Ruminations On A Screened-In Porch

She took another sip of beer and grimaced a bit. She still struggled to really enjoy the bitter taste, but right now, as the wistful sun sank behind the trees and the evening settled in, it was exactly what she wanted.

As the warmth of the sun on her face and the effects of the beer began to relax her, a daydream began to flit through her mind. She began to imagine herself wandering across a foreign land, maybe it was India, not really searching for anything, not even really appreciating what she saw around her so much as appreciating the liberating distance it provided from her life, as if the real benefit was a novel environment where no one knew her and no one judged her. She imagined the experience allowing her to subconsciously make sense of everything in her life, allowing her to think about everything without thinking about anything.

She absentmindedly rubbed her grandmother’s ring as she drifted further into the daydream. The tiny bumps along the edge of the ring always held her attention just enough to let her mind wander more freely. Tracing her finger over it had become a frequent habit when wrestling with complex questions.

Visions of long walks along ambling river banks drew her in deeper. She imagined crossing a bridge into a small town. From the fringes of the town activity would trickle in occasionally out of the corner of her eye. A small boy chasing a chicken or an older gentlemen pushing a cart toward the town center.

As she approached the town center she imagined housing becoming more dense and activity coming more frequently from random directions like tributaries off of a larger water source. She imagined women hanging clothes out to dry and more children running around chaotically with what seemed like no adult supervision at all.

At the edge of the town center in her daydream she imagined sensing a great deal of commotion just ahead, prompting her to slow her pace and proceed more tentatively. The main street of the town opened up to her as she emerged from the shadows of the side street, flooding her senses with the colorful, animated scene of a small parade, making her take a small step back. She imagined exotic sounds and smells coming at her from all directions. Just taking in the chaos was enough to completely engross her and she imagined losing track of time just standing on the sideline as the controlled chaos danced around her.

Slowly the scene would become more comfortable as the chaos and patterns that played out in the street in front of her began to make more sense. She imagined herself taking a few steps forward, not yet interacting with the activity, but becoming a more active observer, more appreciative of the nuanced scene that played out in front of her.

She sighed deeply, almost remorsefully, as the visions quickly disappeared like a dream might upon waking. She had never taken a truly exotic trip, had never thrown caution to the wind and just boarded an airplane, content with not knowing what she would find on the other end. She knew it was foolish, overly romantic, to think that her trip would be anything other than one crazy, stressful disaster after another, but maybe it was that very lack of control that she craved. Sometimes you need to stop trying to control everything around you in order to truly understand what the world has to offer and where you fit in. Sometimes serendipity is the only way to find what you are looking for. Or at least that’s what she told herself, somewhat bemusedly, as she tried to justify such an extravagant adventure that had no actual purpose.

Maybe she would keep a journal of her adventure. Maybe she would write a novel. She’d had so few opportunities for creative outlet in her life, just writing may provide the cathartic experience she seemed to be craving. She could only imagine the inspiration that a trip might provide toward writing.

The smell of burning leaves drifted in from some unknown origin, distracting her thoughts. For a brief moment she lost herself in the sweetly emotional smell, wondering why she found it so alluring, so comforting. Maybe it was some association with childhood, although she couldn’t really pinpoint any specific memories that she connected with the smell of burning leaves.

She glanced around the screened-in porch, noticing for the first time the aging, weathered, wooden beams that held up the roof and screens. A few flies buzzed against the screens, beginning to seek out the light from the window behind her head that become increasingly prominent as the evening sky grew increasingly dark. It was an odd environment, neither indoors or outdoors, only barely wide enough to walk around someone seated in the middle of the room as she was. It had a very temporal nature to it. It wasn’t build to protect people from excessive weather, it was just meant to spend a brief period of time in before retiring back inside.

For some reason analyzing the porch made her feel increasingly awkward just sitting there. She tried to turn her attention back to the natural scene just beyond the screens. The setting sun was now obscured slightly by a tree, bringing on a bit of a chill, but she didn’t want to leave her seat just yet.

A trip would be nothing more than an escape, a procrastination technique. She’d still have to come back at some point and deal with her life. She’d have to commit herself to some path without the vaguest assurance that the path was correct. She wasn’t sure what scared her more, the length of the commitments she faced or her lack of confidence about the goals those commitments led her toward. She felt deeply jealous of people who had a passion and directed sense of purpose toward some goal, any goal.

She’d never really been able to nail down any one purpose with enough clarity. She had many interests and curiosities, but none of them were the clear winner. Everything from political science, which she had majored in in college, to art history, to architecture, to cooking or working in hospitality seemed to offer a life of interesting challenges and fascinating discoveries. The problem wasn’t a lack of curiosity or passion so much as an excess of it. Everything seemed so interesting so how could she possibly choose one direction to the exclusion of all other directions.

She’d already begun heading down one path just by default through the jobs she’d applied and been accepted to since college. She’d spent time working on a few political campaigns and was currently working for an environmental non-profit. She enjoyed the work, but increasingly she felt the need to look beyond the next few years and start thinking about the rest of her life.

She took another sip from her beer and realized that it was just about empty. The nearly empty bottle seemed to be suggesting she lay down her fantasies and deal with the immediate reality around her. She lingered for a moment more as the last rays of the sun sprung from between the branches of the tree and cast a scattered pattern along the wall.

The last moments of the setting sun gave her a moment to transition from her alcohol-assisted ruminations back to dinner preparations and other responsibilities. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant transition, but it was inevitable.

She reluctantly lifted her legs off of the table they had been resting on and pulled her back away from the slightly reclined cushions of the couch, bringing her body into a roughly crouched position. It took more effort than she would have preferred to stand and gather her stuff from the table. A few steps toward the door and a pull at the rusted handle and she stepped inside, the creaking door slamming closed behind her, leaving her thoughts behind her on the screened-in porch.