Temperate City Life

[garran]

Rachel has said, in the past, that she wouldn't want to live somewhere with a lot of tall buildings, because she wouldn't want to stop being amazed. Recently, I've been having cause to reflect how happy I am that I do - that I am able, as I said to J. when he was here, to take the skyscrapers[1] for granted as features of the landscape - to make my way every day out between these towering, strange, inscrutable monuments, and accept them as ordinary and familiar. Life as Miyazaki, the wondrous spilling over into everything.

Over the past few days, though, it's occurred to me that I may have a similar relationship (to Rachel's with the buildings) with snow; a lot of places, including Vancouver, have been snowed upon, and in among the pleased or amazed livejournal entries I have seen the occasional curmudgeonly comment from someone for whom it's much more commonplace, and who cannot stand the stuff. I feel wistful, the years when we don't get any, but I'm glad to live somewhere where snow is rare enough that I see it as a cause for wonder, and not as a nuisance.

It isn't so simple, of course: my familiarity with the skyscrapers has not made me contemptuous of them. I'm sure that there are many people who live someplace with snow every Christmas, and still love it fiercely. But I'm grateful for what is plentiful, and I'm grateful for what is scarce, and I still like my city very much.

([1]: They scrape the sky! What a wonderfully evocative word to find hidden and unremarked in our everyday language. That is what the structures themselves are like.)

Comments

[masamage.livejournal.com]

Wai...

I guess it's true, now that you mention it, that commonness really doesn't have much to do with one's ability to appreciate things, if one remembers to be grateful. Look how I still feel about trees, for goodness sake--not to mention sunsets, or my siblings.

That is pleasant to think about. And your life-gratitude makes me happy.

[synchcola.livejournal.com]

Nonsense! "Skyscraper" is a corruption of the German "Schössgraben," which means "to bathe". Don't be fooled by mere resemblance.

[zuki-san.livejournal.com]

Here here! Snow is fairly rare here in Boise, in the river-basin regions of Idaho. I count myself lucky if we get one or two good snowfalls in the season, down in the valley. I was tickled pink when an inversion broke some sundays back with a snowfall. It was, as far as I knew, the first one of the season, and so at 11:45 at night, the sunday after (american) thanksgiving, I was running about trying to catch big fat flakes on my toungue, and, failing that, decided to simply eat a few handfuls off the ground. It's usually too warm for snow (not slush mind you) to stick around here, and some of the powder (powder, mind you!) that fell four days ago is still on the ground and still fluffy white ice-dust.

This is a sharp contrast to my friend from Idaho Fall's attitude toward snow: Namely, that Boise doesn't really know what it is, and that, as it is experienced in her hometown, she doesn't really like the stuff, or winter in general.

The worst thing about winter here, I think, is the inversion. Also known as "That smoggy overcast weather that drops by to visit for a couple days and won't let us see sun, stars, or moon." Some people say it is getting worse as the treasure valley area develops and grows. It always seemed to me like it was the other side of the coin: most of the time, Boise is sunny, dry, and clear.