Searching for Moi-thern Exposure

There is an ad on TV with a mother glancing up at the ceiling. She's hearing noises of her child upstairs, as he hops into his too-small jeans, jangling the glass chandelier above her, while she was looking out the curtained window, seated at her 8-person woodgrain dining table in the sunny wallpapered dining room, looking out at the green lawn when she is interrupted, and then up at the ceiling again, where there is a sunny messy child's room unseen by her. All this in a few seconds. And I see it is a moment I long for, and I think for a moment that I'm not so different from a juvenile in prison. It's a tumble toss of numbers; I see a future, they tell me I can go grab it if I try -- but I may or may not have it. There will probably be no house for me, no sunny place with trees, no wallpaper, no family, no child, no knowing look between the two of us, no future for a them that was a part of my future -- and yet, I must find a place that feels like that. That has that kind of certainty, that has that kind of expected, everyday sunniness, that kind of lack of anticipation of worry, that kind of undercurrent harmony.

I wonder if it will be part of my life, even in an alternative adjusted way, or if I will always be where I am now, buried in this thing that does not shelter me, but eats at me. I have to punch some holes in it.

I have a friend who wants to become part of an eco-community. She wants to jointly own land with a group of like-minded folks, maintain her self-sustenance along with them in a plan for a surrounding, friendly, secure future. The more I think of it, the more brilliant I think it is -- if it could be at all close to something I could make a living at. There's the rub. For her, in Port Townsend, Washington, it might work, since even in the midst of an island off the coast of Seattle, there are enough wealthy escapees of average society to maintain her in her two jobs -- the grocery store and her acupuncture practice. She is a red-haired, green clothed, determined sort. A worker of the land she always has been; a gatherer of blackberry vines employed in sculpture and a maker of gooseberry jelly given out as presents. She knows how to maintain a proper composting pile, and can tell you about the various critters that live around those parts. She has, I do believe, really found where she ought to be. I envy her much.

For me, as I sit in the part of Los Angeles I don't much care for, far away from the scenery and beauty of gardens and trees and oceans and hills I miss, I wonder whether the challenge is simply me. As I scratch at a patch of bumpy skin that no one can diagnose, at the very same time cursing the cigarette smoke coming through the window from the apartment downstairs, I wonder if there is such a thing as mini-hives, and that all the fuss physically concerning me is really my own fault. Perhaps I am simply so uncomfortable as to make it manifest on my own form. Wouldn't surprise me. Healing it is another matter. But planning for something that will put me at ease is now my goal.

I watch a travel show about the Cinque Terre, a string of towns above Rome along the coast. They have the slowest, most backward living style you can get besides perhaps Alaska. Everyone lives high on the weather-beaten terraced hillsides, overlooking the sea. They harvest famous grapes to make specialty wines. They spend hours preparing salt-preserved anchovies the way they have been done for generations, just because. They ride up and down the mountains on small pulley systems and lower their boats with cranes from the high cliffs now, instead of the old severe climb, but they have plenty of walking and climbing to do up the mountainside anyway. They harvest lemons and make a limoncello liqueur, so easy, but so much theirs as to never be duplicated. Everyone knows each other, both for good and for grudges, and all in the town are dependent on each other in some way. The women bake and dress not so much differently from their grandmothers. The men still stitch nets to fish with. They hang their laundry out the high windows in the sea breeze. Wouldn't I like a place like that? They're trying to get people to work the land, to restore it. But you must make a 20-year commitment. A tall order for someone who is not Catholic, cannot speak Italian, be a farmer, or be confident to be content with a cruiseship-sized containment of neighbors for a long haul. Wouldn't I go nuts? Or would I?

What would put me at ease?

A slightly larger home.

Somewhat of a garden or a park.

A dog. Most definitely.

A true love.

A job where I no longer must wear these perfunctory clothes.

Neighbors with a certain intellectual inclination.

A place to meet them each day and talk.

That doesn't sound so difficult, but it is -- right now, right here. In the contained life where I live now, wake alone, travel from a gated garage in a car to another gated garage, work in a tall building with people I don't much care for, return to my car and fight traffic back to my gated, cramped home to the company of someone who does the same thing I do every day.

I would like to think there will at some time be some flexibility in the picture. I want to make that happen.

To wake up and not eat while trying to remember what day it is and whether I actually did those things I have been thinking about, or whether I have yet to do it and was only dreaming it, and can't remember. To wake somewhere were I can work hard when I can, and pause when I really need to, without the nagging feeling that I'm going to be fired and something huge will be at stake. Someplace where someone will say out loud that it was a godsend that I came to work for them, instead of a lurking feeling of invalidity. Someplace with windows that open. Or alternatively, with a place to eat downstairs where everyone shows up and I can point them all out by name, or at least, their dogs' names. Someplace with some sort of communal magic.

If not right now, soon, in a foreseeable time. It's time to get out of the little uncomfortable box, in small reaching, scratching ways. I need to breathe.
And if I can't do it now, I will plan.

Essentials:

Music, to breathe in some energy.
Art or Architecture, History, buildings, appreciation for the heritage of things.
Something that will trim my figure so my life will hold up, not so I please someone.
A handful of unusual, worthwhile people.
A backup of other people who can be those who stretch my patience, since it should be flexible.
One person who finds great happiness beside me.
Beauty.
Flowers.
Oh yes, my dog. A big floofy one.