Mizz Erna

There is this thing I like to tell people every so often, when the time is appropriate. Have you ever discovered something that's so amazing, so new, righ in your own backyard? It's that feeling of new-ness (word?) something you usually only experience when you visit someplace new, usually somewhere far far away from your backyard. I call it "expansion of universe."

Like when you've lived in your hometown for so long, you think you know everything about it, (everything that counts anyway) and you have this feeling of stagnancy, feeling trapped. Suddenly, like a saving grace, as if someone up there actually heard you but just didn't have the cash to send you plane tickets to Anywhere But Here, you discover something new in what feels like you're own backyard.

Like last week, I met a guy who didn't even know Koreatown in NYC even existed! Or B., who had never seen the pretty houses in the outskirts of Queens (Queens??). I like to say to them, "Your universe has just been expanded." I guess you can call it a personal philosophy of mine, and at times the hope of that happening is my only way of keeping sane. I don't remember where I read about it, or first thought about it, but I like seeing others experience it, I sometimes feel like Mr. Rourke on Fantasy Island at that definitive moment of a visitor's stay, "My friend, your universe has just been expanded."