and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

Anywhere else in this country makes my corner of the world feel a little bit out there. Off the beaten path, around the bend, out in the willy-wacks as they say. Maine. Small state. 1.2 million people milling about in relative anonyminity doing what people do all over the country - get up, go to work, have a beer, watch some tv, go to bed - but doing some of their own things as well, yet doing it quietly. Perhaps Wyoming strikes me as a more out-of-the-way locale, but even the Dakotas have a certain air about them that, despite being in the middle of nowhere, still has something going on. Don't ask me what cause I don't really know. All I know is Maine does a few things on what we consider a "large scale" but even that is pretty small time compared to most places. We do potatoes, but not like Idaho. We do lumber but we're not clear-cutting a mile a minute like Alaska and we don't have real big trees the likes of Washington state. We do lobster, too, and I suppose we're mildly well known for that but give it a few years and even that story will dry right up like a fish outta water. Marine resources aren't exactly the futures market I'd be playing these days, is all I'm saying. We even do tourism, which is what locals refer to as a "booming industry", but even this is puny in comparison to what California or Florida must see, and our season doesn't even stretch half the year unless you count a few ski hills a "industry". There aren't too many folk driving in from the city to plunk down some flag traps and sit on the ice all day waiting for a fish to bite, that's for sure...

And I'm certainly not complaining. We're cranky when we want to be, cantakerous other times, but there is a certain northern new england personality that comes with the territory. It's a neighbourly attitude that still involves holding doors open for people behind you and waving to strangers for no good reason. It's the presence of a sympathic helping-hand that stops to help with a flat tire. It's all these things but it's also yelling at the people in the apartment upstairs to turn that fucking music down but not stranger-to-stranger yelling. This is friendly yelling like a mom telling her son to clean his damn room. In the morning all is forgotten and it's a good chuckle some day, sitting on the porch watching the sunset.

I'm exaggerating of course. I'm making things sound better than they are. We aren't all like this and we don't all want to be. With television we can watch shows and see how we should act, how our hair and clothes and what we drive should be important. We can figure out - you know, by putting things in context - that we need cell phones and that we should probably be treating our fellow community members with disdain just because we don't happen to know them. This is called progress. Sometimes, when I'm down in the portcity drinking a beer and someone says something like "excuse me" as they push by or "sorry about that" as they bump into my pint glass I'm almost taken aback. Really. No, not really. It's a nice little reminder that while this state may be "advancing", we have a lot of retarded politicians that have managed to keep this very much a backwater and that means people still, on occasion, treat you like a human being.. even if we're all trying to keep up with the Jones'