here or there? either really

searching for place

It’s beautiful, it really is. I like this more simple way of life that I have not really tapped into since my adolescence but even then it’s different now. Found or forced my way into the big cities. I like those big cities too. They provide this energy that I don’t find here. There is a different kind of expansiveness, many people who set off to do something or be something and take the risk of being a small fish in a big pond for awhile. Mikey comes to LA and looks down on the city from my deck and says he likes the way it makes him feel small. That there are so many people he can feel while peering onto the buildings and cars that create a constant whir in the background that I barely even notice anymore. The feeling of being one of so many that either produces a connectedness or separateness depending on the day.

It’s a bit more literal here, the expansiveness, it’s wide open. There is space to think and breathe and be. Not so much noise either, but noise even more-so in a metaphorical way. It’s easy to get impressed by others in cities. Not impressed by them per say, that too sometimes, but subconsciously allowing their way of being to be impressed onto my way of living. Easy to be confused by all the ways one can live. Spending time out here might help my intrinsic motivation, to do the things I want to do without being convinced by anyone else it’s the thing I’m supposed to do. Though I fear that if I’m left to my own devices I could wither away out here. It gives life to my hermit will more easily. That falling off the map feels entirely possible. I haven’t decided if this is a good thing for me or not.

I like that many people here have had to or chosen to go off the beaten path, that’s kind of the whole point. No access to everything at your fingertips. Or even the possibility of being able to access it all at your fingertips which keeps most of us reaching. So things feel slower and more spread apart and you must live with a bit more intention. In New York City you can run into anything and everything in a moments notice. The serendipity feels alluring. It also comes with the feeling of being constantly bombarded. The coin.

There’s a bit less yearning in the air I notice, though the struggles are evident as well. It’s all relative. I think the people here learn to get by with a little less, or in fact, just enjoy “less” while maybe even actually enjoying more. There’s a funny story I heard from a friend of Mikey’s who’s lived out here for awhile. That people come into the town and say things like “wow, it’s beautiful how you have built such a simple way of living,” admiring the rustic-ness and worn down buildings as if they were a choice. To that the friend laughs, “nope! this is really just us doing the best we can.” (actually, he was on a podcast, worth the listen, linked here) I laughed too noticing my own inclinations to see it all as a well planned exhibit of beauty in nothingness. So with that said these might be all generalizations and romanticizations. There are different kinds of people everywhere. People are content, sad, greedy, joyful, dissatisfied, yearning for more, struggling to get by, just happy to be next to each other, they like the trees and the grass, regret their pasts, feel hopeful for their futures. People are people everywhere. The monks might be okay.

I admire the people that go out of their way to make this town of 200 a better place and it makes a clear difference for the people that live here. Many I’ve met here amaze me in their ability to create, they do so much. That happens on a bigger scale in bigger places but I notice the ways I’ve felt overwhelmed by that before. Here there are limits of illusions of grandiosity, they’re clearly not changing the whole world but their changing their world so, in fact, they are. Continuing to carry on, chip away, help each other. Teaching me a truer weight in the touch points we all have. I love the way Mikey runs so many errands for the older people in his town. That they rely on his youth and his heart.

The New Mexico sunsets have a color as if you were looking at old film. I keep noting that everything looks fake. Feels like drugs, almost a mild dissociation that the world can’t possibly be real with how the colors are hitting my eyes. Everything looks startlingly clear yet somehow also softer and blurred together. The adobes blend into the sky at a certain time of night with tan and pink hard to distinguish; during the day they complement perfectly to the blue sunny skies that peak out at least at some point even on the rainiest of days. At times I anticipate what a life out here could be like and it draws me in, quite easily I might add.

Yet, I sit outside in the backyard and notice the flies. There are little gnat like ones and the normal kind too. Swarming, they test the boundaries of my arms, my legs, my face. They land across the pages of the book I’m reading. I’m tempted to shut it tightly just to get a kill of the annoyance without a second thought to the page of my book. I think to myself I’d just smear off the blood and carcass onto a rock nearby and read along never to revisit that page again anyways, pretending I have a comprehension or memory of someone more focused than myself. I let the kill pass. Besides, another one would find me in just a moment as they circle around my head like the thoughts that revisit me each day. Reminding me of a choice I feel like I must make. I’ve been noticing a tainted pressure to find something I don’t like out here so the decision can become a non decision. No longer a pull towards something I could enjoy but a push away from something disgusting like flies.

