Knowing Bliss

Props to dear Jules, from whom I stole this idea. The morning I left from Boston I made a mix CD designed to let me cry, and let me heal from crying. It was also populated with songs for belting along to (the virtues of driving alone) and songs I wouldn’t mine listening to roughly four times, since I only had time to make one CD. Plus the Get Up Kids because when 50% of your drive is the Mass Pike, you have to play that song, right?

Overall I was happy with it, but I think the emotional switches were a bit too quick. For Burundi, I will make at least two mixes: “Songs When I Need to Cry,” and “Crying would be a bad idea right now”. Suggestions welcome.

1000 words? You’ve all been amazing.

. . . don’t do it in the summer.

Because even on the (second) hottest day you can remember, a cooler wind will leave the Harbor or the Charles just to find you and wish you well. And the afternoon light off the River or the Pond will know just how to sneak between the trees and break you open. And buildings that have been a background to your life will slide into the haze of July, edges fuzzy like they are already something you barely remember. And the children and the birds will be splashing in fountains and even the cashier will be friendly to you because the cold city of that other season has disappeared. What you have been here, what you have hated, what you have loved, will sneak along side and inside you, because the hot air retains emotions even better than moisture. You will turn your bike over your favorite bridge one last time and be newly amazed that you can be newly amazed each time you fall in love with the skyline. Then you will watch the little white sails moving along the water and know that everywhere the city is going on around you, and tomorrow, without you.

Friday I drove from Boston to Philadelphia for Addie’s wedding. As I took the I90 Exit to get on 84 through Connecticut, I spotted the sign to continue on to Springfield and then Albany and promptly choked up, realizing that in 10 days or so, I’ll be continuing West, car full of what remains of life in Boston, heading out for good. I don’t feel ready at all to say goodbye to life here.

The sadness had passed (or at least been displaced by NJ Turnpike induced rage) by the time I hit 95 in Delaware, where I was spending Friday night. And I remembered back to July 2005, when I was on a Greyhound bus traveling to DC to start my first real job, we passed the exit for the University and I almost cried on the bus, shaken by the realization that I wasn’t getting off I95 there, that whatever life I’d had there was done.

It was comforting to remember that I have mourned pieces of my life before, and then moved on to new discoveries, new loves, and rebuilt my life – never quite the same, but never less than what it was. I think I’ll need to remember that this week.

I fly out of Boston with inexplicably less than the usual take-off nerves, so look down over the city as the plane lifts out of Logan. As we swing over the Harbor and turn back, the plane’s climb mirroring the circled edge of land, I’m filled with a sudden fondness. “Oh, Boston,” I think, and then because it resonates I think it again. We swing out over the narrow rusted bridge to the shelters on Long Island and the thin strip of Wollaston Beach where once I walked someone else’s dog. “I didn’t know I loved you,” I wonder to myself, as the green of the South Shore disappears beneath clouds.

But when I land in DC, I picture the hot air awaiting me at the opening of the metro, and I feel my pulse quicken, my mouth water, my heart and stomach collide at the bottom of my ribs; in short, the way I feel when I anticipate a lover.

And really, what has DC been if not my first adult love – exciting and sudden, a heat verging on oppression, a wet breath on my skin that I can never feel without a shudder of remembered joy.

And then Boston, violent more in its coldness than its passion, withdrawn at times, but sneakily winding quiet arms around me that I don’t want exactly to leave behind.

While there’s something sad to know I could never have them both at once, that I will always miss one or the other, something in me savors this blessing, that I have loved two cities, who each in their own way have loved me back.

So, last week, my roommates and I hauled our junk to Jamaica Plain, into our lovely new house. One of our reasons for moving here was to find a more “neighborhood-y neighborhood” than Allston/Brighton. So far, it has not disappointed. On move in day, one roommate encountered little girls having a bake sale across the street to support the endangered gorillas (they had pamphlets!) . I have noticed in general a higher propensity for people exchanging greetings while passing in the street.

This morning I went out for a run around Jamaica Pond, and as I was cooling down on my block, I passed a woman walking a small dog. I greeted her and stepped to the side to let them pass, and she apologized as the dog stopped and looked up at me. “No problem,” I assured her. She made a frustrated face and announced, “She won’t poop!”

It’s nice that we’re a community now, and we can talk about those things.