snippets from
Neil Gaiman calls Toronto "his first girlfriend."
Cities are not people. But, like people, cities have their own personalities: in some cases one city has many different personalities -- there are a dozen Londons, a crowd of different New Yorks.
A city is a collection of lives and buildings, and it has identity and personality. Cities exist in location, and in time.
There are good cities -- the ones that welcome you, that seem to care about you, that seem pleased you're in them. There are indifferent cities -- the ones that honestly don't care if you're there or not; cities with their own agendas, the ones that ignore people. There are cities gone bad, and there are places in otherwise healthy cities as rotten and maggoty as windfall apples. There are even cities that seem lost -- some, lacking a centre, feel like they would be happier being elsewhere, somewhere smaller, somewhere easier to understand.
Some cities spread, like cancers or B-movie slime monsters, devouring all in their way, absorbing towns and villages, swallowing boroughs and hamlets, transmuting into boundless conurbations. Other cities shrink -- once prosperous areas empty and fail: buildings empty, windows are boarded up, people leave, and sometimes they cannot even tell you why.
Occasionally I idle time away by wondering what cities would be like, were they people. Manhattan is, in my head, fast-talking, untrusting, well-dressed but unshaven. London is huge and confused. Paris is elegant and attractive, older than she looks. San Francisco is crazy, but harmless, and very friendly.
It's a foolish game: cities aren't people.
Cities exist in location, and they exist in time. Cities accumulate their personalities as time goes by. Manhattan remembers when it was unfashionable farmland. Athens remembers the days when there were those who considered themselves Athenians. There are cities that remember being villages. Other cities -- currently bland, devoid of personality -- are prepared to wait until they have history. Few cities are proud: they know that it's all too often a happy accident, a mere geographical fluke that they exist at all -- a wide harbour, a mountain pass, the confluence of two rivers.
At present, cities stay where they are.
For now cities sleep.
But there are rumblings. Things change. And what if, tomorrow, cities woke, and went walking? If Tokyo engulfed your town? If Vienna came striding over the hill toward you? If the city you inhabit today just upped and left, and you woke tomorrow wrapped in a thin blanket on an empty plain, where Detroit once stood, or Sydney, or Moscow?
Don't ever take a city for granted.
After all, it is bigger than you are; it is older; and it has learned how to wait...
I think I'm in love with Neil Gaiman (in addition to my list of many writers I admire & adore for various reasons). This must be what it's like to be a writer - to be able to capture the words and sentiments of many, and put them into simple snippets and paragraphs which make so much sense (yes, I'm looking at you, H.D. Harootunian/Homi Bhabha - my love/hate relationship for academia increases everyday). Once I wanted to be someone like that, and along the way that dream got merrily washed away and replaced by practicality and reality. Still, if there are people out there doing this - it must only mean that I lack courage.
Last Friday, on a whim (and on a serious withdrawal from doing fun reading), I went out to the library and borrowed 2 books. One was by James Patterson and it was such a sappy, romantic chick lit book which reminded me of Just Like Heaven - I'm surprised at the versatility of this man. Need to read more crime/thrillers by him, obviously, since I adore those two genres and everything that comes with it. People find it strange that I have such an obsession with crime television, and all I can say is that I honestly have no idea why - except maybe that I'm curious about the human psyche? Anyway, the other one was a book that reaffirmed my love/hate relationship (I have tons of these) with Jodi Picoult again. I love her prose and style of writing, but seriously, can her topics get any more melodramatic/heartrending/controversial?
I didn't really want to blog/update till I had significant updates about life. So here it is:
I found out that I got waitlisted by Disney, and to be honest, I'm not even mildly upset by it. Yes, I really wanted it (way back in April 2008) and to work in Disney, for a summer, plus spend my 21st birthday there would have been something close to a fantasy. But I guess over the months my enthusiasm for it thinned, along with the fact that I got accepted for exchange, which would already be quite a big adventure. Not doing Disney would have meant: staying here and enjoying summer (the reason why I'm here in Toronto), doing a bit of summer school and possibly graduating early in 2010, making hopefully twice as much money as at Disney, and more travelling around Canada.
So I decided upon getting the email that I'm staying here for the summer, maybe in a nice little apartment with a gym and pool. I'll be here from May - end June (hopefully going to Vancouver/Prince Edward Islands/NYC too!), and back to Singapore in early July/mid July till end September (please let me get an internship with the museums :( ), then off to Tokyo (Todai!) for the year. And with everything that's coming up - all the festivals, the food, the fun - I'm actually really, really psyched about living here for the summer. So to that end, I just wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who's heard my Disney dreams and supported me in a small way or another, I really appreciate it. And that's not exactly the end of the road, I am still considering re-applying sometime in the near future or doing something that will lead me there somehow. All in all, for some reason I think that this year my life has brought about many unexpected changes, and I'm a firm believer of everything happens for a reason. :)
Cities are not people. But, like people, cities have their own personalities: in some cases one city has many different personalities -- there are a dozen Londons, a crowd of different New Yorks.
