The City: A Solipsist's Paradise

I'm not a city person.  I grew up in a small town, attended smallish schools (until college), and have lived my adult life in the 'burbs.  Aside from a summer in Busan, South Korea (pop. 3.6 million) nearly 1/4 century ago, I've mostly steered clear of cities.

City living is different in lots of ways, obviously.  It's louder.  In Barcelona, driving is tricky and parking is expensive, so you walk and use public transport instead.  You shop often, near home, buying less at a time, carrying/carting it home.  Those brave souls who do choose to drive all hate each other.  The faster their vehicle, the more they hate being thwarted.  Car horns should be illegal.  Really.

Due to density, there are far too many people on the street to greet or even bother to look at directly.  We pedestrians dodge each other, occasionally bumping elbows, negotiating or downright demanding right of way.

Barcelonans smoke.  Damn near everyone.  They contaminate the air in front of you then chuck their toxic butts with impunity anywhere they like, which is to say directly in front of me.  Occasionally they cough up the phlegm their smoking induces, leaving gooey landmines in your path.

They're not the only ones.  Their dogs leave landmines, too.  They pee on buildings (for lack of trees), but worse, they do their dirtier business in the center lane and then instinctually scratch at the stone in a vain effort to bury it.  Luckily, the vast majority of the dogs' servants take pity on us and clean up after their canine lords, but even so, keep your eyes peeled.

So dirtied and disrespected are the streets and sidewalks of Barcelona that most are swept and sprayed down everyday.  How I love the street cleaners!  Even the ones who smoke while they work.

This past weekend, the NYTimes published an opinion piece entitled "The Quiet Ones".  In it, the author laments that some people "refuse to recognize the moral reality of those around them," and proceeds with: "It's a pathology that seems increasingly common, I suspect in part because people now spend so much time in the solipsist’s paradise of the Internet that they carry its illusion of invisible (and inaudible) omniscience back with them out into the real world."

But cities are a solipsist's paradise, too.  When you're surrounded by everyone, you're in the presence of no-one.  So smoke away.