1 post tagged “paradise”

I live in a world of neon pastels and sand.  Where apartment complexes back up to wild jungles and you can find seashells in your backyard.  Many find this land of turquoise water, white sand and margaritas paradise.

I want to say my own personal hell, but those words are harsh.  It's beautiful, sunshine,  beaches,  the wilderness,  It's full of mystery,  venomous creatures, gators, beautiful birds, greenery.  It's also vapid, vacuous, living in it's own reality of tourism and southern culture.  Oranges and country music.  Delicious strawberries (They might even be better than those in California) and Caribbean cuisine really can't cancel out the massive gift shops with smiling magicians and enormous animals with light up eyes sprouting from the roof.  To many this kitsch is charming, much like that in  Chinatown or fisherman's wharf, but the ominous beast of consumerism and promoted naivety looms large.  The culture of non-culture is so prevalent in this paradise, homogeneity is always rewarded and the slings and arrows are endured by the unique.

Feeling alone in millions is a familiar concept to many, (I mean look at poor Eleanor Rigby), but to live in a world where everyone one is here on a limited time basis, is challenging.  I am comfortable alone, for days, but without a comiserant, someone who understands your context, truly and deeply the values of you, being alone transitions into being lonely, for you are lone.

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
-Carl Gustav Jung