Life in the Middle

I recently moved back home to live with my parents for the summer. I did this for several reasons, namely to finish my Master's Thesis on red-headedness, but it is never as simply as that. Good ol' uncertainty showed up at my door as usually, and now I find myself at an unexpected crossroads. It is not simply funny the way life is in a constant state of change; it is in many ways unnerving that we can adapt to such shifts in direction.

It looks as though my prolonged childhood may come to an abrupt end if I accept a job somewhere. I think it is a wonderful opportunity, but I'm nervous about what this will mean for many of the sandcastles that I have built over the last eight years. Hopefully, I will find a way to utilize everything that I have learned and focus it on this position. Regardless of what I chose to do, another change is coming, like a wave of storms on a hot summer day.

One of the things I have enjoyed most about being home is my parents' garden. They have put a lot of effort into making it look very nice, but making it more than just ornamental. My dad built this white picket fence in the back yard to give the yard that classic country look, and at the same time, built smaller wire fences to keep the rabbits from eating the leaf vegetables. That's another pretty incredible thing about my parents' yard, it is a safe-haven for many different kinds of animals that aren't found throughout this small town. There are four wild rabbits that live around the yard, plus several different species of birds. I'm learning to identify the different songs. I know the cardinal, mourning dove and sparrows but that is pretty much it. I've been calling to them, and sometimes it works. I've had a couple bird dive-bomb me. It was pretty funny now that I think about it, but at the time it was startling to see the bird take flight so quickly and the suddenly change course when it realized that it was chasing something that isn't a bird. Ha.

I know it is a little pretentious of me, but I've been reading Walden while I sit out in my parents' garden. I recently read the secret garden, and after reading that I have just become very attached to this secluded outdoors feeling. It's interesting because I am outside, in nature, but it isn't nature.. really. It is a garden, a carefully controlled area of land made to imitate nature in many ways, but is still contrived, unnatural. This isn't a bad thing, but it is just interesting to consider this type of enjoyment from camping, in which the civilized is removed and juxtaposed against nature in a contrived way. The two are chiral. Mirror images of one another. The same, but opposite. Like the right had is to the left hand, gardening and camping are so similarly related.

I do enjoy it here, living in St. Louis. They call it the "Middle of the Mitten", because the lower peninsula of Michigan resembles a mitten, but really it is the middle of nowhere. And to prove it, there are three maximum security prisons at the edge of town, with nothing but miles and miles of farmlands. The town isn't as rundown as it used to be, and in fact you wouldn't be able to tell anymore that there was a recession around here. Many of the shops in the downtown area have grown, so instead of having a lot of little shops, there are a few thriving bigger shops. I don't know much about business, but in a small town, that seems like a better idea. More money distributed among fewer sources means more money for everyone.. or something. Either that or the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Sounds like a dialectic problem to me.

Either way, the town seems to be standing up on it's shaky legs. Many of the derelict buildings have been removed, and replaced with either nice park area, or expansions to the succeeding businesses. It was sad two years ago when the local grocery store closed, but it has reopened and seems to be doing much better than it had when it closed in '08. There are two bars in town that seem to be doing quite well for themselves. One is the local hangout for people 21 and over. It really is more like a high school/family reunion in there every night. I've been in there a couple of times since I've been home, and I'll probably go there a couple more times.. but hopefully I won't find myself there too much.