Where do you go to my lovely....
Some days I wake up and I feel a restlessness. I find myself wanting to walk between the street and the sidewalk just to kick at the scattered leaves in their fall colored hues and the debris of printed newspapers that collect there till a streetsweeper erases their existance from memory. I wrap a brightly colored scarf around my throat but, avoid the jacket as the air is still crisp and cool but not yet cold. I have a slight cold but, the breeze that blows through the trees that line the streets make me feel better even if the air doesn't help my throat. Things are still now, or so it seems in the rollercoaster we call life. I remember as a child thinking even then,.. "when I start life I will..." It seemed appropriate then and adults looked upon such thoughts with approval of my mature forethought of planning. Never could they have told me that life had already started and that all the planning would be nothing but an illusion of structured dreams that would fade and ultimately be struck down by what LIFE is. Though I suspect now that they never could have told me because they themselves didn't know it. I remember picking out the quote by John Lennon to put under my picture in my middleschool yearbook that read, "Life is what happens to you while your busy making other plans." I thought then that I knew those words but, I hadn't truly lived enough to really understand the bitterly harsh reality of the meaning of that sentiment. Everything flies by in the blink of an eye with the exception of those still pictures we keep in a shoebox on a shelf in the back of our minds and call memories. Sometimes we take them out to look at them with feelings of cheerful nostaligia and other times of regret. I woke up one morning with an exact date I can't place and discovered this was my life. This here and now, where I wake in the morning to the light buzz of the alarm on my cell phone and stumble to the shower to try and let the heat of the water wake me up to full consciousness, where I then dress and scramble out the door to head off to work by train or car. The days meld together in these walls where I sit making the imperfect perfect, sometimes even beyond what really exists. Very few days are terribly significant. I have a boyfriend and a few other friends and daily I embrace the happiness these relationships give me but, this is it. This is my life and it's as hum drum as most peoples lives. Naturally these days are dotted with outtings to concerts, shopping, or movies, or whatever else has captured our attention. For all that, in it's safe contented monotone sphere it's really a good life just....not the one I want. The hardest part is I'm unsure of what it is I want. In fact the only reason I know it isn't the exact life I want is because I find myself saying inwardly at times,"When my life begins.." I find myself in bitter envy of all the people around me who appear for the most part to be contented by such an existance. I often wonder at my own restless spirit. I almost can't fight off the urge to pick up and go to somewhere new and experience new again and again. I'm not unhappy where I am but, the desire for more wakes me up sometimes from a dead sleep and my breath catching with the whisper of the question forming on my lips"Is this all there is for me?" That restless spirit at times seems as wild and untamable as any free creature that has never been tethered. I sometimes think that it takes over my life at times destroying many of my relationships just to oust me into action. Perhaps, instead of fighting it I should try following it. Maybe just maybe that restlessness will lead me to the more that I seek.... that ever intangible sense of purpose that seems to evade my searching.