July 23, 2018

My favourite thing about living in a city

My favourite thing about living in a city is being able to disabuse myself of the notion that the place where I live is not a place where “something like this can happen.” To live in a city is to live in a  place where anything can happen, which is actually the case with living anywhere, but in a city we know it by heart. It’s why I live in a city all all, and quite on purpose, because I want to live with my eyes wide open to the world and all its possibilities, even the terrible ones, because just because I can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there. And because I want to live in a place where I could never be fooled into thinking there’s just one narrative, that there are no contractions, that there are simple solutions. The world is tangled, and dirty, and gorgeous, and awful, and miraculous, and I take comfort in the ragged edges. In the darkest moments, I take comfort that the terrible stories will never be the whole story, that there will always be other stories. A city, like everything, can hold more than one reality. In fact, this is precisely what a city is for.