Nibble they little feet

I try to walk around my neighborhood as often as possible, particularly on bright, sunfilled days like today. Living in the city is many things to many different people at many different times and places, but it's so close to me now, like a friend whose constant company is sometimes terrible, sometimes marvelous, and always familiar. I suppose I've lived so long on the edge of impermanence through military-forced nomadism and the shuffling of academic goals that thinking of a place as "home" is scarily, thoroughly delightful, however banal or complacent. This yellow-and-mauve apartment in this old apartment building on this block of South Philadelphia in the city of Whateverly Love has been an everchanging home since January of this year. Damned if it still ain't the apartment I'll die in, or even remain for the next year, but something warm tendrils around every time I set foot in the neighborhood, every time I'm sitting and working in sunbeams, or watching light color all these rowhouses like a carnival.

I guess I always want to remember the way sun filters through the streets here, setting red-brick houses in stark contrast against unnaturally blue skies. Unnatural for the city, because they oughta be smog-grey, right? Maybe they are, but they seem so clear. And the old trees along Broad St., I can see from my window -- they stand so tall and green and they whisper with the wind like they're telling me stories only trees can understand.

Anyway, I figure if I'm this glad to enjoy the sun and the sky and the trees and the air and the rain while I'm a citydweller, wandering to actual skyscraper-less, building-less environments should burst my aching heart.