Wednesday, October 13, 2010

The Smaller Stuff

Atlanta is a perennial traffic jam with skyscrapers and housing divisions built around it. I was sitting in the back of Lucy Hall’s SUV while she and Kim drove me back to the subway station. I stared at the long lines of cars in every direction. Blinkers and headlights and break lights and horns almost make it like a moving version of New York City’s Times Square.

Lucy’s office is near the northern most subway stop and I would be heading to the southern most at the airport. It would take about half and hour which is far better than drive time and there I would sit amidst the diversity of urban culture. Races mixed, multiple nationalities represented, music blaring from earphones … and a collection of people who look …worn out and tired.

I’ve had my share of urban in my life. Eight years in the inner city of Louisville, Kentucky then led to Union Mission in Savannah and the opportunity to do work in most every major U.S. city. I’ve been blessed to visit most of them, many on numerous occasions.

I have my favorites. I love Pittsburgh! The drive through the tunnel in the mountain as you make your way from the airport to the city is an explosion of the senses. One moment you are in a lush green countryside then you go through this tunnel and BOOM …the entire city lay before you. Of course I also have good friends there, one of which who has a hot tub.

New York is always a rush because everything in the universe is there. Talk about subway rides! Talk about wonderful entertainment on Broadway and in little taverns and just on the sidewalk. Talk about poverty like you’ve never seen it! NYC has it all.

Washington D.C. I love it but I probably hate it a little more. It is a wonderful city and I have dear friends there too (though none have invited me to their hot tubs …umm… likely cause they’re all on Capitol Hill). But you see the majesty of Congress and sleeping outside is a man on a subway grate with several empty Soda containers filled with his piss because there are no public restrooms that will let him in. The place is a city of extremes that slaps the senses.

Cleveland is a wonderful place if you hit it on a sunny day. Baltimore is wonderful so long as you stay within two blocks of the river. Cincinnati is fantastic and sin-free (just go across the river into Covington, KY for that). San Francisco is as sweet as it gets, especially if you are standing on Martha Ryan’s rooftop garden and seeing a whole city spill down a mountain into the bay. Buffalo is a trip into what American city’s used to be. And Chicago (How could I leave my extended family at the Breakfast Club out?) has Wrigley Field … nuff said!

All of these places are like anywhere though. They’re just on a grander scale. There are good things and there are bad things. There is rich culture and barren landscapes. There are rich and there are poor. There is happiness and there is sadness that cannot be measured.

I sit in another airport again today on my way to New Orleans, another city that I love and have had wonderful times in. This trip ought to be a hoot because two different worlds will collide. Jim Withers, famous doctor who is changing the world, meets my friend Conner, who orchestrates body waxes. The place survived Katrina and bad political reconstruction … I’m not so sure about this.

When you boil it all down though, wherever you’re at, it all comes own to the same things. We’re trying to find ourselves. We’re trying to get out of relationships or get into them. We love what we do or hate what we do. We are sick or we are well. We’ve paid all of the bills or we haven’t.

And while you may have done some combination of the above, the person next to you has done some other some other collection. We only have ourselves to get one another though.

I see lots more kindness in small places than in large places. Maybe that’s why I love Tybee Island as much as I do. People rally for one another. Sure, there are angels and there are assholes like anywhere else, but there is a kindness that blankets a larger geographic area than in the cities.

I’ve seen lots of sadness in my life and have more tee-shirts than I can possible wear in a lifetime (most of them given to me in urban areas). So I’m drawn to the little things now; a Phone Call from a friend; a Face Book private message from another; text message exchange from someone who cares about me.

So urban is great. This smaller stuff is better.