Champaign-Urbana is a small city (actually 2 adjacent cities) in east central Illinois surrounded by fields of corn and soy beans. It was even smaller in 1973 when I moved there to start university. But to me, having grown up in a small rural community, it was a vast metropolis. After settling in at my dorm I started walking around campus and almost immediately felt a sense of place. For the first time in my life I was living in a place where NO ONE KNEW ME and it was exhilarating. In my mind I can still see 18 year old me walking down Lincoln Ave in cut off jeans shorts and a Sears workman’s T shirt (later rebranded by Gap as a “pocket T”) reveling in my anonymity. That was when I learned that cities make me feel powerful.
This really resonated with me. What places have been my happy place: London makes me feel I'm home and what a flaneur city as well. Even if no one is looking at me, I love looking at everyone. When I land at Heathrow, I feel I'm back home.
I get a nostalgic bittersweet feeling walking/driving around Westport. It was home, but it's so changed from what it was back in the 60-80's. I'd say that Vt. is a home for me; I enter the state and see the Green signs and it fills me with coziness and contentment.
Simsbury is home and so comfortable, but it's not my home of homes. I feel more connection to Georgetown, Wash DC than to Simsbury and I only lived there until I was 5 but my parents loved it so .
Champaign-Urbana is a small city (actually 2 adjacent cities) in east central Illinois surrounded by fields of corn and soy beans. It was even smaller in 1973 when I moved there to start university. But to me, having grown up in a small rural community, it was a vast metropolis. After settling in at my dorm I started walking around campus and almost immediately felt a sense of place. For the first time in my life I was living in a place where NO ONE KNEW ME and it was exhilarating. In my mind I can still see 18 year old me walking down Lincoln Ave in cut off jeans shorts and a Sears workman’s T shirt (later rebranded by Gap as a “pocket T”) reveling in my anonymity. That was when I learned that cities make me feel powerful.
This really resonated with me. What places have been my happy place: London makes me feel I'm home and what a flaneur city as well. Even if no one is looking at me, I love looking at everyone. When I land at Heathrow, I feel I'm back home.
I get a nostalgic bittersweet feeling walking/driving around Westport. It was home, but it's so changed from what it was back in the 60-80's. I'd say that Vt. is a home for me; I enter the state and see the Green signs and it fills me with coziness and contentment.
Simsbury is home and so comfortable, but it's not my home of homes. I feel more connection to Georgetown, Wash DC than to Simsbury and I only lived there until I was 5 but my parents loved it so .
Such food for thought.