From the pen and through the eyes of George Webber, writing deep in the bowels of Brooklyn, or speeding on a then-modern train through pre-war Belgium en route to Paris in 1929, Thomas Wolfe let fly with his pre-fifties “Howl” aimed at the Western world: “You can’t go home again!” And for the last fifty years Americans have, unconsciously and in particular, cradled his statement as some sort of karmic truth.
With the help of Henry Ford, the migration out into the sub-urbane chaos of the twentieth century has been going on consistently in the minds and bodies of the generation that fought WW II, the Kerouac generation, the Hip generation, and now the generation of space and TV-oriented globe-wandering youth. Everyone, young and old, has been on the move, the concept of home, roots, clan, or community, more a source of embarrassment than of fear. The youth of the 30’s and 40’s and now their children prefer to think of themselves as liberated from the rigid ways of the past 50,000 years, and for the first time, perhaps, the individual ego or personality has taken precedence over the family, the community, or the nation state in terms of social and cultural priorities.
Well, somewhere out there on that gypsy’s path, all roads end. At least for me they did. And I think for many others like myself, though some of them may not yet realize it. Their search for self or some sort of American utopia has taken them to the edge (most literally in the case of the North American continent, to the north of California, and parts of Oregon and Washington state). And there we all stand, facing a huge, wild mother sea.
The illusion of freedom outside of social ties and commitment has been the music of an enchanted Piper, who, perhaps drunk on his own tune, has led us to the edge of the cliffs — and we stand there, not wanting to go back, but not able to jump.
Most of the leaders of the 40’s and 50’s have long since died of alcoholism, and the leaders of the 60’s and 70’s have abandoned ship near the islands of money and Hollywood acclaim. A generation of young Americans stand at the precipice of a great void, Maya as their guide, disturbed about their own fate as well as that of their friends, families, and, in fact, their world.
For what we have found is that it is lonely out there On the Road, on the edge. That the problems of the country and the world are much too great for any of us, individually, to shoulder, and, yes, there is literally nowhere one can go to get away or to be alone. Led down the primrose path by misfits, malcontents, gypsies, and a few honest seekers, a few curious searchers, we all stand lonely and abandoned. Having burned the bridges back to our families, going back, retracing painful steps to attempt reparations back home, seems almost impossible. Yet, the swelling and heaving tides of the sea below seem no less horrid to our instincts of survival, that seem still to be crying out: Life!
So, here, with the beginning breaths of the 1980’s, which promise to be some of the most exciting years of any in the short two hundred year history of the Euro-American, in response to Thomas Wolfe’s defiant cry for the total emancipation of the individual out of social slavery, at any and all costs, “You can’t go home again,” in philosophical, spiritual agreement with his position concerning growth, I echo: “You must go home again!”
By home I mean the idea of re-inhabitation — an awareness of and loyalty to sense of place, and literally to a particular place. A place in Nature. A place of geography where one’s heart and inner machinery are filled with the silences of reality, and are at peace. I mean that place (and this may or may not include specific family or friends) where one gathers into his body the unconscious knowledge of the ancient history of that place, the religious and cultural background of what has, in fact, gone on there before him. A place where that ancient history becomes a part of him and with it as a foundation he can grow in that place, like any tree. For most of us these are places where we spent time as children. These seem to be the places we know best, instinctively, intuitively, for at that age instinct and intuition shape the manner in which we function and the way we relate to the world.
What I have come to know is that in my young life there is something very important which is substantially missing. In all the years, and miles, and in all the teachers I have sought out, and the friends and acquaintances I have made, I have been searching for that special me, that special other, that special Eden. The search has led me back, full-circle, to a place that, for me, just may be Home.
With the uncontrolled global spread of a complicated technology, things appear to be much more complex than they actually are, or at least than they need to be. For nearly half a century, we have been moving fast to keep ahead of the locomotives of change. But the open-ended search for experience has, in the end, left us open-ended. For we’re facing the dilemma of having too many alternatives from which to choose the proper channels for our energies, the appropriate paths of our ideologies, the most decent directions to our futures. Where do we go? How do we go about it?
There are those who have come to their own personal edges and have found home in a guru, or a god. To my mind, cultist mentality and allegiance — as observed in any number of the “pay and join” paths to nirvana with their placebic philosophies of capital gain and quests for personal power stemming from deep-seated social and personal insecurities — just don’t measure up. Gurus are not the answer. Nor are girlfriends. Nor games. Nor the concept of grounding, in any sense other than that which concerns the truth in terms of roots. And the truth is, perhaps, that home is who we are. Where we really come from. Deep inside. From the earth. And of these seemingly simple things, how many of us really know?
Yes, to go home again means a lot of work. But we are a generation (and perhaps soon to be a nation) out of work. And maybe it was the work we were running from all along.
