Suburbia

What is suburbia? Is it the thriving habitat of the middle-class in concrete high-rise buildings or in unpainted houses with grilled windows? Is it a milieu of people fighting over drinking water, shopping for fresh vegetables and fish alongside heaps of garbage? Is it the throng of a million commuters in crowded buses and local trains every day?

Some say yes, sadly, while others rejoice at the sign of eternal life.

Suburbia may not be everyman’s dream-world, but it has a disposition that is worth celebrating... as this poem from http://www.daypoems.net declares:

Suburbia! I Think It Time to Praise
by William Brendan McPhillips

Suburbia escaped me when I wrote.
An unintended slight, I should explain,
I've lived here long and put it in my vote,
Despite the city's population, pain.

The country, farms, were fodder to the Muse,
And cows not cattle set the rural scene,
And forest stretching distance fed its hues
To measure out the glades of treasured green.

And yet suburban contradictions kept
Me from returning to familiar fold,
And urban constancy made sleep un-slept,
So here I am suburbanite, and old,
Amid conflicted contradicted ways,
And yet against the contradiction, praise.

Suburbia is not always the brick and bitumen anonymity that people make it out to be. It has its own character and its own beauty. Over the years, it has been a source of inspiration for many. Artists, poets, writers, photographers, architects alike have toiled to portray their feelings, thoughts, ideas and designs of suburbia creatively – displaying their love, their despair, their isolation, their discovery of the self and their loss with the onslaught of modernity.

If you look deeply enough, you too might find suburbia a source of wonder and inspiration.