2B

Magazine Editor:

Ian Dillingham

Deputy Editor:

Natalie Gadbois

Design Editor:

Jake Wellins

Photo Editor:

Luna Anna Archey

Illustrators:

Megan Mulholland

Maggie Miller

Managing Editor:

Lev Facher

Editor in Chief:

Jennifer Calfas

Copy Editors:

Hannah Bates

Laura Schinagle

Emma Sutherland

THE
statement

COVER BY JAKE WELLINS

VIDEO: WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

Wednesday, February 4, 2015 // The Statement

A

nn Arbor is a city built
upon a framework of rela-
tionships — people finding

friends, jobs and love.

Writer Italo Calvino describes

a particular fictional city — Ersilia
— as full of color-coated strings,
each representing a relationship
between two people.

In his work, “Invisible Cities,”

Calvino writes, “When traveling
in the territory of Ersilia, you come
upon the ruins of the abandoned
cities, without the walls which do
not last, without the bones of the
dead which the wind rolls away:
spiderwebs of intricate relation-
ships seeking a form.”

Though time carries away the

physicality of cities and even of the
inhabitants themselves, the rela-
tionships made continue to stand
erect, to matter.

Strolling down the street this

fall somewhere near Greenwood
Avenue, I hear voices singing along
to Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Heal-
ing” on a paint-chipped porch.
While stuffing biology notes into
my backpack, I watch a student
and Graduate Student Instruc-
tor discussing their collaboration
on an upcoming research project
in New England planned for the
summer. After a “Spy Kids” mara-
thon, I look over at my friends and
wonder if I will be looking over at
them on my own porch somewhere
in Florida 60 years from now.

These relationships might begin

on campus, but their potential to
evolve into real-world friends, col-
leagues, and spouses is more of a
reality than I like to acknowledge.
Ann Arbor is a place to build these
relationships, but also to consider
our role and interactions with
people outside of the University
that are worth investing in — the
residents with wildflowers scat-
tering their front lawns or the guy
spooning lobster bisque into your
cup at Le Dog.

Paris has been called the city

of love, but college towns in the
United States might be our twisted
equivalent — where people find it,
bring it with them, lose it, agonize
over it, and download Tinder a few
times only to end up deleting it all
the same. Scribbling your initials
onto a five-euro lock, wrapping it
around the Pont des Amoreaux
and tossing the key into the river
below is the Paris equivalent of
kissing under the Arch at mid-
night.

There is a significant popula-

tion of Ann Arbor that consists
purely of residents (think: the
people who make you roll out
those fences between houses when
you’re planning a party). Many of
them are lifers, born here or hav-
ing attended college here. Their
lives and relationships grew here
and they chose to stay. I fantasize
sometimes about coming back to
Ann Arbor one day and finding
myself and what will probably be
a few weird little children named
Julip, Indigo, and Theodore living
in a rickety old house just walking
distance from Kerrytown.

Even the most cold-hearted and

focused among us can stumble
upon love and connections amid
the possibilities and opportunities
of this city. On autopilot, rushing

to a class or
to work, you
don’t see the
city. Trapped,
you end up for-
getting that it
is human con-
nection
that

makes a city
to begin with.
I wish I could
see all of the
strings
that

were
formed

between
us

in this city: to
see the ones
color-coated
to signify the
lasting
mar-

riages
that

began on the
streets of Ann Arbor, or the ones
that represent the grungy weirdos
we eventually call best friends
dancing mindlessly for the first
time at the Blind Pig, or our room-
mates, and all of the roommates
before us, talking at three in the
morning in the worn down, quirky
homes so many of us will “enjoy” at
some point in our college careers.

You think about a city as you

see it — no strings involved — but
they exist and that realization has

the power to banish the hopeless-
ness this overworked, underpaid
city can exude from time to time.
The numbers and connections are
insurmountably numerous and
the lives we touch altered, such
that while the walls of the city will
never again look how we remem-
ber them now, this place has been
and continues to be magical, a wel-
coming open door of opportunities
if you let it.

Becoming a Townie: A web of connections

B Y E M M A K E R R

THANKS, SCHLISS!
ON THE
RECORD

“This was my first major Michigan snowstorm,
and my reaction to your response over the last

two days is simply, WOW!”

– University President MARK SCHLISSEL, in
a letter to University employees who kept critical

operations up during Monday’s snow day.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND