Words, Glorious Words

This afternoon, while at a tea party with my lovely neighbors, one of them mentioned how he had purloined the word "kismet" from me.  He had had someone look at him strangely as it popped out of his mouth as easily as it has, on many occasions, popped out of mine.  And it made me think about language and words.  Specifically favorite words.

We all have our favorite words.  For some they may be more succinct and steeped in cultural symbolism.  "Fuck" or "shit", for instance.  Some people's favorite words have lost their meaning, words of a different time.  Words like "gay" that once simply meant lighthearted and cheerful, something completely different than the nebulous, socio-conscious word that it has become now.  But for me I love best the words that either sound like what they mean or what they mean is represented in how sound.  In a way I suppose a theoretical onomatopoeia but that's not a really accurate description.  The words I like best are the ones that somehow, somewhere deep inside you resonate so that they make you feel, as you are saying them, exactly what they mean. 

And, truthfully, for me there really are only two that stand out:  "Pathetic" and "Kismet." 

There's something so  joyously derisive to call someone pathetic.  Just the way it rolls off your tongue...."You are pa-THE-tic."  The emphasis behind the word matches the desired intention.  The true definition of the word could mean, "You are cheese curds," but yet somehow it would have still the same desired intention of insult, derogation and disdain.  While there are few in my world who deserve being called so or described as such, when the time comes, as inevitably it occasionally will given the feeble nature of the human race, there is such satisfaction in delivering those syllables that it's hard not to crow with glee as they are uttered.

Which leads me to my second, and perhaps optimistically more favorite word: "Kismet".  While in essence it means "fate" or "fortune" its Persian/Turkish/Arabic origin gives it just that little bit of...spice.   It's fate with a little bit of magic carpet thrown in.  Over the years, in all my adventures, I've come more to embrace, even revel in, the idea of fate.  Not predestination....I think we all choose our own lives.  But the idea that the world is yours if you're brave enough to take it. 

For example, last year in July I posted a blog post titled, "I Am For Bath."  At the end of the post talked about how funny it was that two years prior I had been driving through Bath with my sister and brother-in-law after being at my brother's wedding in Porlock, here in the U.K.  I had a lovely boyfriend in L.A. and was not planning to move anywhere at the time, but my sister, in reference to my newly acquired dual U.S./Finnish citizenship , at that moment said, "Just think...anytime you wanted to you could live here."   And in that  blog post I wrote, "How ironic that here I am, planning to move to Bath."

Two months after that post, after an exhaustive search across the entire town I carefully selected and then moved into a flat here in Bath.  A couple weeks after that my then-boyfriend pointed out that the house at the end of that street on the right, the front door that, while far away, is centered in the picture, was the house that I had just moved into.  The flat that I am writing this post from now. 

So two years and change prior to moving to Bath I took a picture of my current front door.  When I had no idea that I was even considering moving here, I took a picture in a city I didn't live in, in a country I didn't live in, of a house that I would, in future, live. 

That is kismet.  Leaps of faith and imagination topped with a sprinkling of fairy dust. 

I love the idea of being where the universe thinks you're supposed to be.  I'm not religious.  When people ask, I say I believe in Carl Sagan and The Force.  And while I abhor the idea of predestination... I dislike the idea of some supernatural being saying, "You will be here," as much as I hate the idea of any mortal telling me where and when I should be...I do love the idea that if you're smart enough, if you're willing and crazy enough, you will end up were you're "supposed" to be.  Perhaps I think in my head that there are many "supposed to be" options and that it's a matter of choosing your own ending in the Choose Your Own Adventure book of your life.  But I do like those strange coincidences the world throws at you makes you think about...just for that second longer. 

And so kismet.  While fate seems to pragmatic and fortune seems so capitalistic, I love the magic of the word.  It implies to me, as I've said, a bit of spice and sand and flying carpets.  To say, "It was fate that I moved here," or "It was fate that we met," seems so bland and pedestrian.  But kismet....kismet is the stuff of legends.  It's the stuff of heroes.  It is the stuff of magic.  

And while we know, at best, it's just a pretty illusion, deep down we all want to believe in magic.

