctor (who made up that word anyway!?- sounds like a medical procedure involving gloves and bending over) an exam on Thursday. But for all intents and purposes, the workload is done. Some of you may ask- so why the hell are you sitting down and doing more of what you've been doing for the last 4 weeks (that being writing on my laptop)? Good question. The simplest and perhaps most honest answer is that my life is really quite boring and that sitting at my favorite cafe with a cup of coffee and writing a reflection on the semester sounded actually quite nice. It's also something (writing) that I've found I enjoy when I don't have to write with any real deadline or purpose. I should also say that my decision was presumably largely influenced by the fact that my heater (though quite effective in pumping out waves of heat) sounds like there's a Mack truck idling (and, strangely enough, smells a bit like that-it's natural gas). Anyhow, here I sit.

Something that's still quite fresh on my mind is my recent, inaugural visit to UT's recreation center. I call this reflection "Just do it".

After a full semester of surviving on somewhat irregular runs and my mostly daily bike commute (except for when it rains, then it's bus and walk) for my exercise fix, I was ready to go do something that was both aerobic and at least partly social. I did attempt to play Ultimate with the local crew here in Knoxville sometime around mid-semester, but, ultimately (couldn't resist) found myself needing to work on Sundays on homework. So I stuck with the convenient, however solitary, nature of running and counted my bike commute as "good enough". I thought about going to a yoga class. I thought about seeing if there's a master's swimming group. I thought, "I should do something that's more social." I thought that pretty much all semester. I finally went and played some pick up ball last week.

I showed up at the gym with my backpack bursting at the seams with all of my gear stuffed in it. When I came up to the check out desk, I got the look I've gotten pretty much all semester. Sometimes it's like: "dude, what the hell do you have in your pack?". Other times it's more like: "dude, do you need a place to stay?". So far, the latter question has been in the minority and not been asked by any cute and available women. Anyhow, I checked out a lock, a ball, put my gear on, and hit the courts. I was pleased to find that not only were there 4 full well cared for courts, but that the gym actually had some windows large enough to erase a lot of that gross, claustrophobic, fluorescent feel that gyms usually have. I was pleasantly surprised.

Then I got another surprise. The gym has work study students (and apparently cameras) whose job it is to watch out for hippies with backpacks who look like they may actually try to sleep in the locker room. Apparently I had that look, because my particular little gym elf came over to enforce the critical "gym shorts only policy". My KAVU, cotton shorts weren't the mesh polyester that everyone else was playing in, and apparently, this is law down here in TN. In retrospect, I'm surprised they didn't bust me on my shirt. I had on my gross Gap t-shirt with bike grease, holes, and cherry stains (one of my favorite mementos from Gabriela). But my shorts, really? So I told him that I wanted to talk to his bosses. He looked like I had just eaten a large portion of his soul (he looked like he was 15, and to be fair, he'd probably never seen a large, sweaty hippy capable of anger). He came back two minutes later to say that everything was fine. Then the balling began.

They say that with basketball, once you've got the touch, you never lose it. What they don't hear them say is that while that may be true, sometimes the touch gets hidden under a couple extra beers, significant vertical leaping loss, as well as good old fashioned muscle atrophy. I think I must have missed like 10 layups. But I made up for it with hard d and some sweet passes. What the hell is my point? My point is that I had so much fun playing ball. I was reminded of much I love running with the ball, looking for the open pass, hitting the back cut, and making a sneaky steal. I like that when you can play the game well, you can just jump on a court, and start playing. I know it's easier said than done, but, next semester I'm gonna play at least once a week.
I need to play once a week.

Being as I'll be in Moscow next week at this time, home is on my mind. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I feel like I have a relatively clear sense of what and where home is for me. So why now? And what and where are home for me?

I know that much of my sense of home has to do with that I am truly living off on my own, away from everything familiar, really by myself for the first time in my life. It's that annoying but truth-holding adage about how you have to leave home to be able to fully appreciate it. I remember having some small sense of homesickness and longing for home as an exchange student in Germany. But I was only 16 and I was completely taken care of by my host families (not to mention that I didn't have to do anything other than simply attend my high school classes). Now, twelve years later, I'm living in Knoxville, TN, living alone, and doing the grad school thing. Never before have I felt such a clear sense of where and who my people are; where home is.

Now I'm sure that much of this is (clearly if I'm spending hours on a Monday afternoon writing about this) good ole fashioned homesickness. It's not so much that I'm clear that Idaho is my home so much as it is that I miss it. Though how can anyone every really separate homesickness from sense of home. Maybe it's these feelings that act as our inner compass; guiding us back in the right direction when we've wandered afar. Perhaps experiencing the feelings of being away from home is truly the only means to discover our inner sense of home. Ok, I'm starting to sound like a wanna-be Buddha. Sorry. But really, what is home? And how do I get there?

I think that much of my geographical sense of being away from home overlaps with my sense of being away from the people I love most. My sense of home has always been about people. I think this has been especially poignant for me being so close to Phil, Ali, and Gabriela these last months. Of course my feelings are especially strong right now, seeing as how they are planning on moving here next month!!!! But aside from that, my time with them this summer and this past fall have left a deep impression on me as to how important it is to make time for the really important people in our lives. When I'm with Phil, I know that I'm with someone who knows all of my quirks, insecurities, dreams, hopes, and fears. With Phil, specifically, I have the best of both worlds- he is both good friend and great family.Being with him, I'm reminded that I have been blessed with both an immediate and extended family (as well as an amazing group of friends) who love me for all that I am. But home is place too.

One of my password reminders is the question: "Where would you most like to live?". My answer, "Near the mountains". I am forced to recognized that I'm actually in a place right this very moment that is close to "the mountains". But the mountains out here ain't the mountains I grew up with. The Smokies are wooded hills- beautiful, deciduously decorated, remarkably accessible. I definitely connect my sense of home to the rugged, evergreen, still mostly wild Rockies (specifically in Idaho and Montana). There's something entirely unique and unmistakable about the scale and sense of wildness still present in those mountains. And maybe that's another part of my connection to sense of home- wildness.

Deep down, I believe that all of us are wild. I KNOW that I'm wild. I was born wild. I I think that I feel more alive, more free when I'm in a place that nurtures a sense of wildness. I can still remember running up the hill behind the parsonage on riverside, swinging on the big ole rope swing, dropping off of it and rolling through the underbrush. I remember intertubing through the rapids just across the road from our house. I remember waterskiing, naked under the full-moon on Dworshak reservoir. I am happy when I'm wild. Never before in my life have I realized how much I love Idaho. Never before have I realized how blessed and charmed my childhood was (and my life now is) because of Idaho.

What was my point? Oh yeah, home. In the end, at least for me, it comes down to two things: people and place. I'm sure that much of all this rambling is largely romanticized. In the same way that I was born wild, I was born a romantic and the grass has always been greener somewhere else than where I am. While I recognize that this may well be the case and that after being in Idaho (especially during the cold and gray of december/january) with family and friends for a couple of weeks, the tone of my blog may be quite different. Maybe having a sense that home is elsewhere is also a way to cope with that I still feel somewhat unhome here. I'm sure that's part of it. But something deep tells me that I'm discovering (or perhaps simply rediscovering) another aspect to my sense of home. That aspect I think is rooted-ness.

My life has been a bouncing from one place to the next. I've lived in a lot of different places. I've worked a lot of different jobs. Not since my days growing up in Idaho, have I been in one spot for longer than 4 years. I think my roots are starting to sprout.