Lie No. 5 | 09.16.18

I’m no therapist—I just play one on IG—but I’m quite certain if mine knew about this experiment + my current Florence-induced state of mind, he’d strongly advise I sit this week out. Or maybe he’d advise I dive in. It’s not like I’ll ever know.
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I’ve always been as drawn to the sea as I am the sky. So imagine my disappointment to discover this perfect paradox of place to be more of a paradigm. Turns out, there’s an explanation as lame as it is logical for why I’ve long believed I breathe as easy at 30k feet as I do at sea level: a pressurized cabin’s air is equivalent to that of below sea level.
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I’ll spare y’all the details this disruptive discovery led me to during a deep dive into Zeno + Aristotle (I wish I were joking). But between my accidental plunge into philosophy + Hurricane Florence ravaging a part of the country I hold in my heart, I’ve been thinking about two things I thought I understood, but perhaps never really have: place + motion.
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My guiding principles can be summed up as such: motion, good; staying in place, bad. In other words, run like hell from anything with even the slightest semblance of stationarity or stench. Escape routes of choice: sea + sky.
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As I watch the closest place I have to home simultaneously ravaged + spared by nature, I’m conflicted. I’ve spent years running from this place to outpace the truth. Yet this weekend I sat motionless in front of the TV, sickened by the destruction. But also overcome with fresh pain only old wounds—the kind caused by a secret first suspected in those waters, eventually found to have a whole other life two islands downstream + currently washing my entire sense of place away—are capable of stirring up. Well, with help from that minx Mother Nature. Water has this uncanny power to both give life + take it away, to curse + to cleanse. It never stops moving yet it has a savage sense of place.
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Anyone else ever feel like a human snow globe? As soon as the water + debris separate + settle back into place after the last shakeup, shit gets stirred up all over again. If motion is comforting + place disorientating, what gives?