Thursday, November 20, 2025

mmmmdcccxcii

No Contest

Why does the eloquent description
you lay out of your city become
my own so very different city?
Are cities all that different?  Well,

of course they are!  And mine, I
swear, is so much better than yours.
My city, not that wonderful description
which sort of becomes mine, my own

city, as I listen, mesmerized, to you and
your voluptuous description of what is
distinctly not my city and yet I can see
my city’s trees, my trees, and the post

office you describe is also my very own,
either the one on Pine Street just a block
or three from Polk or the one rather hidden
in the side alley off Market as one passes

Van Ness (oceanward). The museums you des
cribe are the ones on my everyday horizons, the 
ones I have failed to enter, no adventuring in 
these museums, for years, but not quite as many

as the years since I have crisscrossed the
galleries in your city, which is a truly fine
city filled with really respectable museums,
I’ll be the first to concede, and yet, and this

I recall, wondering why it is long since I 
have ventured within either of my fair city’s
museum doors just for a bit of an adventure, as
our museums are far superior to those of yours.

We needn’t continue this line of thought as we
both know our own personal feelings on such
matters and may never reach any agreement
except that we live in our separate cities that

we love and both of us know, me especially, how
much more superior that the city and its architec
t
ure and art and inhabitants and personalities with
in mine are than those that exist within yours.

I’ll return, perhaps often, to your city, to examine
these inferiorities, learning so much along the way
of how I live in the fairest city by far; the fairest, I’d
say in the entirety of civilization.  For what a fine and

immeasurably invaluable (though measurable enough
to know in relative comparison to yours) city it is that
we should surely agree this is. It
s the best, really. And
in my heart of hearts I know that, should you more 

rationally consider things you would 
wholeheartedly agree.

my city