Moving
As a kid I moved my bedroom furniture around quite a bit. Maybe the dresser would make more sense in the closet, and the bed over on the wall with the window. Every arrangement gave a new perspective of the room. When that got old, I asked my parents if I could move to the spare bedroom at the end of the house off the kitchen. It was a garage that’d been incorporated into the house before my parents bought it, and it was about three times the size of my current space. Our house was 2500 square feet of open style, 1970’s ranch, and this new room capped off the West end of the house. That felt exciting and expansive! I shelpped my things down the long hallway, through the living room, across the kitchen floor and into this new chamber. Loaded down with Care Bears, my
chintzy, yellow, ruffle curtains that shimmered in the sunshine, and my entire middle school wardrobe, I set off to new heights. The big leagues. Independent living.
My things were lost in the space, and the walls were unfriendly, scratchy, wooden paneling. The carpet was a tight weave of brown and orange specks, and the one window was completely blocked of sunlight from the overgrown pine outside. It was dark, depressing, and damp in there. All the noises were weird. My mom was miles away at the other end of the house, and everything felt creepy and bad. I missed my wallpaper with the little blue flowers, my blue shag carpet, so soft and nice, and my windows that let in all the sun and moonlight. I lasted no more than two nights in there and moved everything back. And I lived in that room with a greater understanding and appreciation for it hence forth.
Looking back on that now, I see I’ve always learned through exploration, by using my senses in a new place or situation, by getting my physical self near a person or a thing so I can feel it’s energy. I’m a researcher of life, curious, and communicative about what I find out. I want to understand how things work, why they work and why they don’t sometimes. I want to see if my influence can change the outcome or the direction of someone or something.
This involves a lot of moving around, setting up camp, excavating, learning and unlearning who I am, and how everything relates to me, so I can be shown something from a new perspective. I’m in my mid-forties and I’ve moved no less than twenty times since I left my parent’s house at seventeen. I’ve lived in a lot of places, and experienced the US from a lot of cultural angles: Northeast, Midwest, Deep South, Deeper South, and the Wild West. I’ve even seen the US from the perspective of living in the UK and felt my ego from an even greater angle.
The data I’ve collected in all these explorations has shaped me entirely, and created a passion for justice, for equality, for re-wiring and re-educating pockets of the planet that still think it’s okay to call someone a fag or the N-word. Some carpets are unfriendly to me and my people. Some walls are very scratchy in places in the world. I might’ve read that somewhere and put it into the category of things people say exist or are true, and also, I’m different somehow because I know it’s truth through my own experience.
So now I’ve seen the injustices and virtues of all these places and people I’ve encountered, I can begin to listen for my part in how to balance and heal them. The reason the deep south are still flying their confederate flags and wearing bumper stickers goading you to come take their guns from them is because they’re stuck in a low vibrational energy field. Things outside of their awareness are holding them in old patterns and belief systems. This isn’t a judgement, it’s an observation. So how can we work to raise the vibration of many people at once so they become free from their own limitations? From greater heights, we have more visibility. Higher vibrations offer deeper wisdom and understanding. And the highest vibration is love, where we can’t feel threatened, scarce, and greedy.
My energy research is leading me to listen for the ideas and tools that can help the greater good of humanity. Suffering is everywhere. Poverty and homelessness is everywhere. Homophobia, racism, gender discrimination, and unfair systems are everywhere. There is no mecca of a city to live in to escape all this. There’s no perfect place or group of people.
Just a few days ago I completed another cross-country move. My third in five years. I came back to Santa Fe, my old bedroom, the one with the sun and moonlight dancing in my windows, the one that feels the most like home and family to me of anywhere I’ve been. I’m here to compile my research, communicate my findings, and hopefully cause a disruption that will facilitate some collective healing. I forgot how big the sky feels here. I plan to expand into it.
Love and Peace,
Julian
