The only thing that's changed is me
I left for a week. I left, during what other people experience as Spring Break, to gain a little peace of mind. Perhaps closure. It has certainly been a mess in my head lately. No work, no pets, no house helps put things in perspective. When you have no mirror to encounter in the morning, you start caring more about what's going on around you than the composition of your face.
In the torment of severe winds and not enough sunshine, we smoked cigarette after cigarette, sang songs, read, knit, and watched. There came the sweet cacophony of commuter traffic, the whining and screech of steel cutting over steel. All that was required of us was to watch and wait, and in the study of the rumbling and clanking of cars we learned in the course of four days of ramen and crank radio that there was no train for us yet, no car that would be able to take us where we wanted to go the way we wanted to go.
And priorities rework themselves; as much as one could hold out indefinitely for a ride, there is, at the end of a week of vacation, school and work to return to, and a dog much missed. Now why would anyone give up a life devoid of time limits, if even briefly?
But we did ride the coast line—only, on Amtrak—and it was a beautiful journey down to Santa Barbara, complete with horrifying studies of American society on board and along the beach...but that analysis later. In the sun burning through skylights, I watched the golden grass give way to cliff and sea, and dreamt of watching the same landscape race by merely feet above the rails instead of yards.
In the sun burning on the beach, my face scarred over with red, but well fed and stretched out like smug lions, we soaked up what the city had to offer us.
In the torment of severe winds and not enough sunshine, we smoked cigarette after cigarette, sang songs, read, knit, and watched. There came the sweet cacophony of commuter traffic, the whining and screech of steel cutting over steel. All that was required of us was to watch and wait, and in the study of the rumbling and clanking of cars we learned in the course of four days of ramen and crank radio that there was no train for us yet, no car that would be able to take us where we wanted to go the way we wanted to go.
And priorities rework themselves; as much as one could hold out indefinitely for a ride, there is, at the end of a week of vacation, school and work to return to, and a dog much missed. Now why would anyone give up a life devoid of time limits, if even briefly?
But we did ride the coast line—only, on Amtrak—and it was a beautiful journey down to Santa Barbara, complete with horrifying studies of American society on board and along the beach...but that analysis later. In the sun burning through skylights, I watched the golden grass give way to cliff and sea, and dreamt of watching the same landscape race by merely feet above the rails instead of yards.
In the sun burning on the beach, my face scarred over with red, but well fed and stretched out like smug lions, we soaked up what the city had to offer us.