The More Things Change...

Pacific Grove is an elderly lady wearing a cardigan who sits on a park bench feeding fat pigeons who roost at her feet, uninterested but content.  The rest of the world is moving more quickly and has brush-ups with the law, feels randy once in a while, but this elderly lady sits with a vague smile on her face and admires her lace handkerchief.   She's been sitting like that for a 130 years now.

There is something peculiar about this little town, a subtle oddity that provokes the jittering malcontent  in me. That is, nothing changes.  There is always the same amount of movement, the cars always drive the same speed and the wind always blows from the same direction.  There are not riots and there is no public mourning, no overt displays of affection on a large scale.  There are only very small bits of modest change.  Perhaps a neighbor has planted a new type of ground cover or an unruly tree is being removed by the city arborist.  A lot of quietness exists here, so much so that small sounds are noticed on a grand scale.  A certain resident brought a neighbor to court for having a wind chime on their porch that he found to be annoyingly, well, chimey.  Both complainant and perpetrator were hushed and sent back home.  

The most heated moments come at high school football games when cheerleaders jump up and down together as the team hero scores a touchdown.  The young, filled with energy, go away and find that in other towns and cities people dance, shout, scream and command attention.  They begin to realize that life can be lived vigorously and is stimulating.  It's always a revelation, a splash of cold water to the face.  

So, is that a complaint; am I dissatisfied?  To tell you the truth, I'm not sure.  I feel hesitant to say it, but I wish something would happen.  Maybe a small geyser could erupt in the park or a circus could come to town so we could all gasp at the highwire acts and stare at a three-headed monkey.  Wonder and awe exist here, but almost entirely in relation to the sea.  It's beautiful, but it's not a beauty that drives you to song or inspires great works.  Instead, where at first you were walking briskly, you find yourself slowing, then stopping and finally shuffling unsteadily until you simply sit and then fall asleep.  Perhaps you wake again in 20 years, and if you do, you find that nothing has changed at all while you slept.

Nature itself conspires to keep life peaceful and quiet, uneventful.  Storms do not thunder; there is seldom lightning.  Parades are rained out, festivals are chilled to the bone, fireworks disappear into banks of misty fog and conversations held outdoors are blown away on the breeze.  There is a midday glare that is not quite bright.  It somehow dulls the senses and enwraps the citizenry in a slow-moving torpor normally found in the tropics but that here requires bundling up against even in the broad reaches of summer.

You find yourself wanting more of something, but at the same time you feel ungrateful, chastened for your discontent, uncertain of what exactly you really need but know it's something.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with all of this.  It's just the way it is.  I recommend coming here to everyone I meet, for everyone needs a nice break from the pell-mell rush of American life.  We are good at that, a little too good maybe.  It's the oddest thing, being bored with peace, but I think sameness, muffled sound and good behavior do breed discontent.

So, we shuffle and wander along the fine line drawn between chaos and placid sameness, erring on the side of quiet.  Evidently, someone long ago took the old saying to heart when they started this town:  Be careful what you ask for.