Give Away My Sweet Sensation

Two peoples, two times, a collision course of constant repetition, a never-ceasing compromise and battle. The Old, representative and symbolic, full of content, stories stitching everyone together. The New, progress and devotion, power and the light, goals, forward, innovation pushing down the limits of Human Expanse. Never before have these two been so perfectly wed, so minutely connected, so intertwined, as to bring about a culture with equal parts respect, wisdom, and potential.

Boston, you ARE world class.

At least according to our guide, Major Groovy, that is. The most fascinating article of life in this amazing area is its uncanny ability to fit history and progress together into a method that defines as much as it predicts. This method, this time-stretched zeitgeist, it governs and pushes, hanging from brownstones and glass monoliths like an invisible banner, pouring through the street intersections, bleeding into the rivers and marrow of the people.

How do they do it? Such a phenomenal sense of tradition and old-world mannerisms, mixed with perhaps the most progressive system in the country? New York, I'm sorry but you don't have universal health care do you? Plenty of progress in the midwest, but the U of M wasn't established 400 years ago, was it?

There was once a time when the Greeks ruled the world, and their system was thought infallible and divine. Their gods allowed their society to wane, and with their downfall, the gods lost their names, their power. They were replaced by their Roman counterparts, and so it happened that Jupiter never conquered Zeus, he just replaced him. The old ways sunk, but their essence reigned. The history coated thought like a varnish - invisible but protecting. A layer immeasurably small, impossibly broad.

We see that everywhere. The gods of our forebearers, souls wandering the hundreds-year-old graveyards, beckoning knowledge-seekers. History alive, mashed between towering skyscrapers. Universities dedicated simultaneously to preserving the delicate traditions and expanding the Known World.

There's something holy in this quest, something divine about this connection to past and future, some sort of bright sliver to be wedged between the two. I'm not sure I'm tapped into it - I have after all only spent a handful of days here. But where there's an energy like this, great things spring forth. Where the city has such a fascinating personality, gold sneaks from the corners. It's a nice place to visit, and I sure would want to live there.

The roads snake in and out, up and around, veins feeding the soul and ghosts, a truly immortal being, history acting like blood, progress providing breath. The old ways never discarded, the new ways always tempered with optimism.

How they do it, only the righteous can know.