Reading Lamp

Reading Lamp

It is mid-February, and all of Cape Cod is drifting in waves and waves of snow. Since seven this morning, the northeast wind has been picking up great dervishes of it, plastering windows, sealing doors, bending the old pines, creating a silence deep in its roar.

In one of those chance pre-blizzard encounters at the supermarket, I talked with a woman who said she hated winter and wished she lived in the Pacific Northwest, specifically southern Oregon, where the weather was temperate, the towns were small, and it seemed like paradise to her.

Almost everyone has an opinion about the perfect place to live. A friend loves France, my niece favors California, my sister would like a city (Boston or New York), other friends prefer Italy, Ireland, Canada, Florida, Maine, New Mexico. Climate seems to be a big factor, but there are others: cultural vitality, natural beauty, diversity, values, the rhythms of a place.

When I visit a city or another part of the country or a road-trip destination, I dream about living there: morning coffee in a sunny courtyard; market day in the village square; a little crooked house in an old literary town; a scrappy garden overlooking the sea; the sound of palm trees in the humid breeze; sidewalk cafes in the early evening; lectures and concerts; walks through bewitching forests. My imagination takes over, and daily life glows without dust, monthly bills, the routine of measured ways.

I look around my house with its reading lamps, wing chairs, funky kitchen, cluttered workroom, little stove, no longer sure if I inhabit this house or this house inhabits me, it is all so familiar, the boundaries so long gone. I hear the blizzard whistling around the corners, cracking the maples, and know that tomorrow there will be shoveling, icicles, cancellations, possible roof dams, inconveniences, perhaps hardship.

And yet, I choose to live here in this place of sea and seasons, of responsibilities, of daily patterns and habits. A paradise that includes the mundane and the measured. Opening my eyes only to the faraway and its charms, while remaining blind to the nearby and its imminent wonders, seems like a great waste.

Magic is here too…right before my eyes as I look out at the snow rendering the landscape strange and unknown. The awareness is up to me.