The Urban Soup (Part I)
I'm starting a new series. It's based on the incessant activity of urban areas. Activity so often remarked on it's become cliched and ridiculous. But I'll do it anyway, since some fields are never exhausted for content, though the do become tiresome. for this one I'll actually go out and collect notes. Except maybe for this post.
I'd just like to remark on the urban buzz: the buzz that wakes you up in the middle of the night, the buzz that won't let you sleep for at least two hours after you've closed your eyes, the buzz generated by the spazzed-out maniac crossing the street against four lanes of arterial traffic and streetcars that should have cow-catchers out front, the buzz that blotted out the sky, the buzz on bass beats through the walls and manhole covers clanging, but also the buzz of scarves whooshing in the wind and determined bike couriers staring holes into the potholes, the buzz of leaf-spirals caught in the wind and the buzz of birds with slightly demented guidance systems coming in for crash-landings, the buzz of the blinking lights of the supercomputers of the future, the buzz of the footsteps of bejeweled bureaucrats and city councillors and haggard students and frustrated skateboarders and the unhappily pierced, the buzz of the herds partying on the gigantic hulks of sideways trees in backyards that should be mine...
At first it is a buzz, and then it builds into a boil. (Obviously, since I have to fit all this into a soup metaphor. Incidentally: does soup buzz before it boils? I know it makes a "whooshing"-like sound, but I'm not sure. Words fail me.)
This urban buzz is the most invigorating thing I know. Whether that means I'm grossly anaemic with respect to experience, I leave to the reader to judge. All I know is the streets are my therapists and motivational speakers. Even the sketchy ones. (Who am I kidding? Especially the sketchy ones.)
Consider: "First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first one is hard and meagerly paid; the second is easy and well-paid."
I'd just like to remark on the urban buzz: the buzz that wakes you up in the middle of the night, the buzz that won't let you sleep for at least two hours after you've closed your eyes, the buzz generated by the spazzed-out maniac crossing the street against four lanes of arterial traffic and streetcars that should have cow-catchers out front, the buzz that blotted out the sky, the buzz on bass beats through the walls and manhole covers clanging, but also the buzz of scarves whooshing in the wind and determined bike couriers staring holes into the potholes, the buzz of leaf-spirals caught in the wind and the buzz of birds with slightly demented guidance systems coming in for crash-landings, the buzz of the blinking lights of the supercomputers of the future, the buzz of the footsteps of bejeweled bureaucrats and city councillors and haggard students and frustrated skateboarders and the unhappily pierced, the buzz of the herds partying on the gigantic hulks of sideways trees in backyards that should be mine...
At first it is a buzz, and then it builds into a boil. (Obviously, since I have to fit all this into a soup metaphor. Incidentally: does soup buzz before it boils? I know it makes a "whooshing"-like sound, but I'm not sure. Words fail me.)
This urban buzz is the most invigorating thing I know. Whether that means I'm grossly anaemic with respect to experience, I leave to the reader to judge. All I know is the streets are my therapists and motivational speakers. Even the sketchy ones. (Who am I kidding? Especially the sketchy ones.)
Consider: "First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first one is hard and meagerly paid; the second is easy and well-paid."
posted by A. D. at 11:55 PM
2 Comments:
Well we Yankees like to use two Metaphors.. Either Soup or Salad Bowl..
For ur piece I will go with the Latter
Streets usually give me back to myself which is said to be the best thing a Therapist can do for the fucked up souls
Once I was walking in the streets of San Francisco all by myself and this black homeless dude went like :" Oh yo stop.."
To which I responded by walking faster to which he said:" Oh, Yo white Basterd I am talking to you Stop."
At the moment I wanted to stop and explain to him :" first of all I am not white, even with an American Passport I am still profiled in the airports. And the bastered part, please sir watch your mouth I am the second child of a perfectly nice semi-traditional semi-modern middle eastern Family. Both my parents were college grads and virgins at the time of marriage."
But then I thought, the hell with some black homeless dude in S.F
and left....
Salad is a good metaphor. Here in Toronto we've gotten so heterogeneous that it's almost like someone mixed up several different kinds of salad mixes. It's like with your homeless black dude: he classifies you as white, and then we have white people classifying the hell out of each other ("are you a Protestant Scot or a Catholic Scot") when to everyone else they seem the same. I know they do to me. But soup has a homogenizing effect, like it or not.
Cheers!
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