The Indelicacy of Brick

I remember when I first moved to St. Louis in 1996 the city felt clunky and hugely misshapen. Previously, I had grown up in a small Southern town on the Tennessee-Georgia border, in a neighborhood where all the houses had been built from wood. The wooden houses of my neighborhood were ingrained in my mind as the archetype for all houses: small, , with bold paints that were faded and peeling, with ivy and kudzu twining around the trellises of the porch. Compared to the slight wooden houses of the small-town south, the brick neighborhoods of urban St. Louis seemed monolithic by comparison. 

Now, coming back to St. Louis after living in Seoul, I am struck instead by the smallness of everything. Walking the dog this afternoon, I kept glancing up, being shocked to see the clear expanse of sky, and a horizon line free from cluttered high-rises, apartments stacked perilously high on top of other apartments. The buildings, rather than seeming sinister in their brick weightiness, seemed instead like squat little boxes littered in a lonely way around the city. 

I couldn't believe the utter silence of my neighborhood. When I walked, I was shocked I could hear the sound of my feet on the pavement, the low zip of my pant legs as they brushed together, and the huff of my breath as it collides with the cold air around it. In Seoul, even in my bedroom at night it wasn't silent. Outside, I could hear the sound of cars zipping down the street, the low drone of construction, and the ha-ha-ing lilt of laughter from old women walking in the cold.

Since I've come back to St. Louis, I've sometimes felt a little lonely during the day. I don't know if it's because of the emptiness of my street, or the emptiness of silence, but whenever I step outside into this quiet, snow-covered street, I'm alarmed at the magnitude of my solitude. I feel a panic for a moment, feeling the opposite of claustrophobic, and longing instead for tight spaces, crowds and blaring noise. I am trying not to be afraid of being by myself. Next time I step outside I resolve to use all the vast, quiet space as an empty canvas to be filled with my dreams.