it's a hard-knock life

Or is it a hard knock life?
Is listening to your aunt rave about her favourite child as you eat her scones that difficult?
How about meandering home from the bus stop?
How about being the only person who thinks that standing on the bus with no hands is a fun game (if you actually have hands but just don't want to use them)?
How about being the only person who paces erratically at the bus stop before you get on?

...I spent the first two weeks in Vancouver in a fury over the people who won't move to the back of the bus. That was before my revelation about the futility of trying to exercise control to appease one's anxiety about the bus.
Now I'm just really aggressive about getting on the bus, but once I'm on I don't worry about who's moving to the back and who's depriving the poor schmucks outside of their rightful seat.

I'm experiencing a general feeling of crampedness in the big city - events and movements feel so circumscribed. Open spaces = possibility. The city has nothing but set paths.

What I do like about the big city is that everyone looks so different. It's funny - you'd think in a sea of faces everyone would look the same, but it's the opposite. Everyone looks more themselves and more unique over here.

And the companies that are the foes of diversity, they all just blend into the general city noise and become less threatening. Oh, there's a Blenz there? Oh well, there's some other shop just beside that's more anonymous and individual and less offensive. In fact, those shops are everywhere.

It's also easier to assume one's rightful place in the big city - that is, as an anonymous and inconsequential being. That's a very freeing feeling, although a wise man cautioned me about this, warning that it wouldn't last - that the loss of anonimity is inevitable, that the encroachment of tiresome impositions by the known and the knowers is inescapable.

But for the moment I still feel quite unknown and quite free.

Except for space-wise I'm living in someone else's house, and working in someone else's company (which isn't so bad). At least I've started writing my own words.