|
I love living in Los Angeles, but if I had a whole huge bunch of money and could live free and easy wherever, I would probably split my time between
LONDON- my favorite city on earth. I love London, and its bookshops and theaters and restaurants and museums, its rains and its people and its historicity, and also its hundreds of pubs. Nothing beats England, a society constructed on the premise that no one should ever have to go further than thirty yards to find beer.
and
ROME- maybe my second favorite city on earth. You have to work to find a bad restaurant in Rome, and work even harder to find bad wine. The architecture is unreal, and the city is both gorgeous and welcoming. It really is the Eternal City.
but votes also go to
JERUSALEM- I lived there for a year, and I would do it again. I love the food, and the absorption of the city in scholarship and study, the artwork and the museums, and the holiness that not even ultra-Orthodox assholes, right-wing nutjobs, and wacked-out Palestinians can entirely cover up. Yom Kippur in Jerusalem is an experience no Jew can experience and be unmoved.
and
WASHINGTON DC- I am always pleasantly surprised by the fact that America's capitol city is really quite capital. The archetecture is often dignified, the museums many and well-furnished, the public transportation cheap and accessible, and the public monuments generally elegant and distinguished. Somehow, Washington really does seem to emphasize our elusive American ideals, and not our ever-present American bullshit.
__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.
(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)
|