3.26.2007 diorama

Cambridge is without exagerration the most difficult place I could have chosen to move to (if you recall that I will never go anywhere featuring sunlight or bombs). The culture of the place is so fundamentally antithetical to the way I've always lived it generally feels like I've taken up residence in a diorama. A very nicely arranged and pretty scene, but still - false.

This is largely a function of history and assigned value. I'm a working class rabble rouser wandering in a world that is the very definition of elite - without any academic affiliations or desire to acquire them. I'm surrounded by people who care about status more than almost anything else, and I do not register on their scale, nor do I care. When asked what I do I honestly shrug and say nothing and even if pressed will not admit to much that would impress a famous academic. People are welcome to believe whatever they like.

Life in the NW was and is all about community and friendship, a huge overwhelming truth that I didn't have the skills to appreciate when I believed myself a permanent resident. Life in Cambridge is about isolation and work, and although I do not belong here, I am thankful every day.

In a theoretical sense everything has lately been way more Bloomsbury than Mayberry but you wouldn't know it from the company I keep in this town:

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