Many major cities are composed of stunning architecture, bright lights, and a bubbling, impersonal ferocity. There is constant energy, relentless tension, perpetual motion. My bumpkin heart gets caught-up and entranced by the sights and sounds for a short while, then quickly exhausted.

Many fewer major cities—and I’m sure hundreds of neighborhoods within the shinier cities—have a different feel of hustle and bustle. Outdated but beloved architecture, shorter buildings, sky with stars overhead, and people who say hello to strangers. There is a flow of energy, tension only with authority, perpetual creation. There is an authenticity to this, an appreciation for what remains after government neglect. The roads in these places require slow-going: rutted, pocked, full of holes. This is the most obvious evidence of abandonment, but as you look you will find so much more.

A common enemy creates bonds within a community. A common cause can do the same. Although it is certainly in my nature to hold court about a thing like this, I cannot pretend to know much about the plight of impoverished cities and neighborhoods under a government built on the subjugation of the inhabitants. Majority black places are routinely fucked over–Symone says “these streets are a hate crime”, and her precision takes my breath for a second–yet always chock full of beauty, right at the surface. Give me a spray painted mural over a corporate sculpture any day. Better yet, paint the mural on the corporate sculpture. Trip over a broken sidewalk and look up to see a bounty of squash and tomatoes and lettuce fitted into four square feet of fencing. There will be local and classic and beloved music bursting from slow moving vehicles. Pieces of plastic, glass, and metal repurposed as decoration, planters, fencing. Neighbors who say hello, no eyes averted, who are yelling and laughing like every day is a good one. I like a culture that looks at the truth of what power does, grieves it, then decides to go ahead and create something, take care of each other. Indeed, from the songs of enslaved people to the undeniable skill of the wheelie boys, such behavior is quintessential black American legacy.

There’s those trite aphorisms about the rose from concrete, or “they tried to bury us but didn’t know we were seeds”. I fall hard and fast for anything that embodies those statements. The buildings in disrepair with clearly beloved gardens. Aggressively bright colors against the grey of crumbling walls. Rebellion in the face of the slavers, who later became the police.

As this spoiled, pathetically bratty, absolutely embarrassing infant of a country finally learns what it means to have rapists in power, I stay avoiding the news. There’s plenty to do in the world right in front of me. Truly, for a lot of Americans, the civil war never ended.