Pax Domi

I have developed socially quite a bit, and as a result am often either out and about with people or doing about the same at home. Each person has their public image and persona. My guess is that I project an image of a loud, animated joker always up for some good boisterous fun. That's substantially true, I suppose, but does not paint the entire picture. As is the case for many, there is the person I am while with people and under observation, and then there is the person I am when alone and left entirely to my own devices.

I would put it like this: I enjoy the thrill that comes from pitching and rolling on the open seas, but have no desire to live on a boat. No matter how much I break out of anti-social isolation in life, I will always crave the security and regularity of a quiet and still home which itself yields no excitement or surprises of any kind. I'm partly something like Roderick Usher, and so am perhaps unusually sensitive. This is surely shocking to people who have repeatedly found it necessary to chasten me for my own voluminous histrionics away from my home.

If I had my way, at the busiest of times, one would have no difficulty in picking out the barely perceptible sounds and movements in my home. There would be nothing to upstage the ticking of the clock, the burbling of the coffee machine or the settling of the edifice in the night. My home would not be intruded upon by any undesired evidence of the world outside- not even the elements which would be present should I live in a lifeless desert.

As I said, this is all in reference only to my home. Outside of it, I delight in exactly the opposite. I dearly love excitement,  and find myself greatly stimulated by frenetic activity and human dramatics. Stimuli like that is fuel for the creative machine, if nothing else. I'm prepared to endure stresses from all of it, secure in the knowledge that it can all be shaken off upon return to home base. Home can take on the qualities of the outside on occasion, but as a rule must be the place of contemplation and recharging. If not, additional anxiety would pile itself on top of the ordinary, and it would be all the worse since I would have neither time or place to replenish myself.

The present arrangement is tolerable, but could bear improvements. I could too, for that matter. I'm prepared to see things differently over time. True love would be apt to influence my thinking on the matter. After all, quiet and solitude seem like the best ways of achieving happiness and productivity now while I'm a bachelor, but I can see those goals being better served by not chasing away a good and loving woman for being too noise or active around the house. That woman alone is exempt- all others must comply.