put the two halves together
Have you seen the movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona? God, I love that movie (it is not nearly as dramatic as that trailer makes it out to be). It’s the only Woody Allen movie I like, in fact. The cinematography inspired Andy and I with this hare-brained idea of traveling around Europe for a year, spending a few months in different places. This hare-brained idea is one of those things that we’ve put on a back-burner, for now. For one thing, I now have a small child to take care of. Two of them, in fact. For another, we signed a year lease and spent a small fortune upgrading from broken down IKEA castoffs to Crate & Barrel. My office is yellow. We are finally living somewhere with no shared walls, no kiddos below us watching MTV at top-volume.
But back to that movie. If you haven’t seen it, there are no spoilers in me saying that the two main characters are Vicky and Cristina. One is sensible and pragmatic. The other is bohemian and whimsical. One is a monogamist and the other is ready for a fling with hunky Javier Bardem (and who wouldn’t be? I mean, as long as he’s not wearing that god-awful wig toupee thing from No Country For Old Men…).
Basically, if you put the two halves together, you get–scary thought–MY BRAIN. I am some parts sensible and pragmatic, happy to snuggle in and ground myself each night in the lumbar-supported comfort of a pillow-topped Simmons Beautyrest mattress (which is a great mattress, by the way). I want spice racks. A good set of kitchen knives. I want to bake bread and try recipes. The most exciting part of any move I’ve ever made is unpacking the boxes of books. Once they are lining the shelves, I truly feel at home. I want houseplants that need watering and a favorite local coffeeshop and regular dates with friends. I want stability. I want regular paychecks. I want a wardrobe full of options.
A whole other side of me wants nothing of that life. A whole other side of me–the wanderlust side, the travel bug side–wants to spend the day walking and then crash on anything horizontal, sleeping deeply from a day well-lived. That side doesn’t want spice racks or kitchen knives or heavy boxes of books or furniture or anything that would tie her down–especially not a lease agreement or houseplants or cats that need feeding. That side of me wants to try a new restaurant each night. That side of me adores my friends but also loves the thrill of sitting on a random park bench in a totally new city and meeting a totally new person who will end up joining me as I meet up with a group of CouchSurfers who have decided to have a meetup in which every single CouchSurfer brings someone they are currently hosting, resulting in a panoply of languages all talking over one another, pantomiming to fill in the gaps (this is, in fact, what happened when I stayed in Milan in 2008). This other side of me has no need for stability, craves something new, is willing to forego regular paychecks in favor of running her own ship, and is happy to pack a suitcase with one black skirt, one black pair of pants, one pair of jeans, and three different tops, all of which can be worn in interchangeable combinations and hand-washed in the sink of a hotel.
It has taken years for me to realize that these two sides are actually quite real, and completely legitimate in and of themselves. They are my yin and yang, my water and my fire. If the Universe asked me, “How would you like to structure your life, Kate?” my answer would be: Be financially abundant enough to have a home-base in the city of my choosing. This would be a place where I’d live with Andy for 8 months of the year. Then 4 months of the year we’d travel. We’d find a house-sitter to chill at our place and watch Poppy and get the same advantages of free rent living that we were gifted with while we were house-sitting. Maybe those 4 months would be divided up into several smaller trips. Or maybe not. We’d either telecomm while traveling or just schedule our lives and save money in such a way that we needn’t work those months.
And yes, this is not just some distant dream. This is something that Andy and I are, in various and sundry ways, paving the way towards having, though all of the pavement has not exactly arrived in shipment just yet. I’m not sure how we’ll make it happen; only that we want to and that sometimes bits and pieces make themselves clearer as to how that might happen.
I share this today because I know that for many years, I felt guilty about these two seemingly disparate sides of myself. I felt like I needed to “be practical” and “get it together.” I didn’t understand what was “wrong with” me, that I kept weaving back and forth between craving fresh green smoothies and salads (it feels so good to be healthy, doesn’t it?) and then good red wine and bread with olive oil (to hell with healthy eating! c’est la vie! buon appetito!). It is a strange thing to be both enamoured with neatly folded laundry washed each Sunday and restocking my drawers, and to simultaneously not care if that night, I re-wash my socks in a sink and then hang them on a towel rack to dry because it’s not worth it to go to the laundromat until I have a full load of laundry. I want the bookshelves full of books and the comfortable chairs to sink into and my kitty snuggling on my lap while I read; I want as few possessions as possible and am proud of having mastered the art of packing light.
For several years, it seemed wrong somehow that I would be this person, composed of these two pieces. I filtered it through my Zen Buddhist training as: Kate doesn’t want to be in the moment. When she’s here, she wants to be there, and when she’s there, she wants to be here. When will she want to be in this moment, now?
But now I realize that there is a deeper–and more useful–Zen Buddhist training in all of this, and it is being in the now with what is. Being fully aware of both the aspects of me that sincerely desire movement as well as those that desire stillness, and accepting them whole-heartedly. Embracing the two. There is absolutely a part of me that craves stability as much as it enjoys a little disorder. Instead of ping-ponging back and forth between Hell no! Stability is soooo rigid! and I need to get life under control, pull in some order, eat my veggies, meditate regularly, there is this lovely passionate middle ground that I am working on riding. Rather than toe the line that the order/veggies/meditation are really where I’m “supposed to” be, and that the desire to cut loose is all distraction, I like the broader, more all-encompassing idea of putting the two halves together to make a whole.
It is a middle ground that notices, in fact, when I most like stability and when I most like to cut loose. Do you notice this about yourself? For instance, I love stability in the morning. I want order and quiet and routines. But around 5:00 in the evening? I want out of the house. I want to see something new–a new book, a new art exhibit, a new person, a new bit of scenery. Flip it around and give me the “new” stuff in the morning, and I experience this as jarring. Ick! Too much! Ask me to settle down in the evening when I’m craving going out, and I am antsy as all get out.
In finding the middle ground, there’s this opportunity to both BE Kate and LOVE Kate just a little bit bigger. It’s freeing, and sort of a relief. Whew! Instead of trying to “figure out” how I would be cultivate stability without resenting the commitment, or cultivate adventure without missing the groundedness of home, I just get to be me: the girl who is beautifully splintered in these different ways.
How about you? Where would you like to give yourself permission to just BE who you actually are, even if the parts are seemingly contradictory?
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