when you live in a small town
July 24, 2007Already I feel small town effects, even (or especially?) in this ideosynchratic small town. The politics of who talks to who, who greets who. The economy of how much one says. The women who treat one with suspicion and distance, the men with a little too much interest. An unspoken tangle of old stories and positions which the newcomer must tiptoe through, but which, for the locals, are like extension of themselves. Alcohol as the blade which cuts through those constraints for an exuberant moment, followed by a rustle of gossip as the rent fabric restores itself, tighter.
A little recognized art, navigating a small town: knowing how to steer clear of ugliness without becoming a hermit, knowing how to protect whatever is green and growing in your heart from sourness, keeping a friendly openness with everyone and an arms length distance.
As a passerby the thing is different. But still one feels it: chapeau to anyone who survives in a small town.
Sounds welcoming, Maggie… and familiar, oddly, since these feelings are often summoned to the surface in all sorts of enclaves. Are you still a passerby in the small town? How do you cross over, apart from the alcohol? And how to hope for the exuberance if the interruptions make of the connections a forlorn archipelago?
I hope the green and growing finds root there. I enjoy reading your thoughts, thanks for posting them!