I guess it's healthy, I guess the air is clean.
So I spent most of the week traveling, first to Philadelphia and then to Chicago. The trips were purely business: I had very little time outside of my hotel room or the shiny office facilities to which we shuffled back and forth to walk around or whatever. (Which is not really that big a deal, I’ve been to both places before. Plus Chicago was fucking cold.) Anyway, it occurred to me as I watched folks in both cities going to and from work etc. that part of the reason I’m not fit to be anywhere else but New York has something to do with the pace. I mean, the people elsewhere are doing the same things I’m doing: waking up hungover, dealing with soul-crushingly quotidian tasks like shaving and taking vitamins and smoking and sitting under fluorescent lights for nine hours until they can go home, etc. But we do it at a much faster speed here, because everything is so important. I think what’s so depressing about Real America is when you look at what you do at half-speed you realize, holy shit, who gives a fuck? I’d rather be kept in my cocoon of intensity, where it seems like all the ridiculous stuff I’m bouncing around each day actually, you know, matters.Also, people are much fatter there.
