I titled my blog posting this evening after a song by Chad VanGaalen which has been in my head for a constant 3 days and I do enjoy it quite thoroughly. I encourage you to go search out ‘Flower Gardens’ from his album ‘Skelliconnection’

And so, despite my previous desire to climb into a peaceful slumber, my chamomile tea is getting quite cold and my room is overwhelmed by incense so I am inclined to sit and finish it (as I would regret being wasteful) though my friend this evening- once I had mentioned chamomile had interestingly labeled it the ‘punishment tea’ though I cannot be sure why. Perhaps because its floral scent is so permeating that you despise it after awhile, or at least the fact that your tea smells like a bride’s bouquet… simply not a welcoming scent for someone that is either nautious, drunk or otherwise. I am not minding it currently, though tonight a rather more striking topic has come to my attention… and mainly because it has been bothering me for the entire week and now is propeling me to write about it.

Imagine yourself, as I am now… walled in perfectly by four neutrally-toned walls with a single window (quite comfortably might I add) though staring out your window, where a teeming wildlife inhabited burm or area of a substantially natural quality used to sit only a few hundred feet from your door… now as I stare out my window and listen quite intently in the morning I notice the sounds of blaring beeps, backup noises, byway whitenoise and construction. No longer is this burm in its entirety a wild space, it has been severely sectioned off to a restricted area where surrounding its perimeter is now large scale piles of dirt, concrete, nails, tape and wood from the construction of a new overpass to move thousands and thousands of cars and the wildlife has migrated.

Just past this is a wildlife ravine which is recognized by my city to be a protected area though penetrated within it are newly block-style condominiums where Beamers sit in the newly painted parking stalls and most of the hillside is overtaken by asphalt and brick. What was once organic is now metropolitan and suburban. Forgive me, but my neighborhood which at some point in its 13 year history once prided itself on being close to nature ‘away from the city’ and ‘quiet’ I now feel confined and isolated from the rest of my community as each new subdivision is being constructed, sectioned and each family displaced from his or her neighbors. Walking has been reduced to a rare occurence as there is only one main entrance into the heart of the ‘community’ itself and the major artery is only accessible to vehicles. I no longer hear the sounds of coyotes or other mammals muttering about outside my window at night, only the constant whirring of vehicle engines speeding past and fading as they continue on the highway. Suburbia will inevitably cause me to lose my sanity, that is unless of course I have lost it quite sometime ago… I am finally waking up.

Because I am usually on foot as my car is rather indisposed of at the moment and I still lack a license I am given the oppourtunity in most cases to appreciate nature and the city itself in the raw-est of forms. The oppourtunity and privelege in itself being that I can see a tree up close, witness it and appreciate it instead of simply moving past it in a mechanical box on wheels. And, though I curse our public transportation in our city on most occassions I must digress and argue with myself, it has given me the oppourtunity to experience the city and notice the beauty that is our downtown core despite what most see as simply a hangout for buskers, drug addicts and drunks.

Currently, neighborhood houses are built too close together and neighbors cease to exist to one another, and even passing on the street as a stranger I feel even more isolated as I extend a greeting and am ignored by he or she that merely glances and walks past. Perhaps I am being a bit mellodramatic but to me it seems that the ‘character’ that the community developers are attempting to create is rather contrived and lost… and I now too am missing a map.

The issue is quite vividly apparent to me now as I peer out the second story of my window and realize that the world around me in this neighborhood has in itself become a stranger, a melding of overpopulation, restricted natural space (where trees are placed neatly in aesthetically pleasing spaces) and young up and coming professionals live their lives in ignorance and instead choose to escape their lives in suburban hell by leaving an hour to the outside of the city to camp. Upon their return they go back to the stress which is their over-scheduled and cramped lives. Forgive my pessimism but indeed this has been tearing at my mind for a few days and I felt it only fair to rant over my blog despite my previous desinclination to do so. Though I hope I have not completely bored you dear reader.

Adieu and Goodnight