A Threnody for Naperville

Is it possible to feel nostalgia for a time one has never directly known? For that, I suspect, may be what I feel every time I commute past the suburbs of Chicago. (I drove home yesterday for my Spring break, you see.) In my mind I can see the farmsteads and villages and acres and acres of woods and fields that once occupied that region. The strip malls and McMansions there now represent the death of all that went before: anything that was unique, or particular, or even praiseworthy is now overwhelmed in this monotonous sameness, this standardization.

Even the farmsteads, it must be admitted, represented a sort of death, for before them was nothing but prairie and virgin forest, mile upon mile, century upon century. But that first death was reversible; field passes swiftly enough into prairie. This second death is far more permanent. What hope is there for Naperville now that it is committed to a world defined by Wal-marts and highway off-ramps? It is a blessing, at least, that this world cannot long endure. I am an optimist in the sense that I know there is a sort of justice in the long term. Even if the world continues to run on oil after I am gone, I know that it cannot do so forever.

"These times we know much evil, little good / to steady us in faith." Indeed.