Thunder and lightning
I don't venture out of the urban core of our little city much anymore. Whenever I do, I find myself becoming unavoidably ticked off by the differences in behaviour between the people who populate the sprawl and those who cling to our precious few blocks of civitas in the centre. It all seems so ridiculous, somehow. How can things change so much over the course of a few blocks of space? But then I remember that, not so very long ago, when I lived over there (seriously, just about 2 miles from here) I virtually never came into the core. Maybe once or twice a month to visit a nice restaurant or when my pangs of conscience about ordering every frigging book I own from Amazon caught up with me and I felt a duty to buy from our nice indie bookstore.
Today I drove out to the sprawl to pick up my daughter, who had an appointment there. We texted back and forth about my proposed pickup, as I explained to her that this would involve my walking home 2 miles from work, only to jump into the car, head back roughly 2 miles in almost the same direction so that she could hitch a ride home. Even though I promised her last night that I would do this for her, I wanted to make sure she got the irony.
I got home, through thunder and lightning, just in time to turn around and go back. It wasn't long before I was surrounded in impatient traffic, people driving utterly gigantic SUVs, weaving around the lesser lights to shave seconds off of the commute. When I got to the parking lot, having endured being honked at, cut off, swerved around to the extent that I felt like a little old 90 year old man behind the wheel, I climbed out of the car to stand beside the huge Mercedes SUV in the next spot. I felt like a dwarf. I couldn't wait to get back here, where most people walk when they can, where the roads are narrow, and only have 2 lanes for the most part, with at least one lane cluttered with plenty of parked cars, overhanging tree branches, and kids peeking out of driveways waiting to cross from one side to the other to visit friends. I know. I make it sound so idyllic here when I'm sure that much of it is just in my head. But still....now that I'm here, I hate to go there. When I was there, I never came here. So there must be something to this insulating boundary. I wish I understood more of it.
I'm trying to write a grant proposal about space and culture -- I only have a few days to get it done and I'm not sure I can do it, not sure I want to, not sure I could find the time to do the work even if it was funded -- and there's more irony here. The proposal is, more or less, about the question of how much the configuration of space -- just the very shape of where we live, walk, drive, and look -- how much all of that contributes to culture. How much of that is culture? I'm hesitating on the proposal because I know that I really haven't a clue what culture is. I know perception, vision, space, but nothing really about people. I can't even make successful small talk. Yet, at the same time, I've got this feeling in my bones that there's something important about all of this that I need to understand. There is something about the shape of things that makes us what we are. It's a part of what makes the core and sprawl so mutually antagonistic to one another. It's as obvious as the difference between thunder and lightning and, in just the same way, obvious that there isn't one without the other.
Today I drove out to the sprawl to pick up my daughter, who had an appointment there. We texted back and forth about my proposed pickup, as I explained to her that this would involve my walking home 2 miles from work, only to jump into the car, head back roughly 2 miles in almost the same direction so that she could hitch a ride home. Even though I promised her last night that I would do this for her, I wanted to make sure she got the irony.
I got home, through thunder and lightning, just in time to turn around and go back. It wasn't long before I was surrounded in impatient traffic, people driving utterly gigantic SUVs, weaving around the lesser lights to shave seconds off of the commute. When I got to the parking lot, having endured being honked at, cut off, swerved around to the extent that I felt like a little old 90 year old man behind the wheel, I climbed out of the car to stand beside the huge Mercedes SUV in the next spot. I felt like a dwarf. I couldn't wait to get back here, where most people walk when they can, where the roads are narrow, and only have 2 lanes for the most part, with at least one lane cluttered with plenty of parked cars, overhanging tree branches, and kids peeking out of driveways waiting to cross from one side to the other to visit friends. I know. I make it sound so idyllic here when I'm sure that much of it is just in my head. But still....now that I'm here, I hate to go there. When I was there, I never came here. So there must be something to this insulating boundary. I wish I understood more of it.
I'm trying to write a grant proposal about space and culture -- I only have a few days to get it done and I'm not sure I can do it, not sure I want to, not sure I could find the time to do the work even if it was funded -- and there's more irony here. The proposal is, more or less, about the question of how much the configuration of space -- just the very shape of where we live, walk, drive, and look -- how much all of that contributes to culture. How much of that is culture? I'm hesitating on the proposal because I know that I really haven't a clue what culture is. I know perception, vision, space, but nothing really about people. I can't even make successful small talk. Yet, at the same time, I've got this feeling in my bones that there's something important about all of this that I need to understand. There is something about the shape of things that makes us what we are. It's a part of what makes the core and sprawl so mutually antagonistic to one another. It's as obvious as the difference between thunder and lightning and, in just the same way, obvious that there isn't one without the other.
posted by Colin at 6:57 PM
1 Comments:
A very thoughtful and relevant post. I think of feng shui, although isn't that usually a "small space" concept? (Believe me, I don't know).
Of course our surroundings influence the way we feel and behave. I do feel certain of that. And if a person doesn't feel comfortable in "the core," they won't spend time there. Likewise the sprawl, although it seems that the sprawl, by its nature, doesn't seem as threatening as the core (which is more clearly defined).
I live in the woods. No core, no sprawl, so what do I know?
Anyway, I came here from Robin's blog figuring that anyone she links to must be worth reading, and I am not disappointed.
Popular "culture" needs to be yanked to its feet and given a good shaking. I don't know how to do this, but if your grant might be a beginning, I hope you write and are able to implement it.
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