Windswept Words

Change

Posted on July 1, 2011 Updated on May 30, 2018

Humans are such creatures of habit.

We yearn for change, for tides and storms to break the uniformity of our days.

But when change comes, we recoil; we are unnerved, thrown into disarray, suddenly clinging to what we know, what is familiar.

Whether a change in city, neighbourhood, house, colleagues, friends.

Even the arrangement of books on a shelf, or spices in the kitchen cupboard – it agitates us.

Maybe it’s a sign of aging. Or maybe it’s just me, an earthbound Taurus.

The sea is beautiful, but standing on the shore looking out upon the interminable flatness, the ceaseless motion, I am intimidated. The sea does not calm me.

I prefer land, the solidity of a mountain, the rootedness of a good weathered tree  – feet firm on the earth yet a head in the sky, nodding in the breeze, whispering leafy music, growing stronger, reaching higher.

I wish to be like that tree – not the water, not the ocean, heaved and hurled about with its vagaries – but to mature with the seasons, to sing with the clouds, to know my own depth.

When I was younger, the idea of being a carefree, freewheeling itinerant excited me – it was romantic, it was adventurous, it was what the heroines in my favourite novels were like – and a part of me still clings to that notion.

But a bigger part has accepted that I am earthbound – I am not not made of air, or fire, or water, but of deep, dense, redolent earth. I need to sow, to nest, to reap, to have spontaneity with order, to keep the scissors in the right drawer, to adore a particular film, writer, song, person; to be attached.

New York is becoming home.