i will listen long as i am able (there's nowhere i'd rather be)

I may never have been so content as I was spending all day Tuesday in the car with people I love, looking out at the city from the windows. We went to pick up Alessandra from the airport, and -- you know, I leave the city, I spend my days here, and every time I begin to think that it's only imagination, or want-to-be-wanting, or sentimentality, but every time I come back, to a city, or to my city (I haven't seen Boston in three years now), there's a spark that lights up inside of me and I feel more right and more aligned and so very hungry for everything that I see. The city is a part of myself, and I belong to it. I love everything about the city (well, nearly; crime doesn't rate high on my loveability charts), even things nobody else seems to see much in. I love the grit and the dirt and the jumbled-together-ness, the way cities are a combination of every world. Through the windows we saw a bus stop with a line of waiting people: people from every perspective and space of living and shade of skin, businessmen in their crisp suits and students with their backpacks and urban youth in oversized sweats. All the buildings shooting up, concrete and grace -- and the little ones, crushed up together like families, vintage clothing shops and family-owned restaurants and corporate chains and music stores and hairdressers and everything in between: a smorgasbord of humanity and culture. I remember Pittsburgh on my birthday: not far from the elegant museum with its long graceful stairs there were ramshackle brick structures and ancient trees on their way to pulling up pavement.

Thursday I spent making stays (well, mostly watching while everyone else made stays and occasionally helping out or finding necessary items) and eating an obscene amount of cake and reading Trivial Pursuit questions (Baby Boomer edition! the answer is always "John Lennon") and drafting Harry Potter: The Musical ("oh where is the horcrux? oh where is the horcrux? oh where oh where oh where oh where is the horcrux?") and meta-discussing Harry Potter with a roomful of people which included adults (remember when I said, "I only ever have this sort of conversation on the internet"? -- this sort of thing is ruddy surreal) and watching musical comedies about the signing of the Constitution and other such things.

Today all of my library books came in at once (I only ordered them last week! I've never gotten four books after only one week before!) and the people at Hockman's (Mr and Mrs Hockman? I have no idea, actually, even though I talk to them often) slipped a couple of peppermint chocolates into my paper bag along with my chocolate-covered Oreos and I rode home singing and spent the late afternoon reading a book I've never read before by an author I love, which is the sort of afternoon that is difficult to beat.

(And I haven't been very diligent about LJ-life in recent weeks, as I'm still catching up a bit from the holidays and keep disappearing into this bizarre otherworld of Actual Life. So, if I haven't been commenting, it's not personal, and I do mean to, and I love you all. You are the very best f-list in the world, as I do hope you know.)