Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Walking home in January 2010

















Listen to this from 1970:

"On our way back home. We're on our way home"

And from 1985, in Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin, pages 21-22, and an excerpt from a song from an unnumbered page that is two pages beyond page 523:

"Walking down to Hard Canyon Creek, I felt old, as if I had been away longer than four days, longer than the month in Kastoha-na, longer than the eight years of my life. I washed in the creek, and came back up the meadow in the twilight. Gahheya Rock was there, and I went to it. It said, "Now touch me." So I did, and so came home. I knew something had come to me that I did not understand, and maybe did not want, my walk had been the golden hill; the coyote had sung to me; and so long as my hand and the rock touched each other I knew that I had not gone wrong, even if I had come to nothing."


_____Stammersong
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
From the Library at Wakwaha.


I have a different way, I have a different will,
I have a different word to say.
I am coming back by the road around the side,
by the outside way, from the other direction ...

...There is a valley, high hills around it.
There is a river, willows on its shores.
There are people, their feet are beautiful,
___dancing by the river in the valley.

3 comments:

bev said...

Walking down to Hard Canyon Creek, I felt old, as if I had been away longer than four days, longer than the month in Kastoha-na, longer than the eight years of my life.

How familiar that sentence sounds to me. I've been away a number of times, and upon my return, it feels almost as thought I have another life outside of the one I live. The year after my dad died, I started going out to the PNW occasionally. I would return home, and for the first few days, walk around my house in the dark feeling like it was some strange place I'd never been before. This past spring, returning home to sell my farm, I had little sense of it being "home" anymore. It was just a place. These are very odd times. Btw, the word verification for this comment is "homing" - how appropriate.

robin andrea said...

I read this now from a place of no home, but of a longing for one. I wish we could walk home and find the familiar rock to lay our hands upon, restored.

am said...

bev -- "... another life outside of the one I live" speaks to my experience, too, and to the concerns of Always Coming Home. I think that's part of why I'm re-reading it now. it moves me to tears of joy and sorrow and recognition. It moves me forward rather than backward.

robin andrea -- I think that Ursula Le Guin wrote Always Coming Home from a place of love and longing. She has her feet on the ground. She doesn't turn away from what is difficult. It's a remarkable and challenging story that she tells, especially for anyone who feels a deep sense of home in the landscape of Northern California.