Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place

Berkeley California writer/resident Barbara Gates has given her readers an insider¹s 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.

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.

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.