Wayfarers All

"He rose and descended river-wards once more, then changed his mind and sought the side of the dusty lane.There, lying half-buried in the thick, cool under-hedge that bordered it, he could muse on the metalled road and all the wonderous world that it led to; on all the wayfarers, too, that might have trodden it, and the fortunes and adventures they had gone to seek or found unseeking - out there, beyond..."

From The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Cloud Shadows

It's nearly the end of May, the days passing like cloud shadows on the road.

The Tale Of The Sad Cheese Sandwich

It's been more than 7 years since I left Victoria, 7 years since I wrote this post, and 3 more weeks that I've been struggling to write this one. Writer's block rearing up from the unconscious like some ferocious beast.

It's silly, you know. It's just a post about a sandwich. How hard can it be? Yet nothing works. It's all too serious, or too funny, or just weird.

I tried to describe that time, how it felt, the white heat haze and infernal geometry of the streets. The dusty wind that rattled the palm trees. It all meant something, though what that was, it's beyond me to say. The way that despair shrinks all your existence into a tiny point in space and time. How surprisingly sad it can feel to leave a place you hate.

I was about to give up, when by pure happenstance an old email to a friend coughed up the original tale:

April 25, 2012 -

The adventures of sad cheese sandwich and the she-hulk, part 1

Okay, so...the only bright spot in my life right now is the purchase of a cheese sandwich at a shop not far from the Silence of the Lambs storage facility (not it's real name :p) which I have in the afternoon between shuffling my furniture around. (Don't judge! Even if my life has dwindled to this sorrowful and lonely point, it's still a pretty good sandwich.)

However...yesterday, a couple of guys tried to interfere with Sad Cheese Sandwich time by giving me grief. I remembered your advice to go all She-Hulk on anyone who gave me grief, so I did. Of course, these things are relative - I'm not very Hulk-like, but I did give them the German Sneer, which is quite devastating. So yay me. ;p

This amazes me, reading it now; not just that I'd totally forgotten the She-Hulk bit, but the chirpy, almost cheerful tone I'd taken in one of the most unhappy periods of my life. So unhappy that - that particular day while sitting in the parking lot with the fabled sandwich - I'd considered running away to the desert and letting the situation implode on its own.

Oh, but of course I didn't, I couldn't. Chirpiness aside, I made the reasonable and responsible choice. I couldn't risk my marriage or take the kids so far from their father, or send my mother to a home. No, I must go back, yield to family pressure and effectively put myself in bondage for the indefinite future. Yay, me.

I suppose that's why it still rankles, and why it haunts me. It was one of the last moments of autonomy I had. Victoria meant freedom to me, and I'd be lying if I said losing that doesn't hurt every day.

7 years later, what is the result? One child grown, one nearly so, the baby not a baby any longer. Of the pets we brought, only Misu, the fearless warrior queen, survives. The children are happy, they swear. My husband is happy. They have taken to this sere and rocky place in a way I never did.

I still have a cheese sandwich sometimes, but it's not the same.

We retrieved our belongings from storage long ago. Yet I still keep the key. It's symbolic, I guess.

Waiting for the day I can retrieve my autonomy.