Today I heard someone on a video meeting casually express an interest in moving to another city, as if that were normal, natural, and doable. As if everyone were doing it, or had done it, or will do it at some point in the future. I didn't hear any angst in their voice. Instead, I heard a sense of excitement, as if a move was an impending adventure. The exciting part, it sounded like, was the mystery of the move. Where might I go, they mused. I could go anywhere!
What if choosing a new city to live in really could be an adventure?
I don't know what criteria the person was applying to help them narrow down their choices. Me, my criteria are pretty simple: clean, safe, affordable, AC and heat, and internet. Oh, a place to park would be good. A lot of cities and towns meet my criteria. It's not like I'm asking for a hot tub and a butler.
A few minutes ago, while I was doomscrolling on a social media channel, I was presented with a video about hermit crabs exchanging shells. The gist was that even if the shell you end up with is too small, too dingy, and has a hole in it, you'd better take it, because having a crummy shell is better than having no shell at all. Homelessness is fatal for a hermit crab. The last hermit crab in the shell exchange skulked into the defective shell, looking somewhat embarrassed and demoralized at failing to have scored something better. Was it too slow? Should it have put its name on a waitlist sooner, even before seeing the shell?Wait, what? Am I talking about me or am I talking about a hermit crab? The lines are somewhat blurred these days. Is confusion really a state of grace? More like evidence of dementia.
I've been trying to come up with metaphors to explain the doings in my head. The latest metaphor is a little complicated.
Imagine you are immersed in a big bucket of gunky water that is just over your head. Sometimes your feet touch the bottom of the bucket, but most of the time you are floating with your nose above the water. Now picture a toy train running on a track past your gunky bucket. It's a small town, so the train goes by your bucket every minute or so. Here's the fun part. Every time the train goes by, some bored kid reaches out the train window and slaps the side of your bucket.
You don't have time to curse the kid because you are busy for the next ten or fifteen seconds trying to maintain your equilibrium in the sloshing bucket. The water slams you this way and that, up and down, from side to side. It's all you can do to stay upright and not go under. Sometimes you do go under. You feel pressure moving through your sinuses in uneven waves as you fight for your balance. While this is going on, your right ear crackles. That's the train whistle. Whoo whoo!
Finally, the water begins to settle. You start to feel a little more normal. The crackling din in your right ear fades to silence. You resume whatever you were doing before the bucket started sloshing.
A minute later, the train comes around the track again, and that stupid kid slaps the side of your bucket. Whoo whoo!
This scenario describes what is happening in my head. I'm normally a pretty calm person, but I'd kill that kid if I could, just saying.
I find it difficult to maintain my focus when the train is roaring through the station in my head, upsetting the bucket and tipping my ear into bedlam. I have to admit, the noise and pressure get to me sometimes. At times, I feel like ramming a pencil into my ear, just to see what would happen, sort of a DIY tympanoplasty. The bubbly ENT I saw last year suggested we try that as a remedy for the crackling, even though it probably wouldn't work, she said, and insurance wouldn't cover it, and it would hurt like hell.
Maybe it would hurt, but maybe it would relieve the pressure and muffle the crackling. Pain could be a pathway into something else. Probably more pain, but maybe it would at least be quiet. I really crave solitude and silence.
How much of my physical disability is factoring into my desire to move to someplace small, slow, and quiet? Where's the adventure in this? I'm not seeing it right now but I'm sure it's here somewhere.
