Publication Date: Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Guest Opinion: Running away -- and running home
Guest Opinion: Running away -- and running home
(August 31, 2005) by Mimm Patterson
It feels strange to call Palo Alto home. I wasn't born here, I didn't grow up here. I'm a child of the East Coast, not the West.
But by 1994 I had been in the Bay Area for 14 years, during which I watched the world around me grow increasingly affluent while I barely managed to tread water. In fact, I felt I was slowly drowning, and becoming envious of anyone's success. I believed the world owed me something. There was a black hole where my heart belonged.
It was time to leave.
I packed a few boxes, said goodbye to friends and relocated to Ireland, where I remained for 11 years. Settling in Donegal, I lived in a small village close to the Northern Ireland border, making furniture with my partner. But when the relationship and then the business failed, I was at a loss.
After a few months of wallowing in the self pity that at times follows failure, I hit bottom. I'd like to think that it was then the transformation began, but I had seven more years of the journey to endure before I found freedom in the knowledge that the world owes me nothing.
It took seven years, in the midst of Donegal's seemingly ceaseless rain, before a bit of light finally found its way to my heart.
Only then could I begin to contemplate once again crossing the ocean.
I returned to the States in May and spent several weeks traveling by bus in an effort to reacquaint myself with America. On my first full day back, I stood with a friend in Lincoln, Nebraska, and reveled in the hot prairie breeze filling my pores with dust. The sun penetrated my bones and my blood began to flow again; the dry air felt strange against my bare arms.
A few days later, I climbed onto the Black Hills Line bus that would take me to Denver, then north to Billings. I was unprepared for the expansive beauty. Even from the dank interior of the bus, I felt embraced by the sky and the land, and understood that here was a grandeur far removed from Donegal's rugged coast.
We neared Seattle 16 hours later and, with my heart pounding, I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
After a few days on Bainbridge Island another bus brought me from Seattle to San Francisco, and CalTrain brought me back to Palo Alto. On a drizzly Thursday, after weeks of travel, I had finally arrived at the beginning again.
Stepping off the train in Palo Alto was a bit like walking into a dream -- a place where everything was the same, yet unfamiliar. And, of course, nothing really was the same. For one thing, The Bead Store had moved. Yet the things I needed to be there for reassurance, like the Yoga Center on Cowper, still stood to welcome and forgive me, and in the case of Whole Foods to feed me.
What I was most struck by, as I dragged my suitcase up University Avenue, wasn't the giant Cheesecake Factory, the traffic or the crowds. It was the pervasive and overpowering scent of star jasmine. Why hadn't I remembered that Palo Alto smells like jasmine in the spring? It was like heaven.
The sun has been shining for me ever since, especially through the love and generosity of friends, teachers and acquaintances. If I had opened myself to this love 11 years ago, I may never have left.
And if I wasn't spooked by flying monkeys, I'd change my name to Dorothy. How many people get the opportunity to click the legendary ruby slippers and find their way home?
Almost three months later, and I remain seduced by Palo Alto and so grateful for the opportunity to live here once again. I have a second chance, and I don't plan to waste a single moment. I've chosen a strange but wonderful place in which to live a simple life.
As I've moved through August my ecstatic high has mellowed into a warm glow as I continue to marvel at my new life.
I have been struck, however, by some of the more difficult aspects of life in Palo Alto that haven't changed. I don't want to trivialize issues that are certainly heartfelt by many, but I couldn't help but notice that we seem to fighting the same battles we were fighting 11 years ago: monster houses, public art, leaf blowers and traffic.
Perhaps we'd be better equipped to find solutions to these and even more pressing concerns if we would just stop shouting about them. What if we engaged our other senses, took the time to be silent observers?
Life often conspires to overwhelm us. I'm certain that as happy as I am at this moment, there will be times when I am unhappy.
But when that happens, I'll take the time to be still, stay open to love and remember the scent of star jasmine in the spring.
Mimm Patterson served as president of the Pacific Art League in the 1980s and 1990s, when she worked for the city's Department of Art and Culture. She now practices therapeutic massage, Reiki and reflexology at the Body Therapy Center on California Avenue. She can be e-mailed at mimmp@mac.com.
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