The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore. Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do.
- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Chapter 10.
This is my entry in the Round Robin Photo Challenge for this week. The topic,as suggested by Auntie Nub (Liz) of the journal Fool's Paradise, is "Village." This was a stumper for me, at least at first. I don't live in a village, or near a village. I don't even have any pictures I've personally taken of the village of Manlius, a mile from the house where I grew up.
On the other hand, I am a village. As the late Douglas Adams suggests in the quote above, I've created my own little place in the multiverse in which to live my "quiet life. " It looks something like this:
Yeah, I know. My pictorial map of Karenville is a little bizarre. Here it is anyway, along with my explanation. See, the sad truth is, my daily life mostly takes place on or around a four mile stretch of Wilmot Road. My home is near there, my office, my favorite gas station (not shown), my favorite shopping mall, my gym, my church, my favorite place to buy chicken wings, and my favorite grocery store. Once a week I get far enough away to pick up Eva (not shown) and Kevin for church. Once every few months I go further up Wilmot onto Tanque Verde, and turn left on Grant to visit my Mom's grave. A couple of times a year, I follow Tanque Verde to Catalina Highway, and go up Mount Lemmon. But mostly, I live my life on a gray track called Wilmot. 
My neighbors in this restricted little world, this village of my devising, are my husband, my co-workers, my fellow parishioners, and a couple of people who work at Safeway. That's about it.
Ah, but don't feel sorry for me. My physical existence may be ridiculously self-restricted, but it sure saves gas. And the rest of me gets out into other "villages." There's that great virtual village called AOL-J Land. I live there every night. There's a village called Liftlabeth, where a boy once met a tengrem. I spend as much time in Liftlabeth (and other places in Mâvarin) as I can. I've been to Thornhill where Vicky Austin lives in Meet the Austins, and to good old Hill Valley with Doc Brown, and to Pleasantville with the kid who became Spider-Man. I've even been to Half Circle Sea Hold with Menolly. And if that's not enough, I can do a little time tripping in my mind, revisiting my memories of Manlius, and imagining 1960 Disneyland.
If I am a village, who inhabits me? That's easy. All the incarnations of Karen live here - the shy child and the shy adult, the accountant and the ex-student, the blogger and the writer. JW lives here, and Rani and the rest, as much as they do in Mâvarin and elsewhere. And you may not know it, but you all live here, too. To the extent that you touch my life, posting your entries and commenting on mine, keeping in touch by IM and email - yeah. You live here, too.
Were I to seek out a real village for this challenge, it would have been Summerhaven. This is the closest village to me. It burned down a couple of years ago, but it's back now. Summerhaven is at the top of Mount Lemmon, so it's pretty much a day trip of a drive. I went up there for my very first Photo Challenge entry, back when Carly and I were the only players. You can visit it too if you like. Just follow the link!
Karen
Now go check out the entries by the other Round Robin participants:
Carly: Ellipsis (posted!)
Sara: Photographic Memories (posted!)
Mary: Alphawoman's Blog (posted!)
Dorn: Through The Eyes Of The Beholder (posted!)
Betty: My Day My Interests (posted!)
Kimberleigh: I Shaved My Legs For This? (not posted due to dead computer)
Aunt Nub (Liz): Fool's Paradise (posted!)
Maryanne: My Feelings Are Real (posted early - oops! And posted another one!)
Chris: It's all about me I think (posted - sort of!)
Derek: Derek's Picture of the Day
Mary: Hunybea's Open Journal (posted - two entries!)
Renee: wwwTimelessCalligraphystudiocom (posted!)
Marie: Photographs & Memories (posted!)
Robin: These are the days of our Lives
rRose: WAIT-NOTYET-/ (posted!)
Cosette: Pandora's Bazaar (posted!)
Robin: Midlife Matters (posted!)
Steven: sometimes photoblog (posted!)
The next Round Robin Photo Challenge is coming up Wednesday, October 26th. The theme for that one, as suggested by Alan, is Halloween Happenings. Remember, grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize! Will you? Click on the link above for details!
