Psychic Cacophony
Yesterday afternoon and into the evening, I helped Shannon move back into her building of 3000 flags. We cleaned the ceiling fans, unpacked boxes of kitchenwares, scrubbed down a totally grotesque toilet – the usual new apartment stuff. After a few hours of such activities, our attention turned to pizza and Riesling and sitting down at a table. So we rustled up quarters and singles, called Dominoes and rejoiced at the arrival of our delicious pie (the Riesling having already been opened an hour in advance.)
What started as a food break quickly turned into an actual sobremesa of chatter. The topic was, of course, life in the city versus life in the country. This is a common thread in most conversations I’ve had of late and was most definitely brought on by my return from Philadelphia. As I was explaining the sheer joy I feel at knowing there are so many people living and dying at every moment in such a densely populated place as a city, Shannon was simultaneously describing the crushing weight of sensing millions of thoughts all at once. It seems odd that we would both come to the same conclusion as to what makes the city good/bad on the first try.
I guess I wonder what this psychic cacophony means to other people. Does anyone else sense inherently the presence or absence of a population? Good or bad? Could this be the basic difference between people that prefer to live in a rural setting or an urban setting?