Looking for home on 3000 square meters of sand...
I’m a slovenly writer, so I know what you must be thinking… another post so soon? And by you I mean random reader of the internet, though we both know you’re probably an insomniac blood relation.
Well, I’m up in the middle of the night again, too, pondering humanity’s precarious state of existence as well as more mundane things, like the very low traffic this blog gets.
I checked, but WordPress SEO analytics doesn’t say anything about my lack of discipline. Or my inability to follow through. Or the pandemic-induced stress that’s sucking the life-force from my body and mind, resulting in an overindulgence in chocolate, chips and wine. But it does say my limited audience has to do with the following factors:
1. Sentences are too long.
2. Paragraphs are too long.
3. Excessive use of em dashes.
4. Not enough images.
Which brings me to the point of this post – and all others – along with the foray into SEO analytics: I might be an introvert but I still want to communicate. I want to bridge some dark expanse, to make a connection. But right now, everything other than my immediate family seems as distant as those lights across the field.
Meanwhile, my immediate family is way too close. When they’re not busy complaining about the sucky wifi or the injustice of homeschooling, the kids play the childhood classic he/she-started-it until we’re all screaming.
And M – fielding conference calls in sweatpants – generally fails to sweep me off my feet these days. Even now, fast asleep, the sound of his breath is driving me crazy.
After everyone is up, I’m off. (Six word sentence and paragraph – take that, SEO analytics.)
As I walk across the fields, the glass-half-empty-me takes over with a litany of questions:
Why aren’t we closer to the lake?
Is there mould in the bungalow?
Are there rats in the barn?
Will the trees ever grow?
When will we manage to apply for planning?
Have we gotten in over our heads?
Of all places, what am I doing here?
I stop at the edge of the lake’s marshy outcropping. The long grasses around me shift in the wind. A crane soars above. When I turn back, a rabbit darts across my shadow. Cows graze in the distance. Following the furrows of cut grass along the edge of an irrigation ditch, I stumble over a large, round heap that turns out to be a nest.
Some bird (the crane?) has decided this spot was as good as any. Home is a mindset, I’m reminded: it can be anywhere.
M is sowing seeds when I return and I have to admit he makes a dashing wannabe-farmer on this beautiful morning.
21.04.20