THE VILLAGE IDIOTS

They say when you are really intelligent, you are smart enough to know how little you know. Being "part smart" however is our everlasting condition--we are all specialists in one subject--my/your self. But according to Walker Percy, we know less about ourselves than about the rings of Saturn, and far less than the people who see/judge us from the outer crust--and our crustiness reveals more about us than we can contemplate.

One thing the world doesn't need any more of--and will get a lot less of in the future--is how boring and horrible it is living in a small town--Hilary's Village notwithstanding--but she's a Shytown  O'burbanite, what does she know about living in a village? "Oh the horror, the horror..."

  I remember the song, "Town without Pity," from long ago--I have an alternate story line about that--or maybe it was "Town Without Pitney".....(Gene.)

So this is the eternal cry of the child, "I'm Bored there's Nothin' to Do." Have you ever noticed that these melancholistic laments are in essence also the Whine of poets, who are "so misunderstood?   "Be not drunk on whine, in which there is --always--excess)

"Nobody understands me!"  Ever consider that that is (a) inevitable--we do have a skin you know; and (b) probably a good thing overall. (see Paul Tournier's "Secrets")  A thin skin, by the way, is a bad thing--take a look at your aging arms if you don't believe me.

The reason I thought of this is not from a single influence but many. I have been listening to "I Just Wanna Get Warm" by Mark Heard.  His lyrics overall are way above average and do verge on stand-alone poetry. And so this is not "Town Without Pity" but the theme is the same--the majority or even all the small town folks are downers, "cut from the same grey cloth."

(Is it so very interesting that people who don't want to be judged are quite quick to condemn both whole masses of people and, well, "the wrong sort of white person." (See "Stuff White People Like", written  by and as a very white person and an insider who can mock his own habits and spare those whom he neither likes nor understands.)

If one really wants to investigate towns without pity, I can't think of any place more hostile to its own inhabitants than Chicago--I will defer on NYC--but from the kind of lances, not lanterns, (Thurber) I am regaled with in TNY there's plenty of mean streets there too-

 Is it "regaled" or assailed?"

I speak as a rural person who realizes the vulnerabilities and limitations of a small town--and suffer from some of them--but I am never bored--nor have I understood why anyone living in a world such as ours would be bored.  I certainly can be impatient--but that's not boredome but anticipation.

I think of my Dad, who in his youth was certainly no lover of his hometown, Dixon.  His hero Hemingway characterized the relatively urban "small town" of Oak Park as the town of "broad lawns and narrow minds"
But my Dad will also tell you that he regrets tremendously moving from Lake Placid FL ( the Caladium Capital of the world) to Jacksonville, which is in fact the largest city in square miles in the USA.  He liked Naples FL--when it was small--and moved when it mushroomed. He is like me in that he is a child of the university but would not be comfortable living near one!  Somehow this makes perfect sense to me. (See "Rope" the film by A. Hitchcock)

If you have vowed to never speak with a village idiot again, no need for commentary.