All this Culture?

A professor pointed out today out that living in upstate NY would be much better for your health, insofar as pollution is concerned, than living in the city. He then added somewhat mockingly, “But would you be willing to give up all this culture?”

My response:

All this culture? Here in NYC? Is it worth it? What about the culture of the trees and insects? Flowers and birds? They speak a language and share their music. Does not the Spring, season the air with honey? And the Fall, tender our hearts to the joy of wool sweaters?

Ai! I say it does. All of it is a world and a culture. A turn around the bend into a meadow is a neighborhood miles away. Step into a brook, dare open your eyes in a clear lake. There is Venice. Come migration time and Mardi Gras is no stranger, with the colors of birds and butterflies surely finer than any lay of beads.

It’s there in the sunlight, the rainbows, the dew drops, the grass. It’s there in the dance of dragonflies, the smells change by the hour and the place. What better finery is there than seashells and summer flowers? What sweeter nectar than an apple, ready to drop off the branch, timely plucked and savored?

None. Is not culture how we dance? How we clothe ourselves? How we talk, and teach, and live amongst each other? It’s all there, wherever we are. It can shape us if we let it, and it has, all of it. All of the music, and dance, words, and arts has been shaped first by letting our senses receive what is already there. To think that any aspect of culture came before someone saw it first in the forest, the desert, or the ocean means that one is not paying close enough attention to who we are.

In the meantime, I think I’d also like to have a little bit less particulate matter from diesel engines entering my envelope and adding to my body burden (toxicology lingo). Keep the philharmonic, I’ll take birdsong.