The City Mouse Meets the Country Mouse
While walking to work through the city streets this morning, I was wondering what it is about a city that draws me. I've always been particular to the countryside, being fond of nature and natural beauty, and I've always found pictures of city buildings and other man-made structures a bit ugly in comparison. But I find being in cities like Berkeley, San Francisco, New York, and Boston to have a certain appeal to me, and I pondered it this morning.
I think what it is about cities that is more absent in the countryside is the sheer vibrancy of human life and activity. In the city you find people of all walks of life going about all kinds of daily tasks and interacting with each other on numerous indescribably levels. You come face to face with life, death, fear, hope, anxiety, exuberance,, love, and hate. And you can be privy to the many wondrous feats that human life has been able to accomplish, as well as near immense centers of lore and learning. You can pass a sky-rise office building, various cultural centers, and a one-story health care unit on the same walk, and see the realities of both the beggar in the subway station and the wealthy shopping in stores you dare not enter. All of these things come together in a dynamic city setting.
It is the countryside, however, that has a sense of calm, tranquility, and restfulness to it. Next to the city, the walk of life in the country seems to happen on a different, less hectic time scale--the New York minute is absent. True nature, untouched (or mostly untouched) by humans, seems almost to exist without time at all, except for the gradual changes it undergoes naturally.
It is places like Central Park that juxtapose these two settings into an amazing blend. Within Central Park, there is the calm, the beauty, the freedom of life and activity, and the ability to feel as though you've "gotten away from it all"--and yet just outside its borders, you can see the skyrises of Manhattan soaring above the treetops, hear the subway rattling underground, and feel the bustle of life that hurries by.
I think what it is about cities that is more absent in the countryside is the sheer vibrancy of human life and activity. In the city you find people of all walks of life going about all kinds of daily tasks and interacting with each other on numerous indescribably levels. You come face to face with life, death, fear, hope, anxiety, exuberance,, love, and hate. And you can be privy to the many wondrous feats that human life has been able to accomplish, as well as near immense centers of lore and learning. You can pass a sky-rise office building, various cultural centers, and a one-story health care unit on the same walk, and see the realities of both the beggar in the subway station and the wealthy shopping in stores you dare not enter. All of these things come together in a dynamic city setting.
It is the countryside, however, that has a sense of calm, tranquility, and restfulness to it. Next to the city, the walk of life in the country seems to happen on a different, less hectic time scale--the New York minute is absent. True nature, untouched (or mostly untouched) by humans, seems almost to exist without time at all, except for the gradual changes it undergoes naturally.
It is places like Central Park that juxtapose these two settings into an amazing blend. Within Central Park, there is the calm, the beauty, the freedom of life and activity, and the ability to feel as though you've "gotten away from it all"--and yet just outside its borders, you can see the skyrises of Manhattan soaring above the treetops, hear the subway rattling underground, and feel the bustle of life that hurries by.