Just one of those Austen fanatics, or "how I wish I could live in a different era... all the time"

I seem to get inspiration in the strangest of places and times in life. It all started in the bathroom of Maggiano's (I know this sounds like a weird place to start, but stick with me here)... some of our business associates took us (the Millers 5) out to lunch today to celebrate Joel & Alan's birthday, we had a lot of fun and it was delicious. I went to use the restroom, and as I was washing my hands, I looked up and saw a painting. Usually I'd admire it a little, take a paper towel, and go about my business, but something about this painting really struck me. It was a classic-looking painting of a young woman with long brown hair in a wide-brimmed hat with blue ribbon, sitting in the middle of a swath of wildflowers in the country. Next to her was a gravel road, and next to that a white cottage with a thatched roof and blue trim, flower boxes under each window, and a small gate. I couldn't find the exact painting on the internet, but if you search "woman garden painting" in google image search, you'll get a lot of similar paintings.

What I couldn't predict is how strongly, in that moment, I would feel and react to seeing that painting. I just stood there for the longest time, staring at it, and felt my heart burning (maybe it was the pasta, but I doubt it). I've never wanted to jump into a painting and be the subject or character more than I did in that moment. I wanted to sit in that field, read a book, and enjoy the same warm, sunny day that she was enjoying.

Sometimes I just want to shed my modernity so badly. I know I exist in this century, during this time, for many many reasons, but I read classic literature, see these amazing paintings, watch period pieces, and just ache for a simple life. I want to live in a small house in the country. I want to know how to cook and bake from scratch, how to keep animals, sew, garden, have friends over for tea... it all sounds so foofy and cliche, but I really mean it! Give me any author and place - Jane Austen's England, Louisa May Alcott's Massachusetts, or just simply pioneer women in the west - and my mind drifts. The homemade butter, the quilts, the ink bottles and wax seals, and the clothes (my GOSH the clothes)... I can't get enough of it.

I appreciate a lot about modernity: grocery stores, electricity, computers, telephones, cars... they all make life easier, but they all make life faster too. And sometimes more stressful. That's the other side of the coin, and that's what I don't like: the pace and the stress. I wonder if humans were ever built to live like this. To have to buy so many things in order to operate, to be involved in so many activities and in so many social circles... it feels like total chaos. In older days, you had a smaller, closer circle of friends, you'd send letters and walk places, and you could be self-sustaining and take life so much more slowly. I joke sometimes that I wouldn't mind living in the Georgian era, but with modern medicine and plumbing.

If I ever tried to live this way today, society would call me a freak. But part of me doesn't care. How awesome would it be to go The Village-style and create a community that lived 200 years in the past? Does that make me sound crazy? Hm, I think it does, a little. I'll leave it there, and give you a few close examples of the painting I saw...

 The Prairie is my Garden, by Harvey Dunn

 Woman Harvesting Vegetables at the Farm, by Max Baer

The Cottage in Summer, by Sidney Shelton