My dear friend Jenny and her husband – who live out in Phoenix – had moved here. They stopped in to say hello and let us know – Oh, by the way, we live two doors down now. SUCH a happy surprise! I was thrilled and flat out blown away.
When I stepped outside to watch all the move-in action, I got the next bit of wonder – they’d brought their entire house, the fruit trees from their backyard and this long row of six foot tall, Alice-in-Wonderland-ish flowers.
Apparently, shifting their home (and flora!) 2,600 miles across the country was cheaper than buying a crib here. Huh...OK. In DreamWorld, this made tremendous financial sense.
The next shocker was that here wasn’t Valhalla by the Sea. Our neighborhood looked more like the rolling hills around Hoosick Falls. We were at the top of tall slope with a gorgeous view of the undulating Arcadian landscape below.
Me without my sea?! Wouldn’t this be mega horror show-esque? No. It was unexpected but cool.
Every time I’m up that way, I fall in mad love with the countryside. Its rich, xtreme beauty dazzles me senseless. I’m forever fantasizing about living there, surrounded by the stunning views of endless mountains and trees. Now that I think of it, I’m like this whenever I visit Ptown. Brattleboro and the Isle of Skye too.
I think what I’ve got, what I come down with, is a bad case of sehnsucht. Was ist das? It’s a German word which, according to Google Translate means nostalgia, yearning, desire BUT the word carries WAY more freight than that.
C.S. Lewis defines it as the inconsolable longing in the heart for we know not what.
AND
…that unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves. (source)Yup. I’m there.
Granted, and you can take this to the bank, if I moved to the wooded mountains of Vermont or Upstate New York, I’d be all painfully wistful for the ocean. Maybe, next dream, Jenny and John could move their house here to the coast?
I find that I am very backward-looking. I do romanticize the past, even (or especially) those parts of the past where I was too busy looking backwards from that point to notice how great they were.
ReplyDeleteNot sure whether it goes deeper, to the notion of sehnsucht. But there is a longing.
I think my alternative reality meanderings are just that. Too bad we can't live in a thousand dimensions at once.
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