A city is a collection of lives and buildings, and it has identity and personality. Cities exist in location, and in time.
There are good cities -- the ones that welcome you, that seem to care about you, that seem pleased you're in them. There are indifferent cities -- the ones that honestly don't care if you're there or not; cities with their own agendas, the ones that ignore people. There are cities gone bad, and there are places in otherwise healthy cities as rotten and maggoty as windfall apples. There are even cities that seem lost -- some, lacking a centre, feel like they would be happier being elsewhere, somewhere smaller, somewhere easier to understand.
Some cities spread, like cancers or B-movie slime monsters, devouring all in their way, absorbing towns and villages, swallowing boroughs and hamlets, transmuting into boundless conurbations. Other cities shrink -- once prosperous areas empty and fail: buildings empty, windows are boarded up, people leave, and sometimes they cannot even tell you why.
Occasionally I idle time away by wondering what cities would be like, were they people. Manhattan is, in my head, fast-talking, untrusting, well-dressed but unshaven. London is huge and confused. Paris is elegant and attractive, older than she looks. San Francisco is crazy, but harmless, and very friendly.
It's a foolish game: cities aren't people.
Cities exist in location, and they exist in time. Cities accumulate their personalities as time goes by. Manhattan remembers when it was unfashionable farmland. Athens remembers the days when there were those who considered themselves Athenians. There are cities that remember being villages. Other cities -- currently bland, devoid of personality -- are prepared to wait until they have history. Few cities are proud: they know that it's all too often a happy accident, a mere geographical fluke that they exist at all -- a wide harbour, a mountain pass, the confluence of two rivers.
At present, cities stay where they are.
For now cities sleep.
But there are rumblings. Things change. And what if, tomorrow, cities woke, and went walking? If Tokyo engulfed your town? If Vienna came striding over the hill toward you? If the city you inhabit today just upped and left, and you woke tomorrow wrapped in a thin blanket on an empty plain, where Detroit once stood, or Sydney, or Moscow?
Don't ever take a city for granted.
After all, it is bigger than you are; it is older; and it has learned how to wait...
I think I'm in love with Neil Gaiman (in addition to my list of many writers I admire & adore for various reasons). This must be what it's like to be a writer - to be able to capture the words and sentiments of many, and put them into simple snippets and paragraphs which make so much sense (yes, I'm looking at you, H.D. Harootunian/Homi Bhabha - my love/hate relationship for academia increases everyday). Once I wanted to be someone like that, and along the way that dream got merrily washed away and replaced by practicality and reality. Still, if there are people out there doing this - it must only mean that I lack courage.
Last Friday, on a whim (and on a serious withdrawal from doing fun reading), I went out to the library and borrowed 2 books. One was by James Patterson and it was such a sappy, romantic chick lit book which reminded me of Just Like Heaven - I'm surprised at the versatility of this man. Need to read more crime/thrillers by him, obviously, since I adore those two genres and everything that comes with it. People find it strange that I have such an obsession with crime television, and all I can say is that I honestly have no idea why - except maybe that I'm curious about the human psyche? Anyway, the other one was a book that reaffirmed my love/hate relationship (I have tons of these) with Jodi Picoult again. I love her prose and style of writing, but seriously, can her topics get any more melodramatic/heartrending/controversial?
I didn't really want to blog/update till I had significant updates about life. So here it is:
I found out that I got waitlisted by Disney, and to be honest, I'm not even mildly upset by it. Yes, I really wanted it (way back in April 2008) and to work in Disney, for a summer, plus spend my 21st birthday there would have been something close to a fantasy. But I guess over the months my enthusiasm for it thinned, along with the fact that I got accepted for exchange, which would already be quite a big adventure. Not doing Disney would have meant: staying here and enjoying summer (the reason why I'm here in Toronto), doing a bit of summer school and possibly graduating early in 2010, making hopefully twice as much money as at Disney, and more travelling around Canada.
So I decided upon getting the email that I'm staying here for the summer, maybe in a nice little apartment with a gym and pool. I'll be here from May - end June (hopefully going to Vancouver/Prince Edward Islands/NYC too!), and back to Singapore in early July/mid July till end September (please let me get an internship with the museums :( ), then off to Tokyo (Todai!) for the year. And with everything that's coming up - all the festivals, the food, the fun - I'm actually really, really psyched about living here for the summer. So to that end, I just wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who's heard my Disney dreams and supported me in a small way or another, I really appreciate it. And that's not exactly the end of the road, I am still considering re-applying sometime in the near future or doing something that will lead me there somehow. All in all, for some reason I think that this year my life has brought about many unexpected changes, and I'm a firm believer of everything happens for a reason. :)