urban girl in the country

green in concrete

For the last lot-of-years I’ve lived in urban areas.  I’ve become a city girl with hints of a flower child mixed with hipster nuances…translated I like to wear skinny jeans.  This is the total opposite of how I grew up, which was on a farm. 

My paternal grandparents grew, raised, caught and hunted for everything they ate – radical organic, free-range stuff.  On my Mom’s side of the fam tree, there were green grocers and orchard growers.  Heck, I was in 4-H raising feeder calves and a small flock of wooly sheep.  Gardens, canning, freezing and preserving everything was the ordinary.

I carried on the gardening-preserving, saving the spoils piece, until I found myself in fresh veggie-at-a-farmer’s-market heaven!  The foreign city I found myself in had a temperate climate where fruit and vegetables could be grown year ‘round, and … it was sold at a giant open air market every week.  Yippee!  I no longer needed to squirrel away for winter; it was there in crates and baskets.

Ooops, this post about the city has gone down the road of food…but what a divine sidetrack. 

i love the city

Urbanity has bustle and busyness, diversity of people and culture, food, neighborhood personalities, the architecture, parks and the closeness of living in proximity.  Sounds irrational to adore urbanity, but I do. While my heart is all pitter-pattering, there is a dark side to this infatuation, too; hunger, pain, abuse, homelessness and crime.  It’s a place of rampant brokenness, which stabs a pang in my heart.

urbanity

concrete and steel lace the landscape

                                                                factories living and abandoned populate the forest

worker ants trudge to and fro – for what?

suits and heels stride blindly ignoring

                                crippled guy is propped by a decaying building

                                                                                                                                paper bag, comfort in hand

smoke belches from pipes and stacks, spewing debris

little gal stands on a street corner, eyes vacant

                                                                crumbling lives, like so many buildings – in ruins

middle-aged couple, sign clad, begging for food

                                                                                for themselves, for their dog

eyes never meet, it’s too risky

                                                furtive glances and blank stares, the order of the day

safer that way, don’t let them know

tuck away the need, desperate cries

concrete and steel has laced our hearts – tightly

I now find myself uprooted and placed in the country.  Even though some wouldn’t consider my new digs country, I do.  For example, we were driving down a back road a couple of weeks ago and saw a dead, frozen cow in the back of a beat-up pick-up truck.  Poor cow’s legs were sticking straight up with a more than ample belly hanging out.  Not too much dignity there.  Certainly the scene was not what you’d see in the city; proving my country point.  I should’ve snapped a picture with my phone, but I was too busy being flabbergasted. 

Dead cows set aside, there seems to be some reappearing pitter-patters and pangs from my heart in the country that appeared in the city.  Sure, there’s good, fresh food, neighborhood personalities and parks, but fragmented, damaged lives are no respecter of the city limits.  Cardboard signs and hungry bellies dot the streets; suits and heels disguise their desperate, vacant cries to keep up the appearance.

maybe, it's not about a place, but a condition.

I'm just a girl with her own cardboard sign and  a desperate heart…

Missy

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