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Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place

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This is a lovely book - part memoir, part reflection on what it is to live in a place where others have been before us. On one level, it is Barbara's own story and that of her neighborhood in Berkeley - diagnosed with breast cancer she fears, not so much her own death, but leaving her 5-year-old motherless. Barbara begins investigating her own house and neighborhood, her neighbors, the people who lived in her house before her, the succession of businesses since Gold Rush times, and even the Native Americans. She sees herself as part of the succession of people who have lived - and died - in this one place. On another level, it is the story of how one connects with a larger sense of belonging, membership in the human race, by looking at the concrete details of where we live and the ordinary people whose lives make up the present and the history of one's own house, block, neighborhood. Barbara brings a Buddhist sensibility to all this, but as a source of insight added to her own reflections - readers with Buddhist sympathies will appreciate the dharmic resonances, but those without will not, I think, read this as a Buddhist tract, but as a personal reflection. It's also beautifully written, so that we get a concrete feel for the streets she walks, the dog who walks with her, the homeless neighbor...I'll never see my neighborhood, and my 1920s-era house, with its traces of the people who have lived in it, painted it, and remodeled it over the years in quite the same way.

All too easily the spiritual path is perceived as an inner experience that unfolds under certain conditions- by an alter, on the top of a mountain, with a teacher. This book was a passionate wake-up call- one that had me walk outside and take my neighborhood and world in with fresh eyes. In-so-doing, my spirit felt enlivened and enlarged.

Barbara Gates writes with a revealing power of observation and an innate appreciation of the mystery, pain and beauty within and around us. Through her eyes, we learn how to deepen our attention, and discover the way our being, our very reality, is shaped by our biological context, our culture, our web of relationships. For anyone who seeks to live and love more fully, this book is a gift to the soul.

I have never read a book before that so eloquently intertwines the concept of spirit and place. Ms. Gates' book has caused me to reexamine my own sense of place in my body, my spirit, my home, and my neighborhood. At times I found myself journeying inward and outward almost at the same time. I encourage readers to challenge themselves by joining Ms. Gates on a path which leads toward home.

Barbara Gates, Co-Editor of Inquiring Mind, a Buddhist journal has woven an intricate and warm shawl we can all wrap ourselves in and settle into our homes. She shows what it means to really live in a place, deeply connected to everyone and everything around us.

Already Home: A Topography of Spirit, by Barbara Gates, is a risk-taking work that criss-crosses genres of geology, spirituality, autobiography and history to tell the story of one woman's discovery of "home' in all its dimensions. Spurred by a sense of not being fully at home in her own mortal being, house and community, Gates takes us along as she discovers her Berkeley, California neighborhood in its present and past incarnations. She balances and connects her spiritual travels with concrete adventures down alleyways, through garbages dumps and into the Department of Vital Statistics. Gates' rich prose let me hear the spring hidden by the factory, see the homeless neighbor sleeping in Gate's car and feel the fear and joy of opening your heart.

Berkeley California writer/resident Barbara Gates has given her readers an insideršs view of her multi-layered, multi-ethnic neighborhood in her sweetly revealing memoir. Already Home is a social, historic exploration of her hood, beautifully written in a journalistic style that explains the migration of communities (flora and fauna, people, businesses and social movements), and celebrates the fundamental nature of extended family and home. Liberally intertwining Eastern philosophy with a dose of Buddhist-Jewish "chutzpah", Barbara inspires readers to stop, look, seize the moment, live more fully and honor the life that is around you.

It's a geological, psychological, and ecological adventure story: And each adventure takes on metaphoric resonance. Gates meditates on the graves of the people who lived in her Victorian house; she also grabbles with a rat in her refrigerator, and her skunk sprayed dog. ALREADY HOME is also filled with accessible insight, wisdom and humor. Barbara Gates expands the definition of "terrain" by including her body and mind, as well as the canyons and creeks near her Berkeley, CA home. As a detective, Gates uncovers the layers of "home" and discovers that where she lives was once the site of an Ohlone Indian Shellmound and a place where livestock once grazed. She helped me rethink what I call "my home" by helping me to realize that I share it with generations before and after me. She also helped me to look inside because she is such a courageous role model for plumbing the depths of herself, her neighborhood, family, and breast cancer diagnosis. What I particularly loved is Gates' brutal honesty about her own inner violence and fears about her life and death. Her love for her husband and daughter moved me deeply. This is a beautiful book, to be read and reread many times over.

