This week flew by and I couldn’t find much time to write. So please forgive and understand last night I scribbled this entry with the most minor of edits.
But first I would love to know, if you could have the same life situation you have now — would you live in the city or in nature?
“Nature.
I wish I could write it larger than that.
NATURE.”
D.H. Lawrence
Muir, Thoreau, Emerson, Crèvecœur are a few names of pioneer nature writers I know of. I haven’t read any of them, but I’ve read a few from the new school writers like Nan Shepherd or Nick Hunt. I can presume they all sing the same song. Nature is where we as humans come from. I mean, I remember the feeling I got when I visited the Alps for the first time with my family recently.
I can’t find a better way to explain it but it was sort of like a spiritual ‘I just spiritually shit myself.’
The majesty of the mountains. The grandeur and awesome power of Mother Nature was breathtaking. It stole my icy exhale several times. Those mountains made me question life. Nature makes you feel small, but also in touch with yourself. Being able to see that famous horizon is so soothing at the beach. Nature is life’s theater but there is no ending to her story. Its massive reach is slowly losing its footing like an old boxer.
Coming back to the city, especially a borderline brutalist one is depressing. Concrete buildings choke the sight of any horizon. Skyscrapers are a testament to man but bruise the view. The constant gray is exhausting as well as waiting for spring. That moment when life comes to the city. All is alive and blooming and so are the damn flies and mosquitoes that come with the season.
My question to myself is would I prefer to live in nature instead of the city? I think I would but it’s not easy leaving something you know for something you know little about. Perhaps I don’t need to know much. I asked my closest friends if they would live in nature and they all said they preferred the city. The sense of loneliness in nature frightens them I suppose.
If I were to live in nature, what I would miss most are my local bookstores, my vinyl stores, and maybe some of the museums that I don’t visit enough, oh, and my croissant guy, and the baker. If that’s all, then what am I waiting for? I want fresh air, to grow vegetables and a few fruits in a garden, to go for long walks in the forest, and have a cozy fireplace to read my books and play my vinyls. Above all is having clean food knowing where it all comes from, what a luxury that is.
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality” - Seneca
What is holding me chained to the city? The understanding that jobs are floating everywhere, that distractions and productivity reign supreme? Or the fear of boredom that never really haunted me. Or maybe the fear of the unknown and leaving what you know. Time, our most extravagant treat goads us into thinking that we have so much of it. The fear of the unknown won’t allow us to believe that now is the perfect time. Now is always the best time. But time can wait because we have excuses. Oh so many of them!
Letting go of an identity that the city or cities gave you, for another way of living you always romanticized. Is a simple life all that simple? I have my doubts. Embracing simplicity; I find it complicated. I see how much we consume, the nonsense and the necessary. What is it that we need? A happy social life might be at the top of that list, and community, culture, innovation, entertainment, and all the possible choices of consumption, which the city can provide just in time for breakfast.
The city can’t offer too much peace, as you try to find it on a mini vacation outside of the city. Not enough space for self-reflection and rarely any quiet unless you’re lucky. We try to destress from the noise and the hubbub with headphones on our way to work, not lucky enough to hear nature’s innate sounds, which are slowly dying down.
Maybe the most convincing reason to jump ship from the city is to hurry before it’s too late. Before the untouched gets spoiled as it already has. To try and find your little, and hopefully affordable, little plot of land. A space to stretch your legs meanwhile your gumbo is simmering down. A place where your kids can run freely and not have to worry about their block stuffed with trash and broken glass. Sure, it’s dramatic but so is the city life. Maybe a necessary leap of faith is enough to understand a life nearer to nature can provide more time and beauty than one in the city.
“Buy land, they're not making it anymore.”
―Mark Twain
Hushpuppy-ly yours,
The Greasy Pen.
You had me at “spiritually shitting myself.” 😆
I agree fully, the time is nigh to return to nature! Find some neighbors who bake and will trade vinyls, and you’ll have it all.