Over-wrought metaphor incoming.
Solid as a rock. Fluid like water.
Thinking about cities I’ve lived in, I wonder about if they’re more like rocks or more like water.
Minnesota feels a rock. The properties are known and familiar. Reliable in what you get. State Fair in the fall, Dairy Queen in the summer, cold as fuck in winter.
Los Angeles feels like water. Or more like waves. It can be tricky to get around in the area, so you tend to ebb-and-flow. You plan a night out to go to K-town, hop around, and then you Lyft back home to chill. Then you found out next week there’s something in Los Felix or downtown, so you gather up your friends to flow to it before ebbing back to base.
But New York. What’s New York? Is it hard and thick-skinned like people say? So a rock? Or is it buzzing with so much that’s like water? Flowing into new trends, restaurants, and bars?
I’d say it’s more like neither. It’s a gas.
A gas fills out to the boundaries of the container you place it in.
So you can go really deep, tightly compressing it into small and intense experiences. Or go really wide, touching on a great many number of things all at once. The city never says no, only expanding or contracting to what you expect out of it.
Although as I think about this, I wonder if I’m really talking about the cities themselves. But also myself, and how I am to the place I’m in, and the people I’m around, and what I expect out of myself.
Dynamic Hypocrisy 