That Blue in the Periphery

When you wake, the first thing you hear is the wind in the trees. If the wind is down, then the waves, against the red rocks of the shoreline. It is the utter lack of human racket that strikes you, while you are still sleepy, the absence of traffic, voices, car doors, front doors, or dogs (besides your own). You feel yourself unspooling stress after a few days of listening waking slowly, and your posture straightens, your chest broadens, and you sleep more soundly.

And yet, after a few days, after a week, after a month, you must return home. You go back to the landscape of human clatter and few moments of stillness, the remembered lives and work that you have built for yourself.

The lake, the aspens, the blue tongue of the waves all start to evaporate, and you pick up your cell phone, check your email, and turn on the tv. Maybe even your misanthropy rears its head again—there always someone else in front of you, no matter where you go.

When you are not too entrenched in the A to B trajectory, if you sit in your car for one moment longer, hands to the wheel and you look up at the sky, you may come to the conclusion, This is not working out for me.

Yes, there are Thai and Jamaican restaurants near your house, an intricate byway of bike paths, and prairie gardens of native plants in some of your neighbors’ yards. But you can’t stop feeling like you can’t fully inflate your lungs.

You remember, just last week, I saw 10 pileated woodpeckers in three days.

But it is not, as if, your hours away were devoid of all other human-made noises. A car driving down the gravel road, the sound of a hammer far off, voices off the water from a boat, the phone ringing. And at home, there are answers how to push aside the cemented world—you’ve heard about them, tried running, gardening, yoga, meditation, a hike in the woods. No matter, you can find a legion of excuses to prevent you from attending to your core’s quiet refueling. Guilt takes innumerable shapes.

There is just so much talking, so much static caroming around inside your skull, that everything feels tangled, knotted, taut.

But don’t we take our burdens from place to place, that if you are unhappy in one place, won’t you be in another?

So then, how long can you hang onto that smooth stone of tranquility once you return to where you left off?