mine alone
There is a place in the world that belongs to nobody else but me.
It is a real, physical place. You can find it on a map. People think they own land there. In my place there are no footprints, but people come very close to entering it, and sometimes people get lost and find themselves almost next to me. But they cannot go where my place it is. Nobody else can. It is hundreds of miles away from me, but I am going there soon.
---
Today is a day characterized by longing. The weather reminds me of my place. The crispness in the air, the cleanness of the breeze, the rich scent of smoke from unseen fires... it is intoxicating to me. I feel simultaneously at peace and intolerably restless.
I set off to go to the lab to do DP work but I never made it there. Instead I felt drawn to walk and walk and walk without any destination, lured by the gold-tinted July sunlight as it slowly slipped toward dusk. I hopped on a bus at one point, found myself at the arboretum, and turned back around as soon as I saw the crowd standing there. A little while later, I jumped on another bus and rode it long past my stop. I simply sat down by myself, put on my headphones, and watched the scenery flash by... places of so much potential, and places where things had begun sweetly yet ended so bitterly. I felt an urgent need to go... anywhere. Home was not an option, but neither was my car.
I realized at some point that what I really, really needed was to somehow get to my place. I also knew that I could not get there, not yet, not with these resources. I got off the bus and followed the alluring smell of woodsmoke down through my alleys, my mind filled with visions of cool dark waters and a grass that is dewy with twilight underfoot. I hesitated in front of my house in confusion. I felt hungry even though I had recently eaten.
I contemplated all sorts of crazy schemes I knew I was not yet ready to execute. I felt a powerful longing for home, but not the house that is waiting right now in Cincinnati. I felt like I did when I first became pagan and I desperately wanted to find other pagans, to find some validation that the things I was feeling were real and sacred and true. I craved an understanding I had not yet received. I needed things no one around me could give. And knowing this, realizing this, I breathed in deeply and tilted my head toward the sky, closing my eyes and letting the cool clean wind wash over me like a river.
Hope, it told me softly. Hope is the only way out.
I want to feel clean again.
It is a real, physical place. You can find it on a map. People think they own land there. In my place there are no footprints, but people come very close to entering it, and sometimes people get lost and find themselves almost next to me. But they cannot go where my place it is. Nobody else can. It is hundreds of miles away from me, but I am going there soon.
---
Today is a day characterized by longing. The weather reminds me of my place. The crispness in the air, the cleanness of the breeze, the rich scent of smoke from unseen fires... it is intoxicating to me. I feel simultaneously at peace and intolerably restless.
I set off to go to the lab to do DP work but I never made it there. Instead I felt drawn to walk and walk and walk without any destination, lured by the gold-tinted July sunlight as it slowly slipped toward dusk. I hopped on a bus at one point, found myself at the arboretum, and turned back around as soon as I saw the crowd standing there. A little while later, I jumped on another bus and rode it long past my stop. I simply sat down by myself, put on my headphones, and watched the scenery flash by... places of so much potential, and places where things had begun sweetly yet ended so bitterly. I felt an urgent need to go... anywhere. Home was not an option, but neither was my car.
I realized at some point that what I really, really needed was to somehow get to my place. I also knew that I could not get there, not yet, not with these resources. I got off the bus and followed the alluring smell of woodsmoke down through my alleys, my mind filled with visions of cool dark waters and a grass that is dewy with twilight underfoot. I hesitated in front of my house in confusion. I felt hungry even though I had recently eaten.
I contemplated all sorts of crazy schemes I knew I was not yet ready to execute. I felt a powerful longing for home, but not the house that is waiting right now in Cincinnati. I felt like I did when I first became pagan and I desperately wanted to find other pagans, to find some validation that the things I was feeling were real and sacred and true. I craved an understanding I had not yet received. I needed things no one around me could give. And knowing this, realizing this, I breathed in deeply and tilted my head toward the sky, closing my eyes and letting the cool clean wind wash over me like a river.
Hope, it told me softly. Hope is the only way out.
I want to feel clean again.