nyc
I’ve been in New York for the past week and a half, and was in the city proper all last week. That’s the most time I’ve ever spent in New York.
I can imagine how people who grew up in the urban canyons could leave the city to visit someone in “the country” and have a feeling of discomfort — too much space and quiet. Personally I like the city: the energy, the diversity, the dirty, organic way in which everything is half-broken and under repair or dying or being renewed. There’s little that’s pristine on the outside and I like how honest that is. I like the anonymity and the freedom that comes from knowing that there’s always someone weirder than you are just around the corner.
But then I leave for the trees and quiet and breathe a sigh of relief.
June 1st, 2006 at 10:51 pm
“They walked Pearl Street, taking in the maze of new wooden buildings that seemed to have sprung up on every available patch of land. Lorenzo commented on that particularly New York street mix of men with nothing to do and men in a devil of a hurry. Mason admitted the place was huge and filthy. They both thought the natives either looked too closely or paid you no attention. Lorenzo, gun under his long coat, wondered how so many people could live so close together without killing each other. He was told they frequently did.”
(The story’s action takes place in 1835, but it was written in modern times.)