It is a strange thing to find myself, at a ripening age, in a position where I am a complete stranger to my surroundings. I know no one. I am not familiar with the landmarks. My kid’s schools are foreign entities. I have no friends and barely any acquaintances. I am in the act of becoming anonymous. The grocery store, thankfully, is the same, therefore I can find the pickled jalapeños without too much difficulty.
I feel like a traveler. Like that temporary interloper who passes through and impedes upon your privacy and your routines and who then, just as quickly, vanishes. I look around me and wonder who these people are, what this town is all about. I try to dig under the surface a little, glean what I can. I act like a traveler, yet I live here.
Is it not odd to live somewhere and know nothing, know no one? I suppose anyone who has moved has felt similarly. There is a disorientation to this feeling of alienation. However, there is also an undeniable feeling of stealthy excitement. Like I can move unseen and unobserved. If no one knows me, do they see me?
I have decided to write. Which means I have decided to spend my time alone. Is it healthy? Do my kids wonder what I do all day? Jim Carrey thinks solitude is “dangerous.” He thinks it’s like a drug. The more you get, the more you want. The more you want, the less you want to be out among the world. People’s energy short-circuits your calm and peaceful vibe. You find it more comfortable to be by yourself. It’s easier to be who you really are. You don’t have to try and be that person you think other people expect: put-together, sociable, successful. (Just so you know, Jim Carrey stopped “talking” about three sentences ago.)
I flit around town and see young people congregating, corporate types having two-beer lunches, older friends walking slowly on a path together, and I slink by in my envelope of exoticism. They notice nothing of me because I am invisible. There is something wonderful about travel and its ability to render you an outside observer. You can look in and watch, but have no obligations of any kind. You can pry and invade on people in ways you never would otherwise.
But to be this way at home is something else entirely.
I will admit that I am somewhat of a social sidestepper. Happy to slip past a social engagement if the opportunity so presents itself. It is possible that once or twice in my life I may have pretended not to notice a friend in passing calling my name to say hi. It’s possible I have breathed a sigh of relief when the call was not returned to go out that one night. There is an undeniably delicious release of duty to the social dogma that I feel being a new arrival in this town.
There is freedom!
Of course, there is also an impenetrable layer that I cannot reach being a nobody. Those of us who sit out here and look in also have a twinge of regret, a shiver of jealousy for those on the inside. Man, it must be nice to sit there with their work buddies and have a “coupla beers” outside at a restaurant, just sittin’ and shootin’ the breeze. I tell myself I like being on the outside. But there is also a neat little voice that quietly and confidently insists that I have it all wrong.
So now I am juxtaposition in motion, a moveable feast of friction. I want to remain on the outside looking in because it is easier and a little bit voyeuristic, like I am doing something wrong. Yet, I also know that I want in. I want something deeper than just this external vantage.
If anyone knows myself better than I, then please stand up..please stand up. As soon as I get that internal vantage point I will long for the days when I was just a passing spectator. When all I had to do was look in and watch. When what was expected of me was a whole lotta nuthin’. Because no one knew me. I was anonymous.
I wasn’t even there.
