Burning Alive

            I’ve made Seattle my home for over five years.  Most of them have been wrought with grave difficulties and defeated apathy.  However the moments of brightness that dusted the shadows from their shoulders have been enough to keep me going.  Recovering from bad break-ups, birth, deaths and broken appliances, I have a trophy case full of wounds and baggage.  As the wounds heal I find myself almost eager to jump into world again.  Armed with the knowledge of unavoidable doom and mishap, the decision is now crazy instead of naïve.  Yet we are all built with the impulse to thrust ourselves from the caves of our birth out into the bright lights of a hostile world.

            From a buzzing city that smells of the sea to a miniscule town of Amish proportions, I have decided to move to Iowa.  The standard response is, “Why Iowa?” or even better, “What’s in Iowa?”  A friend of mine that has lived in Iowa longer than I have lived in Seattle assures me, “I still get that question,” Even Iowans ponder the sanity of one that chooses to make a home there.  When the answer is, “to write” or “an endless sky” the sanity question is believed to be answered.  No, I do not have an interest in corn or pork.  Not that I don’t like corn, I am a vegetarian after all and corn is one of my favorite vegetables.  Yes, I do have favorites.  As you can see, my pork dreams are slim to none.

            Comparatively Iowa appears like a backwards choice compared to the bright lights of the city.  Seattle is impressive at night with the Space Needle as the torch, lighting up the diamonds of the sky.  Puget Sound puts on its best colors like rainbows melting in oil.  But by the light of the day, the paint wears off and Seattle is nothing more than a ten dollar whore, pockmarked and bruised with a sense of desperation.  Glittering condos take root within its heart, releasing the homeless like lice to hide in the alleys before it too is taken by modernization.  Coffee runs through the philosophical mania that twitches its limbs.  I am burdened by the city, easily bought and sold as it masquerades in liberalism.  The few bright lights that lurk within the grit are not enough to make it home.  Bitterness paired with high ideals does not make an eager resident.

            Centerville, Iowa has no bright lights.  There is no strip mall or super mall, no Starbucks or freeways.  Within the clutter of mom and pop stores, there is one Wal-Mart.  The buzzing of locusts at night cannot compete with the drilling of construction or the roar of heedless traffic in Seattle.  The beat is slow and steady, drumming quietly in the rushes of cornfields.  Beauty is found when one is not looking.  Shades of green are smudged with the love of Monet into the backdrop.  Perfection can not be found on Earth but I crave the silence over the kinetic trill of Seattle.  Picasso could have painted the sharp edges and uneven landscape of Seattle and with it, the landscape of my thoughts.  As my mind keeps ticking, so does the city and there is no rest for either.

            I am ready for something new.  A stillness to balance my restless dreams, a concept foreign and complex to me.  As I leave one life behind for another, I mourn for what I will lose.  The shedding of the skin is not easy.  The loss of the familiar can be frightening but I am affected more by the loss of people.  People I loved, people I liked and even those I could do without.  A woman defines her place in the world by the relationships she creates and none of mine will ever be same.  But we all are driven to the unknown, to achieve something greater than ourselves.  We must fulfill the impulse, the pulsing need, or wither beneath the stale sameness.  We are released from the cave of before, naked and raw, ignorant and complacent and enter a hostile world where we are shaped into people, formed and individualized so we, in turn, can guide others to do the same.  We are taken from the darkness by our own hidden instincts to find our better selves in the light of day.  It is a natural process to move on, start fresh and begin again as one life dies away.  We take what we’ve learned; who we’ve loved and keep what sustains us as we progress.  As Kahlil Gibran once wrote:

“Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
      It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
      You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
      But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.
      The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part”