Through a glass darkly

There's something that I've been thinking about for a while now, and I've skirted around the issue in some previous posts, but now I'm going to try to get to the heart of it. Simply stated, I am a contradiction in terms. I guess everybody that I work with would tell you that I have both feet on the ground. Some might even say I'm a goody-two-shoes. I've never had a library fine, I've never missed the deadline for a paper, and I've never taken more than a sip of liquor. When shopping, my big splurges are usually no larger than a box of imported chocolates, and that doesn't happen that often. (Only when they're on clearance!) Especially here in Ohio, everybody knows that I'm good old reliable Marne, who you can ask to do something for you and she'll do it. (Unless she thinks it's a dumb idea, and then she'll drag her feet, but that's another story.)

But I'm also a lush and impractical romantic, a little girl who wanted to be a writer and a ballerina and a chef all at the same time, who made up long and involved stories about imaginary people and had her stuffed animals act out Shakespeare in her bedroom. I love air travel because of the feeling of being weightless and free and cut off from all my regular ties that bind. I regularly write letters to people telling them how I really feel about them that I never send, and they're all in a box here somewhere that's really going to shock people when they find it after I die. I've been secretly in love about 47,000 times, and have described at least 5 different people as "the love of my life" and meant it fully and whole-heartedly each time. I also am that rare American who was regularly filled with saudade even before she knew that it was a real concept in Brazil, and was so glad when she finally found a name for that feeling of indescribable longing that she gets with astonishing regularity.

Maybe it's no surprise that one of my favorite books when I was young was The Three Faces of Eve. The sensible part of me got to note the details of the psychoanalytical approach the analysts used on this perplexing case, while the romantic side of me got to revel in the wild details of Eve Black's secret life as a bad girl who did whatever she felt. But now I'm wondering, like Eve does at the end of the book, if I can successfully integrate the disperate strands of my personality.

I think the reason that I'm feeling this bind more now is that since I've moved here to Athens, the sensible side has really won the day. I'm not exposed to all the interesting artistic types like I was in Iowa, and I've been way too busy with work and school to notice that fact. And now I'm at a place where everyone in the library already "knows" who I am and it seems too late to break out of that mold. And so I'll always be the good girl, the one who isn't interested in romance and doesn't even want to have a pet and is perfectly happy eating spaghetti for supper every single night. While all around me lies another Athens with fancy restaurants I've never been to and galleries I've never seen and theater productions that are passing me by. And will I ever get the chance to go to Pittsburgh and see the Mr. Rogers exhibit like I've always wanted to? That seems like too much to even dream of.