The City

[Lenin McCarthy]

(Inspired by the day trip I made to Oslo yesterday with my family)

The ever-shifting sands of the man-made urban desert scare the hell out of me.
Tall grey monsters of concrete and glass.
Spiralling roads and junctions, populated by colorful wheeled insects who all keep at least one human inside their bellies, just to spit them out when the journey ends.

The insects, called cars, are ruminants. They remake man in their own image, through a seemingly endless procedure of chewing, regurgitating, chewing, regurgitating; making them ever more immobile, ever more dependent, ever more digestible.

Less sophisticated than Cro-Magnons, these constructions speak to me in muffled grunts and groans.

Somewhere deep inside, this city has a soul. Old churches, townhouses and parks, sailing steadily through tumultuous waters of urban growth and decay, telling stories about long gone days. These buildings have a history, but they're not just history. They're still in use, existing simultaneously in the past and the present. These buildings live, other buildings just are.

For every concrete colossus that is built, a tiny shrivelled piece of the city's soul flakes off.
The city changes.
I fear change.
I change.
I fear.
I fear-change.

My inner reactionary now wants to stage a coup d'état, with the sole aim to abolish all post-1900 architecture. A final solution must be found to die Modernismus-frage!
I immediately reject the fantasies of my reactionary self. Everything changes, all the time. I'll have to accept that, and encourage the good changes and  fight the bad changes, with democratic means if possible. The soul of a city is a cause worth fighting for.

Some cities don't have souls. Living in a soulless city is death.

This city has one. This singular city, from which no man departs until it has marked him. Living in it must be like getting sucked off by a shark.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I like this. I like recognizing people's cities as entities... they each have their own unique identity.

Also, that last line...  evocative!