Spring and the Urban Outlook

Looking out of my window, at the chilly beauties of an approaching Spring, I felt strongly how transformative it is to gaze upon something beautiful each day. I live in an urban landscape, and often in winter it feels gray and uninspiring. At such times it doesn’t really even feel bleak and grim, which would at least be a powerful effect. No; it tends to feel drab and bland.

It seems that we need either beauty to look on, or grim majesty, or both at the same time – if you want to go to things like mountain views and the Grand Canyon.

If neither of these things is available then I suspect that we tend to look on objects for comfort – the sleek lines of a car, the harmony of new furnishings or possessions. We substitute things for what we don’t have from Nature. So we find ourselves slipping away from Nature and focusing on more trivial concerns. One’s house may look out on an urban street devoid of trees, but the kitchen, ah, the kitchen is a haven of good design.

Perhaps the fixation we have on possessions and precious things is, at its heart, no more than a disappointment in the conditions of urban and suburban blandness. Perhaps the cure for compulsive consumerism is a walk in the woods.