nerves

My mom has a nervous temperament; I've always been calm & sometimes collected. [Although the one who is truly collected in an emergency is dave--he is so rational and amazing in a crisis.]

It's funny--lately sometimes I've just been overcome with anxiety and felt as if I really can't handle much more. It's a new phenomenon for me. I can only take so much tension and stress and chaos and I need to take a mental break. Today was one of those days. I mean, a mental vacation day. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. with strange dreams and worry. The pressure was too much. I went out on the porch in the early foggy morning and prayed and did my stretches (my own version of yoga). Then I took a bunch of pictures of mom's garden, including lots of insects. I'll post them here eventually.

I went back to bed after my photography spree & slept late. Spent a lot of time today reading The Shipping News, a novel by E. Annie Proulx, who I believe also wrote the book Brokeback Mountain. I am enjoying The Shipping News because it takes me to Newfoundland. I spent a summer there a while ago. Thanks, Sue, for giving me the book. I so deeply enjoy books about people living in isolated, primitive places. Living simpler, harder lives, where you survive by your wits and with the help of your neighbors. I relish the rocks, waves, and fog. The weather shapes your life.

Perhaps my desire to live in such a place is based on an over-simplified view of rustic living. My parents live here in the rural midwest. I like coming here but there are things that bother me. The small-mindedness of certain people. The fact that I'm an oddball for having lived overseas, or for a variety of other reasons. I never really did fit in.

I think I might like life here better if I could have my own little home in the middle of the cornfields and the trees. If I had a shed in the back with a potter's wheel and a kiln. Loads of books and a few gardens. Oh--the other part of my fantasy is a lovely old Ford F-150 pickup truck. Sighhhhhhh...they are so....primal.

I'm really enjoying the book. Perhaps it will inspire a roadtrip. Because for now, I have a home, and it is in the midst of urbanness, not in the country. Moving to the place of my fantasies does not seem to be imminent. I do not have the intention (or courage?) to make a radical move to either rural Illinois or distant Newfoundland, for now. Why don't I? Maybe someday I will.