When I say first, I really mean "first." By the end of that week, I was consummately in love with the city. But initially, it just felt so unnatural.
Wooster was a bigger city than I'd ever lived since leaving Cincinnati at 4. Now I was in Cleveland, supposedly learning about what exactly was going on in the city. But I had never been around seemingly so few plants. As goofy as that might sound, the endless concrete, the lack of farmland, the short horizons, the seemingly unending buildings took me out of what I considered my "comfort zone" in ways I'd never experienced. By all measures, I'd never experienced such a powerful aura purely from my physical surroundings.
A lot of things happened that week, perhaps the most significant being a reordering of my thinking which allowed me to see city's as full of life, not devoid of it.
Now, 6 years later, every single day, I can't believe how green Cleveland actually is. There are so many parks, so many random outgrowths of trees, so many urban farms, so many marshy shores around the lake and river. Cleveland is called the "forest city" traditionally (though you'll rarely hear that nationally)- if you look at it from the right angles, it's obvious as to why- Cleveland was hewn out of a forest and it still maintains that general feel.
It is a major urban setting, and its far from the rural flat land in which I grew up. But there's something to be said for its natural beauty that does persist, right alongside all of the vibrant life emanating from it due to its diverse, beautiful population. I took a few pictures on my ride home today. It was one of those beautiful "Cleveland" days, where there's sunlight, but it's overcast, and you know the clouds are made of pure metaphor.
You could say I've come full circle.
-Zack
"In the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love, we must plunge we must plunge we must plunge"
-Bright Eyes
No comments:
Post a Comment