I love this city.
When I was a child, I wrote an essay that talked about my experiences in the wilderness (on camping trips with my family) and in farm country (on road trips with my family) - each of these had their charms. I can still remember isolated bits of country or farmland that were so beautiful they would make me cry to see them today. I don’t remember where they are, how we got to them, or where we went after. They are cut off forever from any map. They are cut off forever from any change. They will never be developed or destroyed. Each of them is a like a little valley of paradise, and only some of them will I ever go back to. Some of them I could drive through right now, and I wouldn’t recognize them from memory.
In that same essay, I also talked about cities, and the joy you find in each one. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I haven’t changed much in all these years (except getting more physically coordinated, slightly), and I can imagine what it is. I don’t know how to explain it - I probably explained it better the first time around - but there’s a special magic in a city. You can find it in odd places or snatches of music, or when you come back from somewhere away, you drive around that hill, and you suddenly see your downtown sparkling there in front of you. You can find it walking through a busy neighborhood, or in a stranger’s smile when hold the door for them, or in some dark jazz bar on a cold and lonely night. The soul of the city touches me at odd times.
When you come right down to it, I said that I was a city kinda guy. I was then, and I am now.
Especially this city. It invigorates me. It is home. Living here is a grand adventure. When I go back to the places I went to as a child, everything is just as good now as it was back then - better, even, because now I am stronger and freer and more awake. When I go someplace new, I am bolstered by the memories and love of the places I have been. Every morning is the dawning of an age, every evening is the dawning of another. I get along with the people, I get along with the buildings, I get along with the plants and the animals and the very air itself. It speaks to me, and I speak to it. I love this city.
A cynical, ironic (good God, I hate the things those words mean) explanation would be that I was born here and grew up here, and so am used to it. It doesn’t usually do any good to ignore the cynics and ironists (though sometimes it does a great deal of good), but it does do me good to rebut them. I like to think that some parallel city kinda guy, who lived in a universe where he was born elsewhere, would still find his way here eventually, like a salmon returning to his stream to spawn - or else that he would always live his life with a vague dissatisfaction of place and a restless desire to search. I like to think that our love is destiny.
Whatever it is, or whatever you want to call it, I’m glad I live here.