Duality

                I remember the car ride to Iowa very well. I was smelly after 16 plus hours but so many valuable things happened along the trip. This made 16 plus hours bearable in the eve of the December months. I can be impulsive and my heart is wild to the core. I didn’t bat much of an eye lash for moving to another country. My hidden family credo had been: “Home comes from within.” Home wasn’t in the money that was recklessly dumped into furniture or the four walls of a shambled home on the out skirts of a blossoming inner city. No, home came from within.
                 I lived a dual life. One half of me wanted to run wild in the wood like a time honored priestess paying homage to her bygone god. While the other half thrived in the masses of the concrete jungles like a bohemian artist living off the cultural prison of their own design. The only way I could find true release was to keep at least one of them well fed and catered to. But everything comes with a price. Cities are great preying ground for social predators and as the numbing news came to show, it was.

                For those of your out there that don’t understand what I’m talking about let me just fill you the same way my abnormal psych teacher informed me. Your brain can only take so much. After prolonged exposure to stressful stimuli, your brain eventually becomes numb to it. Every day there would be talk of stabbing, murders and hold ups. My brain grew its buffer like an unnoticed callus. It’s tough to feed your inner wild child with a buffer in place. Through a series of long winded events I came to live in America’s best kept secret, Iowa.

                Sure it had its down side. But don’t all laid plans of mice and men? Here I found the solitude I craved so deeply. The dualities of personality were coming to a revolt. Here, there was no concrete jungle to feed my inner Bohemian artist or place that was safe enough for me to howl at the moon. What was a girl to do?

                In the lonely, cold nights, I would look outside and I would feel comfortable. It had been noticed once that when anyone put me outside I could calm down easier. Only a few weeks had passed and I was beginning to feel “unconformable” in my new “home.” I worked hard to make sure that nothing where I was staying changed. I didn’t know how long I was going to be there but none the less I kept my bags packed. For months, I kept my things in a grab and go order. It was easier that way.

                I yearned for my concrete jungle, the subway systems, and the loud and rowdy restaurant that only authentic Greek restaurants could acquire. But here I was in the opposite of what I had grown to know. It was the fresh start that I had always yearned for and now that I had found it or rather attained it, something in the heart of my soul felt disconnected. Everything external seemed disposable and I couldn’t identify anything I could connect to. The revolution inside seemed to rage louder every day. My inner self was growing more discontent with the day.

                But that is when the strangest thing happened, I simply looked outside. It came to me in a gnarled fog like haze. It twisted arms reached toward heaven like demons homesick for the loving grace of god. Weathered indented inlay of bark wrapped itself around the contorted figure like finely fitted latex boots. They stood centennial over the land in a fashion that the British guard could only envy. The revolution quieted and stilled itself. I didn’t to touch them or get in touch with them.  To view them for the art that they are gave me a sense of piece. It fed both side of my personalities somehow. The trouble inside quieted. It was outside each day that I woke and everywhere I sent.  But I didn’t just look outside, I became the outside. Where were answers to my sorrow? Would I ever be able to sate both demons inside? Whatever the answers, I know they are in the trees.