I want to go to beautiful

[rowanf]

SFBay-GrizzyPeak.jpg
Originally uploaded by rowanf.

It is the season of the cold and grey and rain. Of being shocked by static when you touch anything. Of never being quite warm enough for very long (thank all the Powers for heated waterbeds). Every year I have dreams of chucking it all and moving to the tropics.

But I suspect that I would actually be a very bad ex-pat. It isn't just the culture shock of being in a new place; it is losing all the ties in the old one. Not just the difficulty of long distance friendships, but all the little things that define one in a place - the pharmacist who knows your name, the waiter who brings you your tea without asking, etc. Then there are the millions of tidbits of local knowledge - where to find good products in any category, who to call for that plumbing emergency, what restaurants serve locally grown food, which shop to go to for different cuts of meat, etc. Then there is living in California where I don't have to stop "flying my freak flag". Where I can dye my hair fuschia if I want to or get a new tattoo. And there are Pagan and interfaith communities where I can find beloved covenmates and work with colleagues and peers on meaningful projects.

And I am pretty change-averse. Just ask my nearest and dearests who have to hear me bitch about every UI change some device or program comes up with. And then there is the dealing with a bureaucracy in a foreign language with different customs. I would really suck at that. I kinda sucked at it in the same language when I moved to England in the early 1970s. And I remember how homesick and out-of-place I felt sometimes, despite a childhood as an Anglophile.

So yeah, I know, uprooting my life would likely be disruptive and alienating as well as potentially enlivening and rewarding (and warm).

And yet, yesterday I was sitting for hours in the Toyota dealership waiting for my car and listening to India Arie albums on my iPhone. And oh, how I was touched by "I want to go to beautiful, beautiful, beautiful" and "living inside the glow". (I suppose I should say that, by definition, beautiful for me would be warm.)

The time is right
I'm gonna pack my bags
And take that journey down the road
Cause over the mountain I see the bright sun shining
And I want to live inside the glow
Yeah



No idea why the embed isn't working - http://www.youtube.com/embed/pOfhbLn8fw8

Comments

[angiereedgarner.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of happy repeat expats were 3rd culture kids who learned the skills young to deal with the kinds of dislocations you describe, and take them for granted. For many of those "little" things, it's just as hard to move across town as to move across the world.

[rowanf.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know. I'm a military brat. I moved every 2-1/2 years or less up until I was in my 20s. I guess I'm just reality-policing myself because the wild geese are calling really loudly this year.

[angiereedgarner.livejournal.com]

Hope I didn't complicate any of your reality-policing then! :)

[rowanf.livejournal.com]

Hah. No worries. I am my own underminer - I follow at least three people on Facebook who post beach pictures from Costa Rica every day. This does not help on particularly grey days here. And having been laid off back in March makes me feel slightly less rooted and yet still intertwined with family and community that I am unwilling to leave. My fantasy self is an expat on a Costa Rican beach. My actual self is looking for another library job in the Bay Area and keeping up my friendship network and volunteer work. It is just that there are days....

[angiereedgarner.livejournal.com]

When I lived in Portland OR, every winter I had these really elaborate fantasies of moving to the southwest. Involving dust and becoming sun-baked like an old shoe and staring at cacti and I am not sure what else. I almost convinced myself it was some kind of past life thing (not seasonal affective trying to sort itself). But then I do now live in a place where 120F is a normal temperature, parts of the year!

[rowanf.livejournal.com]

I love your southwest fantasy! Too dry for me. I am a child of the tropics (two tours in Panama) and the South (I never lived north of the Mason-Dixon line). Deserts don't feel like home. But 85F year round... oh yes.

[angiereedgarner.livejournal.com]

I talked to ppl who did childhood time in tropics etc. and the deserts v. tropics expat preference seemed to come down to: bugs. Those that did not care for the bugs go for desert!

[rowanf.livejournal.com]

That makes total sense. I'm not much bothered by bugs, but I admit 30 years in California has spoilt me by their absence. :)