April 01, 1999
Monochrome World?
Well, I thought about pulling some sort of April Fool's joke for my journal entry, but I couldn't really come up with anything clever enough. So instead, I went and created a notify list, woohoo! If you're interested in joining, just so you can be among the first to hear when I update... there's a link at the bottom of the page.
I'm still hacking and coughing from last week. I'm pretty sure it's bronchitis, again. It's an annual thing. Here's what pisses me off. Every year I get this, and every year, after I've been coughing about a week, my doctor tells me to come on in. I called them today to set up an appointment. First they tell me that they don't have any appointments free for a week. Then they have me talk to a nurse to (and I quote) "triage my call". The nurse talks to me for a while, and then tells me to take some cough syrup and call back if it gets worse. I think it's time to find a new clinic. This one's just a wee bit too crowded. If I'd had enough breath, I would have yelled at her. I am going to stop and get the cough syrup on the way home, though.
Yesterday was as perfect an early spring day as Michigan ever comes up with. I mean perfect. When I went out for lunch, it was 74 degrees and sunny, and best of all... windy. I love windy days. I always have. There's just something about feeling the wind blowing through my hair. Sometimes I think that's one of the biggest reasons I keep my hair long, just so I can feel the wind tugging at it on windy days. I can remember being a kid and standing on our front porch when it was windy, and pretending I was on a cruise ship (well, granted, this was the 70s, so I'll admit it: I pretended I was on The Love Boat - I'm so ashamed!). I suppose if I were the same kid now, I'd be pretending I was Kate Winslet or something. Yup. I'm pretty sure I would be. Hey, I never claimed to have had any taste as a child. Didn't I just mention watching "The Love Boat"?
Anyway... since yesterday was so gorgeous, I spent my lunch hour at a park here in town. It's a great little place. Very wooded, with a good sized stream running through it. Give me a bench there on a windy, sunny day, and I'm completely happy. I sat there, and I marvelled at how much color there was around me. It's amazing how monochrome my visual world usually is. I work in an office with no window view. My world is hedged in by cubicle walls, all gray. Neutral office furniture. Fluorescent lighting. You get the idea. My home space isn't much better, in terms of color. White apartment walls. I've never been much of a decorator. Having things on my walls just for the sake of having things on my walls has never appealed. I like the things on my walls to actually have some sort of meaning to me. Finding those things takes a while. Usually those sorts of things find you.
So. Monochrome world. Most people would go mad, right? I realized why I don't. In fact, I realized why it's taken me two years to even recognize the 'dullness' of my external surroundings. Most of my focus, most of my attention, gets turned inward. I do most of my living inside my head. Well, the parts of living that really count, anyway. Where my external world is colorless and bland, my internal world is vibrant, alive, rich. My imagination and my thoughts color and decorate that world. My headspace is a place I've carefully cultivated - grown throughout the years to a place where I can be anything I want to be, try anything I want to try. I do a lot of living in my imagination. It's a place where I'm very comfortable. Care and feeding of this interior space is pretty easy: lots of music, reading, writing, role-playing... everything contributes.
Here's the catch. No balance. It takes a 'real' experience, like being in the park yesterday, to point out that the physical world itself can contribute to the internal world as well, if I let it. The divider between my internal and my external walls needs to be more like a cell wall than a brick wall. Osmosis between the two worlds is a good thing.
