vibe

yesterday for a while i was in a bit of a mood. the idea of getting rid of everything, everything, excluding kara but sometimes including the pets, is sometimes extremely appealing. lose it all, burn it all. all the stuff we have, our whole lives, gone, and start over. new city, new house, an empty house, empty but for the two of us (and maybe the pets). maybe there could be a fire and there would be insurance money for us. (though kara has probably already had enough destruction by fire, and calamity in general, for the rest of her life.)

i suppose i was just feeling generally down about things, mostly about this town of tacoma, feeling weighed down and stuck and lost and alienated. what are we doing here? are we going to live here for the rest of our lives? i was feeling terribly not-young. (though, happily, i was carded twice in the past week when purchasing wine - not bad for two months shy of 36!)

(we moved here solely because we wanted to own a home - we'd been renting half a duplex in a dingy suburb north of seattle - and prices in tacoma were considerably more reasonable. now, of course, we know why!)

it's true i've put almost zero effort into meeting people here. my trouble is i don't expect to like anyone i meet. i expect to be disappointed by people, expect them to be narrow-minded. i think my bitterness about tacoma comes from the fact that my first job here was at borders books & music. what a terrible experience that was, what a rotten store, and what horrid people. i felt stifled and lost there. (i did make a friend there - shannon - and she could have become a good friend - she and her girlfriend and kara and i went out a time or two - but she hated it here too and moved to oregon.) i got away from borders, but the experience tainted my views of this town, and perhaps that's not fair. plus in my job currently i'm alone, with headphones on, not socializing. oh, i'm quite de-socialized these days. i've isolated myself rather radically. that's my own fault, my own choice.

i went to the mandolin this morning because it's one place in this town in which i feel as if i might be with like-minded folks. i don't even know why i feel that way, because i've never met anyone there (once i chatted with a barista for a minute), never made any connections. it's the environment of the place, perhaps, the wooden tables, the paintings on the walls, the fireplace, the music. i sat there, drank coffee, ate a bagel, read iris murdoch. there weren't many other people there, but there were a few. i ought to go there more often than once every few weeks.

i don't feel like i need a lot of friends or activity. i don't want to go out all that often. i'm a homebody and i go to sleep early. i enjoy my fridays to myself and i enjoy evenings and saturdays with kara. i don't need a lot more. a social engagement now and again, a dinner out, something, wouldn't go astray.

it's true i stress a bit about meeting people and talking to people because whatever conversational skills i might ever have had are surely severely atrophied.

mostly it's the vibe of this town. is it too small? is that what it is? i think of afternoons spent in cities like seattle, dc, and cork, and what i liked about those environments. the buildings, the people, the shops, the buzz, the possibilities. a nice pub in which to have a beer of an early afternoon, and then walk around again among everyone.

today i feel a bit better. i'm still a little low, but i know of some places in tacoma that make me feel better. there's the mandolin, the metropolitan market, shakabrah java. something about those places, the people i see in those places, remind me of the larger world. somehow. the vibe.

the idea of starting over is still appealing. getting rid of all our material stuff sounds appealing. being thoroughly cleaned out by a fire, however insane that sounds, appeals, on a level. (theoretical!) i know that we're going to be in tacoma for a while, so i'm going to make the best of it. i'm going to go more often to the places that i like and i'm going to work on being more open and accepting of people i might happen to meet somehow.