YK’s 365 Release: Day 318

I’ve moved across the country several times.

The first time I moved was because I ended up in Portland, Oregon after my cross country bike trip. I had been living in Durham, North Carolina for 5 years. I had just finished a 90 day bike trip from the east to west coasts and ended up in one of the most bike-friendly cities in the country, Portland. So I decided to stay. Then it started raining, and it didn’t stop. So I packed up my things on December 25 1999 and moved to the Bay Area. I stayed in the Bay Area for another 3 years. Eventually, I left because I felt as someone who wasn’t from the Bay Area, I was contributing to the instability of a transient city, overtaken by people who were not from the Bay Area. The friends I had who were born and raised there and who remained there to organize are warriors of a sort to me.

During my stay in the Bay Area, I purchased my first fitted baseball cap. Not because I wore baseball caps, but because it was a Cal cap. Those were ubiquitous in the Bay, just as the NY Yankees caps are ubiquitous in New York. To me, and many who had those caps, ownership of the cap was less about vying for an institution or a team, but it was more about the suchness of the location. Of course if you live in the Bay you get a Cal cap. Of course if you live in New York you get a NY Yankees cap. I have no affinity toward baseball nor baseball caps. So in essence, I have these caps because they are like souvenirs of places I’ve called home.

I have kept both of these caps precisely because they remind me of two major places in my life. They serve no utilitarian purpose. They are only for nostalgia or documentation. But as I’ve been learning many times through this practice, I will still have lived all over the country whether or not I carry souvenirs from each location, and my experiences there will be no less memorable without them.

So, on Day 318 of my 365 Release practice for non-attachment, letting go and change, I’m letting go of things I’ve held onto because I wanted to hold onto something that will be there regardless. May the memories live strong and I always live in the now.