outer-jessie's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- detached I can't believe it's been less than one presidential term since I first came here. I don't feel like the same person anymore. I was reading over my entries from just two years ago, and I don't even remember feeling, never mind actually feel the way I described. It's like I'm someone else entirely. Even my feelings for Cambridge are different now. I never came to love it while I was there...in fact I kind of hated it in many ways. But when I look back on it I miss it. I miss the lifestyle. I miss the location. It's place-based in some way or other. (This phrase is being borrowed from American Indian education -- it means what it says.) I never liked Cambridge because it was dirty and the people were ill-mannered and crass, but I love the *place* underneath all that. The land, the climate, the animal life, and the subtle, hard-to-put-your-finger-on subconscious effect the sum total of the place has on people's souls. Even if they want to ignore it, reshape it, make it totally unrecognizable when they're done. Tucson is beautiful. I love it deeply. It takes my breath away every time I step outside, which is sadly not too often (it's really really hot out there). I love living here and seeing the desert fold and unfold, the smell of it, the creatures running around on it, human and non-human. But it's not my place. This, I think, is quite the bum deal. That a place has some magnetic effect on me when I had no idea...here I thought I was free to live and love wherever I wanted, when come to find out I'm just a New England girl who misses the smell of the ocean and the feel of a drizzly day and the crunch of leaves under her feet. And fall. God, you'd never know how much you'd miss fall until you went to a place that never knew it existed. I hope, I really hope, that this new me that's taken me over is just a result of the busy life I've taken up and will someday take back down. I hope. But I suspect there are other things going on. The city here, and the people I know in it, are all spread out. I feel unloved, unknown. I miss community. I miss being silly. God I miss being silly! I wonder what I'll be when I grow up. 9:36 p.m. - 2004-08-08 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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