Some of my family have gone to the Mall. Some of my family have gone to get tattooed. I am in the middle of a pool in Midland, Texas. So named because it is midway between El Paso and Dallas. But that still doesn’t help me. I am lost. I am thinking about identity and place. Homesick! The sky is so blue, the water cool, I am treading water and staring at a tree blowing in the wind. I guess I am no tumbleweed. I think I’m identifying too much with my home. I miss the attic, its skylights and stained glass windows. I’ve been told the rain started the day after I left. I loved falling asleep to the sound of it on the skylights. Through the walls of my bedroom here the pool pump thumps all night long. I do not want to be so undone. I do want to learn to travel and be present wherever I am. Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux have a photography book on Patagonia called “Nowhere is a Place” and I get it. Where exactly are our reference points?
Just as one learns to relax into a relationship, so it is with new places. I have six more weeks to recognize the neighbours, have a favourite walk and become a familiar face myself. I’ve been to camp, I can do this!
Advice to myself
1. Read the “Be Here Now” book.
2. Take up Southern drinking. Start with bourbon, perhaps Wild Turkey.
3. There is a Zoom sale. Book a ticket to Ireland for the Spring.
4. Get out of the pool, phone someone’s cell, ask them to pick up a T-shirt for me at the Mall, one with a map on it, and a dot, and an arrow pointing to it that says YOU ARE HERE.
Good Life
diane
Hey Diane,
Well, it’s raining over here. Guess you sort of figured what you’re missing, eh? I had the furnace going now for the last two days, and the days are getting shorter–fast. Oh, and the Autumnal Equinox is on the 23rd of September, which seems to be two days late this year? So it’s going to be a totally different world when you get back to the attic.
You should get a T-shirt that says what the weather forecast is. 🙂