Flirting with suburbia, aka: why do illiterate and poor people all know what gentrification is?

Kids are pretty stupid. They eat their own shit, get upset when they hurt themselves after doing stupid things that basically guarantee they will hurt themselves, and that sort of thing.

But mainly eat their own shit.

But even stupid kids know about the 'Fundamental Universal Ethical Truths', because like baby deer and even spiders, it is programmed into our DNA, like the desire to breed, and a prediliction for maintaining our state of being alive-ness.

The truths are those facts that, although not written anywhere in particular, are written everywhere. You just have to see them. Baby animals see them, hippies see some of them, musicians see all of them but prefer to ignore them. They are facts that are impossible to prove using propositional calculus, as, like God and aliens, the test of repeatability does not apply, and the hard evidence is few and far between (if that).

When you see an infant child, laying in its crib, watching avidly nothing in particular, it is actually reading the truths. The truth, in their big scrawly, flowing letters, the Universal precursor to Wild Style graffiti, sprayed across the very fabric of space, in invisible ink, that only invisible eyes can comprehend.

The truths are many, and so I will not list them. Besides, the list is in you anyway. But I will talk about one today, so sit on the floor and get comfortable. If you are in the ocean at the moment, sit on the ocean floor and get comfortable. But mainly get comfortable.

Fundamental Universal Ethical Truth # 3456455.

"When you raise the rental prices in traditionally creative and dynamic enclaves, the creatives that made said enclave creative and dynamic in the first place, will all be forced to move to whatever barren, lifeless industrial area that a) is affordable, and b) completely resembles what the enclave in question resembled when they first got there."

In short, Blockbuster, 7-11, and Starbucks will move in, all the graffiti and boutique stores and dogs in shop doorways and friggin actual culture will shut down or move. And you will be left with an expanse of grey space, of static, where all the music now sounds like a dial tone.

Even kids who eat their own shit can see this.

And so they spread out, just like the 12 tribes of Battlestar Galactica (the old one, not the new one which was turned into a steaming bucket of suck), or like the 12 tribes of Israel, or like the Dalai Lama. Some went overseas, some found a new enclave in which to plant seeds, and the rest?

They moved to suburbia.

I have always thought of suburbia as a dirty word. Cramped together, endless rows of houses, fluffy lawns, and sameness. I have been lucky, I grew up in wide open spaces, or in warehouses, or on the open road. Traditionally I have loved cities. I have loved living right in there among the bright lights and the ACTION. Feeling like I was a part of something amazing, which as I have grown older I realise wasn't the case at all, but it didn't make it any less fun.

The thought of living in a suburb, where you have to travel to get to anything, disconnected, no longer part of anything except maybe the rat race, has always provoked a knee-jerk reaction, a shiver up the spine, a hard swallow.

Living in a suburb is like saying "Game over". Like, "I'm done with trying to be somebody, I'm just gonna crawl over here and die a slow death of lawn mowing and ingesting television".

I know a lot of people would scratch their heads at this, but then a lot of people scratch their heads about a lot of things, and I don't care about any of that either.

Maybe I'm wrong, entirely probable. But when I think about suburbs, one emotion springs immediately to mind, and that emotion is sadness.

There's somthing fixed about a suburb, a massive block of mortgages, a population of individuals who are stuck together on a ship going nowhere, working their whole lives for a piece of something that will never take them anywhere but right there. Struggling for a holiday once a year to South East Asia, cars like anchors, holding the whole arrangement down like a rock solid but uninspired bassline from somebody who should know better. Dark at night, no sounds except thousands of frustrated dogs who are all too aware they shouldn't be kept like that, calling out to each other, singing staccato songs of captive misery, dreaming of running together. And all the cats loving that song, as they prowl. Home theatre systems broadcasting escapism, teenagers in bedrooms and bands in garages, plotting a way to break out.

Suburbs are like giving up.

They're like admitting to yourself and the bank that this is as good as life is gonna get, and there's no point gambling on it any longer.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the need for security. The peptic ulcers and sleeplesness, wondering how to spread such a tiny paycheck over such a vast expanse of life. I've just never let it dictate to me how things are actually going to be. That's my choice.

I have stayed in suburbs here and there, out if necessity.

I have walked those streets, and smelled the disinfectant. The total and utter lack of individuality, the Ikea and Bunnings and Super Cheap Auto Lego arrangements. Couldn't wait to get out. And I always did.

Counterpoint.

I have given years of my life to various cities around the world.

Turned up knowing no one, made a name for myself, invested innumerable hours in being a part of the scene, being known, being someone.

Then leaving, and no one even missing you, because all the decent people had moved on too. Searching for the same things I was.

Now, the idea of being in a bar or club full of 18 year olds sounds like a nightmare. Does anyone actually have any class nowadays? I'm frightened of young people now, because in the main they just don't think. At all. Thinking has become a disease, and the public is panicked. Going to the kinds of places I used to populate is a total non-option for me now. The things I used to find exciting about a city now I have seen a thousand times before and I'm just bored with it. I have witnessed all the stereotypes, I'm sick of the filth, and over the danger of it all. I don't want to fight any more, I almost feel like...

...moving to the suburbs and watching tv with the air conditioning on!

I said "almost".

I was in a suburb today, I stopped in to buy some lunch. The guy at the take out counter looked like he should be in a band, out on the highway, looking for life. But he arranged my food in the regulation manner, and bagged it up, and I just wanted to just take him from there and show him America. Or the Middle East. Or anywhere, where he might be able to find that spark that would drive him for the next 10 years. He was so sad, like he knew "This is it". That all life is is debt and an enormous flat panel tv, and porn and jerking off and cruising with the boys in a stupid car that looks like a boat and has far too much power for that few experiences.

I think about all the people I could have grown up to be, had I not escaped the suburbs of my past, all the thoughts i would have never thought. i wouldn't like any of those me's. It has taken exposure to so much of the world to get to where I am now. Otherwise I could have so easily been that guy in the take away shop.

So easily.

Because unless you are disabled in some way, we are all born the same. We can all become kings or paupers. Some of it is chance, but a lot of it is how much you put yourself out there to get hit face first with experiences. Your favourite band probably won't ring you if all you do is sit at home playing X Box, but if you're out there doing things, and they see them, then the chances are higher.

And it's hard to be out there doing things when you have to work am much as you do to pay off a house and a car and insurance and all the shit you buy to stop yourself from going insane because you live in a box in a row of other boxes.

My point?

I don't know, have a look at your priorities, maybe?

Because this world needs all the light and creaitivity and inspiration it can get, and unless you share it, we all lose.

If you want to just live by numbers, go ahead. But if there is a part of you that dreams about something bigger, don't think about it in private. Come do it where we can all see.

It's ok to earn less, despite what all the materialistic girls I meet say. That's ok, I don't care for materialistic girls, or at least the ones who think they have some god -given right to leech my money because they look pretty, but spend none of their own.

We're all way too geared around money. We need to be geared around life.

I think that's my point.

This is knifey, from 'the internet'.