A Little Quiet...

Talking to a friend this evening about writers and artists, and our natures, there came a moment in the conversation where he suggested that creative people in general are lonely.  I argued that while I think there's an element of truth to that it's not actually that they're lonely.  They're solitary.

Solitary is a choice.  Lonely is not. 

I am someone who most people who meet me would consider quite sociable.  Gregarious even.  The life of the party.  Someone who loves being a hostess and being hosted.  I talk a lot, I laugh loud and often and I enjoy the company of both people I know and people I don't.  Strangers to me are just people I haven't met yet. 

But at the same time I am a person who needs their alone time.  Years ago as a member of a touring theatre company I would dream of and prize the 15 minutes of solitude I would get every few days.  I craved it.  I needed it.  Achieving a quiet moment alone in my own space, albeit a hotel room, became almost an obsession.  And without that solitude I became crabby and shrewish.  Not a pretty sight.

The Family with Uncle Tom and Grandma...1986ish. 
I'm in the back in my favorite red and white checked Esprit shirt

I wonder if that is a result of growing up in a loud, boisterous, exuberant household.  It was a rare moment to come home from school and find the house empty, so those moments became greatly prized.  Until my early teens I can think of maybe only two or three times where there was not someone else in the house with me.  We were, and I think still are, a rambunctious family, full of laughter.  Family dinners were held every night and still are some of the best memories of my childhood.  Random evenings where we were all in tears of laughter as my dad explained to my middle sister that the best way to make sure her swimming goggles weren't stolen was to etch her initials into the lenses.  Taking a break from the table saying "I'm going to take a walk" holds special meaning in our family...let's just say it's in regards to hated non-Oscar Meyer hot dogs, a wood pile and a really good throwing arm.  Not mine. 

But I need a place to retreat to.  From the chaos.  From the color.  From the energy of other people...that they take, that they need, that I want to give them.  To a quiet and a solitude where...yes...I like the sound of only my own voice.  Lucky for me Otis seems to like it when I have long, philosophical, sometimes wine-induced conversations with him....he's a very good listener, though he occasionally does tend to fall asleep in the middle of a very good oration. 

I've never been one for background noise.  My hip and cool college roommate Julie used to like to turn the radio on the moment she got up until the moment we went to bed.  But for me I needed quiet.   Constant background noise is to me the same as the buzzing of a fly.  Irritating, incessant and...did I say irritating?  

I do have two theories on my lack of interest in background noise.  Both of which sound bonkers.  

First, I have a dog ear.  One of my ears hears high pitched sounds.  I've heard a computer monitor whining that others couldn't hear.  People didn't believe me when I switched it off because it was too annoying....until the day it went up in smoke.   Literally.

Second, when it's really loud I can't smell well.  Again, seriously.  It's not actually that uncommon, to have your sense of hearing be a more dominant sense than the sense of smell, but not something people general are able to put a finger on.  Once, watching TV alone in my apartment in New York I smelled smoke.  I muted the TV.  Sniffed.  Decided it was cigarette smoke.  Then unmuted the TV. 

And then realized what I had just done.  I had muted the TV so that I could accurately determine what kind of smoke it was.  True story. 

I find myself now as an adult who's lived primarily on her own, other than my rarely-barking, non-English speaking dog, for a number of years and find there are times when specific amounts of vocal volume bother me.  Something that would have been natural to me as a kid in that energetic family and childhood now is foreign.  I can be overwhelmed by a person of loud pitch, overt vocal aggression or grating tone.  To the point of wincing.  To the point of snapping.  Don't get me wrong....again, I talk loud, I laugh loud, and I can, at moments, gesticulate wildly, so the words calm, quiet and reserved do not even remotely apply to me.  But those times, those people can be so overwhelming to me that sometimes I wonder if it's just, in essence, I'm out of practice. 

But...I'm probably out of practice by choice.

There is a nearby bar that I jokingly refer to as my writing office.  It's a place I go to escape from the carpet that needs vacuuming, the dishes that need cleaning, the work that actually pays me money to have a glass of wine and write.  And I've had some people ask me how I can write with all the bar noise.  How can I focus.  But bar noise isn't personal noise.  The sharp edges of the various accents and verbs and melodies blend into one constant white noise background.  One shrilly harping shrewish voice can make my skin crawl, but 200 of them in one giant cacophony becomes a symphony of life around me that I can tune out.

