parts of country

i’m on my way to massachusetts this morning, for a weekend workshop with ellen bass the poetry goddess, who has popped up on this blog a number of times in the past. ellen lives on the west coast and doesn’t make it to this side of the country very often.

i like new england. my brother has lived there for years, and i lived there — very close, in fact, to the bershire mountain town i’m heading to this afternoon — for a few months when i was quite young, the only time in my life i’ve lived outside NYC. this was on a communal farm just outside teeny tiny new lebanon, where all the lights went out at 7pm, and i had a room in a barn shared with birds and field mice (BIG suckers, if i saw one on the streets here i sure wouldn’t call it a “mouse”) and had to flashlight my way to the main building if i needed to take a pee after dark. that wasn’t for me, and at the end of the summer i fled, back to NYC in a broken-down station wagon big enough to hold everything i owned, limping into brooklyn while smoke streamed up from somewhere under the ancient buick’s hood.

this doesn’t make it sound as if i actually liked new england very much, but actually it was the rural life i didn’t like — i’m a city girl, pure and simple, and those few months up north played a big part in learning that about myself at twenty-something.

in the years since, visiting my brother in portland (maine) and exeter (new hampshire) i’ve seen a bit more of new england and while i still wouldn’t want to live there — i don’t want to live anywhere other than right where i am — if i had to leave new york i think portland would be my first choice. new englanders may be a close-lipped gang, and it’s true they don’t take warmly or quickly to strangers but boy, when they have something to say, they SAY it, and fuck whoever might not like what comes out of their mouths.

i absolutely love that terse, ballsy, horseshit-free style, and i feel at home there. so different from the way i feel on the west coast, where i always seem to seem just a little too loud, a little too direct, a little too opinionated.

so this morning, as i contemplate new england and pack a tiny bag for the trip (thank GOD i am not flying! i am carpooling with two other attendees — women i’ve never met before, referred to me by the conference center when i offered to share — and feeling quite green about it) i ran across a video on wonkette that contemplates another part of the country and what we might want to let it do.

so, with apologies to the two dear friends of mine who live in the dreadful state of texas, i pick myself up off the floor where i rolled and laughed and offer this video to you. enjoy! and have a great weekend. george held will be back tomorrow morning for Satire Saturday.