A Place Called There…
Travel nostalgia and the practice of *feeling good* no matter the locale.
It has been two months since traveling to Senegal and I awake in my bed to find the black, red, green, & yellow beads from my bracelet scattered like a freshly opened puzzle; no perceived pattern to where they lay in my sheets.
I am slowly starting to accept that my flip flops previously caked with thick red dirt no longer support my weight on these cobbled streets of Berlin. And as the summer season fades, my colorful tunics seem to lack their place among this chic sea of all black attire.
My trip is still fresh enough for me to continue peppering my speech with random French words and new Wolof vernacular: “Wéye sama Ndeye!”(Oh my Mother!, Oh my God!) Yet distant enough to cause my heart to ache as I hold up a small shell found on the island of Gorée to my ear.
Por Moi…
Senegal sounded like prayer at hour 5, children singing at 10.
Calls of fresh fish for sale, shouts of “As-salamu alaykum!” in passing.
Honks,
acceleration,
crows crying before their feed.
It smelled like bug spray and roasting tilapia and onions.
Stinging throat from the exhaust of the scooters.
Tobacco,
mixed with salt air.
Cafe strong as poison keeping me up all night listening to endless songs.
This trip looked like rusted red and golden yellows.
Black Bodies.
Making everything around them PoP in contrast.
I saw trash piled high and goats awaiting their fate.
Men in dresses,
women with crowns.
Young boys running and singing in the rain.
Leaning bare trees and mangoes piled high.
Taxis! Taxsi! Everywhere.
Absurd things like bathroom scales being offered for sale outside the car window.
Senegal tasted like the salt from the ocean still saturating the inside of my lip.
Like spices and meat new to my belly.
Like hibiscus tea with too much sugar.
Like the drippings of fruit in my teeth and down my forearms.
Like grains with every meal,
and salad more as a garnish than a California way of life.
~
There, in Senegal, I felt content. Happy. Peaceful. Here, in my plush bed and overpriced flat-share my mood leans more towards irritability and an inherent sense of lack.
How does one cope with this state of in between? When your body has physically traversed the time zones but your heart and soul still lags behind in a newfound locale of contentment?
The loss from returning from a journey.
No matter how hard I try to hold on, the feeling fades. The sand from the bottom of my suitcase gets swept away, my clothes no longer hold that dizzying scent of salt air mixed with sweat and tobacco. I guess it’s true what Mama says, everything does come out in the wash.
Even so, there is no denying the settling that has happened just under my skin. Being in Africa and no longer in a constant state of “other” from the colonizers gaze allowed for a newfound freedom, and acceptance. I feel the weight of this newly discovered dermis and now it is my decision to allow it to cushion my journey or weigh me down.
While even the bottoms of my feet ache to be on that land again, in an effort to tread lightly I am curious of this well-being I found there.
There, contentment existed without “stuff,” and was found in the company you kept and the fullness of your belly.
Is this feeling dependent on the city you lay your head or on the sense of self, state of mind, and energetic frequency that is with you, always?
“How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you?”… “It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.” — Socrates
Fact. This capitalist regime I have returned to in Europe does not accept rent checks of joy nor songs of jubilee. Consumerist logic seems to be engraved into our fingerprints from our very first swipe. However, one must take responsibility for consciousness and presence no matter the STATE or state in which they physically or mentally occupy.
So what of this forever fleeting idea of ‘There.’
Not only coordinates on a map but ‘there’ as a construct of ‘better than’ albeit age, job, zip code, tax bracket.
Let’s be honest, I am grieving this loss from Senegal but two summers ago it was from a Goddess retreat in Greece and before that it was a life-changing solo trip to Oaxaca, Mexico.
Anyone who has been consumed by wanderlust knows that travel is the ultimate drug for this escapist mentality. To surround oneself with new ways of existing ignites a freshness in spirit, a natural high if you will. One so powerful that you receive a power boost of well-being beneath your wings. However, as soon as you begin to coast again, returning to minimal energy and maximum efficiency therein creeps thoughts of defeat and dissatisfaction.
This time I am determined to look past my basal emotions, open my third eye and realize…would you look at that, I’m still flying!
This sensation knows no borders. In those things that we so desperately search for outside of ourselves with a different house, change of country, new lover, Socrates philosophically confirms that your burdens are always packed even when you travel light.
I consider it a great privilege to know lands that feed my frequency more than others, but it is also true that I can find this sense of *feeling good* wherever I am, no matter how much foreign product I bring back. So that when the coco butter runs out I am still full.
The sunlight cuts through my window heating up my bed and the beads within it. Instead of focusing on loss of my favorite souvenir, I choose to remember a lesson I learned in my youth before I had ever even heard of a country called Senegal. When my father taught me that Black is for the people, Red is for the blood, Green is for the land, and Yellow for prosperity. Those universal truths I keep in my heart, and I find weigh more than my feather insecurities that cause me to always want to take flight.