I do wonder what it is about artists and writers that makes us...different.  Through history we're often jokingly referred to as drunks or lunatics or eccentrics.  The best, truthfully, are often all three.  We live our lives by our own choices, not by what society dictates.  We may like a little too much wine.  Or dress in alternate clothing.  Or cut off our own ears.  But if that's what is necessary to open the floodgates to the creative process, is that really too much? 

Okay, I'll give you the thing about the ear.  That's a little weird. 

I suppose in the end as a writer I need to be able to hear the voices in my head.  In the quiet of my solitary living room or in the loud din of society.  Perhaps that's why people think we're nuts...we listen to those voices, we feed off them, we are obsessed with them.

But the funny thing is.... the moment those voices are down on "paper," suddenly they're considered sane.  They're still the voices in my head.....

...but, because you've read them, they're now a voice in your head as well.

A Fine Line Between Bravery or Insanity

Bravery.  We use the word so casually but yet what does it really mean?  

To me bravery is a fireman who leaps into the flames to save a human being.  A soldier on the battlefield facing dangerous situations but carrying on nonetheless.  My older sister who was near the front lines of the first Gulf War.  That's brave.  Hell, to me someone is brave if they're willing to climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower or stand on the deck of the Empire State Building..

I'm terrified of heights.  Completely, absolutely and to a state of crippling panic.   I turn into a whimpering, shaking ninny.  

No.  Not at all what I'd consider brave.

Yet, on regular basis people tell me how brave I was to have moved here to England.  Where I knew only my aunt, uncle and cousin.  To just plop down and begin a new life.  

But to me I can't help by think:  really, how scary are strangers?  They're just people you haven't met yet.

I've always been the one in my life to walk up to the stranger at the bar.  I'll think about it for a second, come up with something witty to say and just plow on.  I've never understood the trepidation.  Really, the worst that can happen is they will be dumb, rude or....worse...boring.

Well, truthfully, we all live in a little bit of fear of being cornered by somebody who's cringetastically boring.  

But it's not going to kill us.

Though if there's no immediate escape we may feel like killing ourselves. 

And so I suppose for me physical bravery is true bravery.  But it's an interesting thing to contemplate.  In some ways there are many types of bravery.  There're people who are brave with their physical being - the soldiers, the firefighters, the policemen.  There are people who are brave with their hearts - they jump easily and willingly where many of us would be reticent and cautious, worried of being hurt.  And there are those who are brave with their lives - willing to try something, someplace new.  

In my case it wasn't to escape a life or change who I was.  Quite the contrary, I would say that the life leaps I've taken have been to believe more strongly in myself and who I was and, in some ways, find the place where I am supposed to be.  Perhaps, like the heart leaper's quest to find "the one", the life leaper's quest to find "the place" is just as transient, as much a fairy tale and yet...still as much a possibility.  Like winning the lottery, if you don't buy the ticket, you won't win.  And people sometimes do win.  

I am not a nomad or an aimless traveler.  When I left Seattle years ago I said I'd go to New York and if I hated New York I'd go to L.A. and if I hated L.A. I'd go to London.  I neither hated nor loved either New York or L.A. but I realized 3 years ago that London was simply New York with better accents.  But I was reminded that I loved England.  And so...here I am.  

When people ask, "Weren't you scared?" I say, "You can always go back."  Again, unlike the love leaper or the physical leaper, the life leaper isn't burning bridges...or being burnt.  I could always move back to New York or Los Angeles or even Seattle.  While some friends have moved away, they're still friends and there would be more friends to be had in those places.  Though, as I get older, the uprooting does become tougher.  While you know you'll stay in touch and visit the important people, if you're not in the immediate vicinity it is never the same and relationships inevitably change.   I sometimes long for a cottage on Bainbridge Island, taking the ferryboat over to downtown Seattle.  I recognize though that much of that is love and nostalgia, for the lovely childhood that I had and the home that it will always be.  But for me now, to go back is to go backward.  For now.  

