NAKED ARMS

In the Old Country, a.k.a. Vermont, here’s how it works. From September through mid-May, unless you’re in a sauna or a swimming pool, you never see a body part other than the head, neck (and only sometimes, the neck) and hands.
If you're outdoors, from November through mid-March, even those parts are on restricted viewing. More often, you see hat, gloves and face… or, when it’s really cold, eyes peering out from a facemask or scarf.
Then, one fine day in late May or early June, bam — skin! Guys walk into class or the office, stunned. “Man. You know what I just saw? Bare arm, man. I saw bare arm!”
That’s Vermont.

With it’s year-round mild weather and its California attitude to exposed flesh (“Duh. That’s what it’s there for.”), the sight of bare arm does not a headline make. Muslim women, shielded from the gaze of others like a Vermonter in a January blizzard, that’s what draws the gawkers, not bared bicep. Out here, elbows just aren't news.
Neither is décolletage. In Vermont, that vertical road between the twin hills would draw every eye in the joint. In San Francisco, it’s just part of the landscape. A pleasant landscape, oh yes, but nobody in this town would confuse it with the Grand Canyon. It’s not even a photo op.
Unless, of course, the décolletage was strolling down the Embarcadero side-by-side with a burka’d Muslim woman.
Or, a Vermonter.

When you live in a place, after awhile, you lose your fresh eyes.

It doesn't mean you're dumb or insensitive or unaware of your surroundings. Unless you work hard to correct it, sure as fog, sooner or later you're gonna misplace your awareness of what you see and smell, hear and taste on your way to work or walking home from school or going out for the Sunday paper.

Sometimes it’s actually a relief. As one travel-writer friend sighed about her blissful oblivion to her hometown surroundings, “Ah, the luxury of not seeing!”

But, ah the pleasures of seeing through fresh eyes. Everything is new, everything is fascinating. Every pungent smell from a Chinese grocery, every touch of salt spray on a beach, every clang of a cable-car bell and visual surprise of a public wall mural — they all capture your attention, alert you to what makes your new home different from the old place.

My old place is rural Vermont. More, it’s the coldest, snowiest, most isolated part of Vermont, the northern end of the three northern counties known collectively as the Northeast Kingdom. That’s where I've lived since 1986, that’s where I was a justice of the peace, that’s where I grew garlic and basil and tomatoes. Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom: where I've shoveled snow off the roof and cowshit out of the barn. The old place.

The new place is San Francisco. Yeah, I just moved here.

Hi.

Neat place you got here. And a little wacky.

I like that in a city.

And i'll be posting what my eyes (and yours, if you'd like) see, what my fresh ears hear, tastebuds savor, nose smells in and around San Francisco.

Open up that Golden Gate.

jules