Current mood:
Been feeling a little nostalgic the past few days and thinking back on my life.
In my early 20's I was pretty much a granola head. I lived on an island out in the San Juans (Washington State). My boyfriend, a man from Fresno, lived where ever he hung his hat. At that time it was in a VW van. I moved in with him briefly, but I have to say, it was a tad cramped!! He had some definite ties to what we would call "new age" spirituality now and claimed he had seen his own future death. If true, he's been dead many years now. We split later on when he moved his van to another island.
I lived in a very small, very rustic cabin after the tourist season wound down. Then along came an offer to 'move up' and I lived rent free in the home of a couple of elderly snow birds who were of course wintering in Arizona.
My best female friend was living in a tiny cabin on the beach. I LOVED her cabin! She did everything she could to winterize it but it was drafty and damp and probably should have been torn down prior to that time. Aurelia was my idol... She rolled her own cigarettes (both kinds), never shaved, had lived in exotic places and was a vegetarian. She shoo'd spiders and flies out the window and picked up cigarette butts where ever she went, not her own, because she never ever tossed one on the ground, but other people's.
We kept in touch for quite a few years after I eventually left the island and moved into more 'mainstream' society. After all, I never did get into rolling my own cigarettes... I definitely required filters on mine!
Aurelia eventually came to the mainland and went to school to study Marine Biology. She still left little impact on her environment. She lived on a small boat she bought and spent most of her time either working on the boat, in school or studying. She didn't moore in a fancy marina, she was in a small marina with wobbly piers that scared me to walk on when I ventured to her boat home. In later years I think this marina came to public attention as the place where a very sick man kept his mentally ill wife confined for years in a tiny boat with several large also neglected dogs. Very sad story....
I wonder what happened to Aurelia. I was thinking the last time I saw her was at my wedding, smoking her home rolled cigarettes, but I think I saw her one more time after that. I can visualize her visiting me in my home in Seattle. My oldest daughter may have been born by that time.
It's interesting to think that we are both now in our 50's... how has she changed? Is she a marine biologist on a ship somewhere? Is she still so very much her own person? Is her hair still long and blond? Does she eat meat now? Perhaps she moved back to the Virgin Island where the weather would be more suited to her lifestyle than the weather of Washington State. Did she have children or marry? Is she still living?
In my mind I am sitting on a rock, under the tree outside her cabin in the sunshine. Aaaah.... remember when.....
I really could just live on Orcas Island... with some cheap and an heirloom vegetable garden... Off the grid.
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2 years ago