To be Afraid

Our Hebrew teacher told us that the word for “place to live” is connected with the verb “to be afraid.” You build a house when you are afraid, when you cannot live in the vastness of the world and need to burrow inside a safe place.

I am not the hermit artist in the woods, the utopian dreamer, or the devoted scholar. At best, I am a dabbler who tries to combine all three. And by wanting it all and wanting to keep so much for myself, I do nothing. Seeing the fault in every path, I don’t go down any.

I am here because I look at everyone else’s life and become dissatisfied. I clench my image of the Bedouin tent with thick woven pillows at the base of the mountain. I work to be able to lie down and watch the billowing tent flap reveal a grove of palm trees against a crystalline sky. All I want is to close my eyes and listen to the thump of my own spirit. But then my thoughts return to my family, my site-specific childhood, and all the other ways I am bound to this time and place. Peace is not enough and so I force myself out of the tent to climb.