Living in the Gap

This bombed out house is in Tuscany. When I first saw it I fell head over heels nutso about it and felt like it was the answer to all my prayers. I wanted to buy it, fix it up, move into it. I tracked down the woman who owned it in Switzerland and went so far as to make plans to meet her. And then it all fell through, once I realized it was outrageously unrealistic. I keep the picture on my computer and look at it all the time. I still remember that first sighting. But I also know that when I went back and really looked, and saw that it was in the middle of a busy dirt road and that it had no privacy NOT TO MENTION the fact that it has no roof or walls or floor or, well, anything, it was not a smart thing to pursue.

Which has nothing to do with what I have been thinking lately, but I don't have many photographs on this computer at home so there you go, a cool picture and a little story, unrelated to the gist of my night's thinking.

Living in the Gap. This, as I understand it, is the place we find ourselves when our minds have moved on and our bodies are still in the place we were in before our minds moved. Clear?

I feel changed by this ride and by the experience of it. It was easy, it was enormously hard, it was fun, it was awful, I miss it dreadfully, I'm so glad it is done. All at once. Mostly, though, I feel that I am in a different place and I want to be doing different things AND YET I still am at work and I still have things to do, things I want to do and things I need to do. And, at the same time, I want to have moved ahead to be living this other, transformed life.

How to do both? Bridging this gap is not easy. I'm feel torn, crazy, frustrated, berserk sometimes, wanting to KNOW how it's all going to go. Wanting to BE different, to live differently, to have it all figured out. No such luck.

My friend Judy did this ride a few years ago and we talked yesterday about the challenge of coming home. She told me about her experience of homecoming and equated it with "pentimento" that painting technique whereby layers of old paint are removed, revealing a new painting underneath. Who KNEW it was there? And who knew, or knows, how to remove those layers?

I have been feeling tension in this gap place. It does not feel easy or even good. But my guide suggested I look at it with humor. And my girlfriend suggests I call it "interesting." Those are good suggestions.

For now, I carry on. Bridging the gap.
I'll say more when I can figure out more.

Good night.
Laurey