Taking a Pulse

I was in the "city" a few days ago.  I was actually in an outside town of the city, but the power and the pressure of the city are so great that it leaks over into the air and smells and sounds and activities.  You have heard about the pulse of a city?  It is exactly that.  Like a heart rhythmically racing in a march to the end of the day.  I had forgotten this undercurrent.  There was a meeting...a series of meetings... and thus the day began early in the first muggy light with the heaviness of gray endless rain, the irregular pumping of brake lights, the tick, tick, tick of a turn signal at the intersection, the spray as cars fled by.  I had forgotten it all, but it was just like riding a bicycle.  It comes back with a somber vengeance.  Mothers rushing children under umbrellas, men avoiding puddles in shiny shoes, well dressed women never looking down, young men with an aimless morning to fill as they hung out at the local coffee shop.

I must admit that it was not all dismay.  There was the excitement of an energy I had forgotten.  The throbbing of a pulse that told you there was life, the stimulus of people with places to be and things to do, things that might even affect your life.

I had returned to an area I lived in about a decade ago and the changes were amazing in places and the lack of change was both dismaying and reassuring in other places.  There is lots of creativity in cities.  Creativity in products and in ideas.  People with hope meet in cities.  People planning big jobs live in cities.  I had been living in the edies of the world and thus had to make sure my paddle was well into the water as the currents shoved me here and there.

But at the end of the day I was glad to return to my woods, to my place of restorative pauses, slow thought and more realistic hope. I guess mankind needs both, and a balance of both places is best.