Comfort & Security

Foreword: I wrote this the day after I settled the details of my resignation. It was the moment I glimpsed the end of a dreadful long road that involved twilight interviews, clandestine visits to government offices, and an all too sobering realization that I really was alone here on the other side of the China sea.

In my mind, comfort is a place and a time. It is a Sunday afternoon outside the family room. It is warm. The sunshine brightens the green lawn, the trimmed hedges. Then comes a rustling. A gentle breeze cuts across the lawn, slips through the open foyer, lifting white lacy curtains, and whirls among sofas, picture frames, a fruit bowl, and the flowers in their flower vase. I would be sitting in a plump reading chair, an open book in my lap, and I would want nothing more.

Security, in my mind, is a place and a time. It is twilight in suburbia. It is in the creeping darkness of twilight, a spatter of dim lamps from pre-fabricated bungalows across the skyline. It is a little chilly. It is also quiet, save for the electric hum of the neighbor's appliances, and the errant cry of a grumpy child. I would be standing out there on the front porch of a friends place, or someone familiar, maybe with a cigarette in hand, or a phone after a call. I would look up to the sky, and the stars would look down on me, and I would realize I am in the middle of nowhere, and yet feel that I am exactly where I should be.

For the next few weeks, I am allowing fate to show me a different kind of life. Comfort will be the 8-minute walk to the station, my very own bathroom, kindly old ladies who say hello, a mattress, enough space for shoes. Security will be a change of pace, the promise of constancy, a view of the sea, a tower in the night, a time to seize the world.

Photo credit: Reading Chair With Book And Cup Of Coffee by Walt Maes