This evening is one of those that can literally make you marvel, never mind your age, at how fast life can change…it’s like a sequel to a film or a video game…it’s now the next chapter, the rules may change a bit, roles as well, and no matter if the changes are good or bad you have no choice but to acknowledge them…face them, as there an inevitable fact, they just…are.
I’m on a porch in Tennessee, and although there are both things I love and hate about the area (Good: Weather, friendly people. Bad: Personal situations, and hills, hills, hills.), I will miss this porch, miss sitting out here, miss seeing the frogs next month, and the abundance of fireflies that I never even saw in Illinois as a boy where there used to be plenty every Summer to be caught and chased after.
I suppose every place is like that and I’ll be just as happy about some things back at ‘home’ too, there is always something somewhere, like returning to the Chicago area. I need a pizza those first couple weeks because they are as great up there as fresh seafood is in the gulf, it’s just different.
It is one the most common features of Human habitations. but also the first feature a human from that habitat take for granted as there is such abundance.
But that is also the virtue of moving around somewhat in your life, even if you have no money but somehow still see more of the Earth than those who may have more disposable income than you do.
And now, by the magic of newspaper print, I am on a different porch in Illinois some five hundred miles away…and it feels…different.
One striking thing in being back is the denseness of traffic, both in cats and people traffic, for the first time I really feel maybe there are too many people for my real liking.
That may seem minor, but to some out there reading this I’m sure they will know exactly what I’m talking about.
It also seems more humid and to my surprise much like when I came back ten years ago it was hotter in Chicago than it was in Texas/Tennessee…as Johnny Carson used to say: “Wild, wild, stuff.”
Unintentionally, I created a personal social experiment to note how I felt and feel after a big move or change and thankfully I can report that all apprehensions are not as bad as they appear and yes, that little snags in the river making turbulence but that too is more about balance than troubles.
If anything is really displacing it’s seeing old things in new spaces, especially as they are in reality, temporary, ‘hard landing’ spaces, seeing my two cats adjust, and trying to build from nothing.
As I have shown, it is not always as bad as it seems and it really does seem that the things that arise from the changes can be both positive or negative depending on how you take them.
Hopefully whenever we all do ‘take them’ we always grow from the experience.
