You see a city image of a crowded overflowing sidewalk.
A sea of people with expressionless faces. Some in a major marathon rush hour hurry. Late for some very important mad hatter like date. Others spilling, sprawled like wall to wall fluid glue, thick mud, ice cubes. Wearing casper like tans. Sporting flat line or upside down smiles.
A liquid phalanx of human urban crack filler. Tangled, layered, knotted. Kitty corner varicose wedged between the movers and shakers.
The hustle and bustle from the crowd, mob, cluster sirens visual stress and plenty of worry.
A few poker faced and seemingly casual in a detached sort of way. Maybe the stop at the corner pub after work gets the credit for a hint of bevity.
Plenty of don’t get involved fear expressions the rule though.
A common goal shared by many. When full scale panic would take over if trucks stopped shipping goods into a city for just a couple days. In their just in time inventory practice to local merchants, peddlers of foodstuffs.
To just slip through the 360 degree obstacle course everywhere they turn in the watch where you step, no way to move in the herding.
Until a let down, long sigh. When the click of a dead bolt is heard, felt. The grab the dangling, swinging security chain finishes the slide ride to the side. Finally. Whew. Geez Louise. Home, sweet costly leased home. The one seventeen stories or more jacked up, hoisted from the high priced, in short supply terra firma down below.
But back to the sidewalks you can not see for the people stuck, melted together.
Add in the taxis, mass transit bus stands and underground or elevated train stairway interruptions. Non stop, round the clock never sleep loud honking horns. Black diesel fume belching buses. To make it a challenge, slow the process of getting from A to B. Upping the stress levels as you can collectively hear all the worn time devices ticking loudly. Like the Pink Floyd song intro.
As someone in the control room slides the audio, cranks the dials on the VU meters. To make them dance, linger, loiter in the red region. To add depth to the what does it feel like. In that crowded, elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder stark black and white image. Look at all those people. Where you don’t know the face of even one soul in the crowd.
Now picture you are in Maine.
I know. Can you stand the sound of all that Maine quiet?
Gone are the sounds of city clanging. Of garbage, municipal trucks, fire engines, ambulances meat wagons. Where every year is getting shorter.
And self medication in all the wrong varieties to manage. The try to cope with city stress addictions, tricks of self deception all melt away.
Like that permanent truck tire around the waist you wear. Oddly enough worn in the urban setting. To fend of others in some bizarre bumper car rubber self protection device strip sort of way.
In Maine on a small town sidewalk there is plenty of concrete showing.
Take your time in the casual no pushing, no shoving stroll. Maine you get extra helpings of space. No matter where you are. Or what you buy for real estate. Measured in acreage, hundreds of yards not fractions of inches.
People wave, smile, hold doors open for you in Maine. Use taught manners. Let you go in traffic.
Less herding help with the population needed in a small Maine town. Kids walk home from the down town movies at night without fear of abduction in the 4th lowest crime state.
You can cross the uncrowded streets anywhere too. Not just at certain times on specified designated cross walk reflectorized painted grid lines.
Where even when it’s your turn, you take your own life in your hands every single time you step down off the granite city curb.
Is it crowded where you live now? You’re not in Maine are you?
Do you feel a connection to others around you? Sense like if you were not around long where you live others would know it, miss you? Let go. Run away. Get to Maine. Feel the release of tension, anxiety, all that bottled up worry and frustration. Lose the worry about hitting someone by accident, mistake. Or out of self defense and reaching for a fully charged taxer, can of mace.
There is another setting. All natural, unfiltered, unplugged and with freedom on every level written all over it. Enjoy, bask, bathe in the clean air, crystal clear water and all this space in the place called Maine.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com