Accidental discoveries

This afternoon at work I stumbled across Here is New York, by E.B. White. It's an essay he wrote in 1948 about (guess it. . .) New York City. I read some of it on the train ride home and it's amazing. An excerpt:

New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everyone wants and needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.

And I think so. One of the things I say about New York is that it makes you very quickly learn how to filter information. Every day living here you are bombarded with an enormous amount of stuff: speech, music, sound, smell, touch, human and animal contact. I think to be successful here you have to learn how to filter all that down into what you need to know and what interests you, because taking all of it in all the time will burn you out, make you go running for whatever quiet suburb promises isolation and the illusion of control. I think White is talking about that, albeit much much stylishly than am I. Here it's possible to be a part of so much while maintaining the ability to snap back into your own world when you want and need to. Or, if you want, you can be absolutely alone in a room full of people.

Working feverishly on the website. Feverishly.