Wherever you go, are you there?

Have you heard of “The Knowledge,” the test you have to pass to be a London cabby? I’ve decided I’m going to do something like it…only not in London and not involving cabs…or a test. Let me explain…

About a week ago, I gently undid my life. I left Eugene, OR, and drove across the country with my best friend, Laura, to start teaching at the University of Nebraska Omaha. I landed on the same street where my brother and two adored nieces live, a quiet section of Omaha’s Gifford Park neighborhood. I’m sitting on my bed now, the cacophonous late summer insect soundscape throbbing away outside. Ivy crawls up my window. It’s a bit like sitting inside a fairy tale. Or a parable — in her hubris, our heroine has gone and gotten herself swallowed up by a whale of a decision. What will happen now?

About a month before I left, I started getting pretty afraid. Of what I would find when I returned to the Midwest. Of losing the wet lung richness of Oregon forests. Of being lonely in the midst of the pandemic. Of utterly failing to teach college classes over Zoom. About a week before moving day I started to panic, like I was facing a decision someone else — someone sketchy and impulsive — had made.

I also started to seriously pre-mourn my daily walks. Walking is how I enter the world…at least, the version of the world I want to inhabit. I’m like Lizzy Stewart in this way: “I think walking makes me, an uncertain person, into a machine in forward motion.” Walking is how I come to know places. To know myself. When the pandemic hit, I stayed sane by walking for two hours most days through the uber-hilly terrain of my South Eugene neighborhood. I took every unfamiliar trail. I created an internal map of little free libraries and muscle memory. I found my way — I found myself — through the increments of my stride. Every day, no matter what: there I was, there I was, there I was.

The night before I left, I’m only a little ashamed to say, I broke down crying because there wasn’t time to take just one more evening stroll. What if I never located myself again back in the Midwest? What if the most important, most hard-fought-for parts of me stayed behind?

It was Helen Mirren, of course, who offered a way forward. On one of my last Eugene walks, looping out into the green countryside southwest of town, I listened to an interview she gave on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast. She talked about how her father “did the knowledge” shortly after moving to London, and being a polite person, she asked Maron if he knew what that meant. He didn’t, so she told him about this test The New York Times calls “possibly the most difficult test in the world.” To pass it, you must memorize every street and locale in London. Imagine it: you walk around with a map of the city in your head. It’s mythic.

I loved this and shared it with my dear friend, Sarah, who told me this test is apparently one of the ways scientists clued into neuroplasticity in adults. Creating a map of London in your brain, it turns out, literally grows your brain. It does other things, too. When you do The Knowledge, you map out this realm, the realm in which you move. You do that so you can help people get where they’re going and so you can get yourself where you need to go, too. You take on a certain level of mastery — you’re connected to that place because you know it and you have a responsibility to that knowledge. You respect what it is that you’ve built in your mind and the ways that, in the words of one London cabbie, touching that knowledge is “like an explosion in your brain. You see it instantly.”

We can create this in our minds. It’s amazing.

How this connects to me: I just moved back to the Midwest after living in the Pacific Northwest for ten years, a decade during which I completed a PhD, ended a six-year relationship, and then went on a five year adventure into what felt at times like a wasteland, wandering dark and lost. That’s not entirely true or (at all) generous — I made amazing friends and learned a lot in the process. But it was hard. I felt stuck a lot of the time. I didn’t know where to go. I still don’t. In some ways, making the choice to move — to change something — was the only move I had.

But then also, doesn’t it feel just genuinely unsafe to move right now? The pandemic, climate change, nascent (or just full-blown) fascism, horrifying social injustices not just ignored by people in power but approved or even outright sponsored. It has felt like a good time to bunker up while we also mask up (please, for the love of Jeebus, mask up). At every turn, leading up to, during, and after the move, I have felt shell-shocked that it seemed to keep happening. Surely, someone would step in to stop it? And I could have. I’m teaching remotely all year. I could have stayed in Eugene. But I didn’t. I moved, and here I am.

But am I here? My therapist, Greg, asks this all the time. It’s his version of the old adage, “Wherever you go, there you are.” He turns it into a question: “Wherever you go, are you there?” His advice to me, when I left, was to keep asking that question. That it was okay if the answer was no. But that it was important, just to know. That locating myself, even if the compass points to “lost,” is a big part of the work I have to do right now. We talk about that a lot, the importance of finding our work and doing it. Voltaire’s novel Candide ends with a group of beleaguered humans, all having suffered horrifically, gathered together at their work. Candide says it, again and again: “We must grow our garden.” I don’t think he means an Eden.

I think maybe there’s a connection between all these things: The Knowledge, walks, taking responsibility for locating ourselves (even if we’re just lost), and growing things. I think it’s not just okay but important (and alive) to want and pursue things — even in the midst of what feels like the coming of the end, or maybe just an end. I think tending to and mapping out the things we want — who we are and what we’re about — is really important if we’re ever going to be able to help other people, let alone ourselves, get where we need to go. Maybe we’ll get to those moments where we “see it instantly.” Maybe in a more plodding way we’ll grow to see ourselves.

So I’m trying to commit to doing the knowledge (I’ll lower the capitals for my version, out of respect) in this move, which for me means a few things:

1. I’ll take a walk every day, at least 20 minutes.
2. After my walk, I’ll sit down and write for at least 10 minutes about the walk — what I noticed, what I felt, anything I want to map, geographically or internally.
3. At the end of each day, I’ll write down the things I’m grateful for and that brought me joy that day. Because those are different things, and both are important in terms of locating myself here in this place.
4. As for this publication, I’m aiming for one post per week: I’ll share something about one of those walks and a list of the standout joys and gratitudes.

The overall aim isn’t to create a map in my head of every Omaha street and locale. Instead, I think I’m trying to take on the work of answering Greg’s question. I’m also looking to locate myself again, in whatever circumstance, for me and for others, creating again that cadence: here I am, here I am, here I am.

Gratitudes and Joys for this week

I didn’t do a good job (or any job at all) of recording these since I got here a week ago, so I’ll note a few standouts from the move itself.

Gratitudes:

• Beautiful weather for driving.
• My dear friend, Laura, made the trip with me.
• My Eugene roommate, Willow, made us a care package.
• Friends from all over sent texts and gifs to show support: I’m loved and I’ll be missed and people in Omaha are excited to see me.
• Comfortable places to land in Missoula and Rapid City.
• My moving pod arrived before I did — I’ll have a bed!
• My new roommate was gracious and welcoming and helped me unpack the pod.

Everything is better when you have a Laura.

Joys:

• The road sign in Montana announcing “Anaconda Opportunity” was 1 mile away. Make of that what you will.
• During the drive, Laura did an amazing conversational non-sequitur that made me blush and choke.
• My brother and sister in law sent texts and told me over the phone reasons why the move would be great.
• My friend Lola sent me texts with pics of her dog, Mo, who is my dog boyfriend.
• I held a dinosaur in the palm of my hand. We also might have made out a bit, but that’s a private photo.
• The cheers I shared with Laura that after all the anticipation, the moment of leaving Eugene wasn’t as bad as I expected. There was some excitement mixed in.

Until next time…