And for now, at least, I want to continue to move forward. There's so much of the world I haven't yet seen, I haven't yet smelled, I haven't yet tasted.  But I've been lucky, not as lucky as some but luckier than many, and I continue to be grateful for that little bit of gumption, guts, bravery or just plain insanity that has led me to where I am.  

Which is sitting in a bar in Bath writing and drinking a gin and tonic.   Living the life of a writer in England.  

And right now, life definitely could be worse.

Little House, Little Cottage....

When I first arrived in the U.K. and reality hit and my grand vision of a "Little Cottage on the Estate" ended up as a lovely but quite scruffy and uninhabitable dud, I toyed with the idea of changing the name of my blog.  I was no longer going to be living on an estate, but instead in a lovely, 250 year old stone house.  Sadly, though, "Little Cottage on a Brook in a Small Village...With A Castle" somehow didn't quite have the same ring to me.

The idea of changing the name has popped up here and there ever since, most recently on my move to my now "High Ceilinged Georgian Flat in the City (of Bath)", but for two reasons I have resisted.   First, the title connects to the motivation and sparking idea for the move in the first place -  the estate cottage - so although the journey changed, it still was a journey.  And, second of all, the inspiration for the title stayed the same.  Which is, quite obviously, Little House on the Prairie and Laura Ingalls Wilder.  But it made me think...as I never lived in the "Little Cottage on the Estate", how would Laura feel about my inaccurate misappropriation of her book title?  Would she be shamed?  But then I thought...her books are referred to as the "Little House" series but really only one of her books -- the second, by the way, not the first -- was set on the actual prairie, so really, was the use of my imprecise blog title any different?  

Because it represents the start of an idea....not necessarily the finish.

Many covers exist, but this was
the cover of my first copy

The Little House series of books were a strong influence on my childhood and I find as an adult now an association, empathy and appreciation for the kind of pioneering spirit that those books, and the people of those times, experienced.  True, I just moved from one modern civilization to another, escaping the brutal rusticity the Plains pioneers endured.  But there is a shared sense of stepping into the unknown, to a place where you know no one, and just jumping in and see where you land.  Though at least where I landed there was a pub already in existence. 

I think if I had to choose, no single book, or even book series, affected my childhood as much as the Little House books.  I loved Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, the latter still being somewhat of an adult fascination.  But I look back and of all the books I read – everything from Mrs. Piggle Wiggle to Ramona The Pest – none stands out as a childhood memory more.

Laura Ingalls Wilder (from Wikipedia.com)

It's hard to separate the imagined story characters from the real image of who Laura Ingalls Wilder was, and also then even harder to separate her from the pigtailed, buck toothed version played by Melissa Gilbert.  But I think in some ways in my head as I was reading them as a child I became Laura.  That little girl in the books was written in a way that I felt it, I experienced it.  I remember reading Little House in the Big Woods, the first of the series, when I was about nine and being enthralled.  The stories of Pa playing his fiddle while people danced, watching Ma put her hair up with tortoiseshell combs, the joy of Laura's corncob doll, and tapping trees for maple syrup.  They were mesmerizing and addicting and I devoured them all.  Thank god for the '80s and the plethora of "prairie-style" dresses, Holly Hobbie and sunbonnets.  

Laura's tomboyish nature appealed to me as well.  I spent hours as a child out with my dad in his workshop, sanding blocks of wood and nailing together treasures.  I love the smell of sawdust and shellac as those are the smells that take me back to the days in his shop in the garage, chilly in the winter while my dad, dressed only in his white t-shirt and down vest, worked handily at his extensive, self-built, highly organized workbench and made fantastic things out of a two by four, some nails and a bit of glue.  We still eat as a family at the large dining table that he made when I was 7 and the addition of "baby" Megan meant we needed a larger than normal table to seat our seven person household.  

Almanzo Wilder  (from Wikipedia)

I still can recite the entire list of books by heart.  Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, By The Banks of Plum Creek, On the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, These Happy Golden Years and The First Four Years.  Farmer Boy, the official second novel in the "set", was actually about Laura's future husband, Almanzo Wilder....and set nowhere near the prairie, so even she was guilty of narrative digressions.  So I suppose I can be forgiven.

