City Pride
Jan. 21st, 2009 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinI've been doing a fair amount of soul-searching and critical analysis of my life and have realized I must come out of the closet, face the music, and come to peace with a troubling aspect of my identity:
I AM A CITY PERSON.
This is a hard thing to acknowledge, and I think I've been in denial about it for some time. I mean, yes, I have spent my entire life living in relatively large cities*, but I was simultaneously raised with the belief that city people were useless, sentimental, materialistic sophisticates who couldn't find their bum with both hands unless involved in some godless sexual deviation. Country people knew how to get things done, had the common sense god gave geese, could see through the veil of crap and lies that were the stock and trade of the urban shyster, and through diligence, honesty, and clean livin' could accomplish anything.
*Well, okay, most of it was technically in the suburbs, but it was not rural
Well you know what? City people are good at getting along with people from different backgrounds with different beliefs and opinions. City people are adept with social politics because that's how large numbers of people live together without killing each other. City people have interesting jobs in science, technology, and the arts. City people are accommodating. City people understand and employ irony, metaphor, and abstract thinking. I like living in an apartment, even if I can't grow my own vegetables. I suck at growing vegetables anyway. I like fancy cheeses. I like public transit, being able to walk to the library, talking about nerdy things with a bunch of other nerds, foreign films, PBS, science museums, shawarma and sushi (on the same day, even!), talking to people who come from other countries, exotic fabric stores, restaurants with cloth tablecloths, esoteric concerts, shop signs in other alphabets, not wearing jeans, and access to an international airport. Yes, I do love getting out into the beauty of the countryside, but that's been part of the urbanite's identity as long as you've had to travel any distance to get out of a city. I AM A CITY PERSON! HEAR ME ROAR! (But not too loudly as it may upset the neighbours.)
I AM A CITY PERSON.
This is a hard thing to acknowledge, and I think I've been in denial about it for some time. I mean, yes, I have spent my entire life living in relatively large cities*, but I was simultaneously raised with the belief that city people were useless, sentimental, materialistic sophisticates who couldn't find their bum with both hands unless involved in some godless sexual deviation. Country people knew how to get things done, had the common sense god gave geese, could see through the veil of crap and lies that were the stock and trade of the urban shyster, and through diligence, honesty, and clean livin' could accomplish anything.
*Well, okay, most of it was technically in the suburbs, but it was not rural
Well you know what? City people are good at getting along with people from different backgrounds with different beliefs and opinions. City people are adept with social politics because that's how large numbers of people live together without killing each other. City people have interesting jobs in science, technology, and the arts. City people are accommodating. City people understand and employ irony, metaphor, and abstract thinking. I like living in an apartment, even if I can't grow my own vegetables. I suck at growing vegetables anyway. I like fancy cheeses. I like public transit, being able to walk to the library, talking about nerdy things with a bunch of other nerds, foreign films, PBS, science museums, shawarma and sushi (on the same day, even!), talking to people who come from other countries, exotic fabric stores, restaurants with cloth tablecloths, esoteric concerts, shop signs in other alphabets, not wearing jeans, and access to an international airport. Yes, I do love getting out into the beauty of the countryside, but that's been part of the urbanite's identity as long as you've had to travel any distance to get out of a city. I AM A CITY PERSON! HEAR ME ROAR! (But not too loudly as it may upset the neighbours.)
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-23 01:34 pm (UTC)http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wDnEoHgC8IA
I spent the first part of my life in what I believe at the time was the biggest city in the world.. then lived on a farm for a while. Then moved to LA. Then London. On the whole the only thing I can't bear is a suburb, but definitely I'm a Town Mouse. Me and Sherlock:
"Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there."
"Good heavens!" I cried. "Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?"
"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."
"You horrify me!"
"But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country which makes the danger. "