catching up with myself

I never really intended for this to be a journal entry, so to speak, but it seems that every thought that I consider adding here is more or less is linked to me in some way. I am trying to make these seem more from a journalism standpoint, but all that comes out are stories with me in them. However, I have been reading a number of magazines lately due to my excessive traveling, and have come to the conclusion that all articles that are not news related, as in magazines or weekly newspaper columnists, are created around the idea or story about how the author got involved with the person they are interviewing or topic they are commenting on. It seems pretty obvious, but it didn't cross my mind until I read an interview with Tim Burton that began and ended with the writer's personal connection to the director. Consequently, I got more from that article reading those connections to Mr. Burton rather than the actual interview. Its not that I know more about Mr. Burton than the average person, until then I didn't know he was married to Helena Bohnam Carter, but I just took the question-answer session to be more of a how did it all begin or what made it come together breakdown. It was almost spoon fed to me, I think the magazine edited the article down for content purposes because there were some weird transitions from question to question. But overall, I didn't enjoy that part at all, I was rather taken on how Mr. Burton touched the writer with film after film about suburbia and his relation to his father being similar to Mr. Burton's.
After that article I looked at what I was reading differently and thought for a moment, only that long, that what I am trying to write on here could be considered for an article in a magazine purely on the writing style. I would have to tie in some sort of connection to current events, well the 'How Old Is Your Mind' would probably work on its own, but they are actual stories on their own and could hold their own. This gave me a little more hope about the future of writing, since I keep trying to conform to what people want to read or word things a certain way. With this in mind I think it will be a little easier to write on here, at least I hope so, and I will try to make it more entertaining as opposed to me complaining about something.

In the last two weeks I have been from New York, to Minneapolis, to Rochester, to Fargo, and back to Minneapolis, which is more traveling than I would probably do in a given year. There were reasons for all of these trips, well Fargo was to catch up with a friend during a few days I had off, but the rest were for family and the future prospect of living. During each trip I was fortunate enough to explore the area and take in the city, I have been to New York a number of times as well as Rochester, and each city is entertaining in its own respect.
Manhattan has its own time frame in my mind, not that they set their clocks differently, but it is a city that covers less space than most areas large enough to call themselves a city, and this one houses over eight million people. Its the 3rd dimention that makes this possible, which is also what draws so many people to its heart. the expression 'only in america' probably originated from there, and that is true in so many levels. I never thought so many franchises could pop up in a one mile radius as they do there, and it never occured how long a block really could be. I guess I never thought of what goes into designing a city aside from an architect, but this place never ceases to amaze me. A couple of semesters ago I was told the origin of the name of the city, settlers found the island inhabited by native americans and they were friendly enough to host their visit with food and drinks. The drinks flowed that night to such an extent that the settlers stayed the night to recover from the powerful alcohol of the native americans, and when they went back to the land and met with them again they came up with the title man-hat-tanna in the locals' language, which translates to 'the land where we got drunk.' Now I'm not trying to say thats all that is there anymore, but it is a catchy story, obivously since that is all I remember from that class. The city itself revolves around its own time frame because it essentially never sleeps, hence the other name for it. You can probably get anything you want at any time of the day there without much hassle simply because in a place like that somebody will stay open for it. It is probably the most expensive place to live on average in the whole country, which is why so many people there have multiple jobs. There are things to do on every street from arts and culture, to science and history. This place is so big that it is proken into sub-parts, some of which have their own lifestyle on their own.
All of that for one weekend and I was back in the moderately sized city of Minneapolis, which has a lot to do on its own and technically has its own parts if you consider directional shifts. The only differance is that I wouldn't go all the way to North Minneapolis for a shirt or pizza since the distance doesn't seem worth the effort. Whereas in Manhattan, I would travel from the Upper West Side to Littly Italy just for the pizza, and I would shop in SoHo just to say I was there. Thats the differance between big city like Manhattan and a city like Minneapolis, there are countless things to do and people to see but in the end the distance rules out most based on the time it take to get there in a smaller city. Not only that but Minneapolis is the type of place that tries to reach its citizens on a larger context, take the news and how it can cover the whole city here but certain areas in New York just don't get the play on a city-wide level. A while back I went there and came back thinking that I could never live there because the city doesn't give people the chance to survive, at some point people will take you for granted or arvantage of you because you are less than them, and it sort of scared me because I never thought of that about Minnepolis. This trip was a little different beause it was much shorter, and the weather limited my productivity, but in the end I had a massive craving for the sound of 'Radiohead' while I was there. I'm nto sure what thats worth, but it felt like something important to me.
Rochester on the other hand is a smaller city, and I viewed Fargo the same way, as the big city surrounded by farms. It is the place where those farmers go to get a taste of what is new in the world, like shopping or museums. Each city is surrounded by numerous strip malls with local people trying to make a name for themselves, and most of them have been there since birth with no excuse for getting out aside from a career prospect. It struck me as a very odd place to live when I first went to Rochester since I grew up just outside Minnepolis and have always been use to seeing this city as perfect. But below the surface it was the little things that made it stand out to me, such as the much stronger ties to religion or the obsession with country music. I never really experienced that in Minnepaolis, but it is everywhere in places like Rochester and Fargo. The one thing that I could nevere understand about places like that is how a club or bar can play a rap song followed by a country song without skipping a beat. It just doesn't make sense how their culture accepts things unknown to me like this, or can oversee it without noticing the dramatic change in the mood or setting. You can just look at the city from the highway and tell they are completly different based on their traffic and housing, but it just goes to show that growing up somewhere does have its affect of people.