The internet is a wonderful thing for sure …BUT…I have spent almost my whole weekend glued to VRBO Palm Springs trying to find a place for my family and friends for February and March 2012. It didn’t have to be this weekend but, with the horrendous weather we are having, and with my tendencies to (1) procrastinate when I am starting a difficult painting commission, and (2) feel incredibly gloomy when the skies are gloomy when they should be bright cerulean…what could be a better activity. You can almost be walking down the various streets of Palm Springs and peering in, house by house and dreaming of how lovely they would all be to live in. I want to subdivide myself.
…But online searching and sorting is time consuming and doesn’t feel productive. And it bounces your head around. One minute you are thinking you are searching in vain; the next reveals an embarrassment of riches.
It’s not that —apart from the weather —I don’t love where I live. I do. It’s not that I’m not (more or less) engaged with my life here. I am. Except when the weather is this ‘maritime’. As my psychologist friend reminds me: this dreaming of faraway places is a ‘state of mind’. I think she is biting her tongue when she could be adding adjectives to this diagnosis: pathetic ‘state of mind’, escapist, shallow, flighty, flakey, etc.
I get intensely attached to some places. Places and the homes we make for ourselves while we are there bind us to the world and to each other. I am, as a result of the wonderful times we have shared in the wonderful houses we have rented for the past four years in Palm Springs, attached to the place.