The City Has Always Been An Embodiment

Books Admitted Me To Their World Open-handedly, As People For Their Most Part, Did Not. The Life I Lived In Books Was One Of Ease And Freedom, Worldly Wisdom, Glitter, Dash And Style.

Living In Cities Is An Art, And We Need The Vocabulary Of Art, Of Style, To Describe The Peculiar Relationship Between Man And Material That Exists In The Continual Creative Play Of Urban Living. The City As We Imagine It, Then, Soft City Of Illusion, Myth, Aspiration, And Nightmare, Is As Real, Maybe More Real, Than The Hard City One Can Locate On Maps In Statistics, In Monographs On Urban Sociology And Demography And Architecture.

It Always Seems To Me Odd To Call A Place A Wilderness When Every Wilderness Area In The Us Bristles With Rules And Regulations As To How You Can Behave, What You're Allowed To Do, And Is Patrolled By Armed Rangers Enforcing The Small Print. They're Parks, Of Course, Not Wildernesses At All.

In The City One Clings To Nostalgic And Unreal Signs Of Community, Takes Forced Refuge In Codes, Badges And Coteries; The City's Life, Of Surfaces And Locomotion, Usually Seems Too Dangerous And Demanding To Live Through With Any Confidence.

There's An Enduring American Compulsion To Be On The Side Of The Angels. Expediency Alone Has Never Been An Adequate American Reason For Doing Anything. When Actions Are Judged, They Go Before The Bar Of God, Where Mom And The Flag Closely Flank His Presence.