Monday, April 03, 2006
Somewhere here?
Here is a place. Bright, but gusty, in these wild and not yet welcoming early days of nearly-Spring. Could this be home?
For several years I’ve longed to move away from London, but, with no compulsion, no prescribed destination, floundered over doing it. After many explorations and contacts, some possibilities have gradually emerged. And now, suddenly, there are two – two concrete, interesting, tempting, different options.
So hard to imagine. So hard to want. Wanting means risking disappointment. Emotional investment in a possibility is something I fear, but know I soon must make. So in the coming weeks I’ll be hanging out a bit in both places, letting myself imagine, letting myself want, opening to intimations of what it would be like.
But, assiduously as I may research the social and cultural facilities, the local development plan, long as I may linger in the town cafes and explore the country walks, much as I may close my eyes and open my heart to atmosphere, that great intangible that is ‘feeling at home’ will not become predictable. It will be a leap, a risk. And I who am timid, who have let life push me around – do I have it in me to leap?
(No, I'm not actually contemplating living on a barge)
I have loved a place, as deeply and wholly as I have loved a person. But it didn’t happen overnight. I long to have that again, but know it isn’t something you can will.
Things have been sticky lately and I’m feeling tired and a bit shut down – not unhappy, but signally lacking in outgoing energy and enthusiasm, as evidenced by recent inability to choke out more than the odd sentence on this here blog. The longing for a new home and a different lifestyle has got itself somewhat submerged under coping from day to day. How, in this mood, do I open to these new possibilities? All muffled up still in my Winter clothes, how do I rub up against these places and see how they feel?
¶ 1:44 pm
Here is a place. Bright, but gusty, in these wild and not yet welcoming early days of nearly-Spring. Could this be home?
For several years I’ve longed to move away from London, but, with no compulsion, no prescribed destination, floundered over doing it. After many explorations and contacts, some possibilities have gradually emerged. And now, suddenly, there are two – two concrete, interesting, tempting, different options.
So hard to imagine. So hard to want. Wanting means risking disappointment. Emotional investment in a possibility is something I fear, but know I soon must make. So in the coming weeks I’ll be hanging out a bit in both places, letting myself imagine, letting myself want, opening to intimations of what it would be like.
But, assiduously as I may research the social and cultural facilities, the local development plan, long as I may linger in the town cafes and explore the country walks, much as I may close my eyes and open my heart to atmosphere, that great intangible that is ‘feeling at home’ will not become predictable. It will be a leap, a risk. And I who am timid, who have let life push me around – do I have it in me to leap?
(No, I'm not actually contemplating living on a barge)
I have loved a place, as deeply and wholly as I have loved a person. But it didn’t happen overnight. I long to have that again, but know it isn’t something you can will.
Things have been sticky lately and I’m feeling tired and a bit shut down – not unhappy, but signally lacking in outgoing energy and enthusiasm, as evidenced by recent inability to choke out more than the odd sentence on this here blog. The longing for a new home and a different lifestyle has got itself somewhat submerged under coping from day to day. How, in this mood, do I open to these new possibilities? All muffled up still in my Winter clothes, how do I rub up against these places and see how they feel?
¶ 1:44 pm
Comments:
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Yes! I know you do have it in you to "leap"!! This is the time in a woman's life when she can at last do all the things she's been too timid to do before. You are in harmony with the times, and with your life. You CAN make the leap to where you belong! I'll try to be back more often, to see how it's going.
# posted by 
: 4:03 pm
: 4:03 pm
I just kinda have a feeling that "timid and having let life push you around" is a perception that you'd have trouble validating amongst your friends and acquaintances :-)
You have a fierce and beautiful mind. I can't imagine it being intimidated, let alone beaten, by anything but itself.
You have a fierce and beautiful mind. I can't imagine it being intimidated, let alone beaten, by anything but itself.
How exciting this development is... whether or not either choice chooses you, for it's two way, isn't it, there's motion, something, that's leading you towards a dream you've had for quite awhile. xo
I brooded on the word 'timid' after I wrote it - wanting to take it down, thinking: I have travelled the world on my own, thrown myself into unfamiliar environments, met and worked with so many strangers, done things that would certainly initimidate many people - it's unnecessary self deprecation to call myself timid. But I think most of us have something we are timid about, even if we are brave in other areas. I'm not timid about meeting challenges set by others, but I am about wanting and deciding and initiating.
You can't know whether it's right to leap. You just have to trust that it is, and that your resources, experience, and openness to new life will make it right. I know that's a bit circular but I think it's how it works...
Sounds exciting.
Sounds exciting.
Re timid, not that I know you but: I'd agree with Dale. And also with yourself, we all have our specific strengths and weaknesses, and these are non-exclusive and overlapping.
I'm inclined to consider it a positive sign, that after years of abstract longing, you now have two concrete possibilities. That speaks of a certain large-things-shifting-in-the-deep kind of change having happened.
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I'm inclined to consider it a positive sign, that after years of abstract longing, you now have two concrete possibilities. That speaks of a certain large-things-shifting-in-the-deep kind of change having happened.
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