William Blake: Fallen Angels,
Alternate Title: Three Falling Figures (c. 1793)

"Maybe I could find a new identity, even one AboveMe there."

While attending university in Portland, my first wife and I lived in a main-floor-of-an-old-house apartment on a busy arterial. When friends moved out of their main-floor-of-an-old-house apartment on top of Mt. Tabor with views of both Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens, we moved in a minute and soon came to think of ourselves as the sort of people who lived on top of one of the more prominent vistas in the city. Later, when our landlord decided to raise the rent by the amount of the increase in the Consumer Price Index each month, we decided to buy a house. The best we could afford was located down in what we called The Flats, a neighborhood far beneath our accustomed station, with industrial operations squeezed between houses. The adjacent milk bottling plant left the neighborhood smelling of sour milk most mornings. All claims to have been urban pioneering aside, we felt as if we had been Exiled into a third-world nation. It would be where we'd raise our kids and live our lives. In retrospect, it doesn't seem half as demeaning as it felt.

I recognized that old familiar feeling when The Muse and I landed in Roslyn, Virginia, at the beginning of our later Exile. The place felt as if it was far BeneathMe economically, and I was flat broke and busted at that time. It was everything I never wanted: urban, high-rise, cramped, and crowded. The only green seemed to be the weeds working their way up through pavement cracks. The neighborhood Safeway store seemed especially chaotic, with more of a Seven-Eleven than a supermarket vibe. Most people seemed to live in anonymous apartments. Few single-family dwellings survived. Everyone seemed to be in a god-awful hurry. The few people walking were heading to or from the Metro station. The purpose of the place seemed to be to serve as a stop-over on the way to somewhere, anywhere else. It seemed as though nobody aspired to end up in Roslyn, least of all us.

The whole DC Metro area seemed of a similar kind. I tried but failed to see myself settling anywhere within its limits. I tried to imagine myself an urban apartment dweller, sleeping a dozen stories above a central city street, but I couldn't. I also tried to imagine myself living in some suburb on a cutesy curving lane in some mid-century brick job, distant from public transportation and driving everywhere, but I couldn't. I just couldn't! I tried to imagine myself living in one of those narrow mid-nineteenth-century brick row houses on the backside of Capitol Hill, but I also could not. I tried and failed to foresee what might not feel BeneathMe there.

I was not trying to play on my privilege. I didn't have to try, for I'd lived near the Center of the Universe, where gravity actually worked right, unlike in DC where nobody seemed to even believe in the existence of gravity, or levity, either, for that matter. It seemed a godless place, one lacking a familiar kind of faith. I feared for my soul's well-being. I felt terrified most of the time. I knew how to make lemonade when dealt lemons, but I was less experienced at reframing shitstorms. The new normal seemed like a fall from grace, and I could not, for the longest time, imagine myself thriving in that place.

I had been seeking what I'd lost rather than what I might have found. I compared what I found with what I'd lost and predictably found it wanting when I might have considered what I found for what it was or what it might become. Losing my soul disabled my ability to see blessings, most of which, admittedly, appeared in deep disguise. Exile steals much more than home; it disconnects the homing instinct, initiating rounds of inevitable failures with searches for only what could never be found there. With my nose in the air, I would not see what I might actually have. Predisposed to reject whatever I found as BeneathMe, I kept myself adrift. I slowly discovered some improvements within my Exile. I found that I lived within easy access distance from the most extensive library ever assembled in history, and I registered and began reading there. A slice of absolute Heaven far above my presumed station invited me in. When I received that library card, my Exile stopped feeling so hard. Maybe I could find a new identity, even one AboveMe there.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz