I really haven’t been keeping up this blog because I feel I really don’t have anything worth saying. I live my life vicariously in my writing. However as dull as I think my life is, there are places in the world I would be considered exotic.
Anyone who gets on Twitter and just talks to people in their own neck of the woods is really missing out. As homogenous as the world has appeared to become, there are still cultural differences brought on by history, environment and attitude. We all live someplace unique even if it doesn’t seem so.
One time on Twitter I was complaining about my husband and his friend (both Gemini) getting lost on some back road in an attempt at finding a shortcut. (I was dragged along.) We found ourselves in the middle of nowhere with only a farmhouse every ten miles. Wheat farmers have to have HUGE fields to grow enough to survive. Beyond that was land completely empty because it was too rocky to plow.
A girl twitted back to me “OMG what a lonely country you live in!” I looked at her location. She was from India, a land known for being crowded. I realized this poor girl would be as freaked out standing in an empty wheat field as I would be in a noisy city like Bombay. She considered my world as exotic as I would find hers.
Indeed many have romantic notions about the West, yearning to see sagebrush and tumbleweeds. Sorry but sagebrush is related to goldenrod and wrecks havoc on your hay fever, and tumbleweeds are a nuisance that pile up like snow drifts. And there is nothing romantic about a dust storm! And yet there are bars in Tokyo where people dress up like cowboys, yearning for them wide-open spaces.
People in Britain drive past castles until they are invisible to them. Sitar music is background noise to people in India. Brazilians don’t look twice at wild orchids. Australians cuss out kangaroos jumping in front of their cars. And New Yorkers think anyone who can’t talk AND listen at the same time is mentally challenged.
So as you go about your daily grind and figure you have to live in the most boring place in the world, remember someone somewhere would consider your town exciting and you quite exotic.
