Musings

Dear Lucy,
Living out of a suitcase is mad and impossible and pares you down to the essentials, giving you pause to wonder how and why we surround ourselves with all of the stuff-ness of living that has no intrinsic life?
Where is it that I am ultimately headed in this one life that demands I own all the trappings and entrapments that suffocate me under the auspices of comfortable and normal living?

As a child I thought I wanted safety and security for the rest of my life only to find that it is illusory at best and confining of the soul at worst. It demands no artistry, no stretching of the imagination.
What is this desire to nest and this rage to run? Is there no middle ground, the great, sighing, ahhhhh of life?

I thought it would be in the pastoral setting where cows graze and gaze upon you with their lovely brown eyes, and the whiney of horses, and the smells of alfalfa and new flowers and clean rain, and here I am in the city surrounded by car horns crying and engines chugging and builders hammering and chattering in Spanish and the incessant whine of the vacuum cleaner outside my doorm room door, and feeling more alive and at home than ever.

A woman can cry madly in this city, out in the open, snot pouring, eye-redening sobbing insanity, and not feel as though a soul is going to be bothered. Being unhinged, left of center, out of sorts, totally lost, is accepted. Not that I want to stay that way. I just want to be able to be that way for a while and rest from my struggle with sanity.

--Kathy