Ocean View in Berkeley, California, is home to Barbara Gates, a freelance writer, editor and co-founder of the Buddhist journal, "Inquiring Mind". She spent seven years writing this memoir while observing everyday events in her family and on her block, exploring the natural and human history of her house and area and being in tune with the inner workings of her own mind. While writing and exploring, she found an interrelation among her observances and learned to truly inhabit her home by uncovering the many layers of its history.

Barbara wanted to be open to an identity that was more inclusive than her mortal self. To do that she needed to get to know her home place, including all of its darkness and blemishes. Her personal darkness included the diagnosis of breast cancer. Over the years, she said she continued to find out not only about the terrain but about herself. She learned how self and terrain are inseparable as she was confronted by the impermanence of her body and an endangered world.

Buddhist mindfulness practice helped Barbara give names to new practices such as "skunk practice" when her dog Cleo encountered a skunk on their walk one day. "Skunk practice" became a new mindfulness practice that was inclusive. It didnšt leave anything out no matter how dark or scary, "no matter how much it stinks".

Reading Barbarašs book was a huge gift. First of all, to observe her courage and then to realize that mindfulness leaves nothing out. In embracing it all, she found a sense of home. She offers us the challenge.

During her encounters with neighbors, research into the previous owners of her house and walks with her dog, Barbara also learned about the Ohlone Indian shellmound on the north bank of Strawberry Creek. Archaeologists have found that people lived on these mounds for thousands of years as far back as 3700 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era). Evidence shows the shellmounds were intentionally elevated villages with storage pits, earth ovens and hearths on top of ancestral remains.

"Shellmound mind" became Barbarašs new experiment in her imagination. She asked herself, "Can I risk that ancient experience of home where categories such as household and church, garbage dump and cemetery--so separate in our current world--converge?" She began to see both garbage in the local dump and human remains in the cemetery as "stations in an immense recycling plant". "I see the two juxtaposed in the vast shellmound home of our world--where life breaks down, feeds the gulls, the worms, the bacteria and feeds into new life."

"Shellmound mind," Barbara said in an interview, "is a state of dynamic awareness, where dread, disgust, anger and other difficult emotions are compost for insights that enable us to live in place."

The title of the book comes from Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh who wrote about the whole cosmos being found in a piece of paper or in our bodies. He said, "...meditation means to look deeply, to touch deeply so we can realize we are already home."

The author set out to look deeply into herself and into her Ocean View neighborhood, where she discovered the whole cosmos. In doing so, she inspires others to step beyond the comfortable and take more risks. The risks can involve exploring new terrain including the garbage dump and the cemetery, observing the street outside your window and entering new emotional terrain.

Already Home is an invitation to cut doors in our fences, share dinners and perhaps silence with one another. The book also reminds us that as we sit comfortably in our warm homes, there are homeless people outside. As Barbara became intimate with the place where she lives, she said she "...settled more fully into a wide sense of myself [and] began to glimpse an inner sense of home."

Barbara's story truly inspired me. It is helping me connect to the land on which I now live in southwestern Ontario. Already Home is also a great tool for the "Writing Your Way Home" classes I teach. Visit her website to find out more about the author and her work. Her "Questions for Reflection" offer the reader an opportunity to reflect on her own home territory. Enjoy!

by Mary Ann Moore
for Story Circle Book Reviews
www.storycirclebookreviewsorg
reviewing books by, for, and about women

I loved this book! The author and I are the same age, and although our lives have been quite different, we both feel the same need to feel rooted at last, after having lived many places and confronted many difficulties. Ms. Gates' search for the history of her house and her neighborhood, and her need to become part of a community, form the structure of the book. Included are many themes--motherhood after 40, Buddhist practice, cancer, love of dogs, and of course California's rich history, to name a few. The writing draws you in, and you learn a lot about Barbara, who is warm-hearted, kind and comfortable with herself. You will enjoy spending time with her. You may also feel inspired to explore your own environment in more depth.

What a boring book. Desciptions are too long, emotionless, as though seen by an outside person and not lived as the writter would like to think she is. It's a book written by a scared and obsessed person who is still afraid to live. She seems to be outerly lost and unprepared for living an everyday life full of adventures, changes, death, unhappiness, impermanece,joy, violence, love,etc...after all these analyses and boring lines she still does not seem to have understood the message!