My First Dusk as a Providence Tourist
Yes, these are the correct members of the bird symphony. This is the right tap water. The robin I saw just before I sat down is a robin, and today was a stream of sparrows, catbirds, chickadees, tufted titmice, birds I know from sight because of a book on birds I used to study with the fervor other children must have studied the Bible, Torah, Koran.
I don’t know their songs or calls, most of them. But the symphony of this dusk is achingly familiar. There really is no place like home.
I’m feeling more Californian as the culture shocks continue to go off, I’m comfortable admitting I moved about as far away from Providence as you can get and am just back here for a visit. It explains my little confusions, as the 2022 Providence slowly overwrites the very strangely-colored 2019 Providence. I was so crazy when I left here. What am I now?
Hugging the opposite pole hard, though it does no good. I have spent too long wreathed in shadow. I am feeling the warm enfolding arms of my friends (though not literally with the Nolans, I feel like they aren’t at the hugging stage of feeling covid-confident) and it is starting to shift the shadow off my shoulders, to reveal iridescent rainbow tinted skin.
I want to be writing about Salem and the good things today. I know there will be more bad things ahead because I’m in literal Trigger City, but I’m doing well. There is a robin digging a worm not ten full feet from me, so contentment comes easily. The cannabis doesn’t hurt. Thank you, California.