As much as I appreciate the way that my lack of financial resources has strengthened my character over the years, at the end of the day I can't help but admit that "insufficient funds" is an embarrassing phrase. Moreover, it is a cause of huge stress. That stress is what has been bringing me down for the past month- no, wait, in all honesty, the summer as a whole was rife with nothing but insufficiency. Life looks pretty bleak when you're worried about making rent and can't eat any of the groceries in your pantry because your recovery from (two words:) oral surgery makes consuming non-puddingified foods painful at best.
This money-stress-hunger-sadness that's been weighing on me was made worse this morning while I was reading newspaper articles about the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The magnitude of the Middle East's volatility hit me in a wave of despair. I considered- surprisingly for the first time- that if the violence that extremist groups are threatening should these talks produce an unfavourable outcome for them actually comes to pass, I might not get back into the land where I left my heart. I realized that most of the factors that will determine the possibility of my return are absolutely beyond my control. That probably sounds silly. It was heartbreaking.
So there I was, silly sad hungry Nans despairing on her olive ultrasuede couch. I decided I had to do something to yank me out of the groove I had made in my mind and my living room seating. I gathered up all my overdue documentaries, got dressed, and set off down the road to the library. And waddayaknow, it was gorgeous outside. After days of dreary grey and the rain I love to romanticize but hate to walk through, the golden leaves were glistening in the sun and crackling with the crisp autumn wind. For the first time in a long time, I noticed a bounce in my step. My feet in their hot pink shoes kept pace with the beats of Vampire Weekend as I turned the corner and let my eyes catch up with the view in front of me: happily stout white clouds rounding their way down to the peaks of half-frosted mountains seemingly vaulted up by a base of gold-and-green-speckled hills. There in front of me, a portrait of what I love best in the world. A free joy: an autumn landscape. A death necessary for new life, a stop on a never-ending cycle. And I remembered other joys. I remembered dancing to music in my head. I remembered the many autumns that never died in my mind's eye. I remembered the immensity of feeling that summer's end always brings. And I looked forward to future falls in new places that I can only envision with the help of my desperate imagination.
This is autumn for me: the beauty of the unknown that is to come, and the heartache of that same unimagined world. A whole sea of deserts and baptisms that are impossible to predict. Such poverty, such wealth. Such unmapped possibility.
(Here comes a feeling you thought you'd forgotten
Chairs to sit and sidewalks to walk on
Oh you had it but oh no you lost it
Looking back you shouldn't have fought it)
Life is still sufficient when it is lived with insufficient funds. It's just not enough to know that in theory.
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