I was talking with Charles tonight about family - and the conversation turned insular. I talked about the members of my family, and as far as direct relatives go, there's my mom, my dad and my grandmother (on Dad's side). That's about it. I have cousins in Virginia and California (I think), but that's blood family to me.
So I got to thinking about my grandmother out on the West Coast, which is as far away from Mozambique you can get and still be on earth. I've seen it on maps and done the estimation - it's a long way.
Since I was on my way home, I looked down at the dirt road I was walking along. It's funny, when you point to the ground and say it's the ground or that it's earth, you never really fully comprehend that beneath it lies this enormous hunk of minerals that is so large, we are drawn to it by forces we can't explain. But when you look - really LOOK - at the ground and try to see that you're looking at the outermost layer of a dizzyingly huge rock spinning and hurtling through space, it looks completely different. I had to orient myself with the horizon a couple of times just to check that this was THE ground and not a hill or second level that I was walking on.
Then I thought back to these 2-dimensional maps on which I located the West Coast and Mozambique, and really for the first time, SAW that if I could somehow look through the Earth, I would see California or one of those states around there. On the complete opposite side of the world.
I thought of being a kid and building a "tunnel to China" in the playground sand that always smelled of cat poop. There were usually 2 or 3 other kids, and we would build cities or roads with tunnels, but it seems so long ago as to not even be real. Likewise, at that age, I couldn't have imagined this - where I'm living, what I'm doing, my clothes, my appearance, my experiences - to be real.
And to think, that hole wouldn't have brought me to China after all - 15 or so years later, I made my way to the other side. And now that I'm here, part of me always wants to go back. Well, me, I'm here for a while and I'm going to make the most of it.
I smelled something on the air like fast food the other day, and memories flooded back for a good 10 minutes. I just smelled airplane food somehow - wow. How odd.
Peace
John
