It's gorgeous tonight. It really is. Not in a dramatic way--it's a little boring if you're looking for fantastic skies, but the moon is full and bright, and the sky is clear. There's a warm breeze blowing from the West, and the smell of damp leaves and dirt is in the air. It's a wonderful fresh smell. I am trying to bear in mind that March is going to come along soon and crush my hopes, but I love this, still. I wish I could sleep out tonight. (I guess technically I could, but I'm too much of a wimp to sleep flat on the hard ground with no mat, and too lazy to set up my hammock. Also, considering how much my body temperature drops when I go to sleep, I'd probably freeze.) After I brought Miley in from our walk, I went out into the back yard and squatted down beneath the moon, and brushed away the top layers of leaves, and pressed my palms into the thawing earth.
I get the feeling that I should write about people--in poetry, that is: I have the urge to write poetry--but I don't like them. Don't like people. Or don't like them close up. I am largely content to brush shoulders with humanity in my day-to-day life, working or going to the grocery store, and then to spend much of the remaining time alone. Lately. Mostly. I don't feel that I have the necessary focus to watch closely enough to write anything of value about a real human interaction. Not these days, anyway. I just like to be alone a lot.
I don't know why this is. I am torn between wanting to embrace it and wanting to fight it. I sometimes worry, in a small corner of my mind, that I will become an eccentric, crusty old woman, self-absorbed and with a misanthropic bent.
But there are people I love. Close up, even, though I often still do better with distance. With occasional real contact.
But is this something wrong with me, or is this just who I am? Is it okay for me to be so solitary and distant? Is it okay for me to feel so cold toward people? It isn't that I don't love; it's just that I would usually rather (or feel that I would rather) love from further back. Maybe. Goodnight.
(Desperado, why don't you come to your senses? Come down from your fences. Open the gate.)
There is something powerful, and so beautifully phrased, about your notion of wanting to love "close up, even."
ReplyDeleteI don't have depth perception, and things sometimes seem abruptly too close. Somehow this also relates to distances between people who love each other. To live in that shared space without losing all of oneself, one's own space.
I ramble. And I hope you find a balance that works for you.