Returning

 

return |riˈtərn|

verb

1 [ intrans. ] come or go back to a place or person : he returned to Canada in the fall.

• ( return to) go back to (a particular state or activity) : Ollie had returned to full health.

• ( return to) turn one’s attention back to (something) : he returned to his newspaper.

• (esp. of a feeling) come back or recur after a period of absence : her appetite had returned.

 

The Latin without the prefix is tornare, which comes from the Greek tornos and refers to that which is turned upon a lathe.  I like all the images here.

 

To come back to a place or person: indeed I come back to this blog and to you, dear readers, after along absence. Both you and and blog have been on my mind during my nearly three-month absence. I have received a number of emails, phone calls, and of course comments here inquiring as to my general well-being and my very existence as Aristaeus. St. Eileen was her usual direct self: an email with the subject line “eerie silence” and the first line reading “You’ve been silent much too long and I’m worried about you.” St. Judy of Ohio called and after assuring herself that I was okay, said “I’m sick of seeing the words “Dialogue Across the Pacific” every time I go to your blog. St. Mary of Virginia tried calling me today after sending me an email that read simply: “HOW ARE YOU?” Others expressed concern about my well-being and about the lack of writing. To all of you: thank you. I come back to you with gratitude and love. I return.

 

To go back to a particular state or activity: the activity is easy enough, but the state is the most interesting part here. What state does one need to be in to blog, especially to blog a sacred journey? Must one be on a journey, or at least recognize himself on one? If not, does he disappear, return to the pre-creation state of “without form and void,” or not return to those who love and care for him as he sails off the edge of the world into a state unreachable by others? I return to a state of openness from one hidden, to a state of voice from one voiceless, to a state of connection from one of disconnection. I return.

 

To turn one’s attention back to (something): yes. Something–my self? the world? my world? Yes. Where was my attention? Elsewhere. Given to something else. Not the Buffalo Center per se, though I was working fourteen-hour days for several weeks at one point (and not hanging out with the students during that time). Not to any one person, though people continue to fill my time and take my energy, most of it good and most of it professional. The else was something strange and strangely familiar, a warp in time and self where I was lost and could not find a way home. The best metaphor is white water. If you’ve ever rafted or canoed a serious river and spilled, you know the feeling: taken by forces beyond your control or comprehension and longing to find a place that is not moving or flowing. Rocks and other dangers all around, but the insistent flowing is what propels and amazes you. The perfect nonchalance of the flowing relative to your existence in it. Your presence is incidental at best, inconsequential at worst. Only the flowing is real. I have found a place that is not moving. I have found some solid ground. I return.

 

To come back or recur after a period of absence: absence is another kind of presence. Absence is only disconnection, not disappearance. Bishop Berkeley said esse est percepi: to be is to be perceived, and he believe that if there was no one in the forest to hear a tree fall, it did not fall. Fortunately, in a typical deus ex machina of Christian philosophy and theology, Berkeley assured us that God perceived everything; therefore, everything exists. I have been absent, but I have been perceived. I exist. I return.

 

It is Easter, a time for returning, to shape oneself on a lathe again. Aristaeus is risen, but he is not the same. Valerie asked back in July whether the journey would continue. I have been asking myself that very question of late. No doubt to live is to journey, but what journey am I on now? What am I leaving behind, and what awaits me ahead? More importantly, who am I? Last year I was the hero who had completed his journey, battered and bruised but home. But all things flow, and I begin a new journey and leave behind the glorious, terrifying, and completed journey that you shared with me last year. Know that I am well–happy even. But know that this journey is different, as you can no doubt tell from this post. As usual Uncle Walt comes to mind, and if you will, I will lay my head in your lap and give you these words:

 

AS I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado,
The confession I made I resume—what I said to you in the open air I resume:
I know I am restless, and make others so;
I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death;
(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;	5
It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them;
I am more resolute because all have denied me, than I could ever have been had all accepted me;
I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule;
And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me;	10
And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me;
…Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated.

 

I return.