Who hasn't thought - or even acted on - the notion that beginning life again in a new place would be beneficial. Usually the 'benefits' are not fully thought out. Just as well. It is enough to imagine how external influences and challenges will overcome an initial resistance to change. Surely, the thought goes, a change of geography can lead to a change of mind and habit. Having such impulses -whether or not turned into action - surely applies to every thinking person on the planet with the wherewithal to dream.
Thus it was, as stories are apt to begin, that a man we'll call Adam made a giant leap from big city to small city (or town, if you like). A man born in Maine whose academic career began in New England and flourished in Kings College in old England upped to start over with his wife and dog in Montana. As much as anything, he admits the lure was the power of myth - images in his imagination of a serene new lifestyle in a magnificent mountain setting. The very name Montana held him as neither of the Dakotas could.
He/they would buy a house - the first one they ever had purchased.
He would have to relearn how to drive. A car would be his lifeline since few people in his new home city ever walk outside, and daily and weekly chores were an immense burden on his time.
He would have to have a job - tenure track, as it happens, having voluntarily given up tenure track at a large well-established university in one of the prime capitals of the world.
And he would have to relate to people in a new way, he realized. The people who were his colleagues and neighbors who might not immediately understand his effusive personality and talkativeness.
It clearly was an experiment. With his degrees - religion and art - he might press his case as an interdepartment scholar in any number of other places. How he came to jump at a blind ad in a professional publication is part of his story; the rest has to be about his adjustment.
He would learn that the so-called relaxed laid-back western folk who appear outwardly so open welcoming have some built-in restrictions on relationships. The 'How're ya?' greeting is not expected to get a full response. And "Hope to see you around sometime,' or 'We must get together,' which - in many parts of the world - really aren't intended as goodwill invitations. People like Adam come West to get away more than to be found: to have privacy at their disposal at all hours. Someone who talks so fast might be suspected of having a 'line to sell,' rather than having a sincere interest in reaching out to another person.
This isn't to imply that the local scene is bereft of wit and wisdom of a worldly kind. Good humor doesn't stop at state boundaries. The subdivisions - plots of land with garages that often seem larger than the houses - keep moving westward, an ever- changing combination of wood, stone, and stucco laced with green. A moving stream of portajohns named 'urapeean' (yes, that spelling) accompanying them. And everywhere for some reason basketball stands, as though every family to plays ball. Of some kind anyway.
Thus it was, as stories are apt to begin, that a man we'll call Adam made a giant leap from big city to small city (or town, if you like). A man born in Maine whose academic career began in New England and flourished in Kings College in old England upped to start over with his wife and dog in Montana. As much as anything, he admits the lure was the power of myth - images in his imagination of a serene new lifestyle in a magnificent mountain setting. The very name Montana held him as neither of the Dakotas could.
He/they would buy a house - the first one they ever had purchased.
He would have to relearn how to drive. A car would be his lifeline since few people in his new home city ever walk outside, and daily and weekly chores were an immense burden on his time.
He would have to have a job - tenure track, as it happens, having voluntarily given up tenure track at a large well-established university in one of the prime capitals of the world.
And he would have to relate to people in a new way, he realized. The people who were his colleagues and neighbors who might not immediately understand his effusive personality and talkativeness.
It clearly was an experiment. With his degrees - religion and art - he might press his case as an interdepartment scholar in any number of other places. How he came to jump at a blind ad in a professional publication is part of his story; the rest has to be about his adjustment.
He would learn that the so-called relaxed laid-back western folk who appear outwardly so open welcoming have some built-in restrictions on relationships. The 'How're ya?' greeting is not expected to get a full response. And "Hope to see you around sometime,' or 'We must get together,' which - in many parts of the world - really aren't intended as goodwill invitations. People like Adam come West to get away more than to be found: to have privacy at their disposal at all hours. Someone who talks so fast might be suspected of having a 'line to sell,' rather than having a sincere interest in reaching out to another person.
This isn't to imply that the local scene is bereft of wit and wisdom of a worldly kind. Good humor doesn't stop at state boundaries. The subdivisions - plots of land with garages that often seem larger than the houses - keep moving westward, an ever- changing combination of wood, stone, and stucco laced with green. A moving stream of portajohns named 'urapeean' (yes, that spelling) accompanying them. And everywhere for some reason basketball stands, as though every family to plays ball. Of some kind anyway.
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