Keeping Your Distance (Cont.)

Everyone is deeply affected by physical spaces--perhaps at the epigenetic level, rippling through all the generations since the Silent Generation. We may now be wired to want to be alone, or it may be the atomizing effects of radio, TV, the internet, and ironically, social media--all done from private spaces.

I am reminded of Jeremy Rifkin's late-90s book Entropy where he discussed the dehumanizing aspects of urbanization--that a person can "meet" 250,000 people within a 10-mile radius of midtown Manhattan, but only "process" and interact with so few. (Neighbors are now typically anonymous). Cities force us to have some anonymity, to want to be separate from the crowd--things about the crowd are unsavory. He says we have become like sailors in a lifeboat: everywhere surrounded by water but not a drop to drink.

Joan Didion (a younger silent) also put this atomization in perspective in her series of essays written in the 1960s, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, while reporting from California and Las Vegas:

"Almost everyone notes if there is no “time” in Las Vegas, no night and no day and no past and no future; neither is there any logical sense of where one is. One is standing on a highway in the middle of a vast hostile desert looking at an 80-foot sign which blinks “ Caesars Palace”. What does that explain? This geographical impossibility reinforces the sense that what happens there has no connection with “real”  life. Nevada cities like Reno and Carson are Ranch towns, Western towns, places behind which there is some historical imperative. But Las Vegas seems to exist only in the eye of the beholder. All of which makes it an extraordinarily stimulating an interesting place..."

We feel there might never be enough America, and runs out at the west coast:

California‌ ‌is‌ ‌a‌ ‌place‌ ‌in‌ ‌which‌ ‌a‌ ‌boom‌ ‌mentality and a sense‌ ‌of‌ ‌Chekhovian‌ ‌loss‌ ‌meet ‌in ‌uneasy‌ ‌suspension,‌ ‌in‌ ‌which‌ ‌the‌ ‌mind‌ ‌is‌ ‌troubled‌ ‌by‌ ‌some buried but‌ ‌ineradicable‌ ‌suspicion‌ ‌that‌ ‌things‌ ‌had‌ ‌better‌ ‌work‌ ‌here,‌ ‌because‌ ‌here,‌ ‌beneath‌ ‌that‌ ‌immense‌ ‌bleached‌ ‌sky,‌ ‌is‌ ‌where‌ ‌we‌ ‌run‌ ‌out‌ ‌of‌ ‌continent.

From my 1998 diary:

10/7/1998

Congress votes to do impeachment inquiry on Clinton. 

New Joni Mitchell album released today. Review in Pulse says it's “The Dissing of Bummer Songs”. 


I figured out why you hardly ever see your neighbors: It's because everyone tries like hell to avoid each other!

10/18/1998


I consider the suburban mindset very boring It's interesting how the landscape of suburbia can create certain ways of thinking.