Saturday, April 09, 2005

waiting for the other shoe to drop

Well, it's been a beautiful day here in the neighborhood.

I started off with a walk down to the local coffee shop for some joe and a croissant, then ambled down to the pet store for supplies and a long conversation with the owner about Dorothy Parker, the Algonquin Roundtable, and the (mis)representation of Prohibition-era women writers. After that, what else could I do but duck into the used bookshop next door for a browse? Next door on the other side is the guitar store, owned and run by the kind of guy who would look more at home on a Grateful Dead album cover than behind the counter of his own business; I popped in for a few repairs to my guitar and ended up getting drawn into a discussion of Russian balalaika music.

Back home again for a bite to eat, I joined my housemates (my place is the only private apartment in a larger co-op style house) for a luxurious sprawl in the sunny front yard, idly flipping through seed catalogs and planning my fantasy garden. The household dog was out, too - soaking up the sun like the world's goofiest, friendliest solar cell. Across the street, a teenaged boy was playing with his own dog, and a little girl who couldn't have been more than four walked proudly up and down the sidewalk, tugging gently on the leash of an amiable old basset hound.

All in all, it's been a pretty idyllic day, here in lovely Roslindale. It's closer to my childhood memories of sunny green Memphis, feeling safe and welcome in my old neighborhood (and the world at large), than anything I've experienced in my adult life.

It makes me want to preserve the day in words, in photographs, like pressed flowers - warmth and neighborliness nestled between the leaves of a heavy dictionary for the generations to come. I'm worried it won't last, and that I'll forget this feeling when night comes and I'm feeling small and lonely again.

It's hard to feel too worried, though, when - even as I write this post - the piercing notes of children laughing, the earthy smell of fresh peat from the neighbors' early flower beds, and the golden brilliance of the late afternoon sun are all drifting in my open window, enveloping me in the knowledge that this is my new home, and it's pretty darn great.

2 Comments:

Blogger P W Ruiz said...

hey your write beautifully, keep it up! really took me there....

10:00 PM  
Blogger Carrie said...

Thanks!
And you draw beautifully...

10:18 PM  

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