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Published: February 1st 2020
I’ve come from a place where despair is not an option, where too much glitter is never a thing. Days when I find myself occupied in the house, I have only to step outdoors to be slapped in the face by surprise: burros requiring sombreros, infants teething on onions, an old woman as wizened as the avocados she’s selling, rock star beauties queuing up for the bus. Colourful this, cacophonous that. There are no exceptions; this is my everyday in Mexico.
Fast forward to this Canada: a silence so profound that I imagine myself cocooned. All sounds, all colours, absorbed by a cushion of snow. The view from the window is a frozen frame blistering before a hot projection lamp. The faint whir of the heat pump, when it splutters to life, feels like an invasion. The smell of singed mittens wafts up from the woodstove. This kind of magnificence, you can’t make it up.
Some people thrive on sameness. I envy their loyalty and emulate their contentment. I imagine them waking up and looking forward to their porridge, steamy-creamy white and sticking to the pot, brown sugar flowing through it like hot lava, each raisin a gift to the tongue. I imagine their proud expertise at winter layering: inner socks, snow pants, outer socks, boots. It feels so right.
But if I’ve learned anything about myself over the years, I’ve learned that I crave novelty. Without it, I get cranky. Denied it for too long, depression becomes tangible, sniffing around my perimeters and snapping at my heels. I kick it off, like a bothersome dog. I work at acceptance; admonish myself to behave. Still, the dog lives on.
For me, there are just too many ways to live a life. Oddly, I am not extolling the benefits of travel, a strange thing to admit on a travel blog site. The thought of it taxes me in ways I don’t care for anymore. Like a pair of old underpants that have lost their elasticity, I am dulled by airport corridors and dread long flights trapped in a silver suppository. I am unimpressed by hotel lobbies and guidebooks and, lately, when I scrabble through my bag for my passport or my room key, I feel every bit of my 69 years.
For me, for now, I prefer to stay put at least as long as it takes to feel part of a place. Satisfaction comes from doing ordinary things in extraordinary places, like pulling up weeds or hanging out laundry to dry on the line. (Or, as was the case in a canal-side house in Amsterdam, from a contraption coming down from the stairwell by ropes and a pulley.) I like perusing grocery store aisles, eating in, and idling away the hours in the tall grass. So just plunk me down somewhere interesting, as gently as possible, and I will bloom like a potted plant.
Same, same, but different. Is there anyone out there who feels like I do?
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
Me!
You are such a good writer...poetic even! [blogger=199442] is written by a couple who has lived such a life for the last eight years.