origin

 

Outside the house where I was born - Newbury Park, CA

What is this feeling? 

This terrain - rolling brown hills dotted with oaks, eucalyptus trees lining the freeway. This feeling - ears popping in winding tunnels, warm breeze through the window, eyes straining to see ocean on the horizon. 

This is my birthplace, the foundation of my existence, here among a thousand oaks. 

But it is not my home, not for twenty years. 

What is it?

My memories here are vague and blurry. But they are my first. 

More than that, all the moments I can’t remember happened here. Sidewalks I rode down in a stroller. Roads I drove in a car seat. Trees I watched when I was first learning what trees even were. 

Maybe that’s it. 

The strangeness of how a place can feel so unfamiliar and yet so much a part of me. Maybe it’s the smallest, earliest pieces of my mind coming to the surface, sensing what they first sensed a lifetime ago. 

Sensing that a place has held and housed me, even if I hardly remember how. 

Known and unknown. Distant and closer than anything. 

This is my origin.