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Town and country : Comments
By Georgina Hibberd, published 5/1/2007After fleeing to the city as soon as she was old enough, the author returns on an extended visit to the rural beachside small town where she grew up ... Best Blogs 2006.
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Urban culture goes to extraordinary lengths to keep hold of those minds that it has captured. The bush and bush life is routinely demonised and ridiculed in ways that, if applied to some other cultural minority, would have the discrimination commissioner baying for blood. And most pervasive of all is the regularly reinforced fear that, having left the city, some sort of intellectual fall from grace would take place that would prevent you from ever returning.
What you are discovering is the magic of place, free of the continuous connection that metrocentric living demands of it's subjects as the price of privacy. The city will not trust you to experience a time and place without first filtering the experience through ideology and collective interpretation. An experience can only be worthwhile if a crowd is experiencing it too.
Indeed, the very concept of privacy is alien to a small town in the same way that the capacity to reinvent one-self, at whim, is limited to those who enjoy urban anonymity.
So what you lose from being unable to be a street slut on Friday night, an artist on Sunday afternoon, and a working professional on Monday, you gain in honesty. You can still do much the same things under the Pax Rustica but these attributes will be recognised as parts of the whole person by both close friends and mere acqaintances.
But more likely, you will discard the need for conspicuous displays altogether. The true test, of course, will come on your return to the big babylon and finally recognise the facades that controlled your perceptions. Good luck with your journey.