Topic 20: On the Pleasure of Escape

Carol:

The Pleasure of (Temporary) Escape

Milo The Magnificent has gotten loose twice this week. The first time was at our usual walking spot. On our drive up the hill, an antelope had crossed the road ahead of us, and rabbits were hopping through the brush; so, Milo was ready to follow his nose for adventure. When we reached the rendez-vous point, I opened the truck door, slid out and got his leash ready, but he leapt past me and took off on a 15-minute romp through the Alligator juniper, cat claws and wild sunflowers. Milo does not come until he is good and ready. Milo lives to run.

The second escape came yesterday when the All-Clean car pulled into the driveway for the bi-weekly house-cleaning. When he heard the car, Milo began barking and ran for the front door. He does this partly to prove he is a watch-dog but mostly because he loves the cleaning ladies, who give him a little treat when they arrive and lots of praise. This time Milo hit the screen door in just the right place and popped it open. He had done 20 laps around the car before the ladies could get the doors fully open, and then he jumped into the car and scrambled around on their laps before they could get out. Milo also lives for attention.

Although I hold my breath and fret when Milo takes off like this—bad Milo—I know he will always come back when his instincts are satisfied and he remembers his perfect life of steady meals, daily walks, lots of petting, a boxful of toys, and comfortable places to sleep. His escapes are TO something, not FROM something, a momentary return to the pre-domesticated freedom of the wild.

I too enjoy my temporary escapes. From a very young age, I lived in, and traveled through, the pages of books, the longer the story the better. I roamed the universe with Podkayne of Mars, wandered the moors with Jane Eyre, and got drunk on life with Zorba the Greek. I’m sure that my love of travel came from devouring all those books. Who could read The Portrait of a Lady or The Razor’s Edge without longing for Paris? Who could read Sherlock Holmes or Dickens without pining for London? And if I could travel in search of my literary heroes, so much the better: Ernest Hemingway’s home and 6-toed cats in Key West, Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top Farm in the Lake District, Albert Camus’ gravestone in Loumarin Cemetery in Provence, the Bronte Parsonage in Yorkshire.

I’m really not really much different than Milo. At the end of a journey---whether as an armchair traveler or a real-time jet setter—I am content to return to my home on Harris Drive and my domesticated life daily walks, steady meals, lots of attention, stacks full of books and comfortable places to read.



















Megan:

A Clean, Well-lighted Room of One’s Own

About 15 years ago, my parents hired a bunch of high-schoolers to build a shed in our front yard. They did a pretty good job. It matches the house (both are barn-shaped). In addition to having a lot more storage space, the shed includes a finished room in the back with a separate entrance, carpeting, phone jack and electricity. It’s supposed to be my dad’s office but to this day, he has never used it. Maybe when he retires…

Anyway, over the years this room has had several incarnations. When I was in high school it was my painting studio, and I got paint all over the walls and ruined the carpet with linseed oil and turpentine. I went through a phase where I painted giant, vague self-portraits. The only trait I shared with the girls in the paintings was the hairstyle – not unlike the cartoons I draw for this blog.

After I went off to college, all the paintings came off the walls and the studio became another storage area. I’m sure the parents have cleaned and organized it several times with the intention that someone would use it, but when I returned home this summer, it was full of old files, broken furniture and bicycles.

Since I’ve moved back I’ve taken a class and then started this project, both of which required a quiet space for me to work. I tried sitting on a chair in the living room with the computer in my lap, but no one recognized that was “work” time – instead it was “ask Megan a question” time, or “can you get the phone Megan, you’re closer” time. I set up a desk in my room but then my mother decided she didn’t like the way it looked and took it out.

Finally, I asked how long it would take clean out the room in the shed so I could use it. Mom must have heard some hint of desperation in my voice, because an hour later she and my dad had dragged all the junk out of the room and into the yard. We moved in the desk that had been banished from my bedroom, moved all of my journals and books and plugged in my laptop. And I finally have a clean, well-lighted room of my own.