“We shall not
cease from exploration
And the end
of all our exploring
Will be to
arrive where we started
And know the
place for the first time.”
When I awoke this morning, this message was
displayed on my computer monitor in an ominous red scrawl. It wasn’t drawn onto
the glass, but it wasn’t the computer’s display, either. It was as if the quote
were trapped somewhere between, imposed over the display but behind the glass.
I turned the monitor off and the quote vanished. When I turned it back on, it
had been erased. I typed it into a search engine (yes I use Bing, get over it)
and was directed to a T.S. Eliot poem. There appears to be no meaning to derive
from the quotation, nor from its mysterious appearance on my monitor.
Just another oddity to add to a week filled with
them.
It’s been two weeks since I moved, and the second
week was far worse than the first. I moved here from New York to escape the
annoyingly crowded environs of the concrete jungle, but little did I know that
even rural America has far too many people for my purposes. I cannot do my work
in these situations. Whereas the city was all stoic, apathetic hustle and
bustle, rural America is small town hospitality and friendliness everywhere. It’d
be one thing if there were few people out and about during most hours of the
day, but oh no – 24/7 the streets are filled. The only thing that changes is
who is filling it. During the day you get the unemployed or retired, amicably
waving and asking how your day is. During the afternoon you get the working
adults, fresh off the job, taking care of their daily errands. They’ll stop you
to chat about the most mundane of things – I was stopped once this week by a
man seeking to talk about the latest crop forecasts. I gave him a confused look
and kept walking. Then at night you get the teenagers. For small town America
there sure as hell are a lot of them. Some of them drunk, some of them stoned, some
of them drunk AND stoned – it’s a mess.
So certainly not the change of pace I was looking
for, and it isn’t doing my work any favors. Thank god my work allows me to stay
inside most of the day and ignore the ridiculous population of this town. I
think the problem is that the city limits are fairly small – hell, I’m even
outside them technically – and thus the population of the city itself appears
smaller, but with all the smaller areas outside it, there are a far greater
number of people in the city than the population number would imply.
Whatever – I wouldn’t mind as much if it didn’t
potentially mean a shortage of food. After the guy stopped to ask me about the
crop forecast, I was curious about why he would ask a random stranger about it,
so I did some reading. Crops have been affected by a particularly nasty drought
this summer and there will be fairly substantial shortages. In a place with as
many people as this, that could be bad. I’ve started hoarding non-perishables;
god knows the last thing I need is a food shortage right now.
I have regrets about moving here. I should have
stayed in New York. At least there, I didn’t have to worry about dying on my
way into the city every day – I tell you, the idiots here cannot drive. I’ve
nearly been hit three times this week alone. It’s ridiculous.
I’m done raging for now. I’ll get used to it
eventually. It’s just annoying that I’ve left the tedium and irritation of the
city, only to exchange it for the same thing in rural America.
