“Tis a common Fault to be never satisfied with ones
Fortune, nor dissatisfied with ones Understanding.”
-
François
VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
I recently had the
opportunity to reinvent myself. I have avoided blogging while I decided whether
I want to keep this up and if so whether I want to shake it up. One of the
things I could do for example, would be to become suddenly nice and stop being
snarky.
So, that decision
only took ten minutes, you say. What else have I been waiting for to resume
blogging?
Sensory overload has
me spinning in place trying to make sense of my new environment. My once lush
So Cal garden is gone. Friends tell me the new owners cut down the 50 year old
eucalyptus trees in the front yard and painted the house a mustard yellow. I
could not bear to imagine how the backyard paradise that I made over 25 years
has been transformed.
My exile in the
Pacific Northwest ended after just short of a year. I was going to sum that up by saying I’ve had a
lovely nine months and eleven days but this wasn’t it. But what about giving up
being snarky, you ask? I said the decision took ten minutes. I never said I
wouldn’t continue to employ strategic snark in nucular (sic) doses at whatever
target has attracted my momentary rage. I also never said I was an intelligent,
articulate and literate genius. I am a terrible person who has taken to heart
that advice about doing one thing and doing it well.
I did have a garden
in the interim home near the Olympic fault line. There were figs, hops,
grotesque hydrangea that seemed to rebloom all year at odd times, and all
manner of flowering bulbs and trees that produced pollen my immune system
decided to get all drippy about. So my entire gardening experience this past year has been to plant a wisteria in memory of my lost California home and to apply water desultorily when it turned out after six months that it doesn't actually rain EVERY day there. Shit pretty much grows without the need for divine intervention. I used Benedryl like gummy bears and I started
having Amazon Prime deliver gummy bears in 55 gallon industrial drums. I have
enough empty steel drums to start my own steel band, mon.
My garden now on my 16th
floor balcony consists of my bonsai ginko, one of the handful of potted plants
that made it from my yard, once filled with so many potted plants that I
abandoned dozens after having friends take home their choices for months before
moving. I have a blue ginger, a black aeonium and a holy basil that insisted it
would live longer than any Trader Joe’s potted basil ever had if only I’d water
it once in a while. I bought a 5-gallon fishtail palm locally, hauled it down
the block from where my car lives and placed in my sunny window where I am as
surprised as it is to still be happy 6 weeks in.
While I’m still new
here, I want to say a tiny bit about first impressions of people in urban Iowa.
But first, a disclaimer about my understanding of the difference between
stereotypes and people. I am about to make a few gross generalizations that
totally involve an un-ironic white-knuckled grasp of the obvious. Stereotypes
exist for a reason.
I shall now describe
my first impressions of the stereotypical 60-something woman from Iowa. It should surprise no one that she is white. She has a short bob of
untinted gray or white hair. It’s November, so she is wearing a sweater.
She is about 10 pounds overweight and her cloths fit well: meaning she has been
this size for long enough to establish a wardrobe of clothes that fit. Meaning she
isn’t caught in the west coast cycle of so many women of a certain age that at
some point we are trying to fit into cloths that don’t belong in our present
diet cycle. Meaning that my Stereotypical Iowa Woman either never succumbed to
the increasingly desperate vanity of trying to be stylish, or she is as over it
as I am of fondue.
Based on my
statistically invalid sample of three Stereotypical Iowa Woman, they were born
in Iowa, grew up here mostly on rural farms, left at some point early in their
marriages, and have returned to the big city in retirement. They have been
around, if by around you mean they have visited their grown children in
Oklahoma City, Kansas City or Omaha.
They have all been
to Chicago. When one lady told me that by way of explaining how worldly wise
she was, I said, yeah, the hog butcher to the world and she gave me the
sweetest blank look. You’d have thought I was quoting the freaking Duc de La
Rochefoucauld on self-awareness.
It will be
interesting to see if these stereotypical first impressions ultimately say more
about me than about the new people I’m meeting. I hope so. My fortunes are
pretty fortunate these days, so The Duc is wrong there – at least about me
being unsatisfied with my fortunes. I am actually hoping that he’s also wrong
that I think I understand things I don’t really understand at all. I hope I
will become dissatisfied with my current superficial understanding of my new
neighbors. That’s why I wanted to record my first impressions.
For now, that’s what
I’m seeing. But I’m new here and as terrible and snarky as ever. I’m insecure
and falling back on looking down on people in the flyover states from the lofty
perch of my coastal arrogance. Also, I’m uncomfortable because my pants are too
tight.
