Gaugie,
I'm reading Mary Cantwell's Speaking with Strangers, the third book in her autobiographical trilogy. A paragraph leaped out at me and made me think of you (and me-but I, of course,already knew the answer for me). Did you grow up in a small town?
On summer nights they sat on their stoops, weaving tales out of the inconsequential, which are perhaps my favorite kind, because I can summon a profound interest in the possible reasons behind a favorite delivery boy's defection from one supermarket to another, or why the lights were on so late in So-and-So's apartment. It is the gift of growing up in a small town, I believe, this tendency to magnify the ordinary into the extraordinary.
My little town had about 7000, many of whose families had lived there for generations, and except for the local universities, and an industry in a neighboring town, tended toward permanent residence and a complacent belief in the superiority of their lives over the rest of the world's. I know you also have this tendency to see small things as remarkable and even miraculous and it made me wonder about your past...was she right? |
