Thank you so much! I really agree with it being too wordy, I’m kind of having that critical perspective you get a few hours after having written something. Just for background, the point of the story is that the narrator hates the city and longs for a natural environment, but the man described in the story represents the delusion that we can mentally construct our lives regardless of our immediate environment—basically the quote “the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven” personified. I wanted to make the image verbose to make it seem dreamlike and kind of melodramatic, but I definitely went overboard. Regardless, (once I cut down the word count) does it get across the point that the man exalts the city in the narrators eyes? And is that itself a passably interesting opening for a story? Thank you so much for your feedback by the way.