Third day in England here. So far I’ve seen: Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield(just a little) and Manchester. Also, some the intercity trains, and various local transit.
The good news: Making a beautiful, functional, pleasurable city doesn’t seem all that hard. They’re doing everything planning theory says to do, and it seems like it works beautifully.
The bad news: Cincinnati doesn’t seem capable of doing nearly everything right. Rather, it insists on doing most of it wrong. Has done for a while now.
Evidence: There is much more going on in downtown Derby (pop=~300,000) than there is in Cincinnati (pop=~2,200,000). For real.
The upshot: I’ve decided to get the hell out after I graduate this time. This has been a dry tickle on the back of my throat for a while now, but I stopped short when I got to Manchester and it rolled to the tip of my tongue.
*cough*
Two weeks left in the trip! Let’s see how this little nugget tastes by the end of the month.
Good luck. I think it’s a good decision for you. You don’t seem to be too happy here, so why stick around? Maybe see if you can make your way into a nice job across the pond!
How did that nugget taste at the end of the month?
It’s mellowed a little but kept it’s essential bitterness.
There is so much apathy here. So much contentedness. I walk outside my building and in some moods I see little but trash. This is not depression, nor pessimism. Pendelton literally looks like trash. The broken cars and people and peeling buildings and blowing litter. The litter, nearly all of it is actually dropped, thrown, by people, consciously. They must see the trash too. One can live comfortably in a great trash heap, but I think I’d better not try to leave my mark on such an ephemeral place.
“Then head on back to the Hellenic golden age you great pretentious fuck! See how far you get!”
It’s not that I want, rhetorical-Nate. There is much that is nice here, but it is all hidden behind walls. This is not a polis, nor ever has it been, nor wanted to be. How could a stillborn thing ‘want’! It is a huge aglomeration of walled families, ugly and barren on their outer faces. I want only a people more willing to share it’s beauty with strangers, to hold it’s hopes slightly farther from it’s chest. There is much hope and striving here, but inward, downward, to children, and only one’s own! Not being a child nor having a family, I take a larger scoop when digging for progeny. I offer my best fruits and find it wasting but neither yet hungry.
I’m not sure such a place as I want exists, but I will empty myself trying to make it.