It's crazy. I'm finally at a point in this vacation where I yearned to be. Only took 13 days.
The house is completely empty of people except for Austin who is still sleeping soundly this morning. I'm lying on the couch doing exactly nothing except staring out the windows at the gray sky and trees with flittering leaves in the foreground. Another big window contains the same gray sky with a gray lake rippling left to right with hazy purple hills on the other side. I can hear the trucks and cars in the distance on the highway up behind the house. It's like soothing waves of the ocean. The cheap decorative clock on the wall over my head has a lovely, just loud enough, tick tock that adds to the monotonous, droning sounds.
It's the perfect conditions for thinking or writing. I always heard of people escaping to be alone in a quiet place to write. I always wanted to have a chance to do that. I'm pretty ok being alone. And I don't mind being alone with my thoughts.
But I've got to learn how to be quiet and alone when I'm not the perfect atmosphere as I am now. Being quiet and alone are the only ways to organize my thoughts. To have a chance to let my mind wander without distractions.
And it's been building. I thought maybe I don't need to write anymore. And maybe I don't. Maybe it s just this setting that I imagined if I were a writer, it's how I saw myself doing it. However, the longer I go thinking without writing, the more distressed I feel and become. I need the outlet. And I enjoy the feedback if I get lucky to get any.
So even after this little vacation where conditions seem perfect today, I need to figure out when conditions are not perfect, but instead normal, how to create a gray quiet morning in my mind. I need to learn how to imagine a lulling backdrop. I need to figure out how to escape and be alone even when activity is around or chores and projects are calling me.
So what am I thinking or wanting to write about? I've asked myself this over and over while being too busy to actually do either of them, and also thinking maybe I don't have anything I need to write about anymore.
But the more I consider it, I feel like I'd really love to explore where I am spiritually or philosophically, that is, if I am anywhere at this point. That's what I think about the most these days. I'd love to immerse myself in remembering all the monumental turning points where I thought -- this is something, that was something. And ask now, what that something? Or did I just force it to be something?
I know the memories will only be impressions at this point, but impressions are what shapes us and gives the framework to who we are. I'd like to sit with those impressions and thoughts. I'd like to see if I can put in words for myself who I am now and how I got here.
For example, if I were to start today, perhaps I'd start with the memory of when I "walked down the aisle" in church to "become a Christian". I put those in quotes because those phrases now seem so churchy. I mean, unless you grew up with that vocabulary, who would understand what either of them mean?
So there. I think I'd start with that story the next time I find the quiet.
But now I must go get Mr. Austin his meds and get his day started. We are a little off schedule here in Montana. The late sunsets make us think it's much earlier than it is. So we stay up quite late and Austin sleeps in late. The mornings really are the perfect time for me to think the thoughts if I can figure out how to be alone. I got lucky today.
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