It’s a challenge to encapsulate all we have experienced together and individually this year. All I know is, 2024 exploded out of the gates and we raced against the timeline of events we had set in motion that put our lives on a completely new trajectory. Devy has routinely picked up and moved across continents since she was 16, but I have deep roots in Philly that will always ground me there. Leaving again felt monumental on some levels, and it felt less big and scary to tell myself that it was just for a few years, that I would visit home often, that where I was going wasn’t so far now that we’re so well-connected. It’s still really fucking far, and I do miss my parents– we are so bad at talking to each other and this fact is laid barer in the physical distance between us. I tried video calling my mom and she didn’t pick up. She must not have known how to. She called me back while I was redialing her, so I hung up on her instead while trying to answer. After multiple attempts, we never ended up talking that day. I’ll have to ask Bub to teach her.
There was a photo exhibit at HOMA of submissions capturing liminal spaces. They were snapshots of abandoned buildings, empty old offices, and other forgotten, negative spaces that are like placeholders for what they could one day become, again. Places that go unnoticed because no one is departing from or arriving to. But it’s in the liminal spaces that we live our lives. The Mondays through Thursdays, the quiet of a Sunday evening, the simple meal cooked and eaten mostly in silence, a discussion about the right way to organize the pantry, the routine and expected good night kiss. The vast expanse of the pacific separating hawaii from Asia and the Americas.
Without the featureless regularities between the more noticeable moments, life would be vegas, and what a shitty life that would be. It is in the liminal spaces where I miss my family the most.
Tidepool Haikus 