boom boom boom

There is literally a spring in my step.

Climbin' up on Solsbury Hill, I could see the city lights...

I'm literally bouncing in my flipflops down the bumpy brick sidewalk. The world is full of news good and bad. Dear friends are in love and getting married. Someone has died. I flounce my way to the drycleaner. The sudden sunshine makes mundane errands positively joyful.

I was feeling part of the scenery, I walked right out of the machinery...

The Hill is full to bursting with the smell of cherry blossoms. When you live in Washington in the spring you don't stop to smell the flowers; the scent halts you in your tracks and shakes you by the shoulders. It's not just the blossoms. Every other front yard has suddenly exploded with flowers and the gardeners who tend to them.

When I think that I am free
Watched by empty silhouettes
Who close their eyes but still can see
No one taught them etiquette

The streets are filled with people. Children racing plastic trucks down the street, their yoga-pant clad mothers walking behind them in gossipy pairs and threesomes, always keeping one eye on their shrieking kids. Twentysomethings, the men in suits that always look a little too big for them, walk from the Metro with a cell phone or an iPod bud attached to their ears. Retired couples putter in their front yards, watering plots of tulips and impatients.

It's days like this when I love this city and this neighborhood the most. Then OOF I trip over a loose brick in the sidewalk, snapping me out of my goofy reverie.

I will show another me
Today I don't need a replacement
I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant...

I wander through Lincoln Park. The steak marinating in the fridge needs at least another fifteen minutes, and I've already run all my little neighborhood errands. I've never been an outdoorsy person, but over the last year I find myself craving sunshine and grass. Sunshine and grass in a controlled manner, of course. The kind where families of every color play together on the jungle gym, where friends meet to kick around a soccer ball after work. A park. So simple, but so wonderful. Is there anything better than a sweet oasis in the middle of a crazy, messy world?

My heart going boom boom boom...

Now thunderstorm clouds have blocked the sun and are starting to race overhead. But they're not here yet. Right now it's just me and the dogs and the happy strangers bonded by our joy at just being in this moment. And, of course, Peter Gabriel.

When the storm does come I'll stand on the street to brace myself against the wind. And then I'll go home and eat my steak and drink my wine and be just as merry.


"Hey" I said "You can keep my things,
they've come to take me home."