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Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Why are you here? Why do you stay?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I read this story on NYTimes.com yesterday: “City Fits, Eventually, for New Arrivals.”
It’s a thoughtful, other-side-of-the-looking-glass version of an amusing Creative Loafing story from a few weeks ago, “I Love New York: Ex-Atlantans dish on life in New York.”
The NYT story is distinctly New York, the ever-abused subject of so many musicals and love letters: young people head to the big city to follow their dreams, to shake off their past, to find what’s missing, but it’s tougher than they think, until it’s not.
Reading it, I saw that the story of newcomers in New York is not the story here. In this area, there are just as many customs, behaviors, histories and habits to learn. But you may be a newcomer to “Atlanta” while never setting foot in the city itself, or in Atlanta, where you ignore our neighbor counties. It may be the biggest city you’ve ever seen, or a break from a faster life elsewhere. We have no universal reason to be here, that I can see; maybe general impatience with cold weather?
The New York story has romance, but I like that ours doesn’t have so obvious a plot. It can be tiring to deal with the constant bickering and unexpected sensitivities here; I disagree with some prevailing wisdom or insanity every day since moving here. That’s OK.
“Newcomers,” reporter Cara Buckley wrote of New York, “suddenly realize either that the city is not working for them or that they are inexorably becoming part of it, or both.”
I wonder who has the idea to come here and can’t find some way, some space, in which it works. Someone who isn’t trying, who guessed far wrong? Someone who never intended to be in love here, anyway.
But…if you are here at all, you are part of the story.
Why did you come to Atlanta or the metro area? How did you make it work for you?
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