I look as an adult now at Laura's life and wonder would we have liked each other?  Would we have been friends?  Would we have identified with each other over an adventurous spirit and a imaginative bent?  Would she be a hopeless romantic?  Would she find my modern brashness off putting?  Or were she, and her daughter, writer Rose Wilder Lane, kindred spirits in creativity, narrative interest, and bold, brave personality?  Their lives as women were on the cusp of many changes in the world, where female writers often changed their names to make their work considered respectable.  While our lives are so different in so many ways, fundamentally we are people that comment on the world around us, so whether by a computer or an ink pen, and so there is a basis somewhere there of commonality.   Ah, what we would give to have an hour's conversation with the people in history who have shaped us....if only to have that moment to let them know what an incredible influence they have had.

My goddaughter and niece is now currently 6 years old and I think that soon she will be old enough herself to discover Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House.  I wonder if it will affect her already creative fashion sense as it did mine.   Right now she's obsessed with sparkly jewelry and hair bows but I have a feeling it's only a matter of time before it's sunbonnets, button shoes and petticoats for her too....  

 

Leap Into a New Year....

On the eve of another new year I can't help but look back in wonderment at what a difference a couple of years can make.  Two years ago this time I sat at my parents' house on the couch and asked them if they would look after Otis for 6 months so that I could sell all my worldly possessions, leave my entertainment career in L.A. behind and move into a house in the middle of nowhere in England, a little cottage on the estate that I'd never seen before.  

I am a huge fan of leaps of faith.  The bigger the better.   But even for me this one was a doozy.

To be fair, it wasn't exactly the first time I'd done this.  I'd dropped a job at Microsoft to move to New York and be an actor.  A few years later, I listened to my heart and pitched the acting career and followed a short, slightly twisted path into script supervising and a life in L.A.  But each of those leaps had been, in my view at least, wildly successful.  Not necessarily the outcomes I'd dreamed of on embarking – I didn't win the Oscar I set out thinking I wanted – but they were life changing and made me stronger and self sufficient and shaped me for the better in more ways, significant and subtle, than I think I could ever really name. 

I do think that taking the leap becomes easier the more you do it.  You become braver.  You see that there's something to be earned, and something to be learned, whatever the outcome might be.    

I jokingly say that my parents were supportive of everything we did as kids as long as it wasn't illegal, but there's a huge kernel of truth in that.  As the child of two adventurers, a sailor who has been around the world at least twice and a former nanny who crossed the ocean from a small island in Finland to live in New York City, following your dreams and being willing to make huge, albeit calculated and educated, life changes was somewhat the backbone I think of what you could call a family life philosophy.   Perhaps even family lore.   So it never occurred to me not to go or that they wouldn't want me to go.   You can always go back.  You can always return to the status quo.  But if you don't take the risk, you don't get the reward.   

If you never buy a lottery ticket, you'll never win the lottery. 

One of the things that I've had to learn to rely on and to trust, most importantly of all, is my own intuition.  Female intuition or just, perhaps, human intuition.  Whatever its source, through the years I've learned to believe in my own instincts.  To have faith in myself.  In my intelligence.  In my own abilities.  In my stamina and  resourcefulness, to deal with what comes at me and to look for new opportunities to grow and prosper. 

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade there's a moment where Indy realizes that one of the tests to get to the grail is to take a leap of faith.  Step onto a bridge that he can't see but he is sure that is there.  In his case, there's both a mental and physical leap to be undertaken, but any leap of faith is a decision to believe in your own judgment, that what you believe to be true is true and what you are doing is the right choice.

And having faith in yourself and taking big risks are what dreams are made of.

Here, now, it's both fascinating and revealing for me to look back and see how right that choice was.  Two years on, I'm challenged, interested, enthralled, curious, motivated and excited about where my life is, on both a personal and professional level. As if all the experiences of my life before this point have been a set up to get me to where I am at this moment, eager to move forward and see what the next adventure will be.   

So, as my friend Molly recently said, let 2012 be the year of doing. 

