south end monks
A lot of places, the weight of history holds em down. Take Stanwood. They got to live up to their Skandihoovian past. Uff-Da Festivals and Lefse Smorgasbords. Viking this and Viking that. Sorta Leavenworth on the Skids ….
History’s a fine thing – keep our heritage. Remember the past. Honor the dead. Yah shure, u-betcha…. But sometimes it’s an albatross around your neck. Or a lutefisk necklace. Keeps a place from growing. Evolving. Rediscovering itself. Moving into new, uncharted territory.
The South End, being an uncharted territory practically forever, doesn’t have much to worry about from History. I think it gives us a lot of breathing room. We can make up all sorts of lies and legends and not have to worry about stepping on the feet of dead heroes or old cultures or somebody’s precious antique heritage.
You stop and think about it, that’s what America was once —unencumbered by history. Making it up as we go. Creating everything from scratch. Dreaming up new frontiers. America’s sort of lost that now. When you spend most of your time celebrating what you’ve already done instead of what you’re gonna do, I don’t care if you’re a country or a town or ordinary yahoos like us, that’s a prescription for standing still and not pushing on. Which is sad really, cause like the South End, it’s mostly a state of mind more than an actual place. I guess we’ll have to keep the Torch lit down here. Or at least the woodstoves. Be like those Monks back in the Dark Ages scribbling in the caves all the Knowledge of the World. Waiting for the exact right time to re-emerge and save Stanwood from its dark last century.
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