Actual Green Space
I have been thinking a lot about Space–Inner and Outer, although not the outer one above our heads. The non-filled areas–fields, parks, vastness…
Do we allow for it? Is it important to us? Or does it simply feel like a waste of, ahem…space?
I am decidedly a lucky one–born into a life and place (Montana) which included nature, and then spit out (voluntarily) to grow into adulthood in the biggest city in the States (I refer here to New York City). My experience with the place goes like this: First hated it. Next moved there. After that…decided I could never live anywhere else.
But then my husband died and it didn’t make sense anymore. The walls of our studio apartment threatened to close in on me like that scene in Star Wars…and the walls of my soul squeezed so tightly breathing became an act of courage. I needed to give myself a fighting chance…oh, and NYC is, incidentally, ex-pen-sive.
I needed Space. Room at first not even to grieve (that required Time first), but to create a distance from this event I couldn’t possibly understand or explain. A buffer of Space.
I mean, maybe life in a shoebox overlooking crowded streets is the ultimate goal–a test that my will is again willing. But, for now, I look out into this vast Hawaiian greenness and I breath in in deeply; take it all in…until the external moves within and I can live in that shoe box again.
The literal becomes metaphorical over time in the presence of Space.
