You're sitting inside my head again!

(Not that I mind...)

Seeing the details in everything; that process of constantly "scanning" everything around us. Taking it all in; finding interest in it all. Above all, the human experience.

Sometimes I miss living in a place that has "sidewalk café culture..."

I see "that couple" around here quite often because this is a bit of an old artist/hippie colony... yet within striking distance of Greater Seattle with its four million tech-loaded hipsters. Perfectly coiffed young women with these unkempt young men who look like they were just pulled from a nearby shed, still with leaves and straw in their rat's nest hair. And I wonder. And I see your scenario unfold...

But usually it takes two to tango. It can be a toxic soup... did peripherally know a young local couple; she that perfect well-presented power-achiever high in Seattle city government; he a local welder/artist and the whole truth laid in her desire to kiss it all goodbye, but she had an overly romanticized version of what "marrying a free-spirited artist" meant... and also had the (unwise?) inkling of seeing him a bit as a "man improvement project" but instead encountered an asshole who was definitely a free spirited artist but who also needed to tear down anyone he perceived was "trying to put on airs." They were a singularly bad match; divorced after two years.

Sometimes it's hard to know the full story.

But it's no excuse for being mean and vindictive.

Very few people have the courage to truly be seen. Even getting close makes them feel squirmy and uncomfortable... and then we end up in fear, and before you know it we have entered "the reactionary zone" rather than a gentle responsive area of sharing.

I'm sad about what you've had to endure. I used to say "I'm sorry" a lot, about things and spent 20+ years apologizing for other members of my gender and the horrors they visit on amazing girls/women in service of protecting their own egos and insecurities. So I pressed my own thumb down on myself, in service of being hyperaware to "not be one of those men," often with the result of completely forgetting myself.

I stay away from pools of piranhas as much as I can; a tendency to isolate, rather than "swim with sharks." Don't always have a choice — because "life happens" — but on the whole...

It's a beautiful painting.
xo