En Route - a fragment

Dreaming of home, I passed grove after grove of naked trees, calm and dignified after yesterday's light snow. In the dead of winter, these man-made forests, measuring 50ft deep on either embankment of Beijing's airport expressway, stood as candid reminders of the pre-Olympic make-over that began years ago. Every so often we would whiz by a lone nest, dark and thickly wedged amongst bone-grey branches, indicating that these groves did not merely constitute a carefully planted backdrop for incoming and outbound travelers, but were a transplant of Nature itself in its delicate simplicity. A home, after all, for the feathered inhabitants scanning the dusklit skies above, akin to the humans peering out of frosted windows below.

Days have passed, and this particular human, having returned to home's dreamlike existence, has found herself back along that highway often, hanging amongst those tall boughs, swaying ragged in the dry winter winds, fate uncertain. Not because of anything lacking at home, far from it in fact, but a feeling of general displacement during that daily trek to and from the nest, gathering worms, acorns and what have you. I like to call this journey "work". Finding the gusto to run up and down the ice-cold tree trunks laden with worms a-squirm has taken more joules than two servings of oatmeal every morning have to offer. Sure, I find plenty of fascination in gathering acorns and worms and other fruits of the forest, but knowing myself, I could likely find something fascinating about almost anything.

Thing is, I'm not sure that this is all that new of a state. Winter's glacier-like crawl has surely played its part in overall weariness of the mind, but perhaps I've been this way to a certain degree since the summer of '99 when I took that fateful first job and nestled myself in the fat, wrinkled underbelly of investment banking. The topic's getting as old as that belly, surely. I consider myself a decisive person but my husband kindly points out evidence to the contrary: "maybe I should quit, maybe I should stay, maybe I am meant for the corporate world, maybe I'm not..." Get a grip already.

So when does it all come together? I suppose it does when you allow it to. I suppose it does when the hunger edges out the fear. I suppose it does when the crystal is all sold out and there's nothing left before you except the rolling dunes of soft sand calling your name and a hot, hot sun standing by. But will your limbs and joints be too gnarled from decades of minding the shop to outmaneuver the desert and make it to the first oasis? And then the next?

It seems my worldview has become even more idealistic and risk averse as time wears on. Waking up in the nest beside my husband every morning, I feel like there's nothing impossible for us, nothing out of reach. In the afternoon during a midday caffeine injection I feel as if I'm not even reaching. Do I take a leap and thrust off this paycheck parachute, see where I land? Or do I let the plane get closer to the tarmac and tuck and roll to safety? I don't have the answer, and much to the dismay of those in audible range, I may just have to keep batting back and forth until either the plane nosedives into the runway or I get booted out the hatch en route.