I Guess That This Must Be the Place
Psychogeography of a hometown
When I was an undergrad in an extremely rural part of Pennsylvania, one of the most common past-times for my group of friends was going on burn runs, i.e., getting stoned and drifting through the barely populated winding back roads listening to Led Zeppelin or Xiu Xiu, depending on who was driving. Yes, yes of course - don’t smoke weed and drive, kids, it isn’t safe, we all know. Surely because of the chemical composition of our mindsets - or perhaps it’s just my own terrible memory and near-complete lack of a working sense of direction - we would wander through different places that came to be landmarks to us, and over time we would find ourselves there without having intended to arrive there, no course having been set. Just - oh, we’re crossing the soul bridge, lift your feet up so your life-force doesn’t get sucked down through the metal grate. Oh, we’re at the game lands, I wonder how much more that deer corpse has decomposed since the last time we were here.
This was so much the effect that once we made a map together of all these different landmarks, connected by waving lines that signified not specific roads, but the passage of time and, basically, magic. The power of drifting - surrendering our agency to some extent to some magnetic force that would spit us out somewhere we recognized. Or somewhere completely new. I felt held by the lull of the plant and the music and the happy company of friends.
A couple weeks ago I went back to my hometown for my brother’s wedding, staying spitting distance from my parents’ house - they still live in the same house I grew up in, which is wild to me, to be able to return to the specific place of my childhood and adolescence. An absolute joy to celebrate, to see our incredible extended family, to meet the new in-laws.
And I realized that even though it’s been about fifteen years since I went on a burn run there is something similar happening, geographically, when I go home. I don’t remember exactly how the roads connect to each other, how to get from A to B, but when I find myself in certain spots on certain winding, dark roads something unlocks in my brain - it is the entire palimpsest of every thought and every emotional state I’ve been in and every song I’ve sung along to on that road. And for me, like for so many folks, that has never felt uncomplicated to return to.
Psychogeography is Guy Debord’s term for the effect that our environs have on our feelings and behaviors. The way the physical world is mirrored or fragmented within us. Perhaps this is the residue of a sense-experience handed down the generations from our hunter-gatherer ancestors, a way of perceiving the world that is beyond the direct senses but that is not separate from them. It is difficult for me to articulate exactly what this feels like - maybe I’m not using this word correctly at all. But I feel like you might know what I mean if you have ever been composed by, embedded in, or altered by a place.
Growing up was emotionally challenging for me, as I know it is for most people. I did not understand it then but I was an extremely sensitive child with huge emotions that constantly overwhelmed me, and for which I had few healthy coping mechanisms. I felt confused and out of control all of the time. I felt flooded and I didn’t know how to make sense of it, and then later I felt a deep sense of shame looking back on that part of my life. How could the landscape, the literal geographic backdrop, not get stuck inside me, not get attached to all of those feelings? How could the landscape not become something that was difficult, too?
And now I guess it’s been such a long time (and perhaps also an amount of therapy) - I guess twenty is the number of years required for me to not feel a twinge of dread at the thought of going home. On this trip I felt the way my internal landscape matches the external landscape for once when I am here. That used to be unbearably painful, now it feels like a relief, like a true homecoming. Going back and for the first time not feeling held hostage by the past. Feeling the way that the land is in me and I am in the land. I did not appreciate its specific beauty when I was growing up here - I only ever hiked into the woods for teenage mischief back then: the tall hills and ridges peaking and rolling down into the river, the rocky outcroppings, the ad hoc runoff streams, the forest the forest the forest thetreesthetreesthetrees.
This trip I felt the unlocking on the country roads, I felt the thousands of overlays of different feelings of the different times of my life but I wasn’t flooded by them, I didn’t feel like I was going to drown. I strolled around and ate my favorite pizza in the tiny downtown of my hometown. I won’t go to bat for New York for many things but pizza and a sandwich on a kaiser roll - I will die on this hill - it is the fucking best. I ate so much of both. The town is very different and also exactly the same - what a blessing.
And of course, I miss my family. It pains me to not be able to be physically close to them and I worry about what we will do as my parents age. I miss my friends, who are scattered all over the country (on the other hand, what a gift to have dear ones to visit in so many places!). When we first moved to Illinois I thought that I wanted to live here forever, to put down roots, to embed myself into the fabric of a community. “I never want to move again,” I said. Too many psychogeographies rolling around in here already. But over time that view has softened - it is one of the many things that died for me in the death portal of the pandemic. Some people move around all their lives and I think for me it is inevitable. I try to sharpen my attunement to the psychogeography of this place: to notice what is inside more and more. To put myself next to the river here that I love, and to breathe and feel whatever comes through the breathing.
Now I’m back in the Midwest and summer is well and truly OVER, y’all! It is COLD. I am bundling, I am reconfiguring my routine to take advantage of the warmest part of the day for outdoor work and recreation. I am doing the autumnal things that I love to do: planning a fire cider-making party, hot tea, textile projects, putting the garden to bed and prepping for winter. I think the next newsletter will be all about my own fall rituals and winter aspirations, but in the meantime I would love to hear how you’re honoring the change of the seasons in the comments.
One Unsolicited Recommendation
One of the seasonal foods I love to eat in the fall is fennel, which I put in everything. Every time I eat it I remember Sister Spinster’s retelling of the Persephone myth, which included the tidbit, if memory serves, that snakes like to eat fennel before they shed their skins. Liz is teaching her class Tending the Hearth, which has been very important for me in the development of many of the rituals and practices that carry me through the darkest season, for the very last time this year - if it looks interesting to you I say you should do it!
As always, thanks for being here.
I freaking love your writing and your mind. And the word palimpsest. Thank you for another engaging journey with you 💚