#15 – A Breath of Fresh Air
It’s been nearly two months since I left China, and already it feels like a past life. For the first month or so, I was flooded almost daily with memories of people and places that I knew. It still happens once in a while. An image hits me, sometimes like a brick in my stomach. Sometimes I stop and catch my breath in wonder that just two months ago I was singing at the Ritz in Guangzhou, and not even two months before that, I was singing at the highest bar in Beijing.
When I first returned to the States, I went to visit one of my closest friends in Mill Valley. Out on a run in the redwoods in the hills above her home, I was captivated by how green everything was. I hadn’t seen that shade in months. It was like someone had changed the contrast on my viewfinder, and all of a sudden green was GREEN–vibrant, electric, alive. I was mesmerized by it on my run up the hill, and I slowed to a walk to take it all in. Not just the green, but the air. It was so pure that it cleared my throat and almost burned my lungs. I realized I’d forgotten what it felt like to take a deep breath and have it actually feel good.
Coming home is like that. Everything is new again, and I see things almost like a child. Beijing and Guangzhou are crowded, polluted metropolises with so much overstimulation that you’re forced to tune it out in order to stay sane. Coming home to California’s natural, peaceful beauty suddenly made my senses open up again. I feel like I’ve grown antennae and they’re pricking up at how blue the sky is, how the light falls unfiltered without such a large amount of pollution, at how I can’t remember there being so many trees.
China was a confusing mess of language and cultural barriers–exciting but exhausting. In comparison, life at home is simple and clear. It’s easier to breathe.
A few weeks after my visit to the Bay Area, I spent a few days in Mammoth with my parents. I usually never go fly-fishing with my dad, but this time I decided to go out for a couple of afternoons. I suited up in his spare pair of baggy waders and oversized boots, looking unkempt with no makeup and a baseball cap, my hair uncombed and straggly. I couldn’t have felt further from my evening gowns, full makeup, and curled hair. While waiting for my dad to change the fly on the rod, I took a moment to look around and really take in my surroundings. The reeds lining the banks of the river caught my eye. They rose a couple of feet above my head so that I had to look up at them. They were beautiful, golden reeds, and this time of year their tips are ripe with seeds. I reached up and crumbled one of them in my hand, smiling as the seeds scattered against the sky. Those golden reeds and their seeds, silhouetted against the bright blue, made my heart leap a little. It was so simple, yet I hadn’t seen anything even close to that in months.
I turned my head to look at the sparkling river running through the valley. There were the Eastern Sierra in the background, their tops sprinkled with snow. I looked down at my feet, which were going numb as the freezing cold water rushed around my legs. I wanted to rub my eyes to see if it was all real, if I could be living the same life. The skyscrapers, the hoards of people, the loud conversations in Mandarin, the traffic, the spitting, the cement, and the pollution…had that all been a dream? It all suddenly felt very, very far away.
I grew up coming to these mountains. I grew up putting my feet into alpine streams. And I always dreamed of going far, far away, to big cities. And I did. And I will. But right now, I’m home. And it feels good.
