concrete and barbed wire

This is a picture of the back of a grand brownstone in my neighborhood, one that I walk past almost every day. The barbed wire keeps the rabble from stealing into the garden.

As much as I love this neighborhood for its beauty and quiet, I am growing less and less happy living here these days. Most people think I am crazy when I talk of leaving. But I don't like what is happening here. It has become a province of the entitled rich. The days of an artist/teacher buying--or renting--a place here are over, unless said person is independently wealthy or, as is more and more common, supported by parents. I am of the generation/socio-economic class which believed, more or less, that once you were eighteen you were on your own.

The problem is not the wealth of the people necessarily, but the attitude that goes along with it. And not only do I face it every day on the street--as the Range Rovers and those absurd Mercedes armored-car type things rush by, or the hordes of nannies pushing absurdly bloated strollers with fat tires (the SUVs of the kiddy world?) that run me off the sidewalk--but at my school, where the majority of the student body comes from that same world of privilege. It wears me down.

Couple this with the constant and increasingly unbearable pain in my back (which, despite the chiropractor and the exercises and yoga, persists) and my mood has generally been dark. Last night I went to bed at 8:30 and slept until 6:30 this morning. Not a good sign.