A city is an ugly thing.

Maybe it's an outrageous over-generalization, but I've been to a few. San Fransisco, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary... Okay, perhaps not so many as I thought. Either way, my point remains. Each city may have had it's own charm - whether it be a sea-side view, nice parks, unique monuments, etc - but the majority of it is dusty and unorganized. It smells like sweat; people sweat, car sweat, building sweat. But above all, it's just so crowded. There are so many people trying to make their own little spider web to catch their own little personal flies. And I suppose in some way this is a thing of beauty, I can appreciate how so many people can be packed so close together and run around from point to point in pursuit of an unobtainable unicorn of an objective.

But take a look, and watch this big mutant of brick and mortar breathe. There's no uniformity. Roads go every which way, no two buildings look the same, and every citizen has it's own idea what this gigantic lumbering hulk should do with the next breathe. A breathe of murky, smog-ridden sky.

And then there's the lights. It's so misleading how something so unpleasant is littered with these little slivers of brightness. They light the bizarre and unused roads and the unique worn down buildings and dirty alleys and trash dumpsters. But from a distance, on top a hill, it's like you're staring up instead of down. So many stars. So few celestial bodies.

Some days living, working, and sweating in a city drives me nuts. Probably because they're are so many of us people with no direction, trying to prove to the world that we're more special than all the mis-matched buildings we inherit. Except there are so many more buildings and even more directionless. Is this the pinnacle of society? Is the modern city as good as it gets, a cultural hub of technology and infrastructure and life?



-Cril

But all of these horses
That you chase around
In the end they are the ones
That always bring you down
This invisible city
Where no one sees nothing
We're touching faces in the dark
Feelin' pretty is so hard

The Wallflowers - Invisible City