fattypatties

Places

We've been in central Missouri for a month on August 5. I've been amazed to discover that Missouri is beautiful. We've been in the center of the state, staying in Columbia and Jefferson City. We have a beautiful camp site on the Osage River right now. The area is northern Ozarks, rolling hills with beautiful rock formations and lots and lots of trees. I love trees.

That's the great thing about traveling. I was in Missouri a few times as a kid. I have family in Springfield. But I didn't remember anything about the terrain. The hills, rivers, lakes and parks around here are almost breathtaking. The people have been friendly. I have found something quite familiar about it.

I was born in Indiana and lived there the first 9 years of my life. I don't identify much with the midwest because the rest of my life has been mostly lived in the southeastern United States. But driving around the area of central Missouri, I've had a dejavu feeling of home. I suspect that I may be more Midwestern in my outlook and thinking than I realize. It has been an interesting feeling after living in a foreign country. In California, I felt a bit out of place. I love San Francisco and I feel healthier there -- clean air, temperate climate, I guess. But it was still foreign. Nashville is beautiful, but it is southern and I still feel out of place in the south -- like everyone else believes the world works one way and I believe it works another and we are never really going to see eye-to-eye. Here in Missouri I've not felt that way. I have felt "in place."

In place -- that's an interesting phrase. It implies that there is a place for everyone. I really don't believe that to be true. I mean I believe that we make our own destinies interactively -- we don't control our lives in the sense that we always get what we want when we want it (and thank the goddess for that because I probably would really screw up the world), but the world is the synergistic total of all our decisions (or non-decisions). So everything I say or do affects the world, but everything everyone else says or does affects my life as well. We are connected and there is no way around it, no way to escape.

But there is no doubt that there are times that I feel like I'm in the right place at the right time.

I'm searching for that feeling again today. I'm hoping for a place and trying to figure out how to get there.

Funny thing to be thinking while living in an RV. I guess.