williams, new jersey, and robert frost

And so we’ve said goodbye to the small town of Williams… My family (and I) lived there for about nine years, almost as long as we lived in Jersey. I don’t remember much about NJ, but Williams has left its ineffaceable mark on me. You know those tags they put in the ears of cows? Well, once you’ve lived in Williams it’s like you have one of those attached to your heart. Don’t ask me how I thought of that analogy. T is not easy to acquire this tag, it’s painful and it takes a while. Williams is… unique. It is, after all, the only town in Arizona to have an outdoor ice-skating rink. In the summer a man gets shot every night on main street (and it’s always the same guy…) They’ve recently added putting a huge tree in the middle of the road, to the star on the hill tradition at Christmastime. It does have an amazing coffee shop (I happened to work there..), which has once again changed ownership. They have extraordinary people there too. There are buckskinners, cowboys, artists, (quite a few normal people lol), and I believe there have been sightings of ninjas…. Each place we’ve been has been completely different. New Jersey, well, it’s the east; obviously there are going to be some major cultural differences. My mom talks about the first time she went to the produce junction; if you didn’t know exactly what you wanted right away you were regarded with the utmost contempt and disdain. It’s kind of like the soup nazi. No soup for you! I was thinking about Jersey today, a poem we read in my English class reminded me of it. It was a Robert Frost poem, Birches. When I see birches bend to left and right
 Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
 I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
 But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
 Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
 Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
 After a rain. They click upon themselves
 As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
 As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
 Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
 Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
 You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
 They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
 And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
 So low for long, they never right themselves:
 You may see their trunks arching in the woods
 Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
 Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
 Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. I remember having a couple bad ice storms. The world became beautiful.. everything coated in a smooth layer of ice and snow. I love to be in the woods when it’s just snowed. It’s a beautiful unbroken silence. There are different kinds of silence—and they all sound different. Well, this one is my favorite. The next might be the silence of the woods in the summer. That’s not really silence at all, it would only seem silent to the unattentive and restless. It loses its silence when you become silent yourself. Hush your mind, that busy brain which would worry, would race you back to the surroundings you came to escape from. The truth is, we can never escape anything if all we are trying to do is just that. That becomes an endless running away, and it is wearying. Problems must be dealt with. They must be given over to God who is able to deal with them. I’m not really sure how that just morphed from memories of NJ to problems.. I guess what I’m really thinking about always makes its appearance even if its subconsciously done lol. Interesting… well, I am done for now. Off to study postmodernism… very interesting stuff. (and that was not a sarcastic statement lol.)