Over the horizon...

How do you figure it out? How does a body with a wandering soul find a place short of heaven that satisfies the insatiable craving do more than exist? How does a person with an imagination the width and depth of the Pacific throw up their hands and mentally retire to a place of imaginary obligations suggested by others?

Oh, by the way, this person is me. Anna, if you hadn’t guessed.

Anna…me…I…have tried and tried to fit my little self into the choices and life pattern that I notice are prevalent in my culture. I try to have the jobs that other people have and appear to be content with. I try to have a couple sparkly things to hang on my neck or wrist. I try to avoid casting my eyes to the horizon, nervously attempting to drown out that beckoning for an unknown abyss, which rises in my heart like the sun over that same horizon.

My heart whispers to my head…“What is right over that hill?” “Look at how the light so perfectly illuminates that blade of grass?” “Do you hear the birds? They sound like they are singing to me today.”

How can I drown out my tendencies to not follow that singing?

I feel that there are some places in which I’m not seeing or hearing the same things as everyone else. How can sitting in front of a computer screen everyday, eyes darting from the buzzing billboard ahead to pale pink walls surrounding, satisfy one’s livelihood? As everyone’s gaze is fixed ahead, I wonder if I’m allowed to want more? No one here talks about wanting more. "We do what we need to," I hear them say.

And I understand my viewpoint is heavy-laden with wanderlust and idealism that wreaks of the generation and privilege in which I was born into…and that guilt by middle class association forces me to turn my eyes from those Pepto-Pink working walls back to my computer screen where I choke down the next task.

But I still hear those birds, and I still find the subtle way the northwest sky filters so delicately into the work space intriguing, and I wonder if I dare dream of more.

If I allow myself to follow my dream where it takes me, I can make out a place high above a bustling, antiquated cityscape. A huge brick space, framed with arched windows which allows the inside to escape and the outside in, with an infinite amount of dusty beams of light. A place with huge palates and paint and music. Where the people far below on the street are drinking wine during the workday and it’s not cause for termination. And when you are walking down the street people really look and really smile at each other, as a silent reminder that they understand something you would still like to learn.

“But silly Anna…you can’t make a living this way. You have to be real. That’s not the way the world works.” Well what if MY world does work that way, and refuses to work any other way. What if my heart refuses to stop reminding me that I have to try harder to accomplish MY distinct, unique, irreconcilable reason for being born? It may not have anything to do with making a certain amount of money every year, or retiring…at all. It may not have anything to do with the people who may whisper about my age and lack of responsibility. What it may have to do with is a girl with an inability to ignore the glaring fact of the apparent lack of years on earth versus things to be done and seen and tasted and loved.

So that leads me to next Saturday. My new (and permanent) partner in crime are taking on a new and yet so old journey together. My husband...Cory, Cocolee, or Beebes, or whatever I choose to call him that day, are going to be hitting the road and heading back up to Skagway, Alaska together for the summer. We are going to work hard in a place that embodies “freedom of the road” to me…breathing deep in cruise ship exhaust, and saving saving saving all the while (God willing I can get my Fish Co. Fish & Chips addiction under control…highly unlikely).

With that wondrous wind in our sails, we are going to let it blow us up…up and away, to a land of travel. And gladly. Next fall through early spring will be one of living out of backpacks, sprinting after trains, stalking Kebaps, mulling in hot wine, and best of all…learning to exist on a new and deeper level with my new husband. We still won’t be terribly impressive on a resume, but I am so over caring. What I do choose to care about is living well in a way that matters to me and my rambling man.
Catching the special way the sun hits the pavement in Turkey…or the way the street air smells us in Jerusalem…or the way the birds sing to me all along the way…telling me to keep going, trusting that if I follow my loves, I will find my life.