Let's see what we can achieve when we take a little leap and have a little faith...in ourselves. 

Who needs an umbrella?

The weather this last week in England has been a chaotic, ridiculous, glorious mess.

First it's windy,  then it's hailing, then it's beautifully sunny, then it's a torrential downpour, then sunny again with a chance of rainbow.  It's warm enough to walk outside in just a sweatshirt but an hour later you freeze in your winter coat.  

And I love it.  Every second of it.  My only wish is that we could get a little thunder in there to complete the package presentation.  

I love the changeability on a moment's notice.  The unpredictability of what will be next.   I sit inside at my desk and laugh, watching the dark clouds roll across the sky, dropping the afternoon sunlight to a dusky blackness, unleashing their havoc and then disappearing again in another breath. 

Four and half years of living in Los Angeles was four and half years of living without any variation in the weather.  Every day was like a scene from the movie Groundhog Day - the same sunny blue skies with wispy white puffs of overly cheerful clouds floating through.  The last year I lived there it didn't rain from February to August.  Not a drop.  There were four days in June that were slightly overcast and hinted at a potential drizzle, which those of us from out of town anticipated eagerly, only to be bitterly disappointed by the return once more of those boring blue skies.

During that last year I heard and became obsessed with the song "Grey in L.A." by Loudon Wainwright.  As he so eloquently put it, "When it's grey in L.A. I sure like it that way 'cause there's way too much sunshine 'round here.  I don't know about you, I get so sick of blue skies wherever they always appear. "  

Don't get me wrong.  It's not that I don't like sunny days.  They have their time and their place like everything else.  I like sunny days when there's a flea market or a wedding or a festival.  I like lovely warm, cloudless days picnicking in the park.  But as much as I don't want rain every day, sun every day is not just boring.  To me it's soul crushing and uninspiring, and drains away my energy and ability to think and create and dream.  Without variations in the weather what do we have to look forward to, to talk about, to wonder about?  If every day is predictable on such a basic level, the rest of your life takes on a monotonous color, like a series of paintings only painted in yellow and blue.  Much as you might like those colors, you occasionally want to look at something else. 

There's a Ray Bradbury short story called All Summer in a Day about a group of kids in a classroom who live on Venus where it rains all the time except for one hour every seven years.  Most of the children have never seen sunlight except for the one girl, a recent transplant, who remembers living on Earth and seeing the sun.  The kids tease her, taunt her and lock her in a closet...and then the sun comes out for an hour and they play outside...forgetting they'd shut her away.  They remember her only after the sun has gone and the rain has once again returned.  

My days in L.A. I often felt like that girl, except the opposite.  Surrounded by days of neverending sun, barely remembering what rain smelled like, tasted like, felt like.  With the lyrics of the song "MyTime of Day" from Guys and Dolls ringing in my head, "And the smell of the rainwashed pavement comes up clean and fresh and cold," I dreamt of that scent, that metallic, minerally smell of the sidewalk as the warm summer rain begins to sprinkle the dirt away.   

I love rainy days.  Misty grey to a torrential downpours.  Perhaps it's growing up in Seattle, but I know many native Washingtonians that think sun every day would be fantastic.  I admit I prefer to be inside when it's raining or in a car or in a tent, listening to the rhythmic pinging on the window or roof.   But give me a booming, window-rattling thunderstorm and I'm a happy girl.  

Otis, on the other hand, isn't too thrilled.  As he really doesn't like getting wet, he's not too fond of the rain, even in his bright yellow raincoat.   

Well, can't please 'em all.

I Am...For Bath.....

 I love my little village.  My own little Brigadoon, I've called it in the past.   I have fantastic neighbors.  A great pub with colorful souls.   A sparkling brook that trickles behind my house.  And a castle just down the street and around the corner.

Did I mention there's A CASTLE.

As a kid I definitely thought about living in a castle.  I mean who doesn't?  I think most little girls think about it at some point.  Living in the castle with their handsome prince wearing a big pink pretty, pretty princess dress and the world is perfect.  

When you're nine.

