As a city kid I still need what my ancestors did; I need what humans evolved to need. In these concrete streets I need trees, birdsong, flowers. I need fresh air, good food and a chance to play with friends freely, feeling safe and loved. We, like other animals, can't adapt so quickly to large changes. So, if it's alright, this kids needs a little country in the city and a lot more space to breathe.
Whatever would a city be without the kids? Concrete and metal without purpose? Even the iconic structures would call for them to return, those young hearts and beautiful brains. As I sit by the fountain, savouring the sandwich that is lunch today, I watch a city kid. There is something troubling that soul. It is easy to see in his eyes and by the way he walks. The happy and nurtured have a different vibe. It is as if in all the hectic hubbub we lost the reason we built such places or forgot the importance of laughter and joy. And if this kid is broken in such a way, then we all are. Only a healthy "I" can be part of any "we" - be it a romantic relationship, family or community. So I say that the city is the kid, it is the kids, for they can be the only reason, the only hope.
The quiet days were idled away, sitting in my armchair near the most sunny window. The song was the gentle hum of the laundry machine and the rhythmic passing of cars on the street. The high notes were the sirens, the horns and the hollering. I guess to someone unaccustomed it could be less than therapeutic, but I was a city girl, and these were the sounds of home.
These concrete streets are my rivers, it's little wonder I seek flow. The sun shines as brightly here as anywhere, on us as much as anyone. Perhaps our ancestors heard the birds and whisper of wind in the trees, but I guess we adapt, learn to find our solace in what we have rather than what our soul expects, as if still cradles memories without words, of times lived in ancient forests. I'll always be at home here, there is something that feels right in those tree lined avenues, in the parks where the cars are only the faintest of hums. Perhaps when the cars are electric, when the rooftops are green, we'll find a happiness we never noticed was absent. Perhaps our souls will rekindle. Perhaps we'll discover that these days we thought of as bright were in heavy shade, and we'll learn how to see again.
Back in the city I ran over astroturf and the perfect surface of the stadium running track, even the cross country running was a sanitized version over the parkland like hill that the developers thought to steep to build on. Now all I have is this farmland, beautiful so long as you don't have to run over it. There are ruts, pot holes, rabbit warrens, stones - and all of them hidden in the partially grown meadow grass. A few months from now there will be flowers, wild ones, ones that perhaps when I am older I will have grown to love as I walk the labrador I am bound to get once I am over forty. But right now my legs are burning to run and run fast, burning to cover not metres but miles and every forth step I twist my ankle fit to snap. And if it doesn't snap, I will, these muscles that have taken years to develop will be fat in a few short months and then I won't even want to run anymore. I'll be like the rest of the kids my age, junk food, computer games and out of breath to climb the stairs. Maybe I should just get that labrador now and start wearing J-crew...
Perhaps we've come to think of ourselves as machine and concrete, to mirror the pollution and chaos that has no purpose. Maybe that's the way nature wired us, to learn from what we see, to feel and become a community with it. I guess that all worked out just fine when we saw the trees, birds and rivers that flowed. What now? Are we seeking AI because we lost our Mama? Are we looking to invent something predictable and reliable because we forgot how to be that way? Maybe once we learned those qualities from the animals, the loyalty of wolves, the bravery of a mama bear, the way kindred mammals protect one another. That was our community. But the thing is, city kid though I am, this consciousness that I am lives in an organic body, loves, has emotions that need connections to be healthy. It's not the stuff that makes me happy, or anyone, it's each other, it's our community of people, of trees, of animals. So show me a machine that grows beautiful plants, that cleans sea water into something drinkable, that saves a baby or replants the desert so that it can bloom - because that's what it should be for - for enhancing natural life. We need to take our broken wings and learn to fly again.