Routinely Nomadic Quotes

Nous avons donc rejoint la communauté des nomades qui se déplacent sur les routes pendant le temps des Fêtes pour « aller en visite » dans la parenté. Comme tous ces nomades au long cours, afin de parcourir les 380 kilomètres qui séparent Huberdeau de Québec, il nous a fallu franchir des montagnes de misère, une tempête de neige de 45 centimètres, des autoroutes fermées, des bouchons périurbains, des carambolages, de la poudrerie latérale, une visibilité nulle sur chaussée enneigée, le vent glacial, la routine, quoi… Fatigués de la longue route où le temps hivernal avait si bien sévi, nous devions maintenant sortir les bagages et les cadeaux empilés dans la voiture comme le matériel hétéroclite accumulé dans les charriots des pionniers au temps de la piste de l’Oregon : voilà que nous installions nos pénates pour quelques jours dans une maison qui n’était pas la nôtre.

Tashi says nomads keep to the routines and customs they learned from their parents and they know the basic truths: that life is full of suffering, that suffering can be understood and lived through, that their actions and intentions will determine their future lives just as the past has allowed for this present life.

Sleeping Arrangements In many societies, children sleep with their parents at least through infancy and sometimes much longer. Some do so because they don’t have much space, but also because they believe co-sleeping to be an essential way to feed, comfort, protect, and bond with their babies and children. Here is a sampling of sleep arrangements in some traditional communities compiled by Carol Worthman and Melissa Melby: • In the leaf huts of Efe foragers of Africa, no one sleeps alone. Two adults, a baby, other children, a set of grandparents, and even a visitor routinely crash in the same small space. • Gebusi women in Papua New Guinea sleep together in a narrow area, about seven and a half feet wide, packed like sardines along with infants and children of varying ages. Men and older boys lie on sleeping platforms in a nearby space. • For the Gabra nomads in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, sleeping arrangements include separate beds for husband (and small boys) and wife (with infant and small children) in the sleeping portion of the tent. • The Balinese in Indonesia are social, even in sleep: “Being alone for even five minutes is undesirable, even when asleep, so widows and widowers who sleep alone are viewed as unfortunate and even socio-spiritually vulnerable,” Worthman and Melby wrote. • The Swat Pathan in Afghanistan and Pakistan allow a bed for each person, but no one gets his own room.

It was also a good time to figure out this relationship with Tyler. We’d been going out for eight months by now, but our feelings were nomadic, too, hard to pin down. Or at least hard to talk about. We were very similar. We were wary of commitment. We ached for new experiences. We feared routine, conformity, and, most of all, the end of our youth. Of course we didn’t say any of this – we didn’t know how. We barely knew it ourselves.