I am feeling Not Inspired.
Not wordy.
But I have these thoughts today.
After having spent some years in suburbia, where:
- if I went out to lie down on my grass at dusk my neighbor watched me as she cleaned her kitchen sink, wondering why a person would do that;
- all the women felt bound to leave the house only when the hair and makeup and accessories were perfectly placed;
- nobody danced down the aisles of the grocery store on a Saturday morning, even if it was good ol' 1970s dancing tunes;
- a person would be hard-pressed to find hair on any head over the age of thirty that was the color that nature, time and God gave them;
- one walked in one's yard only on pathways that were perfectly edged and bordered by impatiens or hosta;
- the old tires alongside somebody's garage were a constant visible source of worry to the neighbors;
- outdoor gatherings required tents and powder-coated lawn furniture instead of canvas seating that guests unfolded from their cars...
I am, every moment of every day, glad I live where:
- people drive, unashamed, trucks that have the rubber stripping hanging loose from the wheelwells, flapping in the breeze as they roll down the road;
- vehicles wear the dirt they pick up on the country roads until a heavy rain washes them clean;
- women go to the store, to work, to wherever they want to without makeup, unaccessorized, without, if they choose, some articles of uncomfortable underclothing;
- I can swing up on the Kubota early on a Saturday morning and mow the lawn before I shower and get dressed;
- dogs and cats can go out the door and move around their environment at will;
- I can look at the horizon at almost any point during my daily life and see trees and sky and no buildings;
- I don't hear traffic noise or jake brakes or car alarms or boomboxes or neighbors' children or anything but the sounds of me and mine;
- people have real conversations with strangers as they pass in the supermarket or sit in waiting rooms;
- I can wear to work the same sneakers I wore (with my nightgown) to mow the lawn;
- people like what they like and allow others to like what they like and don't worry about how the other guy keeps his house or his vehicle or his yard.
To the Happy Suburbanites out there, it must sound like Hell.
For me, this is Heaven on Earth.