Yesterday and this morning both, I started the morning with something akin to a mild anxiety or panic attack at the prospect of heading home. This happened to me this summer when I prepared to board the plane from Indianapolis to home, my subconscious self revolting at the notion of being back in Berkeley.
I asked myself yesterday, what is it about being in Ashland that lets me relax and lower my shields? Undoubtedly, the lack of work or home life stress helps. But it’s more than that. If I imagine life in Berkeley without my current job pressures and with the boys and house being tended, and yeah that takes one whopper of an imagination, but if I can pull off that illusion in my head, it still does not calm my heart beat. Something else is going on.
Yesterday I calmed myself by spending two hours in the wooded Lithia Park, hiking and running trails. I convinced myself midway through that Sandy and I needed to buy or rent a place here in Ashland to which I could bring the boys every summer. I would plan my work life around having a sabbatical every summer, the boys would do Shakespeare and/or forest camps, and I could roam the woods and write like I did this week. After I texted Ted my new plan, he reminded me that summer in Oregon is like an oven. When the forest fires are blazing, it’s like a wood fire oven. The weather that I am enjoying is November weather. So the fantasy went, poof. But I realized isolation and solitude energizes me; even in the presence of people there is an anonymity here that fuels rather than depletes.
Through my years in Bloomington and the Bay Area, until Berkeley, I never lived in the same place long enough to be known. In San Francisco, in particular, I could be camouflaged in broad daylight. With a population of 100, 000 people Berkeley should also afford some invisibility. Throw in the fact that Berkeley, Albany, Oakland, El Cerrito, and Richmond are basically a fluid mega-opolis, and since most people work in San Francisco, there should be plenty of people to hide amongst. But it’s funny how years of routine strip away the veils. I bike or walk virtually everywhere, thus I have configured a life around proximity. I work in Berkeley. For six years, I have lunched at the same restaurants in downtown near my office. I shop in Berkeley at the same places at the same time on the same day of the week. I repeatedly see numerous service providers: doctors, chiropractor, dentist, stylist, therapists, and more, in Berkeley. After my medical troubles of 2014, at the pharmacy in central Berkeley where thousands are served, the staff and pharmacists know me. When I approach the counter they greet me by name already pulling up my electronic file. I smile and wave daily at the same people as I walk or bike home from work, as they too follow their respective routines. I encounter the same parents picking up their children at school. I know my neighbors’ names and socialize with many of them. Berkeley is my village.
A couple of months ago a routine-thing happened to me, but it struck me then, and ever since, I have been rolling it around in my mind. Lee and I had gone for a Friday afternoon run along the Ohlone park. I had shared some brutal thoughts and feelings and was feeling viciously vulnerable – naked really. We had stopped at the stoplight at Marin. I sludged through another dark thought, when he turned me to look at the street. When I did, what had been white noise suddenly became clear: two children hollered from the back of a station wagon, “Eliot’s Mom! Eliot’s Mom!” The dad driving, smiled a familar grin, and all of them were waiting for me to wave. Like a wet dog, I shook off the damp, donned the smile and waved back. My time was lost, and the light turned green. Lee and I laugh-sighed and ran silently home.
I asked Ted about what he does when he needs to fortify himself against the world. He shared that he holes up in the upstairs rooms of the house – his lair – and covers himself with blankets and dogs. I used to do something similar with my cats. I’d climb into a closet or hide in the bathtub. Well, not so much with the cats in the bathtub. But in some small secret space, I could find asylum. I think about my home now, and I know I miss this. My closets are too full. My bathtub too shallow. The interior doors have no locks. Children’s toys and books and artwork are strewn throughout. There is nowhere to hide.
What further aggravates it are all of the wonderful people who help us with our home: our cleaners, our dog walker, our gardener, our hot tub service guy, our afterschool babysitters; or as I like to call them, our staff. So many people have keys to our house. So many people wander in throughout the day. I find no sanctuary at home.
I am reminded of a bit from Nick Park’s Creature Comforts. About midway through the Brazilian cat’s monologue, he explains how he needs space. “We need space to live, we need space to feel that we are part of the world and not a kind of piece or object in a box.”
There is a sense, living in a village, of feeling like you are on display. That you wear a smile the way you wear your shoes or a hat. It couldn’t be much more relaxed than Berkeley, but it is still there. That need to don your costume and mask everyday.
In the Bay Area, I will have difficulty acquiring space. And given that I don’t drive, getting to hidden wooden trails to run takes some creatively. Maybe it is time to move to another town. Be unknown for some short while. Or maybe I need to build a studio or bunker in our backyard.