A city is a city is a city. Lights, buses, energy, trash, expensive restaurants, impersonal service, style and maybe some adventure. You might be lucky to find art or celebrity or a new fashion trend. You are luckier, though, to be in the countryside. Any countryside. You are luckier to be invited into someone's home for unpretentious company and a homecooked meal. You are luckier to inhale the scent of animal dung, which means there enough room for naturally occurring grass and trees and for you to be yourself. You are luckier to see an ancient Roman column that has been protected by good-hearted neighbors rather than an preservation commission. You are luckier to taste the grape from the vinyard than swig foul Chardonnay in a poser bar.
Small town-ness is often chalked up to po'dunk-ness, usually by those raised in self-important, mundane suburbs. Yet small town-ness, rural-ness is society's last link to genuine human living. Often, city living is a contorted existance of marketing, social approval, rat-race survival and contrived effort to feel human. Sure, there are moments of community (great tragedy, charity concerts, Macy's parades), but we city dwellers are disconnected from our food and our deepest histories; we poo-poo "red state" family values and dismiss the consequences of our consumerism. Yet farming and family and pragmatism are the ancestors of iPods and Starbucks. Where is the appreciation?
Being tired doesn't necessarily mean that you work hard. I don't even have the first clue about what real work is as I sit in a comfy chair, warm and dry, at my office. Just because you have flour on your cheek doesn't mean that you baked the cake from scratch. And it's best if you don't pretend that you did.
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