A person can live a long, long, time- hearing things but cannot “know” a thing until s/he experiences it in the flesh. Like the biblical use of “To know,” You know?

“To Experience, to be One with.” I feel my Puritanical, New England-self blushing at the sound of it. But, I am in the state of Virginia now, and Virginia is for Lovers.

😃

Anyhow, you can’t “know” a thing until you experience, it is a useful tool or device or ‘wise word’ I learned in an earlier post and re-remembered today.

Avoiding the too common expression, “It’s funny,” because it isn’t quite funny. It’s more than quirky, or ha-ha laughing funny. ‘More like a clown you don’t quite trust funny. Your kind of on edge, in a not-so-sure-what’s-going- to- happen- next condition. Like that.

Anyhow, in my on-edge condition, I awakened to realize how my head is full of phrases, “isms,” slogans, sayings – half of which I am clueless to their meaning and origin.

That would make me like a monkey, mimicking things I’ve heard, as if I know what these things actually mean. 🤔

Like who is the Iron Lady standing in NY City Harbor? Why doesn’t she let anyone sleep?? Can she be melted down to pay the national debt? What is she actually made of, I wonder. Copper?

She definitely doesn’t give me that cheery happy feeling that Copper- the -Hen, gives me. “Lady Liberty” seems ice- cold like…well…a Statue.

People have been loving, and fun and sweet here. Like I am God’s gift to the world. Not more so than anyone else, of course. That is what makes the experience genuine. I am special just because I am a human being, I think. Such an intoxicating, and disorientating sensation for this coffee- drinking, nervous by comparison Yankee.

I’ve not received any brutal treatment since I arrived in this place. Except, well, either one foolish bird crashed into my window, or a local hostile threw a rock through it.

A pebble really, ‘sort of like a pin prick from my New World that people from Massachusetts are suspect, even in the State of Love.

Perhaps the slogan, “Yankee,” puts the same metallic taste in their mouths, like “Lady Liberty” suddenly puts in mine?