Thankfully, the City Also Falls Apart (We Are Angry People This Summer)

In case you're just getting back from the moon, there's been a lot of controversy in New York City recently about what buildings should and shouldn't be built. It's not just the ___ which represents ____ but also the ___, which might block the view of the ____. People are very upset about all of this, at least if you believe the news articles that are incessantly written about these developments. Supposedly there are a lot indignant New Yorkers who hate when the rest of the country tries to tell us what to do, and vice versa. I've read blogs where people are at the end of their rope and are now taking a 'hard line' on these issues going forward, making clear that they aren't going to tolerate this discussion any more, because they've had enough. It's time for the world to stop being so stupid, they seem to say, and it's difficult to disagree with the point! I mean, really, why do we always have to be so stupid and angry all the time anyway? Has it always been like this or has this summer marked the all-time high in stupidity and anger? Maybe there's a poll being conducted that will tell us for certain? Let's hope so.
I've been skimming past most of the debate, and the debate about the debate, not because I think I'm too good for it -- there's nothing I like better than getting riled up about dumb shit, and I've had more than four decades of it under my belt -- but somehow I'm just too exhausted to fight. I want to sit with my iced tea and stare out the window and not hear anything except perhaps the white noise that drifts up from the motion of the cars. (I miss being in Ithaca, where the hum of the cicadas was constant.)
Maybe it's time to talk about how we weak we really are, and how good it feels to admit this, and how we -- like the rooftops outside my office window -- are falling apart, literally crumbling into an infinite kind of dust, and how nothing can change that, any more than we can rewind time.

Comments

[Robert le Diable]

"Ultimately, nothing matters..."

I don't remember who said that or where I read it, but it does make sense, and is comforting in a fatalistic way.

My main ambition in life is to become a recluse. Oh yeah, I may have said that here already, way back when, when I first discovered your blog by Googling the word "recluse." But I still want that.

[Matthew Gallaway]

Yes, the reclusive life! If you havent read AGAINST THE GRAIN by JK Huysmans, you should do so immediately, for hes the patron saint of all gay recluses!

[Bourgeois Nerd]

It seems to me that instead of the "Silly Season" that traditionally coincided with summer vacations and slow news days, summer has become "Anger Season." (And I suppose there is some connection; endless "People are angry about XYZ!" stories fill up space.) The town halls last year, the mosque thing this year. People are just angry. Hopefully, as happened last year, fall will come and relieve us and we can get back to just simmering instead of boiling.