Things That Change Everything*

*And Nothing at All

The first time I experienced the phenomena of 'That Which Simultaneously Changes Everything and Nothing', I stood next to my best friend, Nate.  He had just been married and took a sip out of his champagne flute and his newly placed wedding ring caught my attention.

The ring.

It changed everything- it changed how people would identify and perceive him; how society would locate him; how his taxes would be filled out.  But it changed nothing.  Standing next to me was the same Nathan who I had fought with, laughed with, lived with during my tenure at Louisiana State University.  It was the same Nate who was the counterpart to my Kate- The WonderTwins.  The same kid who my own mother claimed was like 'the other son she never had.'  He was the same Cub who had picked me up from the airport a day or so before, had driven me to the center of New Orleans and sat at Pat O's- one hand holding a drink, the other hitting his knee in laughter (he may actually have been smoking a cigar at that point, to be honest).

It is almost the same as putting on a uniform.  When I don the NPS Green and Greys- with my gold badge and brown patch and stetson, I am suddenly given power.  I become a figure of authority- people smile, wave, obey traffic laws- even though nothing about me has changed.  The uniform, the ring, the doom of wanderlust...

I have been a traveler since.. I don't know.. maybe before birth.  I know my father wandered; I know my mother longs to.  And long before this blog was even a twinkle in my own eye, I lived in Paris.  I traveled throughout Europe on my own and later with my parents.  I hopped trains, planes and into automobiles.  I journeyed, I journey, all over the place.  On a whim or with a mission.

These journeys- they change everything and they change nothing.  I am fundamentally changed in travel.  I have experiences that I often cannot describe to or recreate for the people who ask.  'How was China?' was often met by 'big.'  Travel changes the core of my being, the way I think and function- and yet it changes nothing.  For a little while I am without country- without establishment or family and I am solely and uniquely alive, on my own.  But when I return I am essentially the same Kate who left.  A little weathered, perhaps; jet lagged, of course; and inevitably injured in some capacity.

But though I am wholly changed- I am the same.  I come home and I am the same girl who left, just with more stories under her belt, more life having been lived.  The life that I am living, the life I lead continues- go and come, hither and thither.  I have the same gap-toothed grin and the same sense of humor that reveals it.  Christ, looking at old photos, I even have the same sense of style- all sweaters and solidity, all ease all the time.

It is a strange thing- this phenomenon.  When everything and nothing change.  It is as though we who experience it are momentarily caught in a void, a void which exists on a precipice.  The universe opens itself up for an instant and says 'Look at all that you and we and I could be… but don't look down.'  And then we, I, look down.  And the universe closes again, rendering us, me, infinitely more knowledgeable and yet infinitely more confused- thus infinitely changed and infinitely the same.

Until next time, my dearest of hearts.