Where Would You Live?

My cousin recently moved to Montreal on her own, leaving everything and everyone familiar to her behind in Edmonton. From Edmonton to Montreal. Sounds like a no-brainer, but joking aside, she had specific reasons for choosing Montreal. The arts, the culture, the lifestyle beckoned. And so, under the guise of furthering her education at McGill, what she is really doing is furthering her knowledge of her Self. She has set some wonderful long and short term goals for herself and I think she is well on her way to achieving them. You can follow her blog at www.danishabhaloo.blogspot.com. I don't know about you, but I could certainly take a few minutes to live vicariously through a twenty-something beautiful and talented woman, writing her way out of her cocoon.
Thinking about Danisha's move got me thinking about where I would live to truly be myself, or to even begin finding my Self. Couldn't come up with a single destination. In fact, I'd start to think a city's name and halfway through I'd think "Nah, that's not it." When my dad stopped by for a visit today, I asked him where he would live if he could live anywhere in the world. Seriously, folks, without skipping a heartbeat, he said "a small villa in Spain."
He knew that? How did he just know that? Does everyone know the answer to this question?
"Yes," he went on. "Somewhere where I could sleep every afternoon." And he literally closed his eyes right then and promptly fell asleep on my patio chair.
But you can do that at home, I thought. And that's when it hit me. I would live at home! I want to really LIVE at home! I could make a list, I should make a list, of everything that truly makes me happy and I could do the majority of those things in my home.
Which areas of my Self do I want to explore and cultivate? I want to pick fresh flowers from my own garden, put them in a hand-painted ceramic vase (or maybe a glass vase with a nice etching on it) that I made, make that a centrepiece on my dining table where I will serve mouth-watering scones filled with all kinds of robust herbs from my herb garden, and sit with real friends who talk about real things.
I want to relax in my library teeming with beautiful books, and read until I almost have to resort to propping my eyelids open with toothpicks. And then I want to share my thoughts on other people's work through my own writing, or a gathering of word-worshippers like my Self.
I want to write letters to my friends in far-away places who I miss dearly...real honest-to-goodness letters where you can 'read' someone's excitement through their shaky penmanship, where you actually describe events in detail to the point that the reader feels like they were really there listening to you laugh out loud so you don't have to resort to hurried LOL's. (Are people really laughing out loud when they type that?)
I want to sew something for somebody, or nobody. It doesn't matter. I just want to.
You get the idea. I haven't even left my house yet! So, maybe that's my answer. Where would I live? I would live at home. I'd get out for some fresh air, of course. To buy more books, to appreciate someone else's garden, to learn new crafts, to meet with friends, to show my daughter the beauty of this world and its people. But I would live at home.
Thanks for reading....