It is fashionable for creative types like myself to be bitter and critical about suburban life and while I went through my teenaged/early-twenties phase of "I am going to get out of this place as soon as I can and wander the world and then live in, say, Paris," I eventually realized that creativity and intellectuality don't have to be urban or ex-patriotic. In fact, by thinking those things, one is just caving-in to the biggest enemy of creative thought: cliche.
In short, I like the suburbs. To flip a maxim, though, I tend to be
in the suburbs but not
of the suburbs. I have never felt an obligation to participate in local government or to take part in any over-the-fence conversation about the weather I could otherwise avoid. I like to sit in the bleachers and watch my boys play ball; they have me telling them what to do, enough -- they don't need me to hound them about the proper way to snatch up a grounder.
All that said, there are times when I find suburban life to be beautiful. I'm not going to qualify that. My middle-to-lower-middle-class neighborhood is a thing of beauty on a summer night or under a blanket of snow, like today.
