Moving

I wonder if we have an instinct in us that compels us, at moments, to move home. When we feel cir­cum­stances else­where are better than cir­cum­stances where we are, it is not uncommon to feel an urge to go to a better place in search of the gold-​paved streets, the mystical greener grass on the other side of the fence, the untapped poten­tial of that place, just over there, that is new, unknown, unex­plored; but it that an intel­lec­tual urge, or some­thing deeper, some­thing from far before that our brains has not for­gotten. Maybe it came from neo­lithic ancestors who moved as their ambu­latory, agri­cul­tural lives demanded — hunting for pastures, for a place to in which to per­petuate them­selves; or maybe it became pref­er­en­tial, bio­lo­gic­ally, to move away from the birthing places, drawing on a larger gene pool when the time came to switch from being a child to a parent. Whatever the reasons, there is an urge.

There is an urge within me, and I’m not sure where it came from; but I do feel com­pelled, very fre­quently, to pack up and relocate, making a nest some­where I’ve not been before, starting again the process (the very rewarding process) of dis­cov­ering things anew that inev­it­ably ini­ti­ates when we find ourselves in new places. I find this periodic moving essen­tial, and become edgy, uncom­fort­able, when I feel roots are setting too deeply in a single apart­ment or room or hostel. Sharks swim to keep them­selves alive, swimming not to predate, but to ensure that they are able to continue swimming, the next day, and the next, and every day after; moving so that they may exist.

It is doubtful that sharks or other animals enjoy it in and of itself — they do it because it is what they know they need to do; but I wonder if animals like sharks, so much in flux, are com­fort­able with the topo­graphy of their lives, with the rhythms of the todays and the uncer­tain­ties of the tomor­rows. I would like to ask one, one day.

I don’t like the prac­tical end of moving — scanners and books and cameras are heavy; rolls of films don’t like x-​rays; clutter, by defin­i­tion, is hard to pack — and the thought of it is often enough to stop me thinking about actually acting on any par­tic­ular urge to move I have; but the urge usually remains, and I do fre­quently find myself going between places (most recently from Xi’an to Hanzhong) with bags and boxes con­taining “my life” in tow, and when that happens I inev­it­ably end up con­tem­plating the whole strange process, as I am now, writing this.