We think of places as simple locations, often from a perspective assuming a static existence. Our lifespan makes longer time scales difficult for real human comprehension. But, given the changes are there, even though they are more gradual than ours, isn't the land also alive and growing? Doesn't it also perceive an experience?

Eight hundred years ago, the Mississippi River flowed through the basin we now refer to as Bayou Lafourche. With seasonal flooding and occasional old hurricanes, back then that environment was no doubt far different from today. Long after the river diverted to its modern course, Thibodaux was established on the banks of the remaining tributary. It was a trading and farming village that capitalized on the fertile land remaining after the river.

Along with plantations, the Europeans built levees to minimize flooding and form the land. Exploiting populations grew and through its routine brought roads, bridges, boats, and war. Over time, its inhabitants responded and found different ways to thrive, although at its heart, nothing in the town or its culture really changed.

My story merged there in 1972, as I began cycling through the same reinventions this place has always endured.

Our culture is really just a microorganism. It rarely teaches a wide perspective; instead we focus on the individual. In my little world, different was a more appropriate concept for us, since mom explained our situation together — often through tears.

My entire family, as far as I know, are accepting of other viewpoints, so I never had a direct reason to feel like an outsider, even though we didn't share a religious perspective. I reached my own conclusions to remain on the periphery, and blundered in life because of them.

What does it mean to be alive, and is my existence more significant because I can consider the question? Because no one teaches us where the definitions come from, even though it is our most significant aspect.

These questions were never part of my thought process. I rarely considered my dejection. Instead of listening to myself at the cost of comfort, for nearly 40 years the past programmed my robotic existence. A fear of my imagined judgment haunted me.

But, am I the sensation or the that which causes the sense? Thibodaux ironically informed my exploration.

Memories are funny things because we believe them, forgetting that, like everything else, they are only facsimiles. If I shall grow, I must remember their nature. "To what have I attached myself and the being who in my head I recall?" All similar inquiry needs tempering.

For decades I've treated myself like the false stereotype who escapes the confines of origin. But this too is imagined; mom made that decision when I was 12, not me. I merely failed to question my absorption of an anxious persona. But it is more important that I understand the self-absorption in such questions, as if in this conversation of place and time I am the only one to evolve.

One of the most persistent mistakes in my life has been the assumption that, at my core, I never changed. The implicit comparison was paralyzing. But I no longer believe in what some call a soul: in spite of its implications on free will, the existence of static entities, preordained and fixed, seems to defy my observations of relational being.

Sometimes change is spontaneous.

My 40 year-old memories of Grand Isle are dominated by painful sunburn and the sensation that the inside of my shorts was made of sandpaper. Under wind and rain and humidity, we only found footprints on the beach. There were no cars and no life rings. Maybe the waves rejected a jellyfish or two. And if you wanted to fish the surf, you and the sharks negotiated who in the end ate the catch.

Nowadays the only significant difference between walking this beach and ambling through a real American town is the sound of waves and sand between your toes. Traffic is everywhere. Sometimes the gale masks the sound of approaching machinery or over-confident disobedient dogs.

There isn't much about modernity that I fully appreciate. I respect development — such as religion — and use its toys through modest selfishness, but it seems like we saturated the world with useful tools a long time ago and now we're just trying to forget our mortality.

Now I better understand how much I want out, but on my own terms if I can help it.

How do I fit in with the rest of the world when I feel so apathetic to it?

So few demonstrate proof of similar thoughts as mine that even understanding is an issue because it drives me to isolation. Where does that leave me?

If I care less about me and mine or status or money or god than those around me, how do I interact with others whose unbalanced values have no background for self-reflection? My model is comfortable, so I don't need justification. If I feel any stress, it is the acknowledgement of my trajectory outside of my small circle. Only a few there understand, and one day I will be nearly alone.

Fear is not a word I take lightly. As long as I can imagine a source, it is a powerful concept. But its propagation takes an energy I don't have so it's not often a motivator.

Death is an exception.

Standing on the street in front of the house most persistent in my youth made me understand how close I am now to the person I always wanted to be. Breaking the momentum of my attachment to a predetermined purpose punished me; it took 15 years to rectify that I mean nothing to my birthplace, yet shedding the attachment is often awkward despite its necessity. Drawing from other cultures has been the only comfort.

An active search beyond Christianity provided the clues I needed to find solace within my own methods.

I'm still unsure why, but thinking of death and no longer existing has a way of forcing delayed action. Asking difficult questions is one thing, but there must be a strong motivation to carry out actions introducing uncomfortable levels of uncertainty.

The pain was in letting go of what I thought was control over my life and its outcome. Now I realize that state was an illusion: nothing has ever been certain.

Working travel to China introduced me to many new ideas. Among them was saving face. Confucian society is much more sensitive than ours to the rituals sheltering anonymous relations.

I'm too unfamiliar to know whether the same is true for the Chinese as the concept applies to the self. But I know me well enough to understand how much I internalized my own abuse.

There were social and family pressures that I imagined; none that are meaningful to me now. For most of my life, I was too unaware of my motivations because I refused to review and edit them. Today I'm nearly unsure what I was trying to prevent or who I wanted to keep from asking questions or disappoint. I hold fewer considerations for what others might think, and I like to think I'm less reactive. Who knows if that's real.

What were those family and social messages driving me through anxiety? I don't know, I only remember how I felt. And that doesn't seem like the basis for a good existence.

It wasn't until my second day that I realized coming here with a premise was a mistake. Maybe in the past I would have panicked. Not this time; I'm better prepared.

Yes, there is at least an association between who 50 years ago I and this land were. To pretend we were always independent would be a lie. But, despite my ignorance, those two entities ceased to exist a long time ago. Admitting we have grown apart helps me appreciate where I am now in life.

This area was only my birthplace in 1972. We no longer relate. Our separation means nothing to me, except that I've learned from the awareness. And I have no guilt about our estrangment, that we are like two drifters passing on a roadway.

Holding on to unknown behaviors or values confuses me, and I tend to cling to them by persistent review or subconscious concern. But, most intentional discoveries seem to empty the vessel of my being, relieving the stress of experience regardless of its pain. This is why emptiness feels more natural, as the release better prepares me for leaving this world.