Conversations on Porches

Today we drove to Hartford, CT to deposit a check. It's the kind of story where people would tell you, "It's a long story," even though it's a very short story. It's just one that is both slightly lame and slightly embarrassing, even though it shouldn't be. There's no Wells Fargos in Massachusetts, is really the whole story, which isn't long at all.

It's quite short, really.

On the way home from Hartford, we passed through Charlton, Massachusetts, where a close friend and poet from the program at UNH grew up. He just returned from a month-long trip in Washington, where he stayed on Lopez Island & in Seattle briefly. In the past year, he became a vegetarian, and is more and more interested in living righteously, above all. He meditates daily, loves milk, honey, & green tea, and told us today that he is ready for true love.

We sat and drank cold water with him on his parents' porch, at a home that reminded me of my own childhood home in Woodinville. His mother defines herself as a "clean clutter queen," which I can both appreciate and identify with. Their house is next to the apple orchard their family used to own, and the woods on their property keep the place cool even in the New England summer heat.

Our conversations were calm, about how to make capitalism work for us, rather than against us, and about running a business that is interested in providing its customers with quality products, rather than in turning a larger & larger profit. We lamented leaving graduate school, as it really is the perfect environment for living one's own life.

I'm very glad he is back home.