Another note about cities

Cities are maze-like. It’s odd, not being able to see more than ~50m into the distance around you, except down long straight and narrow roads. It makes getting lost S.O.P.: was it this turn or that? Path Integration further than four-ish turns melts into the repetition of right-angled left-right-left — even worse is when the city-planners decide to throw in a curve, or a zig-zag or two. Landmark recognition has to pick up the slack. But then of course landmarks aren’t really a thing when high property-turnover rates keep storefronts protean. It’s no surprise that the winding streets are navigated almost solely by mobile maps.

The inability to navigate by in-built human cognition might contribute to feelings of embeddedness in a something-too-big-to-comprehend that you usually get, living in a city. The sense of impermanence vis-a-vis people, since everyday you see a stream of something like a hundred new faces, even without necessarily changing locations. Just this feeling that you’re smack in the middle of a really wide thing that’s constantly changing and you yourself are just this one speck of almost-nothing with no weight or will at all, in the whole thing. Terrifying. Less terrifying with sufficient distraction.¹ I’m saying this terror may be amplified, or maybe even entirely mediated, by this giant-rat-maze lostness you find in cities.

Moving out of the labyrinth feels like putting good roots down. It feels like curling around places and people and letting your limbs dig in tight. In this sense, trying to find a sense of belonging in a giant metropolis is like trying to plant a tree in a river — it’s just really hard to grasp onto anything.

I’m tempted to extend the analogy and say that growth is likewise hard in cities, but truth is I’ve grown in the city in ways I wouldn’t have outside it. A different kind of growth, to be sure. It’s not the growth that stretches out roots to tangle with things and enrich diversity, not the ecosystem-building kind of growth. It’s lonely growth. Singular growth. Solitary growth within. A kind of invisible investiture of affect and thought directed towards the centre. Time in the city has shown me that this growth — and really, this is very clear to me — serves only as a compliment to growth of the expansive kind. Too much time directed inwards can make one stunted and sickly. And yet also this inside-growth is essential, a necessary precursor to the outside-growth. The movements follow each other: deep, internal and static enrichment, then the burst of wild and colourful proliferation that follows; each kind of growth only possible in specific settings and the sequence itself mirroring exactly that of Winter into Spring.

So the city has its purpose, as the Winter of one’s life. Yet Winter not forever, for forever can’t be ice. Spring should and will come. Spring is joy and life, and Winter is deep and solemn understanding. Both/and rather than either/or, yes?