That Crappy Little Place

"It can't be more than 150 a month!"

"Are you seriously a business major? Have you no concept of housing market values?"

"For that crappy little place?"

As unbelievable it may have been to my scrupulously business-minded friend, I moved into that crappy little place, a one room studio/apartment with dingy carpet, old white paint, and no furniture whatsoever, only bare walls, bare floor, bare ceiling, and a fourth wall made of two extravagantly clear floor-to-ceiling window panes opening to a lake: water grass, marshes, a lone palm in distance.

Mira Lago is its name.

For a few days while electricity had not been turned on due to complications with the city provider, I lived alone, with shifting natural light of the day and dakness of the night upon lake water to witness my not-so-still or silent mind.

I thought of that man who walked about the woods of Concord, Massachusettes noting bird prints in snow and the sound of ice cracking over the pond. Reading Walden had been one of the most anchoring experiences in my life. Getting to know Thoreau while sitting on a wood stump just outside the house, in the sun, with nothing to disrupt--it ushered in altogether another dimension of perception into my wandering mind that was, at that time, infested with homesickness and adolescent angst. I had again moved to America from my home in China, leaving my grandmother and a waiting boy behind, both of whom I loved with my whole heart and soul. It was a time of turbulence and Thoreau's words became melatonin for my insomniac mind, a dose each night before bed. Images of Walden Pond, of Concord woods, of cranberries and pines sent me to sleep. And this continued for an entire semester. I decided, then, that I would go to college, major in English literature, and write my senior thesis on this very place, this very man.

Little did I know that life would take me on more detours. On the journey, I heard of Rachel Carson whose Silent Spring hauntingly pointed out the absence of insects and birds during a time of earth's awakening. The ban on DDT which ensued the book's publication intrigued the Chemistry geek in me at that time. I started to consider studying Chinese medicine, devouring ancient texts that explored the physical qualities, natural habitats, and healing powers of completely foreign plants. Each book revealed so much. I had visions of farmers, medicinemen, their wives and daughters hiking up mountains, traversing remote terrains, or stopping at the roadside to merely note the vein pattern of a certain leaf, to dig up rare roots, to taste potentially poisonous flowers. My grandmother was very much such a woman, her herbal brews made up ingredients that seemed magical in their abilities to cure the strangest maladies.

She was uneducated, but sensitive to nature's rhythm and character just as the best of haiku masters who had devoted their entire lives to penetrating nature and finding its essence. I read of these who traveled as vagabonds across Japan's countryside--along rice fields, under moons, around rocks--looking, just looking. I've been inspired by Basho and Issa, one spiritual, one aesthetic, but both writing poetry that expressed the transience of this world in terms of cherry blossoms or running water. The Zen philosophy which pervades their verses was tonic for my soul at a time of bombardment of the Western culture, the Western languages, the Western religions every corner I turned. More than postmodern neurosis or rebellion, I needed a sense of stability, a peace with apparent metaphysical uncertainty.

In college, the most sanity I felt has been on bike rides oupast t the campus security gates, outside the confines of well-architectured Tuscan gardens. I've gone down the broken down roads that lead to trailer homes, overgrown yards, deserted lots--a kind of wildness that paralleled well with the lonely moon and native trees. In Lakeland, I've came to know the name of the town through experience: Bonny, Hollingsworth, Crystal, Parker, Wire, Hunter, Mirror, Scott, Hancock. These were taken in carefully along with the untamed grasses that find their reflection in the water whose hues changes each hour. I hated the thought of being a mere passerby. There was a part of me that always wanted to come back, always wanted to be near, always never tired of gazing or breathing.

There is something in Nature, who so mysteriously draw searching souls into her embrace so that they forget their homes. Some of them were considered lunatics, vagabonds, outcasts, or simply out of their mind, as my business major friend must have thought me to be. 

Yet for that tiny connection to a piece nature, a relatively unknown lake, I did not care. If freedom could be purchased, I think I did exactly that. My more sensible friend E.T. deemed me "Ms. Thoreau" in celebration of such a simple living space. So Mira Lago was and Mira Lago will be, this space for this period of time.