Where do you go when you need to hide? When everything is just too much, and the world is just not doing what it should, but you can't fix it?
Because there are things you can't do, and things you can't fix. I almost drove myself insane in 2020, convinced there must be something I could do to stop the madness. If I just explained once more...
It is a side effect of playing with worlds, with made up histories, with empires that rise and fall in my mind. You get confused when it comes to the real world. Kind of like when you're in a rough spot and you just want to fast-forward and get past it, because your mind is used to movies. Only more so, because you think there must be a clever trick you can use to make it all alright.
But clever tricks are a novel plotting device, partly because it would be really boring to write "And then the character sat around for ten years waiting for the other shoe to drop in the minds of those who weren't paying attention. And then--"
But the world doesn't lend itself to fast forward or clever tricks. Not most of the time.
Note I'm not going to say you can't do anything about the mess -- looks around -- we're in. It's a mess and no mistake, one that started before I was born and probably long before most of you were born too. And it's... Well. It is, you know? It took almost a century to weave, or if you look at it another way, 300 years, from the beginning of the industrial revolution, to the worship of "scientific" and "experts" and larger and more bureaucratic governments.
We're not going to undo it all in one go. Even if you take the approach to untangling this mess that I take when I'm crocheting and the thread gets in a big tangled mess, and just cut out the worse of the knots, then tie to the last clean thread, when it comes to the world, and everyone in it, or even to the vast and complex nation we inhabit... well, other than that outside the metaphor, you end up in blood up to your ankles, with that approach, and what comes after is more than a bit of a gamble, even that takes time. And pressure. A lot of time and pressure. And heaven help us, the pressure is being applied. Yes, it is. But the time is awfully hard to take.
And honestly most of us, perhaps desperately, are still hoping for a solution that doesn't dye all the thread red with blood, and allows us to go on crocheting a tissue of human dignity, liberty, individuality instead of the old grey, dingy pattern of feudalism or communist neo-feudalism. That, well, now, it could go very slowly and then all of a sudden. Or it could go... slow. Incrementally slow, so it looks like it's all coming apart, because you don't see the parts that are getting slowly rebuilt in the background. It's messy, it's slow, and most of the way -- probably the rest of my life -- is very uncomfortable indeed for those who know history and see how it could all tip into the brown stuff. Or worse, the red.
But it's all slow, beyond individual, or even plucky small group control. Hard to live through.
However, we live not just in a place but in a time. And it's the time we have. Probably (unless you believe in a very specific form of reincarnation) the only time we have. Like the space opera "these are the times of our lives."
And you know, it could be worse, much worse. I mean, I doubt I could have gotten this far and still be alive, given what my body is and how it works, if I had been born ten years earlier, even in a slightly more advanced place. Also, I like daily showers. I like clean clothes every day. I like hot meals. All of those were at times luxuries, and at times unobtainable without extreme effort or wealth while I was growing up, let alone say when the founders lived.
So our times are not so bad, even if parts of it are very much Heinlein's crazy years, and our polity insists on going howling further into them.
Then there are personally bad times. Sometimes I wonder how my friends survive, how they go on functioning and producing beautiful things, or creating these ordered, joyous lives, while dealing with stuff. I think I'm more of a wussy in the emotional field. I worry obsessively about those I love. (My love language is biting my nails to the quick.) Particularly when I want to help but I can't.
But I know, blessed though I've been so far, there will bad times ahead. They arrive for everyone. Nights of a thousand years by a hospital bed. Days of dealing with a loved one who is sinking into illness or losing his or her mind. Endless weeks of drudgery and effort. Personal or inter-personal strife. People you love who leave, by their decision or not. People you lose to death, misunderstanding, anger. You wake, you sleep, and you wish you could be anywhere else, at any other time, doing anything else. All of us go through times like this. All of us. It's part of humanity.
Where do you go then? What's your bolthole? The fox goes to ground. The bunny goes down the rabbit hole. Where do you go?
I don't mean physically. We all have places we go physically, where we feel renewed, refreshed. Where we gain strength, so we can go back and do what must be done.
For most of my young life that was grandma's house. I'd go around the side gate, past the renters' yard and the wash tank, around past grandad's workshop and the orange tree and to the grape-vine shaded patio where I played every day until I was seven, and often enough till I was ten. The kitchen door was always open -- unless grandma was going to be gone more than a day -- and the clock ticked loudly on the wall. If grandma was not in sight, I crossed the kitchen, opened the door to the inner corridor and called for her. If she didn't answer, she was out on some errand. But most of the time she was in the kitchen or the yard, doing something, or answered from the depths of the house, "Daughter! I'll be there." (Daughter/son is a term of endearment in Portuguese, often used for grandchildren, and even your spouse.)
And then I'd sit down. A kitten or three would climb into my lap. The dog would lie at my feet, grandma would make tea. Later, when she decided I was a young lady, instead of the bowls used for tea in family, she'd bring out the teapot, the night cups, and the bought cookies. (Heaven only knows why, but I appreciated the effort and the love behind it.)
