marlyse.comme, myself and my life
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Talking.
We intended talking for just an hour but ended after three. After 10 years USA I’ve bumped so hard into physical boundaries which are so painfully real but in truth are nothingness and is, … distance.
And it is and has been hurting me over the past years and like a dripping tap been hollowing me out, slowly but steadily until I finally, finally realized that I was not trying to withdraw from social interaction and people but that circumstances have forced such a scene onto me and it is killing my spirits. Always been in surroundings where at any time I could walk out and interact, or take a bus or a train, a tram or a subway, but never far away from life and talk I am now in a situation with which I can not easily cope. But it took years of accumulated dripping drops until it overflowed to the point that I could clearly recognize the source of the emptiness and see the dark pit I have fallen into.
It is not that I need life all the time, I am and have always been quite happy on my own and have always a ton to do and don’t get bored with my own company. But there is one extreme and then the other.
2 years ago - what, already 2 years again?! - when I had stepped out of the house in Brooklyn N.Y. where we were visiting and could stay for a few days with friends, I instantly smelled it in the air: creativity, pulsing, life, possibilities, interaction, threads of connections weaving in and away again and I instantly pulsed too; took the deep breath and felt it go deep into me and my lungs, this breeze of open slate, just ready to be played.
Suburbs, well, this is a total different game and one at which I am no good. I did take steps and efforts to change things, but no matter where I tried, people here in the suburbs seem to be here for very other reasons than we are: people seem to not want to interact casually, they have family and friends, work and hectic, all day something going on, so if they go to an art class or workout or anything, people actually don’t want true interaction but only on the same level as talking with the cashier on the way out of the store. If you don’t have kids and don’t go to soccer games or children’s plays and all that stuff which is ‘their world’ and you are on different tracks than the families all around… things are too different, too little reality, too different universes to be able to connect.
But now, as the water of time has carved me hollow and the shadows are finally out in the clear, we could talk about solutions. And it is that there are options, paths not thought of before and some paths which require me to change; but I am willing, importances are too high not to, and I can change, I could always change and can change if I decide to do so.
The one thing I have to do though to make it work here in the suburbs is to adjust to the fact that everything is so much further apart than back in Europe and I have to get to the point that driving 30 or 45 minutes will no longer stop me when I know it is time for me to interact. And there are things, other steps I will take too (even though they are alien to me to do for these specific reasons, but hey, what isn’t alien here in the USA for me?); some of these things I’ll do on my own, some not; but all to get again back into the flow which also means stability and extroversion, balance to my being totally happy being on my own and then, then even the suburbs will no longer get to me.
Balance to living here in the land of vast distances and emptiness and non-connectedness, that is the game.
created late at night - it was 11:37 pm to be exact | trackback |
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