restless
Lying on my side in my bed, in my newly painted bedroom, I look into the small bathroom that must have once been a closet. The wall is a soothing, dark periwinkle blue, the exact color of the long purple shadows on the snow in the picture of Thorn and Frost leaping through the 24 inches that fell the January I moved to Charlottesville. The picture was taken at some late hour and the shadows are deep purple and blue slashes across the white of snow, and Thorn is forever caught rising up in the snow, shedding snow off his back, leaping forward and up in a pounce at Frost, neck deep in snow, Frost looking back with an expression of trepidation and joy, Thorn rushing toward her like unavoidable fate.
The white of the doorframe trim is a long vertical, clean line, drawn by perspective to contrast with the blue of the back wall of the bathroom. Above the slightly darker blue chair rail molding, the wall is white again.
It becomes a pleasing interweaving of color and lines, blue and white, shadows and snow in right angles instead of slashes. It is calming. The room now seems to breathe blue, breathe coolness, breathe acceptance. But this environmental mood is not enough. I went to bed restless in my mind and I dreamt restless dreams, and not surprisingly, I woke again restless in my head.
Friday was a good day because I came home at noon to check on Ash, who had been acting like he was thinking about bloating when I left him at 8:30 to go to work that morning. The potential catastrophe, the trite and evil nature of coming home to a dead dog on Friday the 13th, drove me to pack up work and drive home to check on him and bring him inside where I could watch him closely. He was restless and fussed at me and panted some, and I dragged the dog bed from the bedroom to the tv room, and he finally thunked onto his side and lay in deep sleep on the floor, and in the end, he was fine, and likely would have been fine.
But spending the day at home, being away from the seething at the office, spending a bit of time working and a bit of time watching tv, figuring out how to fix the ice maker and puzzling out why it broke in the first place... well, like Ash, I was restless and I fussed, and ultimately, it turned into a good day alone at home with just a dog for company.
Restless this morning, I sorted through my stack of books to read and picked up Pam Houston's A Little More about Me, and I read the preface and 3 or so of the essays.
It was a perfect choice and a terrible choice--she makes me restless, even though I was already. I want to move West, I remember the feeling of freedom I had living in Oregon. I marvel at her ability to live without a deskjob, to have horses and dogs and big spaces. Her courage to just *do* and make her life work. She is who I wanted to grow up and be--an explorer, an animal lover, a professor, a writer, surrounded by friends.
And I think, here, here I failed in courage. And I can't pick one moment where i made a wrong choice. I can't flaw one decision. It all made sense, it all seemed to be what I needed to do at that point in my life, what I was capable of doing, at that moment. But I can almost pin it all on a single point of inflection--crying as I rode out of the Willamette Valley with my mom at the wheel of my Jeep, 2 dogs and a car packed full of *stuff* I couldn't leave behind. That decision to move home, to be nearer my family, the people I loved and who loved me, the Virginia that I still ached for after two years in Oregon. Those ties that I could not, did not want to, cut.
So, I think now, I must find my way back toward that life I wanted, the person I wanted to be, the one I visualized--visualize--for myself. And it seems to be a matter of courage--I must cut loose from this job I have, the security it gives me--because the cost to me is too great, the soul drain and the creative suppression, the sheer number of hours spent trying to make the hours go faster, the in-company political maneuvering that makes me bitter and makes my bite my tongue, the incessant Thou Shalt Cover Thy Ass commandment. But I must be able to pay my bills, stand on my own, keep on keeping on (which isn't enough, I want to move toward better, not just survival). So it's not just courage, it's practical courage--I want to be brave enough to find a practical path, not just brave enough to jump off the cliff.
The white of the doorframe trim is a long vertical, clean line, drawn by perspective to contrast with the blue of the back wall of the bathroom. Above the slightly darker blue chair rail molding, the wall is white again.
It becomes a pleasing interweaving of color and lines, blue and white, shadows and snow in right angles instead of slashes. It is calming. The room now seems to breathe blue, breathe coolness, breathe acceptance. But this environmental mood is not enough. I went to bed restless in my mind and I dreamt restless dreams, and not surprisingly, I woke again restless in my head.
Friday was a good day because I came home at noon to check on Ash, who had been acting like he was thinking about bloating when I left him at 8:30 to go to work that morning. The potential catastrophe, the trite and evil nature of coming home to a dead dog on Friday the 13th, drove me to pack up work and drive home to check on him and bring him inside where I could watch him closely. He was restless and fussed at me and panted some, and I dragged the dog bed from the bedroom to the tv room, and he finally thunked onto his side and lay in deep sleep on the floor, and in the end, he was fine, and likely would have been fine.
But spending the day at home, being away from the seething at the office, spending a bit of time working and a bit of time watching tv, figuring out how to fix the ice maker and puzzling out why it broke in the first place... well, like Ash, I was restless and I fussed, and ultimately, it turned into a good day alone at home with just a dog for company.
Restless this morning, I sorted through my stack of books to read and picked up Pam Houston's A Little More about Me, and I read the preface and 3 or so of the essays.
It was a perfect choice and a terrible choice--she makes me restless, even though I was already. I want to move West, I remember the feeling of freedom I had living in Oregon. I marvel at her ability to live without a deskjob, to have horses and dogs and big spaces. Her courage to just *do* and make her life work. She is who I wanted to grow up and be--an explorer, an animal lover, a professor, a writer, surrounded by friends.
And I think, here, here I failed in courage. And I can't pick one moment where i made a wrong choice. I can't flaw one decision. It all made sense, it all seemed to be what I needed to do at that point in my life, what I was capable of doing, at that moment. But I can almost pin it all on a single point of inflection--crying as I rode out of the Willamette Valley with my mom at the wheel of my Jeep, 2 dogs and a car packed full of *stuff* I couldn't leave behind. That decision to move home, to be nearer my family, the people I loved and who loved me, the Virginia that I still ached for after two years in Oregon. Those ties that I could not, did not want to, cut.
So, I think now, I must find my way back toward that life I wanted, the person I wanted to be, the one I visualized--visualize--for myself. And it seems to be a matter of courage--I must cut loose from this job I have, the security it gives me--because the cost to me is too great, the soul drain and the creative suppression, the sheer number of hours spent trying to make the hours go faster, the in-company political maneuvering that makes me bitter and makes my bite my tongue, the incessant Thou Shalt Cover Thy Ass commandment. But I must be able to pay my bills, stand on my own, keep on keeping on (which isn't enough, I want to move toward better, not just survival). So it's not just courage, it's practical courage--I want to be brave enough to find a practical path, not just brave enough to jump off the cliff.