Winding Down Early

As intriguing as Fairfield, Iowa is, our experience there offered evidence that even fields of wild flowers can be degraded by noxious weeds. Confederate flags hanging in windows, Trump flags spilling out of yards littered with trash, and clear lines of demarcation between rich and poor demonstrated that utopia remains just an idea, not a reality. So, for now, Fairfield is off the table. It wasn’t the prospect of winter weather that took it off the table. It was the reality that humankind has yet to evolve into a state of human decency. Thus the quest for a more perfect place continues. During the course of these last several days, distinct differences between my IC and me in how “the perfect place” might manifest itself have become apparent, too. I can envision how a smaller house on a bigger piece of land might be right, in the proper setting. Not so my IC, I think. More than that, though, both of us see how “perfection” is more illusion than fact. I want so much for there to be a place where everything is just right. It doesn’t exist. That is true in large part because friends and places do not pair up in the real world. In an ideal world, friends would be part of the search; they would move to the perfect place when we found it. But the perfect place is different for each of us. So we have to decide that point at which place and people are in the best achievable balance.

Today, we will wander toward the place that’s now home, the place where friends await.

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I may have more to write later, but I’m still doing in on my phone, with one finger, so I must stop for now.