It's a short story written like the autobiography of a Roman soldier that becomes immortal accidentally on purpose. It's rich, surreal, has a lot to say about the nature of the infinite and mortality and human identity and this post isn't about any of those things. (but definitely read the story, it's good I promise)
First off, I love that #borgesposting is a tag, absolutely delightful and part of why cohost is definitely my kind of crowd
Second, this is exactly how I feel about most of the suburbs in the midwest. I grew up in the northeast, where the cities were both walkable and confined to denseness by the geography of the places they were built, between hills, rivers, valleys, gorges, and mountains.
The midwest of both america and canada are by contrast vast emptiness, with built with next to no impulse towards the vertical, just endlessly outward. It creates labyrinths, built in the age of many horses, or worse, after cars. Minnesota ate at me. North of minneapolis, in a town named for a slur, I could not walk. Endless mazes of suburbs that look pretty from above, but no sidewalks. No local shops. Nothing. Endless mazes of homes, close or far apart. In my head, before I lived there, I romanticized that big emptiness. Told myself it would be good for me, give my mind room to stretch up and out infinitely. All that idealism shriveled when the wind died down and I found myself living in a town I don't like saying the name of, with no way to walk to what I needed, surrounded by nothing in every direction, isolated to car travel and an obscene loneliness. When I moved to somewhere with hills and actual neighborhoods and a flurry of shops in walking distance, I felt like those immortals when the rain touched their skin. I could remember what feeling human felt like.
Sadly, I do still live in Ohio now, but my little corner of it is safe for the time being, and just enough of a walkable place that I am oft content to wander for miles.
