Somewhere
(Self-portrait at Papineau, March 24, 2012)
Where am I these days? Somewhere between the intimate familiar and the anonymous stream of the city. We're still living downtown while the renovation work continues on our apartment, and during that time we're traveling between a hotel, our apartment, and our studio using a combination of the metro, buses, our feet, and our car. The trip that used to take 15 minutes now takes 45 each way, but it's interesting: we slide into the flow and become riders, watchers, waiters, learning new paths and signs: the African shop at Peel; the Caribbean guitarist who plays each morning at the foot of the Papineau escalator; the searchlight on top of Ville Marie sweeping through the night sky.
One result of all the travel and moving around I've done over the last decade is that I've become much more comfortable with dislocation and change. I used to be very rooted to my home, which was very much my "home base," and it would take me a long time to adjust to being somewhere else, or to disruptions in daily life. Now I'm OK with living out of a suitcase for a while, or that odd feeling of waking up and not being quite sure, for those first minutes, of where I am. I used to experience a lot more anxiety, both before and during travel. The circumstances that have caused this shift have not all been happy or fortuitous, though some have; I guess that's just life and getting older, because change happens whether we want it or not. We can adjust, or we can fight it and suffer.
I had a long talk with a friend recently, about those sorts of things. She was thinking about her eventual retirement from a demanding, intense career, and beginning to plan ahead. We both observed that some people spend years in denial about aging and the changes that it brings, and then get blindsided because they simply aren't prepared once they actually retire, or face some limitation caused by health, a partner's death or illness, or some other change in life situation. It's as if some people become more reed-like as they age, more capable of coping with the gales that inevitably strike, and others become more brittle, more fragile, more prone to bitterness, anger, and remorse, and as a result, they often isolate themselves. What are we identified with? A job? Professional prestige? Children? Marriage? A home, a lifestyle? Physicality? Being "in the loop?"
I used to feel so much more brittle and fearful as I thought about what might happen, but now, as that "ïf" comes closer, I can see that I'm actually becoming somewhat softer, more flexible and more resiliant, more able to go with the flow of things -- and that gives me hope. Curiosity helps, humor helps...but mainly I think we have to face reality, think ahead, develop real interests and relationships that can sustain us later on, and, if possible, put ourselves into situations that mimic some aspects of a potential future. For me, that definitely won't be shuffleboard in Florida...!
(Hmmm...just noticed that this is my 1400th post since moving the blog to TypePad in May 2005.)
