City Mouse Country Mouse

In the country Etta Marie longed for the excitement and bustle of the the city. Each visit to the publishing house, or to see a play felt like an adventure, but also like she was missing out on something--something that was going on without her while she was gone. Her farmhouse, once the perfect retreat for writing and escaping the world felt cold and lonesome, and far too isolated, so when a rent controlled apartment opportunity opened up, she jumped at the chance to live in the teaming habitat of the Big City.

Now she realized she didn't like people very much. Hoards of People. Also, people in the city avoided each other, although they purposefully lived near each other, or on top of each other. She wished for time away from them, and their noises, and squabbles, and nonsense. Dogs barking; people fighting and yelling at each other, and about their problems; horns, alarms, and sirens going off--it was all so much, and so often. She wondered if she was really a country mouse who like to visit the city, and not a city mouse at all. There was plenty to do, but the time to do it was not there like she thought it would be. When it was, she wanted solitude, more than she wanted to fight crowds, and stand in lines.

It was a paradox, her life. Etta Marie gathered her manuscripts on her lap and continued working, and looked outside to see rain starting to fall against the window. She wasn't quite sure if she had a gypsy heart, or if she was just terribly malcontent, or maybe just had not found her place in the world. In college, she lived in a small town, adjacent to bumpkins; in childhood, she lived far off in the wilds; and she traveled after college around the world. Maybe she was bitten by a kind of bug of wanderlust. One thing was sure, the suburbs were not the answer. Etta Marie grew up in the suburbs, as a teenager, and she never wanted to try that again. Where was the safe place to fall? Of should she keep her bags packed?

Etta Marie grabbed the newspaper and flipped to the classifieds.