"The thing about loving a city is that it can't love you back."I was listening to
This American Life a couple months back when I heard Ira Glass say those words, and they have never left me.
Of course a city can love you back, I thought.
Can't it?
I think about this question all the time.
I've lived in the city a few months, and I begin to know it now; in my head I can see a map of all the places I've been, crammed with detail. Beyond them lay vague regions I know are there but have hardly seen: terra incognita. Sometimes I trace my routes: the interstates, the odd streets that end without warning, the back roads that wind around unexpected hills, the vessels that lead to the city's heart. When I ride the bus I feel like a cell, tiny, pulled along in the rush of the city's life. In seconds I can be in motion; blink and I'll be gone.
Sometimes the city takes my breath away. At night I can see it glowing from the top of the hill, the lights outlining the shape of its towers. In the right place, at the right time, they sit shrouded in fog, ghostly, as though they might not really be there. The best view our house affords is of the sky; sometimes when I'm in the yard, the planes fly low overhead, and I stop to admire their shape as they descend. In my head I can picture the places of which I'm fondest: the alehouse on the corner, the tiny bookstore that puts up quotes for us to guess, the flower stand vibrant with daisies, the lakeside path where I run when it's warmer, the coffee shop where all the sandwiches are named in French. I know now that at the market, the best thing to watch isn't the tossing of salmon, but the fishmongers scaring tourists by yanking on the hidden string they've tied to the ugly monkfish.
When I think of these things, I love the city, and I wonder if they are its way of loving me back.
But sometimes I hate the city, too: The days when I get lost, or there are too many people, or I feel too much alone. And those days, it doesn't seem to want me, either.
Maybe Ira Glass is right; maybe a city can't love you back. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have anything to give. Maybe the important thing isn't the city's indifference to your happiness, but the fact that it can give you happiness despite its indifference.
Either way, the city can't exist without us; in some small way, I am it and it is me, and bit by bit, we become each other.
