an old diary piece

A New Neighborhood Diary "There is the same foreignness ..." June 20, 2017 There is a same foreignness about this town, the same as the town I came from that I didn’t feel I belonged. The streets are not paved according to code and the shops give one an askew feeling. And any time one could encounter a wild lion pouncing out of a men’s clothing store. I tread gingerly. I have been here for nearly a year now, but I don’t venture out except on the first of the month when I receive my disability check. My ego is inflated when I have some cash in my pocket; yes, I feel harder and more erect and one meal above the homeless man. But mind you, forty years ago, in my hometown of Aberdeen, the fog and rain assailed most of the winter, there were jobs in the fish cannery as the salmon found their way back to the spawning grounds, and yours truly kept going back to the sandy beaches to dig his limit of razor clams at Ocean Shores. But now, Ocean Shores is an investment property, attracting strangers even with strange kinds of money. The foreignness keeps invading these lands. Should I now declare, but to no one’s urgency actually, that I am a different man in the same body or the same man in a different body, as my identity keeps morphing into something unrecognizable, as I become less and less useful, sort of like a crabapple shrinking into itself? Or is this the culmination of a found wisdom, such as a grossly underpriced item in a gift shop run by volunteers for the benefit of the local senior center? And what about the farmer’s market on this block every Sunday to add vegetable colors to the sidewalks with tents erected on the pavement? The greens and cobs and fruit cost you twice as much you know as they do at the local Safeway or QFC stores. Still, it is worth it to help the little organic guys and to remove some of the drudgery of everlasting commerce, when these condos are filled with high-tech geeks, who will soon go to higher grounds. Still, the sea will not drown us out for some time yet, even as global warming gives us no more warning. I am in West Seattle now. Koon Woon