Tuesday, March 11, 2003

And Back Again With More To Follow

We're back from four days in the suburbs with my parents, and I'm happy to report that we're all still about as sane as we were before.

Some people dream of life in the suburbs: the white picket fence, the climbing ivy, the house set back from the street behind rhodedendrons, the unused lawn heavily landscaped. Newton, MA, a dense and sprawling immediate suburb less than ten minutes from Boston noted for having the most resident therapists per capita of any township or city anywhere, may be a bit more on the upper side of upper-middle class than the average, but it is prototypical of the suburb form in many ways. Its two malls (one high end, one a bit scarier), its fourteen quaint village centers, its overabundance of brick houses and good schools are the marks of suburbanity, the 666 of the winding residential street.

Once, I was a suburbanite, spending my childhood in those silent yards, my adolescence in the malls and, later, under the bridges and friend's parent's basements of Newton.

It just isn't me anymore. I'm a country boy -- rural by marriage, and by deliberate effort well worth it. The suburbs exhaust me. Too much light pollution; too much peripheral noise, too many cars but too little parking. I need to just relax and process in my own space for the evening.

So call it almost home, mentally-speaking. Tomorrow the power's out for a while so they can fix the local grid, but stay tuned nonetheless for a comprehesive and surely overwhelming blogmissive about the last few days. It's been a doozy of a time. It's good to be home.

posted by boyhowdy | 8:23 PM |

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