Perhaps the conversation Mikey and I most circle back to is the one about place. We name what we love about life in southern NM. And we name what's missing and talk about the struggle around trying to compensate for what's missing. We fantasize about what other places might be like. Our imaginations span the world. Then we remember the term "geographic depression" and wind up back where we started, naming what we love about southern NM. This little mental game usually delivers me back to one of the intentions I had when I moved here. And that was to discover the part of myself that was impervious to place, time, situation and environment. I came here at a time in which I wanted to reveal the source of happiness in myself. I was reminded of this, and prompted to post about it, when I read our friend Christian's blog post on the same subject. I signed in relief, "we're not the only ones!"
Our lists usually look a bit like this. . . we love the natural beauty of the area, appreciate the ease of a low cost life in which we can experience the cycles without the unnatural clock and near urgent need to earn lots of money, we feel free from endless marketing and branding and enjoy genuine community. In short this place invites us to feel free on a certain fundamental level.
What we struggle with: we miss being around a youthful creative culture in which communities form to engage in creating solutions to problems, we miss the energy that exists around such communities (healthy competition, stimulation, knowledge sharing, collaboration, newness), and we miss great entertainment and creative ways to experience ecstatic state.
Christian's post sites the Buddhist view that "all suffering comes from attachment." Funny . . . I'd just been contemplating how a dead animal laying roadside hit by a truck and a blossoming rose in it's perfect state come from the same ground of being, the void from which all comes. Like Christian I'm taking myself to the task of producing my happiness and not allowing myself to blame place for the areas of my dissatisfaction.
Like all good questions this question about place is one to live with. I don't expect my mind produce an answer, I expect my life to, that is if I'm living will full gusto. I can also probe my imagination. Perhaps we are reaching the right time for people to change how they geographically congregate. Currently geographic community is based on money and jobs an a little bit on preference for landscape and climate (for those with the luxury to make that choice). At the same time the system that has been the primary organizing principal for how we have geographically gathered is degenerating and becoming less reliable. This opens up the possibility for newness. Mikey and I are always wondering, "when will other folks who can work via the internet migrate to rural areas?" Another question that comes to mind is, '"when will people collectively solve their problems rather than individually?" And surely there are many more reasons that people can come together in a place and more ways to view place. . . . well, that can be another post for another day.
2 comments:
i enjoyed this extemporaneous prose! it reads like thought flows. these posts are why i love blogs - real, introspective, illuminating, and full of wonder. thanks for a glimpse into your perspective of space and place
i needed to read both this post as well as christian's post (though i hardly feel sorry for him, lol - taos would be a huge cultural jump from THIS neck of the woods).
i am definitely making myself unhappy here by thinking about the things i lack - on one hand, yeah - i think okay, maybe i need to just find my OWN inner happiness... on the other, i've definitely come to cement a few things that i'd like to have in my life, and how important they are to me - one being a consistent and tightknit community that does not exist where we are. we're both happy and sad we're leaving but... i just don't see this as the best place to raise a kid and guess what? we're having one.
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