The larger a city is, the more lonely its inhabitants can become.
I have lived in my apartment block of 16 units for the last 18 months. I have only met two of my neighbours in that time. The first was a woman in her sixties who I spoke to for the first time about a year after I had moved in. I have only seen her twice. I can't even remember her name. The second was a girl in her late twenties who knocked on my door a few weeks ago to borrow a corkscrew. Her name I still can recall. I have no idea about any other inhabitant of my apartment block. If something happened to any of them I wouldn't know about it. They may as well be living on the other side of the world. You hear those stories about people who have died in their house in the city and not been found for weeks.
Is this because they can call on others who are not neccessary neighbours? Or does the city cause agoraphobia? Or do people lock themselves away because they fear the unknown? Has media emphasis on the rare violent events that happen in the city been a factor? When people meet, do they eye off the other with distrust and extreem caution?
I don't. Call me naive, but 99.99% of the population are decent folk. I try (and it is hard) to begin a conversation with someone who I haven't met with no preconcieved ideas of the type of person they are. They soon reveal themselves for who they are and then I'll make a judgement.
One thing I found strange about both the meetings of my neighbours was that they didn't ask what my name was or tell me what their name was. Both times I had to interupted the conversation topic to introduce myself and find out who they were. It used to be that when you met, the first thing that was exchanged was your names. Is this a symptom of the prevailing mood?
How many of your neighbours do you know?
5 comments:
How many neighbours do we know?
One and a bit. We actually know the guy next door (even by name, although it took a while to figure it out). We are also quite chatty with one other person on our floor, but can't remember his name (I don't think he remembers ours either).
But in an apartment block with 5 floors and about 10 apartments per floor, that is a pretty low number of people to know.
I'm actually intrigued by the fact that despite having a building population of maybe 100 people, we still very rarely actually see the same people more than once every few months. If you lined up all the people who live on our floor and asked me where they were from, I couldn't tell you. And I work a typical 9-5 type of job, so I should see more people coming and going at those sorts of hours.
I do see the building manager a couple times of week though, does that count?
What does the title mean?
a-man, I probably have seen only two other people who live in the block. It's amazing that we don't see more.
jade, the title are the names of three films that had the english title of "Neighbours".
I do think that your theory is pretty good.
I dunno, I try to make a habit of fostering community in my neighbourhoods and think I'm doing an ok job of it. These days, I spend at least 2 nights a week with my upstairs neighbour and we chat regularly to John next door. In my last place, I'd often chat over the fence with the girls next door.
Talking to strangers is a habit I learnt from my Dad.
That said, your place isn't very conducive to bumping into people and loitering in 'communal' areas (i.e. there's really only the driveway) so I'm not surprised that you don't.
We were on g'day terms with the guys next door. We borrowed a ladder from one of them to check the bathroom fan for hidden cameras during Nicolette's psychotic episode, and then we talked to the other guy after he got robbed (probably by associates of the smackies who live two doors up).
Oh, we talked to he neighbours across the road when they got robbed too. Robbery seems to bring our street together...
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