Thoughts from the Bearing Sea
I'm sitting on a plane right now, several thousand feet over the Bearing Sea, between Alaska and Russia, and I've been sitting in this chair for the last eight and a half hours. My flight path takes me from my home in the New York City suburbs to Tokyo, Japan. This is a trip of many firsts for me; my first time crossing the International Date Line, my first time in Japan, my first time in a country where I do not speak or read the language, my first time leaving my home quartersphere1, but most importantly, it's my first time going to Star Wars Celebration.
Before we get in to all that, I just want to say that for many years I've found travel in general, and air travel in particular, to be a simply wonderful environment for reflection. It's likely the simple aspect of being stuck sitting in a single location for a protracted period of time while cut-off, or at least severely limited in one's ability to reach, the broader social internet. Despite this, I choose to draw a far more romantic explanation; the act of travel brings to mind all the ways in which one can travel, which immediately brings to mind the metaphorical manner in which we're all traveling through our own lives, hopefully with the intended destination of deeper human connection and understanding. It could also be that rapid and sustained motion forward, while also remaining relatively stationary, highlights the nonlinear manner in which most of us experience personal growth. Regardless, I find travel to be incredibly, seductively, introspective.
What then, to be introspective about?
Historically I'd find myself musing on any manner of topics, the state of my romantic life, my career, my relationships to friends or family, the books I wanted to read or the video essays I wanted to watch, or the myriad list of projects and ideas I'd like to bring into being. Truly, I love nothing so much as a long opine on all the things I'm going to do when not stuck in a steel box hurtling through the air at a rate faster than any other my body has experienced, that I then completely disregard as soon as I vacate the box, the list serving primarily as a source for my own self-guilt at my inability to follow-through. I do not wish my particular cocktail of mental idiosyncrasies upon anyone.
This particular instance of steel box-inspired introspection seems to have taken broad shape around a concept that I've found myself returning to time and again the last few years, and with an increasing frequency in the last few weeks in particular, community. I grew up in a "blended" family2, on my mom's side I'm descended from the Founders of the country3, meanwhile my paternal grandparents immigrated from Uruguay in the mid-20th Century. I have always identified on some level with my Lantinx heritage, but I've also spent most of my life feeling quite disconnected from it. I have a factual knowledge of those aspects of my cultural heritage, but not an emotional understanding, nor indeed an emotional connection. My grandparents were incredibly focused on integrating themselves in their new community, my father grew up bilingual, but my uncle, a decade my father's junior, has only some conversational Spanish. I have only what I've gathered through osmosis, combined with what I learned in AP Spanish in high school4. I have not, and will not ever stop giving my dad a bit of grief for not raising me bilingual. This is all to say, my understanding of community is tangential to my familial experiences, but it's not entirely derived from them.
In school, I mostly had one incredibly close friend. From the first day of kindergarten right up through the last day of middle school in 8th grade. Zane and I probably would have grown slightly apart anyway, but right before high school his family moved to Daytona and I was left to brave my freshman year solo. I'm the oldest of my generation of the family tree, with plenty of uncles who all hover around a decade or so older than I, so making friends at least superficially wasn't too much of an issue, but I recall being plagued with a feeling of detachment from my friends for most of those four years. As people started graduation over the years the group slowly morphed, until in my senior year I had become the sort of de-facto ringleader of the "outcasts", all the kids that didn't quite fit in to the other social groups. In retrospect, we were probably all similar varieties of neurodivergent, but as the most "together" of the group I found myself frequently serving as surrogate therapist5. Our pattern of community-through-detachment continues.
I spent most of my early adult years battling a host of mental illnesses that ultimately all add up to a phenomenally slow process of accreting people who saw me as I was, in spite of my efforts to don nearly any mask I could find and try out.
Which brings us to my 30s. Where I sit here, in a tiny steel tube hurtling over the Bearing Sea, naught but water for miles in all directions. Thanks to the contributions of a host of individuals to whom I'm eternally grateful, I'm finding the strength and courage to show my face to the world more and more, even though it's the most terrifying thing I've ever done. In a little over one week from now I'm going to step through the halls of Makuhari Messe, along with around 60,000 other people who love this campy and weird little space opera as much as I do. We're going there to learn about new projects, to celebrate classics we love, to catch up with old friends and share our wacky hobbies born of the love that only fans can have. I have friends in this community, and we've been talking about how excited we all are for this convention for months, speculating on which celebrities will be there, what will be announced, what the exclusive merch will be like, and everyone seems like they have their thing that they're most excited for.
For me, it's not any of that. Sitting here, the anticipation building after months of work on cosplays and swag and plans, waiting to arrive at what has consumed my mind for the past year, all I want is to be surrounded by people who understand. Who know that it's not enough to fight with all you have to push back the darkness, because in the end the only way to beat back the dark is to stop fighting and open yourself up to finding a new path.
There's a quote from the book Master and Apprentice that's stuck with me ever since I first read it, Qui-Gon, talking with his old friend about what drives him, says
"It matters which side we choose. Even if there will never be more light than darkness. Even if there can be no more joy in the galaxy than there is pain. For every action we undertake, for every word we speak, for every life we touch—it matters. I don’t turn toward the light because it means someday I’ll ‘win’ some sort of cosmic game. I turn toward it because it is the light.
I think, for me, that's what community is underneath it all. A collection of people, alone and in the dark, reaching out towards each other's light. Not because it will serve anything in particular, just because it's light.
If anyone reading this sees me at Star Wars Celebration Japan, I hope we get to bask in each other's light. Thank you for including me in the community. 💙
1 The closest I've come to crossing the Equator is Grand Cayman, the closest I've come to crossing the Prime Meridien was a trip to London, however I never went so far east as Canary Wharf, let alone Greenwich. As mentioned, this is my first time crossing the Dateline, therefore my first time leaving the North-West quartersphere!
2 This term never felt quite resonant with me, from my perspective my family has always been as it always has, and being that I was not around to witness the blending process I don't identify particularly strongly with the label, though I'm sure other members of blended families might say the same. If you've only ever had a milkshake, then to you regular milk would be a different thing.
3 Okay, one specific one, but that's another story.
4 For those curious, I got a 3 on the AP exam, which is enough to pass but only just barely.
5 Picture Charlie Bartlett, but without the drugs. We really only drank, and only occasionally.