coming back to some kind of beginning

places have a way of crawling inside of you.

Sometimes we jump in- wanting to be submersed, wanting to see and feel nothing but where we are. We let the waves of being physically present surround us.

But this jumping, this submersion is not very sustainable.

It's a lot like holding your breath.

You jump in because you know you will only be there a short while. You don't have to figure out how to breathe there, how to survive, how to live day after day. All you have to do is take in all that you possibly can so that you can take back with you all that you can- that a piece of this place will go with you when you leave in a week, in 10 days, in a month.

And yet when you jump, the waves receive you and they jostle and the submersion's effects color all that you can see - the dizzying impact of a jump an inescapable theme of all that you see and know.

Sometimes we guard ourselves, sticking a toe in, trying not to get completely wet, separating ourselves into the parts that are in this place and the parts that are not. We try not to fall in love with this place.

Then it happens when we're not looking; like dirt under our fingernails or the cold air that swoops into your lungs and fills you up. You get splashed over and over again until you might as well go under. Or you slip while you're distracted and the divisions of wet and dry cease to mean anything at all.

You wake up one day and realize that you can either keep fighting, treading water when you're already wet, or you can let it be as it is- an opening of every part of yourself to a place that you will at one point grieve leaving.

Then we realize, remember, recognize that we are not made for this place like those who were born here. We cannot fully let go of our past environment and fit in our new (much as we might want to at some moments)- we are forever making adaptations- creating ways to make up for our shortcomings and still be a part of where we are now. We learn how to let go of plans and wrestle with language learning. We get used to never really fully knowing or understanding what is going on. And we get really good at communicating in smiles, pantomime and a few essential words. We learn how to be here even as we come from there.

Yet it is always clear that not only do we have to adapt to this new place, we also have to return to the old. And we long to share with those still where we once were.

And so you adapt and you let your new surroundings fill you. And in the beginning you still know how to talk about your new place in a way that can be understood in the former.

Then you start to lose the words, the frame of reference, the context. The old environment is very much still there, still very much a part of you and who you are, still very much where you will return. And yet you feel like you're losing the ability to navigate between the two.

Things that once made sense don't so much anymore. That which you knew is no longer what you know.

The land and the sea have flipped. The place where you once held your breath is now where you breathe. And the only middle ground is that which you make, a slippery surface carved out of words that sound a lot like underwater air bubbles.

They carry with them the stories of a place found in that water, found in the jumping and the treading and the discovering. They carry with them an invitation to a place of uneven, dirt paths dug into the dusty, rocky way of gers and one-room houses. To a place of blue skies and throat-singing and bumpy micro rides that create a rhythm of life; a story of footsteps, of conversations and of the past. To a place of paradox- of poverty and struggle that aches and of life and living that sings.