Though this week started out with uncertainties, I celebrate settling out of abstractions.

Though this week felt stable, I honor the tiny changes, the last-minute edits, the decisions that proved to be unwise, and the plans that were never concretized.

Though this week I found myself to be rather consumed by my project, I cherish the moments I spent at my sit-spot, observing space, understanding space, reflecting on the power of space to nurture relationships and to offer clarity.

~

I hold on to the noises of the lawnmower nearby, to the invigorating July breeze, to the movement of the leaves, to the laughter of children, to the barking of dogs. I hold on to the dances of the plants at the edge of the pond, I hold on to the sun, and to feeling protected by it. I hold on to simplicity, to the flies surrounding me, to the multitude of species I still can’t name. I hold on to my eagerness. I hold on to the awareness of my ignorance. I hold on to realizing that everything is in a permanent state of change. I hold on the sunset, the football field, the Friday Night lights that still turn on on these friday nights. I hold on to the promise of more free time, to the excitement of the now, to the feeling of ants climbing my legs. I hold on the cold grass under my feet, to cold water in a sunny day, to changes of plans and changes of mind. I hold on to the nostalgia that is yet to overwhelm me, to the notion that today I’m not the person I was 2 weeks ago. I hold on the shades of green, to the subtlety of insects, to the shapes of leaves, to the freedom of birds. I hold on to the people I’ve been; I hold on to who I’m becoming.

Abstract ideas materialized in the form of an approachable, inevitably incomplete, whole

No longer did it feel that I couldn’t launch off

Human relationships were solidified, one interview question at a time

Conversations flourished, flourished more than an introvert would prefer

Plants are admirably committed to life

They grow unexpectedly, with no need for an answer – to live is instinctual

A few months ago, we started taking our organic compost to the backyard, with no intention other than to keep the flies away

This week I spent time with the plants that arose from that compost material

The compost made the sandy soil a livable place

And from the bunch, a couple of seeds made our backyard their home

I suppose the produce we bought was destined to be immortal

Uncle was ready to cut the unexpected plants off: “anything we don’t plant is a weed”

Tomatoes, peppers, and papayas had their lives at risk

Was it because they couldn’t immediately show who they were?

Are plants introverts, too?

Nature trails, local parks

The heat becomes more tolerable

Making sense of the holes at the bottom of the trees, of the plants that grow on them.

Does serving as a home make them less strong?

Runs around my neighborhood and the surrounding ones

Humid thoughts, ambiguous questions

Uniformity, uniformity, uniformity

Staying in a tiny space and feeling that I’ve explored the entire region

Misleadingly similar

What if I approached an area seeking to acquaint its particularities and not to draw generalizations?Imagined containment

This neighborhood blended in with the rest of town in surprisingly simple ways

It was actually never that hard, that far, that separate

Why do I keep compartmentalizing the world around me?

Never thought that maybe how much I connected with this town was limited by transportation itself

Car rides can facilitate connections

Getting away helps to interrogate the place I’ve casually normalized

Context matters

Movement too

Last week I spent my days near the ponds, trying out different distances from the water, looking up at trees, balancing lingering with actively seeking out, hoping to bear witness to the bird life of Apopka. Monday the heat felt still, the ambiance was silent, no movement or color coming from birds could be discerned. Tuesday and Wednesday, the days I went for bike rides, I could hear multiple simultaneous songs, but I couldn’t see any of the birds – probably because I was in movement, and when I was on the go, I couldn’t afford to stop and look up as much as I would’ve liked to. I began to wonder if birds were flying away from me; I couldn’t help but try to make sense of their absence.

Thursday morning, I woke up at 6 am, even though I hadn’t reached my most needed eight hours of sleep. I made my way to the neighboring ponds and in this time, I saw two birds, one of which I’ve concluded to be a song sparrow, and another (a white one) which I still haven’t identified. The song sparrow was on a neighbor’s driveway, casually and unaffectedly walking around. The white one was on a light pole. It seemed agitated and in constant movement.

Seeing these birds lifted my spirits, but I was even more delighted when I arrived near the pond. Despite the sound of the lawnmower in action and the heat of the morning, the pond felt serene and enlivening. I could make out individual bird songs – even though I struggled associating them to a specific species. I could see (otherwise unidentified) white birds flying over the pond. I could see three sandhill cranes near the water. I could see an orchard oriole meandering around a tree and signing so beautifully and so potently I was surprised there was only one. I wondered why they were all flying in different directions and imagined all the places they have lived in and visited. I wondered whether they were talking to each other, whether they could understand each other’s songs, whether songs were their means of communications.

