Bainbridge Island

Bainbridge Island sits replete with various curiosities, sandwiched in between Seattle and Quimper penninsula, it offers many an allurement to the brief guest, and has few amenities. But what is most interesting to me about the place is the people who frequent the docks, restaurants, pubs, and boardwalks with the stifled negligence of the recently castrated, the apoplexic loss of passion paved over by a yearning for the natural in only the external. What I am wondering, and it may be a glib question, is where do these people come from? Surely I know of their location, but of their homes I know little to nothing for I have never been invited inside one, indeed it is uncustomary to invite travelers into anything here, including the most banal conversation. Exceptions include the boat-owners, who appear as a kind of outcasted rabble with little unity or connection with each other besides their amazing passion for sailing and power vessels, a connection which many people often lack. But this brings up an interesting observation in my mind at least, which is the concept of home. What is home, anymore?

You are probably imagining a two story white house with a picket fence, maybe a garden, and a family consisting of husband and wife caring for one or two children. But a home can be so much more than that, and simultaneously, so much less. For home is our sense of place as we move through the world, some people leave it, others are looking for it, yet others claimed to have found it, and some people never will. It is a troublesome topic. As Ursula K Le Guin says "You can always go home as long as home is a place you've never been," which brings up interesting ideas, home as a transient place, not locked down to the meaning of structure, home as a place in training perhaps. Because wherever I am is my home, no matter where I am. I am always with myself, so myself becomes a home.

But the people here try to invade my home. It is as simple as that. They gawk, make rude gestures and comments, and have never engaged me in anything that can be called a polite conversation, though one man tried (really it seemed more like information gathering about these 'out of towners,' as if strangers were ever really a threat to anybody). So it is with due confidence that I relinquish my home from them, the one's they both neglected and punished, ( i am thinking of a lady in particular who tried to charge me $50 to use the computer), while obviously their homes served as mere facades for the acceptance of the death instinct. Settle down and die should be the motto here, though I'm sure that mottos galore must be coming out of the mouths of the townsfolk.