Something even more bizarrely inexplicable
This is my entry in this week's 
But: despite my mania for online confession, you don't know everything about me. Some of it's deep dark stuff I don't tell anyone (except maybe John or my doctor), but a lot of it is basic personal data. With a few exceptions, you don't know my address or phone number, the name of the company where I work now (or the kind of business it is), or the name of the company where John works. You sure as heck don't know my credit card numbers and financial data. Again with exceptions, you don't know the name of my Wiccan friend with health problems, or what's going on in her life now. You may know that I go to church with a guy named Kevin, but you probably don't know who that is. And so on. You know what I choose to share. I share an awful lot, but not everything. And if I don't volunteer every negative thing I could possibly say about myself, who can blame me? So you're getting a slightly grainy and rosy picture of me, and there are pieces missing.
Life in this modern world is compartmentalized, and we interact with different populations at different times, sharing some things and keeping others secret. Nobody at my office knows that I am a blogger--at least, I hope not. Although I strive to avoid revealing anything that would compromise confidentiality agreements, and never write blog entries at work (as I did a few times at Worldwide Travel, I'm ashamed to say), it's better not to raise the issue than explain what a blog is, and why the company need not be concerned about it. Hardly anyone at work knows about the novels. The few who do are the ones who asked about the Sherlock portraits of my characters, which are posted in my cubicle. Nobody there has heard of my friend Kevin, and not too many have even heard of John. But they do know stuff you guys don't about what I do all day and why and how, and how it fits in with their own jobs, and how I look when I return from lunch on a muggy day, my hair all droopy and messy from the walk across the street. A few of them hear things even John doesn't know. (Not very many things, though - John doesn't miss much!)
Still, I'm not a very secretive person by nature. Although I haven't said outright where I live or where I work, I haven't exactly covered my tracks well. Here's a picture of the hallway outside the accounting department at work, taken when I left just before sunset one evening. If you worked there, you'd recognize the hall. Even if you didn't work there, but you lived in Tucson, you could deduce where I work from the pictures I've posted of weather and mountains and streets and buildings. You'd know that I must live near that one Safeway I keep mentioning. So what is the point of my saying I live on Calle *Mumble*?. I'm not sure. But basic Internet security guidelines suggest that I not post my address, so I don't. Maybe I get 1% less junk mail that way. And it is true that a whacko from Quantum Leap fandom once used my address against me - to sign me up for a subscription to Playgirl. It wasn't exactly a tragic consequence of my openness, but it was annoying. I really don't like that magazine at all.
When I was in high school, or possibly junior high, I came up with a premise for a story about an alien from a planet where everyone has telepathy. When he visited Earth, he could not understand why people had any need or desire for privacy. Knowing everyone at home so intimately, he understood them completely, why they did what they did and how they felt about everything. There was no miscommunication, no misunderstanding. And because everyone understood each other, they empathised with each other. Everyone's feelings were important to everyone, because they all felt them. In a situation like that, how could anyone seek to hurt or judge anyone else? Secrets were both impossible and unnecessary.
As I've mentioned here from time to time, I maintain "
Madeleine L'Engle and Harlan Ellison are worlds apart in the style, tone, and even length of their writings. L'Engle has written mostly novels, book-length journals and religious books. Harlan has written mostly short stories and essays. L'Engle is a Christian and a mystic; Harlan is an atheist. But they're both intelligent and funny, cover a broad range of subjects and genres, and have written lots and lots of books. 
For many years now, I've had in my head an auditory impression of how it would sound if Johnny Cash recorded David Bowie's song Heroes, particularly the last part of this lyric:
I've 
Madeleine L'Engle has said that she is every age she's ever been. The creative bookworm child, the awkward adolescent, the young woman in love, the mother, the older woman - they're all still inside her, part of her, helping to make her who she is now. All those Madeleines are filtered through the prisms of memory and fiction, becoming Meg Murray O'Keefe and Vicky Austin, Polly O'Keefe and Katherine and Camilla and Flip and Charlotte in her many novels. 
You are looking at an archive edition of 
