iamMIA is a shapeshifting project, long in reach and deeper in scope. Here's some of what it's shaping up to be. Ongoing, some in progress. After decades of visiting family in Miami, in 2013 I discovered I’m American and returned. It had been 23 years since my last time there, when I went for my father’s memorial after he took his life. I’d long been afraid to return; the unprotected tenor of an open heart long ago there laid to rest. I held all at bay—a tie broken, or at least terribly frayed. Yet returned there I found myself, and there my place took shape. Home where I’ve never lived. There life finally linking, my world within come alive. I turned up, open, fully sensate in the light. Then back to Vancouver, again. Vancouver—I’m from Vancouver, as the saying goes: that is, born and raised, as another saying goes. And if it’s true to say that I’m from here, it’s truer to say that I’m from where this used to be. I’m here now though, back but not home. I now live in an in-between, body in one place and soul in another; my mind and memory the bridge, the place where I dwell most, undoing the stays till I can go, for good. |