the northwest

there is something different about the northwest
not necessarily better or worse
not much point to those designators, but different
there is a feeling here unlike anywhere else
it could just be me
but I don't think so
it's the feeling that
if you let it
the moss will overtake you and you'd eventually be submerged in your own little hovel
not a bad feeling necessarily
but also not necessarily one that I am ready for just yet in my life
it's the feeling that
if you don't stretch yourself and get out and try to touch someone
that eventually your circle will get smaller and smaller and smaller
once in a while
people surprise me
and a random man
standing in line in front of me at the grocery store
randomly turns around to me, literally tonight, and says...
'so how was your day?'
and he wasn't loony tunes, and he wasn't coming on to me, he just wanted to know
and I couldn't believe it
a person crosses the threshold of 'normalcy' and actually wants nothing more than to get to know me for a small moment in time, nothing else gained, just an interesting moment shared
and I couldn't believe it
not because I dislike this place
because I don't
i'm just trying to understand it
I don't get it

I'm as guilty as anybody else
oftentimes i'd rather take the circuitous route to avoid a conversation i'm just not in the mood to have with a perfectly harmless person
but I just don't have the energy
so I get it
but I think it's more than that
there is something about this place... maybe it's the clouds, maybe it's the fact that we're on a peninsula, maybe it's the trees, maybe it's the fact that it is so small that you have to declare your borders, but I don't know
I think it's strange
that this person I know in one part of my life
will probably never intersect with this person I know in another part of my life
that the students I teach
have nothing to do with the people at the soccer games my kids go to
maybe it's the lack of sun
but something keeps us inside our minds
I was an introvert as a child, somewhere or another I leapt out
and now, living here, I am going back to that place
not sure if I want to, but i'm trying to understand it, make sense of it, negotiate a truce with it and the other parts of me that have grown since those early years
and it's not a bad place to be
in fact, it's a very quiet, peaceful, meaningful place to be
it's a place that lets you absorb beauty in the seemingly redundant things you see
you think you've seen this landscape before
but you haven't really
but you wouldn't know it
if you hadn't arrived at this quiet place
but still... I just wonder... were we, as human beings, meant to be so quiet?
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and I think the northwest thinks I'm loony tunes! and it may be right.
I think it thinks i'm a nutjob, a basketcase, an overthetop, out there circus show freak
but i'd rather be that
again, not in a combative, betterthanthou sense
but in the sense that I, personally, would rather be out there reaching into people's heartsandminds
than circling around in my head for too long
wondering when I will come up for air
because there is beauty out there
so much beauty in there, too
but there is surprising beauty out there
conversations you would never expect to have
stories you will never ever hear in your head
ok, maybe in a book, yes
but
I, a human being, still crave the oneonone primal contact of facetoface, smelltosmell, skintoskin, handshake to handshake that tells you so much more than a 'regards' or 'yours truly'
a limp noodle handshake tells you more than 'LOL' or 'wassup?'
because suddenly you are confronted with the primeval person who is either your prey or your predator
and you have only moments, milliseconds really, to figure out which
and i'd rather live in that iridescent luminescent undecided unresolved place
that prompts me to spill apples and plums all over a safeway parking lot
because a real live human encounter left me so spellbound that I can't think or walk straight
than live in my head
and never be bamboozled
by the smiles and frowns, reprimands and accolades, blank stares and shy but jubilant grins
that you only get in the 3D, my friend, you only get in the 3D