Thank You, Maveriks

American Pillar-of-the-Community:   Reading Kunstler, I can’t help but think back to a day that still echoes with raised voices and pounding footsteps. I was in elementary school, and my parents had imposed some sort of paternally responsible rule. They had been doing it a lot lately, and I wouldn’t stand for it. This was MY house. These were MY toys. This was MY life. In a plume of rage I left the house with a colorful backpack and no destination. I walked until reaching an intersection that seemed miles away, in reality only a few blocks. Almost able to see the shopping center down the street (Houston-has-no-zoning-laws), I remember feeling a radiating joy at having escaped the archaic rule of my parents. The Blockbuster and McDonalds golden arches seemed to share in my triumph. My individuality, the fact that I was intrepid, made me exactly the kind of kid that could forge a new life. Juice box in hand, I would fashion a new existence.

In Kunstler’s depiction, the New World settlers seem to share in my itch to escape the undesirable. Towns went through an odd mitosis at the inception of every argument and quarrel. Their citizens tore apart the young communities so each newly independent shred could become an increasingly small microcosm of an increasingly inconsequential lifestyle. Living amongst the peace and quiet of one’s own thoughts was apparently seen as the achievement of the Eden these religious mavericks were searching for.

In pop culture, many people’s personal lives, and in the urban landscape, we can see how much this refusal to acclimate and repair has perpetually ravaged American culture. In movies, when people get into a fight, what do they do (especially as teenagers)? They go for a drive. When people feel a pang of stagnation they move. When buildings begin to crumble, they are destroyed. Our culture suffers from a lack of resolution. In the face of confrontation (emotional unrest or architectural deterioration) we discard that which is a nuisance, forgetting how valuable it was only moments before.

If we think that in New York we are immune, that we have matured and learned to acclimate in our crowded city blocks, we are mistaken. With shifting renters (I being one of them) moving around the city both in search of the new and escaping the corpse of the last residential fad, people are constantly looking to replace their surroundings with something better. We aren’t willing to make their own communities better or to use their own creativity to bring different people together. Neighborhoods are characterized (read homogenized) by everything from race and sexuality to age. A friend recently complained of the strollers on East Village sidewalks. “Children didn’t belong” there and nor do parents.

“Deracinated”, a word Kunstler uses frequently, is rightfully placed in referring the maelstrom of renters moving from place to place, refusing to set down roots that may finally ground them, the stability (read consequences) of their lives finally reaching the right mailing address.

In reality, when my parents hadn’t come for me on that street corner I walked, head down and feet dragging back to my house. What would I have become had I stayed out on the street. Would my toys and the wily street smarts of a ten year old have helped me to accomplish anything, or even to survive?

Luckily, I went back to my family where a nurturing environment helped me to deal with the people around me and fully appreciate my love for them. It seems though, that I left America back on that corner, angry and confused.

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