I think I had forgotten this blog in the whirlwind of plane flights and group papers of the last month, but this morning I stumbled upon this in my Google Reader. It reminded me that maybe writing in here sometimes helps me organize my thoughts and feel more cohesive as a person than I do when I ignore this space for too long. Sometimes I think of this blog as a way to waste time, not as something that's actually helpful in my life. But thank you, Becoming Minimalist, for reminding me that there are more benefits to writing about my life than just procrastination.
So anyway.
Then, since we were in the area, Maggie and I spent all day yesterday in Boston, which was a new city for me. I'm sure the beautiful weather helped shape my opinion, but I really loved it there. I love their open spaces and weird-looking/confusing T stations and the mixture of old and new buildings. I felt like Boston would feel very homey if I lived there. But I thought the same thing about Austin and Seattle and Philadelphia and Antigua, Guatemala.
At our last woman club meeting, we read Great House by Nicole Krauss. The story is very centered on furniture, houses, and locations. I think part of the reason I responded to the book as much as I did is because I in some ways feel like the places where I am and the items that are around me do shape my life and my experience. I invest a lot of meaning in the ugly end tables my mother pawned off on me so she could get new ones or in the house on Cary Street (even when the doorknob fell off or the sideyard was full of uncooked meat and cornhole or the chestnut pods were stabbing my feet through my shoes). These things and these places have in some way impacted my life and made it different than it would have been otherwise. I put feelings and memories into furniture and into trees in my parents' yard. I think this process of growing into and around my belongings and my space is part of why I always love anywhere I live and then feel nostalgic about it after I've gone. It becomes a part of me, a part of my growth and development.
When I visit new places, I always picture how I would situate a life there, how me and my furniture and my habits would fit in when I first moved and how they (we) would all change the longer I lived there. Sometimes I think I could live almost anywhere and dig out a small niche of comfort and home and be satisfied. I'm lucky I ended up in DC because I feel like it's made me create a more ambitious life than I would have some other places. If I'd moved back to Roanoke, I wouldn't have felt as motivated to go to grad school, for example. If I'd moved somewhere else, maybe I wouldn't have tried online dating for that short time. I probably wouldn't have started hosting trivia somewhere else either. Or have joined a woman club(!). In so much of what I do, I see the cause being where I am and what and who are around me.
I had a grand idea of where this was going when I started, but I'm obviously out of practice at organizing my thoughts for internet publication. Mostly I am happy to have spent time in some new cities in the last year because it's been fun to (1) see how friends are living there but also (2) imagine what I would be like under the influence of that place. Everywhere is just so quirky and exciting!
I'll probably be posting some pictures from my recent travels pretty soon. You know I got some good pictures of the Boston Public Library.
1 comment:
i have very fond memories of that awful doorknob and the chestnut pods when i think of all the fun happy times in that house. and i had forgotten about the meat until i read that.
sometimes i think that wherever i've lived was the exact perfect place for me to have lived in that exact time in my life. does that make sense?
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