"You are missing so much by not traveling!" a friend chastised me, using a stridency that rings in my ears a year later. Her misunderstanding of my travel-aversion infused her warning with guilt & disdain. 

   Shamed, I wondered what she saw that I was missing? She produced a fine array of photographs she had made of rock formations in the Baja. Amid compliments I asked her husband what he thought of his wife's artwork. "It's just a bunch of rocks," he said.

   What if we do not have the freedom to traverse the world as do my friends? What if we are bound to a caregiving role that calls us to reach into diseased bodies at work & nurture children at home?  

   Fortunately, beauty dwells nearby now. The intricate pansies float in a tiny pool in my back yard. What lies near you?

   The scarfed angel cloud-dances with the moon. She knows that we are all sometimes desperate to escape but cannot abandon our work. Instead, we imagine.

   Tom Petty gave us a pretty option in the opening lines to a searing song: "I got a room at the top of the world tonight/ I can see everything tonight…I got a room at the top of the world tonight/ and I ain't comin' down."

   Our "room at the top of the world" is not thousands of miles away but within – or not at all. I have found mine & I ain't comin' down. 

-Erie Chapman

   Photoart – erie