Community

I live in a place where everyone that works at the post office knows my name. And I know theirs. We say hi-how are you? And mean it. When I go grocery shopping (which by the way is 20 min. away) people chat about what is going on in the area while they pick out vegetables. They are pleasant. They say excuse me when they forget their cart in the middle of the isle. They don't seem to chat about such and such-if you know what I mean. Small but not uncomfortably so.

My -town- has a post office, a tiny grocery, and a car repair place. That is it. (The grocery is in the next town over). I don't live in -town- though. I live down a long forested (for the most part damn them) road. Almost at the edge of the Pacific Northwest Universe.

I used to live in a place that talked, published, and claimed a lot that they were a community. And I lived with a person that pretended to be a partner. In that universe the people were not what they claimed to be. People were mean to their neighbors and were interested in the greener grass next door. In this little universe the grass is a beautiful color and so is the moss, and the squirrels are plentiful. Here is to people and places that are nice and real.