How I long for this. How I long for an escape from modernity. How I long for a forest as my backyard, a garden and some animals to care for every day. But, I live in a city. A great city, yes, but still a city with its constant din and endless, manic activity, a place where silence is hard to come by and the only nature is manicured nature. I want modern life to be different for all of us. Nothing about the modern world feels akin to the values that make a human life meaningful. Everything is commodified in our country. Everything is gambling. Everything is a metric to be measured in growth and followers. I hate that substack forces me to look at my metrics every time I open my home page. The part of me that cares about that wants to latch on with manic energy, a productive robot only seeking more. But the quieter part of me knows it is so silly.