The Exchange

I very nearly titled this one… 'Reciprocity, Bitches.'

Digression at the beginning is not, however, the way to go.

In order to fully understand this blog post- you should probably read this one first: a friend's musings on the meaning of haunting, haunts, the haunting of places, times, people.

His post got me thinking about exchanges (in a typically round-about fashion).  If we leave something of ourselves to haunt a place, a time, a person (if we have or make haunts)- do we get something in exchange? Do we not become the haunts of the others, haunted by the others?

If we leave something of ourselves- do we not get the chance to take something as well?  Is there not an exchange of being-ness?

From Australia

For example- I have traveled and lived all over this planet.  I literally have haunts in so many towns, so very many cities, that many states, and too many countries with that many people all over said planet.  But for all these places, spaces, people that I have haunted; for all these places, spaces, and people who have a part of me eternally with them, don't I carry a return piece with me?

From China

Am I making (no) sense (at all) yet?

Let me put it this way and in a very clipped, edited fashion: From Australia I took (or did it give me?) gold, GOLD; from China the meaning and impression of new, young love (and smog, of course. Also, maybe lung cancer); from New Zealand- both times- I took… indescribable- the knowledge that there are, indeed, things that take no, will have no, words.  And that is only three of the many, so many, too many.

From New Zealand… 

And what was that exchange? I left in Australia the first sigh of waking every morning to birds calling at dawn; I left in China a little of my naiveté, and some of my heart; in New Zealand I left such lit joy- such knowledge of and gratefulness for goodness.

There, you see, that is the give-and-take of it.  We have Haunts, we Haunt- we are Haunted.  All ghosts come from and go to.  They are left behind; they follow.

We come from and go to; we are left behind and follow.

The place that opens up in our souls when we create a haunt needs to be filled somehow.  The piece of me that I left in the open-air market in Amsterdam- the hole it left behind is filled with the scent of tulips; the fear of zombies from seeing 'Night of the Living Dead' the first time (it played at a bar there, on Halloween night- the undead attacked from a screen behind me while I sang 'Like a Virgin' during Karaoke).

The gaping hole left behind the first time I left New Hampshire is filled with mountains.   The piece of me I left in Iceland- well, I took away some sort of heritage.

And in and from North Carolina?  Only and ever love.

And it never seems to matter, how many places I go.  It does not matter how many people I meet, how much time I spend.  There is always a part of me left behind.  And there is inevitably a part of everything else in me.

Much love.  Too much until Next Time?