my baby, my poor sick city

In the advent of a large portion of my buds moving to/already living in La Grande Pomme, I've been directly and indirectly criticizing them. Why are you moving? Why do you need to live there? What is wrong with you?

It flatters me to think that I'm above the attraction of a big city, the big city. I don't need to live in a fantastical, ego-driven atmosphere to feel happy. I don't need to be reminded I'm important by living in an important city. A sort of "if you're bored, you're boring" attitude has engulfed my feelings toward these friends and their leave from Albuquerque.

But, I'm wrong to criticize them.

As expected with many negative emotions, I criticize them because I'm deferring critiques of myself and my first, real city love, my Albuquerque. Albuquerque has become a very toxic place for, it seems, many people in our group of friends as well as for myself. Our acceptance and complacency for Albuquerque's more shameful quirks is unnerving and I'm reminded of it especially when I go traveling. I'm reminded of how corrupt our public education administration is. I'm reminded of our impossibly slow politics. Our lack of well-paying, interesting jobs. Our ridiculous public transportation. Our disgusting crime statistics, even for such a small city! Our deficit of credible art galleries. Our absence of artists and other creative entities, most likely who have been living in the art cove of Santa Fe. Our awful, awful, awful medical doctors. There, of course, must be several very good MDs in the city, but my dad has been told over and over again that he must go outside of NM for reputable medical service - this was told to him from Albuquerque doctors!

I could go on, but I won't.

I think I've highlighted through this blog the very people and places that make Albuquerque and New Mexico worth living in. I'm rarely negative in this web space and when I am, it's usually followed by a joke, however boring they may be. Albuquerque has its beautiful, ethereal eccentricities that pull people from around the world to live here. And that is good. I'm happy Albuquerque can be that tender, loving mother to those people, but it is not to me. Not anymore and it seems my friends have figured that out slightly before I have.

I'm crossing my fingers that they (and I) can move on and grow up, away from our complex issues of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.