Perhaps it was the time of the day, but the 30 minutes I spent sitting by the pond I felt overwhelmed with a peace I had been missing all week. Quite strangely, it felt so satisfying because it felt like a peace crafted with effort, a peace filled with magic and somehow devoid of excitement, a peace that arrived after disappointment and conflict, a peace I felt I worked for but over which I ultimately never had much control.

“Everything transitory – the knower and the known.”

– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

What does it take for a place to feel like home? When does a body, a living being, choose to settle, and stops looking at the surrounding environments as exclusively transient? How long does it take for a relationship between a human and a place to flourish? And a place… all the agreements and relationships between plants and animal species, between insects and trees, between blue and green, between the endless variations. How long did it take for this place to become the place I know it to be? How often, how quickly is it changing? Can I holistically understand it, even if I can’t insularly acquaint every aspect of it?

These last few weeks, but more generally, ever since COVID sent us home so abruptly, I’ve noticed that the spaces and rhythms here, that life itself in Apopka feels different this time. I’ve somehow come to feel that I am a part of it, and that it is a part of me. For the first time in almost six years, I have a palpable sense of belonging. As my family slowly, and only partially, has begun the ‘leaving’ process from Northern Guatemala and settled in this small town in Central Florida, I have noticed that my connection to this place feels more meaningful. Apopka before was the town I had randomly encountered. I had randomly lived in. I had randomly gotten to meet. It was devoid of a grounding relationship; it lacked a permanent sense of joy.  I barely cared enough to interact with it, and that apathy always seemed to be reciprocated.

Family life, family joy, family relationships bring to the surface how interconnected my wellbeing and the wellbeing of my place are. Family has turned a random town my home, and has nourished a commitment to learning it. Relationships, to me, always feel necessary in learning processes. As overwhelming and immense as my ignorance about my surroundings may occasionally feel, it is now an ignorance I care to acquaint, to explore, to deconstruct, to replace.

A ten-minute walk away from my house takes me to a nameless body of water I’ve come to be fond of. I have a deeply ingrained tendency to count distance and understand space with minutes – how long does it take to walk to school, how many minutes by car to get to the nearest Walmart. Meters and miles are all too abstract, and what I (problematically) take to be a universal interaction with the land/water/air concretizes what objective measures have rendered strangely inaccessible. In the tiniest, the simplest, the weirdest ways, I seem to have centered my physical existence in spaces, even if I know they are gracefully apathetic to my presence.

Upon arrival, tall trees and tiny bushes, blue sky, blue water, and all the biota living in, and surrounding, the pond make me feel welcomed – arguably because that’s precisely the feeling I come seeking. The trees move with the wind, the water is eternally dynamic in its contained stasis, the sun hits us all the same. At random times, I’ve sought tranquility and chaos in these waters for the past five years. But this week I’ve visited this spot devoutly. No longer to journal and get lost in my own thoughts; no longer to render the majesty of this ecosystem a macrocosm of my internal state. I have visited to notice how many birds I can’t name, how many branches in the water I’ll take to be gators, how the softness of the sand changes as I walk around. I’ve come every afternoon to make sense of a rather incomprehensible realization: how have I been navigating this space while being so unfamiliar with it?

I’m dancing with that question in my head, thinking about the processes I could witness, the understandings I could deepen… by allowing myself to explore a space in my absence. Like listening to a conversation that I can’t quite engage with fully, I want to get back to the basics. To engage with nature beyond the ways that now feel natural. I’m hoping to explore this same spot through different lenses every day next week, to wait for something else to be revealed, to wait for another part of me to be challenged.

Phoebe Shea Pérez is a rising Sophomore at Wellesley. She’s native to Santa María Tzejá, Guatemala, but more recently has been living in Apopka, Florida. Being Maya K’iche’ on her mother’s side, she is particularly invested in researching and highlighting indigenous perspectives and experiences across fields and disciplines. She loves learning and unlearning history, challenging the frameworks she employs for making sense of the world around her, and rendering the learning process simultaneously communal and intimately personal. When she’s at Wellesley, she loves taking ~dramatic~ walks around Lake Waban, volunteering at the Natick Community Organic Farm, and spending way too much time at her professors’ office hours. In general, she enjoys writing poetry, studying K’iche’, and learning to cook iconic Guatemalan dishes.

After moving to Wellesley in September, and unexpectedly developing a close relationship with the natural composition and the selective historical aliveness of the Campus, Phoebe developed a fascination for questions regarding place, identity, and the histories we choose to guard in our collective memory. This summer, she looks forward to deepening her understanding of, and relationship with, the plants, animals, and living beings that have been members of her community in Apopka for far longer than she has, and to learn more about the black and indigenous histories of Central Florida.