pull up a chair

there are no palms out my window. no kitschy drive-ins in sunset shades of bubblegum pink and peach and aqua. no deco movie-house spires piercing the clouds, lit up in the night, ablaze with neon beacons. 

instead, there is drab. limbs without leaves. birdhouses atilt thanks to gale-force winds in recent days. patches of snow still dot the brick walk back to the sodden alley, where a potage of wet leaves and muck and the detritus of winter all signal: these are the middlelands, where exotic is distant, and gray the predominant shade. 

i’m home. and decidedly taking note of the vast gap—chromatic and otherwise— between LA and chicago. LA and my leafy little village. yes, there is a grand grand lake. but the waves are nowhere near pacific. and the water’s edge not so dramatic. 

we live here in the middlelands. in more ways than geography. and it made me wonder. it made me think. 

this old house is more than familiar. i know it by heart. it’s held me for decades now. i know its creaks, and which doors stubbornly refuse to close. i know which light switch is finicky. and just how to light the front middle burner. 

we hold each other’s whispers. 

this old house has heard me cry. and felt that rapid clip of my footfall when racing toward the door, because someone i love is knocking. 

this old house knows my ways. how, pretty much, day after day, i awake before dawn, sit my bum on this bench, this bench where the cushion conforms and the wide-plank maple below is scuffed from all the years of my soles rubbing against the grain. 

we humans make home where we are. where we land. but, now home from the land of abundant abundance—abundant color, abundant whim and whimsy, abundant greenscape and vertiginous terrain—i wonder how the drab infuses me. are we a less colorful people for the monochrome we’re up against? 

or is home, in the end, the comfort that’s closest to the skin? the factor that completes the equation?

it’s something of a koan: might we be more colorful souls if we lived amid color? or do we make up for the lack thereof by sparking our very own rainbows?

is it the familiar, the cozy comfort of our surrounds, that’s the deeper, truer source of what fuels us? 

how best to eke what we can out of this one shot of life? 

to step into the unfamiliar is to open the lid on the sorts of queries we’d otherwise miss. which might be the wisest reason of all to pack up a suitcase and head—for a spell—for the hills—hollywood’s or beyond.

i know i’ll adjust, because that’s what we do. we could live in a box if we had to. 

the bright hues of the city of angels will fade. i’ll forget the neon of the nimoy lighting the night. 

any day now, the snowdrops will rise, and the redbud will break out in a string of little red knots strewn along each branch. the pace of home will pick up, will sweep me into the current, and once again i’ll find myself sated. 

but for now, in the interlude, in the space between there and here, i am wondering just how much it affects us deep down in the soul. and if, in our time here, we’d be wise to consider the backdrop in which we settle our lives.

it might account for the fact that day after day, here in the drab land, i slip my old arms into the nubbiest sweater of gray you ever did see: my uniform in winter, here where gray is a hue of many colors.

have you a place you’ve visited that made you wonder why you didn’t call it home? and what might your life be like if you up and transplanted your very sweet self? (mistake not the questions stirred for any serious thought of transplant; for one, i could never afford SoCal; for two, i’ve no intention of pulling up stakes, no matter how sumptuous someplace else might be…)

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time and again, i find myself drawn into the orbit of pablo neruda, the late great chilean poet-diplomat and nobel laureate. time, in particular, is a subject at the core of my many contemplations. in Elemental Odes, neruda’s collection of odes to everyday objects—tomatoes, artichokes, soap—he laid out his most explicit instruction for how to hold time:

Listen and learn.
Time
is divided
into two rivers:
one
flows backward, devouring
life already lived;
the other
moves forward with you
exposing
your life.
For a single second
they may be joined.
Now.
This is that moment,
the drop of an instant
that washes away the past.
It is the present.
It is in your hands.
Racing, slipping,
tumbling like a waterfall.
But it is yours.
Help it grow
with love, with firmness,
with stone and flight,
with resounding
rectitude,
with purest grains,
the most brilliant metal
from your heart,
walking
in the full light of day
without fear
of truth, goodness, justice,
companions of song,
time that flows
will have the shape
and sound
of a guitar,
and when you want
to bow to the past,
the singing spring of
transparent time
will reveal your wholeness.
Time is joy.
—Pablo Neruda

photo credit above: will kamin, 2011. AP photography senior portfolio, new trier high school.