And they’re back! We will be presenting a short forum on the topic of cities and urban life. You may recall our previous forum “On Writing”, and the format for this one was the same: a prompt was offered, responses were requested and subsequently shared. First up is ESC who talks about cities through the lens of his personal experience growing up in New York. Do your experiences parallel his?
I was looking out of the fourteenth floor of the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. building on 125th Street in Harlem and I realized how infinitesimal Central Park really is. It made me wonder how much better it would be if the entire Manhattan Island were covered with a lush forest as it once was. The park is a strip of green amidst a multitude of grays, washed-out brick reds, and varying chromes of the city. I’ve always loved my city and always appreciated it in its metallic and petrous glory but simultaneously I love Nature.
Humans came to be in Nature; not simply our physical make-up but our social genealogy was developed in times where there weren’t extremely high numbers of human in one cramped space. Our ancestors only had to deal with immediate family, extended family, and maybe a small village. These interactions were welcome because they were people we knew and loved.
However a funky guy on the subway whose pits are an inch away from my nose is not getting any love from me. I don’t know him, I don’t dig his funk, and there is a one-in-a-million chance I will ever see him again so there is no motivation to be nice to him! This only encourages tourists to think New Yorkers are rude due to my stone-faced demeanor, but really I’m a nice guy; I just don’t like body odor, people stepping on my sneakers, bumping into me, or the high cost of getting on this stress-filled train. The subway isn’t the only urban animal that causes frustration, but the high concentration of people is a common denominator. Millions of individual personalities, emotions, hygienic habits, and manners clash making the city hard to live in, yet amazing to participate in.
That being said I love the frenetic hustle of the city as I everyone’s feet pounds the ground. The subway has the almost poetic movement of a metallic octopus swimming through the water of steel, stone and gravel. I love the anonymity I can assume as I wander through its street in search of something fun to do, because there’s always fun to be had! I guess cities in all of their unnatural artificiality are perfectly human. Manhattan undeniably beats with a human heart, along with all of its good and evil. I guess I love and hate it just as easily.
What has your experience with cities been? How do you feel about what ESC describes? Are cities beautiful or terrible? Creators or monsters? Join us in the comments section below.
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