In a Foreign Land

I dreamed that it was winter. I was in the Davis Square area of Somerville (AKA Slumberville), wearing my grandmother’s big black, faux fur collared and cuffed coat. It was night and I was running down a tree lined side-street – sprinting so fast that, in each stride, only my toes hit the pavement. I was practically flying.

Was I running from something? Nope. Just jetting.

In this dream, I was an unknown, a newbie, an outsider trying to find a spot within a local co-op clay studio. Got one – I’d be their glaze mixer. But I was still the outsider, a foreigner, only there on sufferance.

Running – was I trying to outpace rejection, the inevitable DQ?

Here in Wakey-Wakey World, to some degree, I’ve always felt that way. That I am everywhere and forever the outsider. Possibly this is why I enjoy travel so much – as a visitor to a foreign land it's just expected that I'll be different, an oddity, that I won't match the drapes.

In a another counrty I am, finally, appropriate – as I should be – offbeat, at variance and out of step. It's a relief.

We are always the same age inside.
~ Gertrude Stein

I'm 60 (JUST!), at decades distance from my old always-the-new-weird-kid childhood, my College Bitch carnival years and those first not-punk-enough/too-hippyish Cambridge years, but I'm still toting those old thoughts and fears. I do believe it's past time to ditch them. N'est-ce pas?

And, quite possibly, I’m headed for a Stuart Smalley kind of a morning and that's OK.

In a Foreign Land – The Kinks