I sometimes get the question; “Why do you always have to be so dramatic?”

The answer is, I don’t know.  Really.  I don’t.  I don’t THINK I’m being dramatic.  I think the world is dramatic.  I describe things as I see them.

I see the ordinary, every day stuff, too.  I see the laundry, and the coffee stains on my tee-shirt, and the kid’s underwear left under their beds instead of being put away in the hamper.

I don’t write about it, I don’t talk about it, and I don’t think about it.  That’s everyday stuff, and everyone knows about it.  What the hell would be the point?

But then again, my mother-in-law writes letters to me about how many apples their trees produced this year, or my mom tells me how many quarts of tomatoes she canned last week, and my sister tells me what her husband did yesterday that irritated her; even though it’s the kind of thing that all husbands do that irritate all wives.

So maybe I am being dramatic.  Maybe there is something in my brain that makes me focus on freaky religious nuts and find them interesting/scary.  Maybe there is something unusual in my urge to poke at outrageous political ideas or contradictions in dogma or ideology.  Maybe it is something wrong or broken in me that finds contradictions: little flaws in the fabric of perception that I have to pick at and make them bigger than they are.

But I have never understood the appeal of the mundane.  The every day.  The usual.  I guess most people find it appealing and interesting.  I think of it as something that simply is.  Not bad – just – unremarkable.  Don’t get me wrong, I LIKE living in a routine.  I need to have reliability.  Not seeing the kids’ underwear kicked under the bed instead of being put in the hamper would unsettle me.  The coffee stains on my tee-shirts are like old friends.  Doing the laundry is like therapy (but not ironing.  Ironing is the work of the devil.  It buuurns us, my precious.  Plus, it’s a completely invented necessity).

The mundane is the baseline, the platform for the jumping-off-point into a wondrous reality where anything can happen, even stuff that doesn’t make sense.  Stuff can happen that is wrong, and bad, and evil.  Stuff can happen that is freaky and weird and can only be truly appreciated by a special class of geek.  Out of the blue, you can have a wonderful experience that you will remember for the rest of your life, even if it means nothing more than whatever was going on at that moment.  There are a million things out there going on that you can see and hear and feel things about that don’t seem to belong in the same universe as canned tomatoes, spilled coffee and discarded Spiderman underwear.  Yet here they are.

It’s not seeking controversy, or trying to be dramatic.  It’s simply SEEING what is there, before your eyes; bright colors, shiny objects, bizarre formations in the landscape.

Can’t you see it?

I was once standing at a bus stop in St. Paul, waiting with a half-dozen people.  I saw a blur, and an explosion of feathers, and then I lost sight of whatever it was.

“Whoa!”  I shouted, as my brain interpreted the residual mental image of what I had seen.  I realized that I had just witnessed a Peregrine falcon making a kill – most likely a pigeon.

A couple of the people stared at me.  The rest ignored me, their gaze fixated on the dull grey pavement like it was an anchor of safety.

“I just saw a falcon bag a pigeon.”  I explained, trying to sooth the alarmed expressions of the people staring at me.

They looked away.

“It was really cool.”  I asserted, now trying to find some common ground.

Suddenly, the people who had been staring at me were staring at the pavement.  The people who had been staring at the pavement were studying the bus schedule with deliberate casualness.

I was being given the message that I was weird.  So weird that acknowledging my experience or (at this point) my presence was impossible for my fellow travelers.  So what made me so weird?

1)      I was looking up.

2)      My eyes were drawn to motion.

3)      For some reason, I found the sight of the fastest predator on the planet bagging its prey in the middle of a metropolitan area remarkable.

4)      I felt the need to share the experience.

Was I being dramatic by choosing to relate that incident rather than commenting on how the bus was at least five minute late? (The only other comment I heard from one of my fellow bus riders during the rest of our time at the stop., and one that was greeted with the easy platitudes and smiles)

No.  I was not being dramatic, but I guess you could say I was living a dramatic life.  And I guess some people find that uncomfortable, and I guess some people think I’m making a choice to be difficult on purpose.

But I’m not.  I’m just being who I am, seeing what I see, and saying what I think about it.

And I guess the point I'm trying to make is:  Thanks for coming here, and listening, and not looking the other way and talking about bus schedules.

I might be being a little dramatic when I say it, but - It means a lot.