Having spent much of the past four weeks seeing a large portion of America, I’m left with a single burning question.
Why do I live here?
After all, in the grand scheme of things, Hampton, VA isn’t prime real estate, although the city sends us frequent communications to the contrary in the form of city property assessments.
Most of the email in my inbox would suggest that I live in New York, or failing that, South Africa. Both locales send me online newspapers and update me daily on items of culture and artistic concern.
Why just today, the New York Times sent me a “snack food alert” informing me where I can score the best kim bap—"a crunchy, chewy jumble of savory and sweet, spicy and cool, familiar and surprising"sort of entrée served in Koreatown. We have no kim bap. In fact, the biggest thing we have in culinary news is the new hot dog shop that opened near Wal-Mart.
Which calls to mind my city’s shopping situation, the centerpiece of which is a JCPenney surrounded by a pile of rubble that used to be a mall. Outside of the aforementioned, we have Target—and did I mention Wal-Mart?
I can’t offer much in the way of first-hand Wal-Mart commentary, although my husband and daughter assure me the police had the clientele pretty much under control during their trip last evening.
We have a lot of traffic, too—but none of it headed toward a ticket quite as hot as Negativland—a band playing in Midtown NYC tonight with a repertoire consisting of nothing but “found sounds.” I’ve never heard “found sounds” assembled into a concert, although I’ve stumbled across quite a bit of racquet that I imagine holds potential for riveting melody if properly assembled.
Considering my two-day plus blogging slump, I suppose I should put all the out-of-town literature aside and find some local art or culture to get the creativity flowing again. Maybe I’ll stumble across something I can pitch to my editor for an assignment.
I’ll write with such panache that when the online edition of the Daily Press finds its way to an inbox in New York or Johannesburg, folks will wistfully quote my prose on their blogs, wishing only for the opportunity to live right here, in Hampton, VA.
1 comment:
Cindy, I must say, take comfort in the fact that Hampton has more to offer than Lynchburg. The other week we had a "big storm" and a few thousand people lost power. I remember when big storms meant flooding, and tornadoes, and tunnels filling with water. Also, to go to a halfway okay movie theatre thats playing a new release, we have to drive for an hour each way. People ask "what do you do for fun on the weekends" we say.. go to Roanoke. So whenever you wonder why you live in hampton, just say, it could be worse, I could by in Lynchburg.
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