In the Northwest there are individual groups, and small communities (not necessarily communes) that are valiantly attempting to adopt a place, call and relate to it as home, instate ritual, work and social ceremony within. My initial reaction to these people and these places was one of ecstatic interest, for they were at least attempting, and some successfully, to establish and live out those same ideas and values which, coming from the city, I had come to acknowledge as essentially important. But even in these small pockets of higher consciousness, where trends, ideas, and patterns of lifestyle are being set for the whole country, and perhaps for all of the West, there was still something missing: hope. Perhaps it is possible for some to adopt, and for some even necessary (for example, those coming out of impossible urban environments), a home. But, if that home is more an idea, a social philosophy, a religion, rather than a geographical area which lingers close to one’s heart, which inspires passion and imagination, it is not and cannot be truly one’s home. What I found for the most part was that these craftsmen, artists, thinkers, educators, and retired businesspersons from the different urban centers of America had adopted a home, a place with which they had little in common other than a deed. A place with which they had no former ties, and about which they knew very little history, and upon which they knew even less about survival and how to live in proper harmony with the ecosystem. I also found that most of those not suffering from fantasies of grandeur seemed to be aware of this, and were educating themselves, and their friends and families in order to become more intellectually aware of the geographic and cultural aspects of their new regionalism. But even though an understanding was being reached on intellectual levels, and year by year they were learning to cope with the environment more and more efficiently, there still was a feeling of displacement. A sort of frantic rush to understand rather than a serene sense of surrender. They were still trying to conquer Nature. Conquer their new perceptions of what they wanted reality to be. Conquer their new homes with their well-meaning energies and sensibilities. And the whole feeling of the community in these places was one of a subtle desperation, like a last chance, rather than of a sympathetic surrender, understanding, or giving in. And to my mind, that sense of surrender is the key to the difference between a true sense of place, and a posture of pretending that incorporates the idea of a “sense of place” into one’s life. The idea must come down, and rest at peace in the body. And only the right place itself can do this. One should know when he is at home! This ego race for fame, recognition, wealth, these joyrides through America, must be replaced by a conscientious search for the right place — power place, if you will — where one’s inner voice finds the proper solitude in silence, and a simple and “normal” life begins.
So, you see, we must go home again. For ourselves, and the well-being of our psyches and bodies. And for those who have, for whatever reasons, remained there in our long absences. We must go home again. Take the knowledge, the experience, and the strength gained from all our years of wandering, searching, working, living, growing, and put them back into the soil of our original homes, wherever they may be, whenever we may have left them for the greener grasses or the stimulation of supportive peer-group communities. To take our ideas, our dreams, our children, back to where we are really from. And to face it, look it square in the eyes. Accept it. And begin again. Initiate our work of educating, through meaningful sharing (be it through the institution of new rituals into the culture of that community, or through example alone) of those experiences and that knowledge with those who have remained. That they, too, may see, and through us grow in the same ways. That they may evolve, culturally, spiritually, along with and in the same ways as those who have isolated themselves in their new-found rural pockets of reality, somewhere out west.
For some of us, our hometowns, our homelands, need to be saved from Federal or industrial encroachment. For some of us the education centers of our childhood need to be revamped. For some of us the ecological balance of our old stompin’ grounds needs to be repaired. With the expressed need for meaningful work, here, perhaps, lies a possible alternative. For surely the concept of meaningful work as part of and parallel to the idea, in practice, of self-sufficiency is a problem that embraces all of society, on all age levels. For lack of incentive, over-dependence, discontent, boredom, and frustration seem to be the most-suffered illnesses of the modern American.
But real progress is slow, and those of us of the present generation have for the most part never studied or learned the virtue of patience. Our world has been moving too fast. Yet a few of the survivors of the disappointments of the psychic holocaust of the 50’s and 60’s are apprenticing ourselves to the trade of patience and attempting to apply it to our small yet consequential lives, as a learned skill in conjunction with the tools of surrender, so the acceptance of progress as a slow process becomes more palatable. And our focus turns to the simple and the silent ways of communicating our ideas, through example and the integrity and concern of impeccable cunning, as opposed to the grandiose, theatrical, and microphonic.
Yes, to go home again means a lot of work. But we are a generation (and perhaps soon to be a nation) out of work. And maybe it was the work we were running from all along. Well, if so, it’s time to face the music, and this time the music is not that of the piper’s golden flute — rather the steel-eyed drumbeats of a dying humanity at the edge of the century, looking out to sea for some mythically promised ship of survival. I often wonder why only a few enlightened new age beings should survive? Carrying the good news to the grave. Isolating and secluding ourselves in some rural or urban intellectual utopia, we become, in a sense, elitist, escapist. We have a certain selfishness that accompanies the uneasiness of adoption. The idea of companionship in pain, and support in numbers, seems fine when we’re all involved, but in specialized pockets of isolation (which I suppose need to exist as training and testing grounds for our new ideas, but not necessarily as housing for the perpetual student), this concept seems to be a luxury of sorts, and more involved with ego and escape than with the notions of furthering of identity realization and confrontation.
Yes, the poor get poorer and the rich, richer; but only because the inspired minds and ecstatic bodies have left for various promised lands and not returned with the news and stories of what they have seen! What Wolfe is really saying is that the social challenge and the kind of growth that only comes from confrontation with things a bit different from ourselves does not exist in these little cultural utopias, these Walden Two’s, these artistic renaissance salons springing up all over America. Who was it said first, that we cannot experience the light before going into the darkness? What these communities represent, in fact and in deed, is the journey into darkness. But soon the comforts that these communities afford become the new norms. A place where everyone more or less supports one another’s illusions and ideas but the real work is avoided.
So, what becomes of the George Webber who has experienced both fame and love, and like Rimbaud, “found them bitter”? What sort of sequel fills the space of the one and a half pages that lie blank at the end of Wolfe’s book? My fantasy is that George Webber goes home. Gives up the urban dreams of his youth. Reclaims his body, and his native land. For how long can man tread the air of this modern psychic void? Like a lost though intelligent sheep he must through the guidance of a few insightful and courageous spokesmen find the path which leads back to the winter barns that contain our collective psychic and terrestrial hay. For if the ship goes down, its sails go down too. Those of us who have until now isolated ourselves in those pockets of perfect peer pressure had best begin to distribute the wealth of our experience and knowledge, or the weight of the ship will take us all down, sails and hull.
Still we are not truly home. Home where our bodies, our hearts, are at rest. Home where the trees and the seasons are familiar, like hands. Where the silent voices of the past whisper to us on every breath of wind. Where winter and summer, rain and snow, are living symbols for life and death. Home: where the heart is. Home: where the work begins.
© Copyright 1979 Thomas Rain Crowe