It’s obviously not something silly like flies. It’s always something more stinging like a thought. Perhaps I cannot be me here. Perhaps I am not cut from the same cloth as the people I’m surrounded by now. Perhaps my hands have become too soft compared to the weathered workers I find around here with dusty sanded palms and light still in their eyes from their commitment to handling the natural substances of this Earth and a daily beating from the sun that keeps their bodies tired and mind still in tact... or a separate notion, perhaps I’ll let myself fade away into oblivion without the constant tethering to needing, wanting more. I get lost in these illusions for a moment as if they were the truth. This must not be the place. As if there had ever been a place I really felt like I could totally be myself in. I have never found that place in all of my searching as I figure I have not quite made home yet in this body of mine and she’s with me wherever I go. The only place I will never escape until the last time I rest my eyes, hands tied no matter how beautiful the sky or the amount of flies. I can make paragraphs of all the things I like or dislike about a place but it will never be enough. It’s a lostness that cannot be found in finding the perfect coordinates or the arms of another person I might add. Those things help. They make things sweeter when it all hits just right. Blessings from God. The one who assures me I won’t have to do it alone, I still will, but not all the way and that’s enough for me.

There would be no shortcut to this home I search for. As I take notes on my time out here for the span of about five weeks I notice my search again for answers to the wrong question. Hoping that logistics might solve my unrest, hoping a new state might shift my internal state. I toggle around settings like the possibility of resting easy at night knowing I might be able to scrounge together $600 in rent each month. That could be nice. To lay in the arms of my lover and rest easy, simply for awhile. I’m not saying it wouldn’t help.

Something deeper, more pressing, still locates me even while I try to hide in this type of ease. It finds me at times when I sit aside him passenger in his truck, which I love to ride in and feel lucky he loves to drive me in. I’ll go stiff and silent like a corpse. A fog settles over my brain and my throat tightens as to not let a word out. Akin to lifelessness, as if I’ve exited my own body. Only enough coherence to nod or smile along, unconvincingly I realize, as if this very perceptive man of mine might not realize there is a unconscious body right next to him. The thoughts move, I toss them rapidly around in my head to figure out an answer to some equation I have made up to solve. The problem creator and the problem solver. I skip ahead to something like forever wondering if I’ll ever really be happy, asking stupid questions again with an impossible answer to keep myself distracted. Searching for life in my lifelessness. The quandary with these types of inquiries is the answer lies in the absence of the same conviction that lures me to leave this moment to solve it. The simple and only answer: I love him and I love sitting in his truck letting the wind hit my face from the vacation of a working AC and staring at the aforementioned fake landscapes. I love the way his hand grasps my thigh and he rarely lets go. My fear is I won’t really soak in the depth of that feeling until I’m present in the true tension of my own skin. The happiness and the fear both sit in the tension of my skin. Another conundrum.

Instead I allow myself to waste my time searching for something to fill the hole that I know only disappears when you stop trying to fill it. I’m wise enough to know the games of the ego but not wise enough not to play.

In an attempt to bring myself back I tell myself to ignore the flies and ignore the lies my mind wishes to tell me as to convince me nowhere will be quite right. Though, the truth is, place does seem to matter. I’ve been granted a pull towards all the places I’ve lived before, a deep knowingness that hits me. It’s tugged me with great conviction even when bittersweet goodbyes were needed. Always a firm yes, go. I expected something as much this time but it never came. It never didn’t come, either. I realize now it was not the real inquiry for this time in my life. Not a time for running but a time for staying, but that doesn’t mean I won’t go. A trip to the land of answers, I found them. I needed to go. I needed to go to see the ways I’ll continue to leave myself behind no matter where I am. That the mind yearns for lists of pros and cons and someone else to blame it on. That I no longer wish to wait for the conditions to be just right. The truth is I’ve only ever wanted to feel the tension of my own skin, my own aliveness, my own energy. That I’m actually only ever just looking to be right where I am. Oh that’s the place.