I learned the most when I stopped for a moment to listen. To believe that my contributions to space are mostly what only I can see. To recognize the city I have built around me has little structure.

There is no foundation. The steel support beams are faulty, and the leaky roof is bowing under the weight of a scrutinizing sun. What does the city need, to see the buildings raised, to kiss the sky?

The blueprint after all did say that the sky was the limit, the architects went ahead and started building without knowing fully how much this project would cost.

Active participation through listening and presence, two activities that we were told are passive, are often the most actively engaged things we can do. In retrospect, to say the city needs to be fixed is misguided. It can not be erased. What has been viewed as poor planning, inattentiveness, and impatience, is really the packing of insecurities, internalized resentment and misguided anger into the walls, the windows and the insulation; not the framework.

The city wanted to move. It has traveled in a way. Perhaps severed some connections, and burned some bridges. However, the same barriers still exist. And while the city itself has grown, it remains situated -rooted- in place, as it always has been.

Gazing outward, I recognize the buildings as something inside myself. Objects, ideas, an energy that can be shared and given to those I feel intimacy with. It is an exercise of trust that subtly draws a feeling from somewhere deep down...tears have rarely ran so silently.

The voice that wanted to express itself fully has found cracks within the walls built around it. An awareness of these walls draws attention -first- to their permeability. It is not everything that remains locked in, or locked out after all.

Mother did not trust her brother-in-law in the room alone with children, or with her. At least half of this I have been fearful others will mistakenly read off of me too. Mother never drove in another city, never strayed to far (without my father). And until hearing all this, I had not been aware of how far she had once been away from home. (And she knew it was home.) She very strongly wanted to go back, and when that want became a reality, she never wanted to leave again.

My own feelings about this place involve a pale blue, frigid cold; an endless expanse; crackling of feet on ice and snow; the absence of a recognizable soul for thousands of miles. I am afraid of being alone, and it is this fear that told me to build the city in the first place. But where to build it?

Initially, the swamp made me a drink and embraced me -naked- with a soft fur, beaded with sweat. This felt inviting. But when I moved closer, the tenderness seemed to give way to waste - a too small apartment, unwashed sheets, and a stench I could never wash clean. The swamp was unfamiliar and hostile.

The ocean and mountains called, and it was not the first time I heard them. It was the first time I moved for myself (fully). It was here that a sense of pride found itself intelligible. But I did not really speak their language. (To this day I wonder if I really ever tried.) Originally learning how seemed too expensive, too risky. But now, those reasons become more and more uncertain to me. Spring comes and I fly to meet them, still wondering what our relationship would look like if we could just listen to each other.

The prairie has always felt the most safe. The plains know my sounds; the woods here guide me, and the lakes and rivers reflect back to me a serenity I know I have, but need to see up close to believe in. The understanding of horizon, the bitter cold of winter, the sweet sex of summer, the thunder and the wind howling through the gaps of high rising visions for myself...its all so very necessary. Because here I am, after all. What is so scary about seeing the curvature of the earth? Or the rings around the moon? What, of all of this, is so haunting that it would lead me repeatedly to lands end? What, of all of this, has made so unrecognizable the things I associate with home?