Rural

Sometimes, especially when the subway is overcrowded, I daydream of living in the country. Like here, mabye:

Pasture outside of Harrison Hot Springs, British Colombia

It's beatiful there, and people will actually stop and talk to you whether they know you or not. Not that everyone is guileless, just that you have fewer people to deal with, a manageable number, say; there's no overwhelming mass of strangers stepping over you to get where they really-need-to-be-right-now-or-else. There are tourists, but they do not ride past your house on weird open-top buses. There is advertising, but it does not oppress you from every street corner, every transit center, every building facade that has not yet been covered in the image of some impossibly hip and beautiful person listening to an mp3 player or drinking mass-produced whiskey or competing in a misguided reality show called Date My Ex.

But that's why daydreams are daydreams and reality is a city that never sleeps and gives you the opportunity to be whatever you might want to be this week. Because no one knows you here, unless you're on one of those ads. And most days, anonymity is grand.