Scale

To me, life seems to be lived on different scales in different places.
In small villages life is infuriatingly slow and simple. People are more honest and sincere. Life is lived outside more and folks tend to know know each other, and sometimes mistrust strangers. I was in a little village in Lincolnshire a few days ago and the crowd in the town pub (social nexus) were planning a vilage ball for the summer, basically hoedown in a field nearby. People were volunteering and making arragements. It was a comunity.

I think of it as life on a small black and white TV. Lovely and simple and somewhow wholesome, but smaller than my ambitions in a way I can't quite nail down.

Life in a big town/small city is different. Sort of suburban and still sort of small. People don't all know each other, but they're not just faces to each other as in big cities. Aspirations aren't much higher than in small towns and it's all very Ordinary. House, job, mortgage, 2.4 kids, retirement. Suburban drug problems. Small businesses. Chain stores. Life on a family TV from a wholesale supermarket.

If you're from a small village you're a somebody to the people who live in nowhere with you. In a larger town you're a nobody in a nowhere. A marketing statistic. A completely soul destroying and uninspired life. I could not live like that.

Big cities. Diversity. If cities are cinemas the London (New York, Tokyo?) is an IMAX. A chance to be a nobody in a somewhere. You're anonymous and insignificant, it's a function of the sheer press of millions of other anonymous insignificant nobodies, but it's not opressive or deliberately unfriendly. There are more people who will have the same goals as you: filling a certain job, renting a certain apartment, getting a certain date. Your chances of succeeding are smaller because of that. The more people one competes with, the greater chance that one of them is better at achievng your goals than you are.

There's also a lot to see and do. And the freedom of being anonymous and independant. Existentialism. Wow this is a ramble. I'm going to shut up now.

Created 2004-06-09 00:00:00 by 216 and filed under introspection

Comments

Easton writes...

http://c4d76a903059f02f278ccd5e60ab1c32-t.tvabji.info c4d76a903059f02f278ccd5e60ab1c32 [url]http://c4d76a903059f02f278ccd5e60ab1c32-b1.tvabji.info[/url] [url=http://c4d76a903059f02f278ccd5e60ab1c32-b2.tvabji.info]c4d76a903059f02f278ccd5e60ab1c32[/url] [u]http://c4d76a903059f02f278ccd5e60ab1c32-b3.tvabji.info[/u] 57d8dbf9672fae6bfc1c19130368c68f

website: http://c4d76a903059f02f278ccd5e60ab1c32-u.tvabji.info posted: 2007-05-12 07:07:32