This morning I discovered that someone had arived at this site by searching for ‘proximity and intimacy’. Seemed a strange search, so I followed it back a bit and discovered that Dante’s definition of hell is ‘proximity without intimacy’

Interesting way of seeing it…

Why come here?

Because I had a quote from Hugh McKay’s novel Winter Close, a story simply about a street in Sydney, which says the following:

“Rich (central character) is fond of saying that the thing about Winter Close is that it fosters a real sense of community. That’s a big claim and I wish I could share Rich’s confidence in making it. Now that Sydney has grown to four million, communities are hard to come by: a common complaint among Sydneysiders is that ‘we don’t know our neighbours’ – as if that’s the neighbours fault. I’ve given up saying ‘why don’t you knock on their door and introduce yourself?’ The puzzled looks I receive make it clear I have missed the point: plenty of people like not knowing their neighbours and only pretend to complain about it. Suburbia offers the wonderful cloak of anonymity for those who want the security of proximity without any of the demands of intimacy” P.10

So… it would seem that if McKay’s view of suburbia is correct, then Dante would view living in the suburbs as hell…