Overwhelmed with choices on how and where to spend a lazy, rainy Sunday: on the sofa reading or napping? in the bedroom reading or napping? at the computer playing games, looking for jobs, writing? Looking at my phone a gazillion times for… ? Yeah, it’s one of those days. I’ve done almost all of those things and it’s not quite noon. These are the types of days when I might eat because I’m bored or bother Nick the cat a few hundred times (it’s also when I wouldn’t mind having a dog to play tug of war with).
Last night I video chatted with friends until early in the morning. They often ask me what my plan is. Last night I told them I was somewhere between buying a cabin in the woods that could serve as a home base as I roamed like a vagabond city to city, natural park to ocean to mountain and just getting any old job and waiting for life to show me some options. Except I didn’t put it in those exact words. I’m pretty sure they all think I’m some crazy hippy new age freak. There’s no good way to say my only plan is to try to strip away artifice and put myself out in to the world.
I had another strange dream. This time we (I have no idea who the other part of we was) bought a house, old and beat up (perhaps abandoned). There were two cars left in a large gravel driveway. It was definitely a backwoods / country road type of house. For a few days we made trip after trip to the store to buy stuff and fix the place up. Pulling in and out past the abandoned cars. Once or twice, I could swear that I could see the windows being rolled down (well electrically rolled down). The front passenger seat had been pushed all the way back and tilted back so far that there was essentially no room in the back seat. That’s where I discovered a frail body that was gray and little more than bone and hair, decrepit, but still alive. I woke up.
I should probably try some actual writing – a poem or two. When my mind feels antsy (as it does today), I feel like I could be on the verge of something really good. I’ve been really inspired by the volume of poetry I’m reading. There are lines that send me thinking in different directions. There are combinations of words and images that don’t quite hold together in a traditional narrative sense yet still seem to tell a story and make me think: I didn’t know that was allowed…. and of course, everything is allowed.
My other preoccupation has been on what I seek: job, environment, lifestyle, relationship. I often come back to wanting everything and nothing – all possibilities. Dinner parties with interesting friends, quite views of oceans and mountain and lakes, lingering over coffee watching people pass by on a city street, wine and good, long meals, slow dancing in the kitchen or under the stars, blankets on a hillside at an outdoor concert, sweats and quiet mornings reading, that long awaited beer after work as evening descends, the crowd at the corner pub, side shoves over inside jokes. I still come back to thinking that one of those things (job) ends up dictating the course of the other three (environment, lifestyle, relationship), when it feels like it should be the other way around. Or maybe the key is get the one and be sure to build all of the others in? I came a cross a dating profile in which the woman described herself as location independent. I sometimes remember the tarot reading my ex-fiancee, B’s, friend gave her – said she would have an amazing relationship that would help her move forward but would also have challenges – the answer to finding balance would be travel… In each other, we sought a little of what we felt was missing in ourselves. I had deep roots and routines, she had lightness and freedom. I’m not an astrology person, but I’m supposed to be a fire sign (summer birthday) and all of my relationships have been with water signs or winter birthdays.
I have always had a touch of the wanderlust, and at various points in my life have “regretted” not taking bigger risks. I went to the familiar and comfortable state school where I had been going all my life. I moved back to my home county got a job and lived there most of my adult life. It all seems predictable. I think in dating the people I’ve dated, my eyes have been opened to other possibilities – city life or eventually moving. And now, here I am several states away from everything I have known.
Reading poetry is allowing me to envision the richness of life in some different ways. Reading psychology and Buddhism is allowing me to find that richness in the present moment. In meeting B, my heart and mind were set on fire. I saw, and still see, a world of endless possibilities – which, in turn, has helped define the type of connection I seek: one that is equal parts roots and adventure, quiet and din, capable of the full range of human emotion. It’s a strange sensation to feel like maybe you can’t be contained. I suppose I was on that path for a little while before I met B, hiking, beach, road trips, concerts – and maybe what I’m feeling is a returning to those basics, a reestablishing of that foundation but in a different, more expansive, and perhaps, more portable way. Stopping here – the thoughts feel a little jumbled and fast.