My adventure in England has taken a wide variety of twists and turns.  I started out in The Little Cottage on the Estate.  I currently live in The Little Cottage in the Village.  

And I plan to move to....The Little Georgian Flat in the City. 

I'm like Laura Ingalls Wilder's modern day English ex-patriot equivalent.  

The reality of a being single woman in her late 30s in a small village has been impressed on me more and more lately as people who have been important in my life this past year have slipped away, only to expose the holes in the theory that life in a village is perfect.  It is perfect.  If you're retired.  Or raising kids.  Or a poet.  Or someone looking to hermit away from life and be a cat lady. 

I am none of those things. 

I fell in love with Bath the first time my friend Les took me there last year.  He took me to all his former drunken haunts in the city, meeting up with a great group of his friends, and within seconds I wanted to live there.  But the idea of leaving my little haven, the place of respite I'd found after the craziness of first arriving here and having everything thrown into chaos, was a difficult one to stomach.  

But as the days have moved on, I've realized that life in Nunney doesn't change.  It's lovely.  As always.  It's friendly.  As always.  There are always people to chat to on the street, always friends in the pub to share the day's events with, always company for a cheerful supper.  

But, like Brigadoon....not many other people come here.  

To be fair, we do have a good amount of visitors.  Walkers who come to explore the trails of the Mendips.  Parents who bring their young children for an educational day out for the 20 minute walk around the castle.  People from neighboring villages venturing "out" for the evening.  Men who work for the quarries that come and stay at the pub for a night.  Some even become semi-monthly regulars.   

But the village, the core, the people you meet daily, the people who you know and who know you, stay the same. 

I grew up in a small town, an island, and thought I would embrace small town life easily as it was something I'd known and loved.  But nostalgia is a different thing from reality. 

The reality is Nunney has become my British home town.  The place I can go to and know in my heart that I'm welcome.  Step into the gossip should I choose, step out of should I not.  I know the people and the dogs, the houses, the roads and the trees.   

But it's time to fly the coop.

I love my hometown of Bainbridge Island, Washington.  Like Nunney, it's an idyllic place, perched just across the water, a 30 minute ferryboat ride away from downtown Seattle.  In the twisted turmoil of trying to figure out where I belonged, knowing I didn't belong in Nunney but not really knowing where I was supposed to be, I thought, "Bainbridge." 

But that would be the end of the story. 

I'm not ready for the story to end. 

And the reality, as I said recently in a conversation with my mother, was that after the magic wore off of being "back home" again, what would I be doing there?  Where would I be?

I have lived in New York.  I have lived in LA.  And there were reasons I left both.  In some ways both were too big for me.  Too much.  Nothing you could get your head around and embrace.  Nothing tangible.  I want to know when there's a new restaurant opening in town...I don't want it to be one of 200 new restaurants opening that day....but I don't want it to be the only one that opened that year either.  

Since I first went to Bath last summer I've spent a fair amount of time there.  I've introduced old friends to it.  I've met new friends.  I've fell in love with restaurants and shops and parks and I think I found that place, that singular place, that I've been searching for.

It's not Bainbridge.  But like Bainbridge, or Nunney, I could walk across it in a day.  It's not New York or LA, but like those cities there's something new, something happening every night.  Restaurants and theatre and music and people.   And life.

And so I've notified my landlords, who optimistically are putting my current house on the market to see who else wants to buy this little gem on the brook with the ancient walled garden.  My cottage that is older than the United States.   That has sheltered me.  And protected me.  And now needs to let me go.

I'm looking forward to moving and feel as if I almost belong to Bath already, in a way that I don't think that I've felt I belonged to any city since I left Seattle 12 years ago.   I wonder sometimes if this is what I've been looking for in all the travels and all the years of adventuring.  Stay tuned. 

What's funny is two years ago my brother got married in beautiful house in the village of Porlock, a really, REALLY little but lovely place on the Exmoor coast, looking out over the bay to Wales.  On the way back to London, driving with my sister Megan and her family, who live in Sweden, we detoured for my first ever view of Bath.  As we drove away, remarking on my newly acquired Finnish citizenship, Megan said, "Just think....anytime you wanted to you could live here."

And now...I will.