It’s an odd paradox, that I identify as being easily overwhelmed by stimulation and yet in certain ways, seem to gravitate towards the way of the multi-tasker, spontaneous planner, multiple-thought trains leaving the station.
The current trains diverging are actually more literal, and not so much trains. While I am trying to lay my roots in a new town and prepare to pack up from the old one, I am also bound for Ann Arbor in 4 days!
The other day, I got the urge to clean Iris. After all, she had just suffered a puncture wound, and has historically worked her ass off for very little recognition (besides my purchase of eccentric adornments). So, I hooked up my vacuum, gutted out all the crap that has piled up inside, and shuffled through every nook and cranny. When I got to my music box, it was there that I rediscovered many audio-ages past that had never made it onto my iTunes. Favorites include most of my brother’s infamous holiday and birthday mixes. My hands reached for one in particular: Xmas 2011. Inside, he’d written a note:
“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.”
- Victor Hugo
May you always have the strength to saw what needs to be said.
Love, Jordan
Six months from then, I would embark on my move out to the PNW.
People say time has moved differently - faster - since 2000. I agree. Everything seems pressure-packed and super-sonic-speed. It takes a special eye to step back and see where you’ve been because it all still feels close together. But even if I don’t feel it all the time, I can’t deny that these last few years have been milestone years.
It’s not until you move away from family that you learn what they’ve imparted or what influences truly become you. Sure, there are definitely parts of my identity that I have come to define as distinctly my own (definitely not anything that these three have passed on, at least….maaaaybe the rest of it comes from my cat XP) but there is no denying that I am also a hybrid of these beautiful people:
Even though my mother and I go head to head more than anyone else, or maybe even because we do, she has very much been my guiding light. Every time I’ve sought to explore a new healing art or have recognized my need for pause and reflection, that is her influence. Even the manner in which I coordinate arrangements, my best face with kids, and now apparently my knack for losing sunglasses emulates her.
Even in the scarcity of our talks, I feel a kinship with my father. Our conversations are very much quality over quantity, and in him, I recognize my patience to wait for the right time of discussion. He’s never been one to push a subject, and yet when the space for it opens up, he shows that he has been spending time with it. While I think patience isn’t either of our strong suites in all regards, it has been a valuable trait in sensitive times. And in more practical matters, he’s gradually imparting on me, the logistics of being independent (taxes etc).
And my brother, the non-vocal, multi-linguist. I cop out a lot by summerizing that we are “similar in a lot of ways, and different in a lot of ways”. Our intelligence is driven by different avenues, our temperament rides different tides, and yet we’ve continuously found value and admiration for one another’s’ strengths, which in the end, makes a yin-yang kind of similarity. Chronologically, we yin-yang-ed also. Everyone thought he was a natural, talkative ham as a babe. As a teen, I was all writing and music. He has carried music and writing into maturity, I have carried voice into maturity. And yet, I don’t think either of us could have done that, or be how we are, without the other.
All of this to say that, when I found that quote, I began to get pretty excited about my visit home.
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