Culture Shock Sunday

“To look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city
is to look at something like the section of a fibrous tumor.”
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Today I drove downtown for the first time since I've been back from California. It made me glad to be greeted by the breathtaking views of Lake Champlain while driving down Main St. Still, things do feel smaller here. It is sort of like my scope just shrank.

But I do not necessarily mean that in a bad way. San Francisco was almost too much for me to handle. Too much rushing, too much money spent, too many dates, too much eating, too much drinking, too much energy spent maintaining my force fields, weaving through crowds, ignoring bums and trying to stay on top of the ever-changing landscape around me.

In Vermont I can relax my force fields, breathe a deep sigh of relief and just...be. But I miss having a cell phone that rings a lot. And I miss having friends to see regularly. And it was nice to be unattached to a computer for 7 whole days, a little scary too.


Tonight at Selene Colburn's work in progress, "The History of the Future Suite" at the FlynnSpace, I saw a dozen or so familiar faces. They were from all sorts of different local places like VCAM, Pure Pop, SpielPalast, the Smittens, Kasini House, the Old Northender and the Flynn Center. Burlington really is a small town.

And right now, a small town is where it is at for me. But I can't help but miss the big town with the arched red bridge, the floating sushi boats, twinkling lights at night and the smell of salt water.

“The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears - as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk-happy.”
- Frank Lloyd Wright