I wish I was a creature driven by wanderlust and star shine and everything new and adventures and the dust of new and ancient roads.
I don’t really know why I wish this...or who taught me to...
not because I don’t love what is new, what is foreign, what is surprising…
[I do.]
The reason I don’t know why I wish this is because I love [even more deeply] that which is familiar, that which is home, that which seems just to have been forgotten and then remembered again [like déjà vu…or a faded dream].
I feel that I should want to venture beyond what I know, that to explore the unchartered maps [where monsters may lurk just as easily as gold] is somehow better [or more admirable…or evidence of some greater depth of character] than sitting wrapped in my pink prayer shawl on the porch [where I drink tea and sigh…and search and heal] with an eye to the cracks of the dry boards of the deck and an ear to the creak of the steps as the dogs tumble down to the grass below.
To explore and discover…to find frontiers of aching beauty…I do wish for these things. But I am learning that the most precipitous cliffs…the most yawning canyons…the darkest night and brightest starlight [the things that always seem to call me outward] are actually part of an inner landscape of myself more terrible and more beautiful [more terribly beautiful?] than anywhere I can lust to wander. And they are here on the porch, with me already, wrapped in my pink shawl.
I carry the things I most desire, most love and most fear everywhere I go. And, by turns, I find this invigorating and terrifying.
I feel unsettled these days. My belongings are in boxes. My heart is in three places [at least]. Even my body feels like a foreign place to me. It is both exhilarating and horrifying to learn that even on this porch, even in my shawl, is a world I hardly know.
I feel so safe wrapped up in this shawl. You could have told me it was as strong as a fortress wall [a few weeks ago], and I would have believed you. I was comfortable in the illusion that I could draw a circle between what I know and where I am safe and out there [where I might not be].
But, of course…a shawl can’t keep out an army of invaders. A shawl and a porch and tea and sunlight are not amulets, elixirs nor any other sort of protective enchantment [nor would the world be better if they were]. Even my own skin [that fairly arbitrary boundary between me and everything else] is no insurance. What’s inside my skin is just as mysterious and ineffable...and fascinating and terrifying... as the rest…
So, for now, I explore inward and not outward…because to do so is to admit that I always carry what is unknown and unchartered within me. Maybe I will settle down in this skin, in this apartment, wrapped in this shawl. Maybe I will, as a former co-worker of mine would say, manage to “take off my coat and stay awhile.” And maybe, at the same time, I will go on a fantastic adventure. Because... though I have learned that the monsters are here… so is the gold.
