29 Jul Trish in the City

The Lab was moving to the East Coast. They put Trish and I up in a small apartment in the city.

It was only for a year, but long enough for Trish; she wasn’t a city girl. She didn’t know how to connect to it. Neither did I.

We’d go out, I’d make her laugh, we’d have fun together. But it never sank in. She wouldn’t let it.

“They seem like actors.” she would say, “y’know… in a play, they have their scripts.. and you’d better stay in character, or you’re off the set!”

I know what she meant. It’s a different way of life here, not right or wrong. People are a product of their environments. It’s social; it’s human.

Trish would hear conversations on the street, “They don’t feel like real conversations,” she’d explain, “It feels like ‘obligated dialogue’… to bolster a semblance of the city culture, not from the heart.”

With a poetic tone, I responded, “Well, let our hearts be the truest then, beating together as one in this place.”

She laughed at me.