In Which I talk about city streets and how details matter

Good morning, dear friend, reader of this present post!! How are you? How have you been, in this mid-week? Hope you are well, I do wish you the best! I was desiring to write something on the blog sooner, but I either lacked the motivation, or lacked idea on what exactly to write, or both, and unfortunately, usually both. My mind has been on a burning out alert for some weeks now, and every move I make I dread causing me to snap, I would fall on the floor and weep until I could no more. The summer heat does not help, even if this summer in the grand scheme of things is not really that abrasive. Statistics are useful, but daily life can amplify one's situation. It is summer, and it sucks, no matter if the weather is slightly less hot than some years ago... I will talk more about heat as follows, because thanks to a book I am reading, I have even more reasons to do so! Let us jump to it shall we?

Now, of course I may change my mind, because that is how a chaotic mind with OCD goes, which is my own. But, for now, I should, and enthusiastically so, desperately so, recommend that you read Death and Life of Great American Cities, by the writer Jane Jacobs. I started this book with some forebolding, given in one edition she thanks the horrid Saul Alinsky for his "help" and "support". Now, reading it where I am at, on the chapter that talks about sidewalks, I can forgive her, and I understand her much better, and I make her position my own. I explain. I was born and raised in the middle of nowhere, or was nowhere at the time, because my dad liked the Shoreline and liked to surf. Then, when mom and dad divorced, I moved to the big city. In both situations, the reality is this: there is no street, no sidewalk, no passers by, at all. So I could not really imagine what she would write about, on the importance of precisely that. Now that I read on the organic relationships that emerge just by having familiarity, just by having naturally to talk to someone for the sake of solving an issue, and coming to trust them, not because you are their acquaintance, but because it is mutual beneficial and because you have no incentive to betray them, and vice versa, it makes sense why brazilian cities are so miserable, so ugly, so violent. They are never designed for street life. And my city is specially hostile to strolling. The sun at mid day is capable of causing skin cancer by just one or two hours of light exposure (you call this exageration? Tell this to mom and my uncle, the latter had to undergo quite the surgery because of that). The asphalt, the solid cinder on the ground, it traps the heat, and there are no trees, at all, just dark asphalt, hard cinder, and the narrow, and I will add, horribly designed, sidewalks are exposed both to the electric wires, some falling to the ground, and the heat of the road. The result is a scenario so apocalyptic in discomfort as to cause MadMax to appear pleasant in comparison. How can you have the healthy balance, when you can't even cover yourself from the sun, and you cannot walk not even on the middle of the road, not exactly because of cara but because of how hot it is, not to mention the holes everywhere... and you add all else, maybe this could be it, the reason why brazilian cities are so terrible, and it builds on my thesis that modernism killed a nation. It did. We are living in the ruins of what could have been perhaps a pleasant tropical country. There are hints of this would-be future everywhere, but it is dead and buried. 

No, I do not say this to "blackpill" no one. Ever. I am against this blackpill thing, or any pill on that regard. No and no. What I am saying is that it doesn't hurt to understand the world around us, so we don't fall under the stoic trap of "suck it up, it is your fault", or the gnostic one, that invites the other monster that plagues Brazil: Marxism. There is so much to be said on this topic, dear friend, dear reader... I have a suspicion I may actually write the book I want after all, thanks to Mrs. Jacobs. I may change my mind, she may say something socialistic, ahe may praise the USSR for all I know, but from what I gather, I have a naggy feeling she won't. And if she does, she would be making herself a disservice so big as to make the favorable position on Abortion by Ayn Rand to look forgivable in comparison. She may have sort of redeemed Hayek for me... I say this because I did not care much for Hayek before, Hayek made unforgivable consessions to the welfare state. Now, reading the work of Jacobs, if his theory on the natural order might look similar, then Hayek should be on my research list as well... anyway, Much more I could say, but this post is getting big and bloated and I am starting to run exhausted, and my face hurts...

I wish you the best, my dear reader, and I am happy that I have you here to make me company, while I talk over this quite impressive and worthy work of analysis. I pray and hope I can be back to this publication real soon, hopefully by the weekend, to start the move to wrap up February. I want to write two more posts before March, we'll see! Until then, God bless you, and see you again real soon!!! Farewell for now...