She'd talk of people in the village. I'll be honest, I have a lousy memory for faces and names. And always did. So most of the time I was only half aware of who she was talking about, unless she mentioned a connection to one of my classmates, or a cat or dog. (Yes, I know. But it's like this. I knew every pet in the village. Humans on the other hand, were Rex's owner or Tareco's girl.) Still, I was interested, in a way. And grandma had a gift for making stories interesting and infusing these very ordinary people with interest and color. Particularly because her memory often went back to their grandparents or great grandparents. And she wasn't malicious. Sometimes disapproving, but not malicious. (If she made malicious comments, they went waaaaaaaay over my head at a point that I caught the hint, but knew she wouldn't elaborate. Stuff like "And if you knew how his grandfather made his fortune." Or "Well, they said her great grandmother was no better than she should be, but I never..." Sometimes, I really wanted those stories. After grandad's death, while she was still in shock, I managed to get her to tell the story of a local family whose first ancestor in the village was a "dangerous sword-fighter" and "not a good man" and I got a feeling that, well, things we value in characters are certainly not how the village knew people. Or how they valued them.)
Sitting there, listening to grandma talk, to the daily life of people engaged in their own struggles, and how she wished to help this one, or convince that one to take it easier, or-- And petting a kitten and sometimes the head of a dog that came to rest it on my knees, I could feel my own struggles: exams and college and ideologically motivated teachers and professors, and spiteful (and sometimes ideologically motivated) classmates and friends or 'friends' slip away. Leaving me a space to catch my breath, and just be. Until I had to face the outside again.
For years, while living in Colorado, the bolthole was Pete's kitchen on Colfax, which is kind of funny, since for at least half of that time, it wasn't in a particularly safe part of town. Also, it was technically a "low dive diner" frequented by working class people, but also marginal people. That was part of its charm. I could go there, usually with the family, and sit in the back, and soak in the noise and the busy and the various pieces of various lives I could overhear. And eat some souvlaki and rice pudding. And for a moment, the world was bearable.
My other respites, the first one from the beginning, the second only my last ten years there or so, were the Natural History Museum (Yes, it changed names. I'm not at home to their weird notions. rolls eyes.) And the zoo.
I'd walk slowly through the hallways devoted to the evolution of life on Earth, soaking in how small we were in relation to the immensity of time, and I'd feel better. And there were often interesting special exhibits.
Then there was the zoo, which particularly when it was cold and almost empty was like a very large garden with interesting animals as a side attraction.
It probably says something about our last years in Colorado that we ran away to those at least once a week. (Until the lockdown.) And older son and I would often drive through night for coffee at midnight at Pete's. (Mostly because I wanted to talk plots, or stories, as it was getting harder and harder to write, for reasons that were probably physical.) By that time, nighttime at Pete's was a who is who of area writers. I have no idea why. I mean, I know why for me, but not for others.
Now I'm far away from all my physical boltholes, and grandma's house is gone. I mean, parts of it stand, but it's not remotely the same. The room I was born in is now a bathroom, tiled in pink roses.
Going to Colorado this summer did my heart good, even if I paid for it physically, in having my auto immune go completely insane the moment I went to high altitude. (It got better when I came back down.) It's good to know it's still there. Look, yes, I knew it existed. But remember we left during 2021, lockdowns still in erratic existence, and everything plain weird. It's not what it was. And Colorado Springs has changed beyond recognition, at least the downtown area that was my stomping grounds. But a lot of my hangouts are at least similar enough, it's good to know they're there, that people are enjoying them, even if I can't.
I have memories. Both of grandma's house, and of Denver, and of a couple of perfect days in Denver with the family. One when the kids were little and one when older son and I just couldn't take "it" -- house hunting (for us), apartment hunting (for him), short on money, waiting for house to sell, stressed over writing career in my case, and applications in his -- sometime in 2015 and we went out for the afternoon, had a long walk in the zoo, under a drizzling rain (so rare in Colorado we didn't have umbrellas,) then dinner at Pete's. At the time we were both strict low carb, but we were bad and split souvlaki for desert. We sat in a small booth, up front (you could only sit in the corner booth if you had 4 or more people) and watched the street outside through the window stippled with rain drops. I don't know why that particular afternoon was perfect. It just was, and thinking of it makes me feel better.
And of course, when I sleep I go to grandma's house. That kitchen, with the (insufficient number of) blue-painted cabinets, and the huge table, is somewhere at the center of who I am. It's probably where I'll go when I die. And you can tell I feel it when I want to paint my kitchen cabinets blue and put a chicken mural on the dishwasher...
But I'm a writer. My boltholes aren't always real places, or real memories.
Oh, I'm a reader too, but weirdly, I don't often go to other people's worlds to hide. Heinlein's, sometimes. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; Puppet Masters. Pratchett's Hankmorpork. Simak's rural places, in fall, with someone hunting raccoons.
But it's more likely I'll go to my own places, my own internal worlds. When I'm truly going insane, the world is often Elly, which is yes, very weird, very dysfunctional. But it's been with me since I was 14, and I have 3000 years of its history in my head. (The rest is fuzzy.) And it's so different from ours that I'm not in it at all, so I can go there and live for a moment a life that is not mine, and that is impossible to me.
Going away, even if only inside my head, gives me a few moments to breathe, so I can face reality again.
And its being inside my head means I can go any time (so long as I remember to come out again. there were years, while growing up when making myself do that was almost impossible.) I can take a much needed break while cleaning boxes or doing dishes, or sorting clothes.
Then come back refreshed to face the mess we're in. Again.
I honestly think without those breaks, I'd already have gone insane. (Or at least "non-functionally insane" since these are the Crazy Years, and I haven't taken and I'm not likely to take the solution of the "sane man" in those circumstances, you can tell I'm a little nuts myself.)
So, what's your bolthole? Not physical. (Or physical, but not in the sense of where you go when SHTF. We don't want that out in public anywhere.) Just the place you for a respite, so you can face the madness again.
Because these days? Everyone needs a bolthole.
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