the city. It has such a beautiful ring to it, the city. It sounds like such a magical, wondrous place where things occur, dreams come true, love is found and lost, people establish their place in the world. Most of that is true I suppose. The city is so ambiguous that it can mean many things to many people, which is one of its charms. I need to step back a bit; this isn't where I wanted to go and I hit a wall.
The city is beautiful. I'm looking out my window right now (9pm) and I see miles upon miles of lights; street lights, house lights, car lights, airplane lights. Thousands of lights winking in the distance, most of those lights have a person associated with them; a human being going about his or her daily life unaware that I'm looking at their light and wondering what their life has in store for them, or someone else looking into the distance back at me wondering if anyone else knows that a speck of light belongs to them. Isn't it beautiful? Over a million people sharing this space, sharing this moment with a million other people, whether they know it or not. The same thing applies during the daytime. Walking down a busy city street during the week, the teeming of unwashed masses all living out their individual lives yet all somehow connected with the people around them, whether they know it or not. The train, one of my favorite things about the city; all walks of life climbing aboard a large tin can with blind trust that it'll safely get to it's location with the same people you see every single day.
It really is no wonder why so many people decide to live their lives within 5 miles of 1 million others. The simplest way to explain it is community. Not the cheesy community bs of everyone going to the church social on a sunday afternoon or the ridiculous grass roots organizing for political means, but the true meaning of community; strangers occupying the same space out of their own individual needs but all working to the common goal or good. We ants may have different lives, different jobs, different objectives and goals but we're all here together because we chose to be and working to make ourselves better, in some way, and in turn making everyone else better.
Or am I naive?
Cheers