Yesterday, I sat in the upstairs of Prairie Lights and felt lost again. Unable to grasp the breadth of my different roles right now: teacher, copywriter, podcaster, writer. Most of me wants to zero in on one and press all of my energy into that venture like leaves into those large paper sacks from Menards for yard clippings. Shove it all in, fill more leaves on top, press them down in. One bag at a time.

Life is not so simple. I taught at 9.30, posted content—a podcast—at 10.30, tried to get some writing in before the next class. It was a little too much. I managed to center myself, but by the end of class my creativity had dissipated. A trip to the post office, to the voting booth, to the grocery store, and then to home where I spent the afternoon creating differently: cooking. An Indian dish.

I'm seeing that lostness is only one way to configure this experience. Others come to mind, though. Disoriented, dizzy, insecure in who I am and where I am. These are all words that fit my experience, too. When you're disoriented, the memory of where you are and the landscape before you don't match though you think they should. There's no platonic wax image in the back of your mind to pull out and compare to the current experience. Lostness is a tingling in the skin that you've been here before, that memory should have record of this space. That the attendant feelings of security—I recognize that building, that streetlamp, that house—should also be there. But there's nothing familiar to accompany your experience of this place.

I have occasionally thought of the following scenario while driving down streets that are fairly familiar but only as conduits to destinations: if I were shown a snapshot of the house to my left without any context for getting to this place, would I know where I am? Or, if I were dropped off here without my usual awareness of my starting point and destination, would I know where I am? Searching for the ingredients to what lostness involves. You could transport me to about any street in Cedar Rapids, and I would feel this disorientation. I've been there several times for Asher's cross country meets, but that's it. They are about as familiar to me as any suburb of Chicago.

When Brooke and I moved to London, we had two nights at a bed and breakfast. I thought that would be enough time to get an apartment. Turns out, you must have a bank account to get a landlord's approval. To get a bank account, you must have an address. For a while, it was an enigma. I took it upon myself to figure this out on my own. We ended up getting to London on my student visa. We were there for me. It was my problem to figure out. All terrible ways of thinking when with a partner willing to do the hard work with me. Stepping out onto the Clapham high street had this directionless feeling. Sure, I could see this way and the other but to where? Where was I? Which direction led home? It took a friend of a friend who then helped us get backing from a church to find an apartment eight days later.

Photo by Ashleigh Joy Photography on Unsplash

I didn't do it on my own. I couldn't.

There's less pressure for heroism now. Brooke and I divorced, but not because of London. That was eighteen years ago this fall. Damn. It feels like 118 years ago. Different me. Different life. Five kids, two advanced degrees, and a teaching career have filled in the gap. Yet, here is disorientation. Here I am looking about trying to match my surroundings to my memory and feeling . . . unease. On edge. Needing to act.

Disorienting.

It's a funny word, isn't it? Two Latin words disconnected within one word: dis + orient. "Orient" comes from oriens, orientis meaning “rising” or “east”; “dis” from “rich,” perhaps as a direct translation of the Greek Πλοῦτον (Pluto) but really referring to the deity from the underworld. "Underworld East" is the transliteration. There's no sun with which to "orient" yourself in the underworld. No north star to fix your heading. Just Dis-information, Dis-traction, Dis-topia. Dis-connection at its most dangerous. And perhaps that's the issue. I feel there should be a sun hanging in the east to give meaning to my location. There should be a way for me to understand the direction I must go or even that I want to go. Podcasting, writing, copywriting. I'll find myself staring at the morning sun just cresting the horizon later when taking Eden to daycare. It tells me I'm heading east-northeast, a direct shot to Chicago as the crow flies. But for now I'm wondering whether all these ventures—podcasting, writing, copywriting—do they all coalesce in one destination for me? What is that destination? Can I even get there on my own?

I remember getting my bearings in London. I circled. I went out. I returned. I made the unfamiliar familiar, wandering down an alley, up a side street, into a cul-de-sac to find out where it led or didn't lead. I created a library of wax impressions. Try this. Doesn't go anywhere? Okay, let try this. Make my own eastern sun. Orient myself by myself. Create my own north star amid my night of fears. This is life upside down, life in the infernal regions. A new life where I’m using my skills from the first to find my way home in the second.

On disorienting

On becoming comfortable with discomfort

On nightmares