So much better than I used to be
I often forget quite how beautiful this city can be. It's for days like yesterday to remind me.
I went to the bookstore after class to read comic strips by Jules Feiffer, and found myself so contented and quietly, simply happy with the way the clouds skidded across the sky that I didn't want to go home. So I walked the whole long way from Highland to Stone, finding beautiful graffitti and little bits of scenery I'd somehow missed before. Someone was taking photos of a busker on 4th Ave, and someone else was filming in a parking lot.
And then when I ended up wandering around on the train tracks, I found a vertebra dried on a wooden tie, and a canal that had flooded with rain, a sunken area with the tracks running over it. It looked like a little river, like the little creeks in Montana where I used to spend so much time building dams and playing in the mud. Broken colorful concrete, an armchair in an underpass, scraps of clothing in the thorny trees, and this gorgeous perfect water running in the desert in the middle of the city.
I soaked my socks but not as badly as I thought, because my boots are sturdy. I am going back when it's dryer with a flashlight and a smile. On my way home I saw a group of pro-choice protestors help push a stalled car out of traffic It's going to rain again tonight. The crumbling brick warehouses downtown are surrounded by ocotillos that, like me, have been uprooted and struck into the earth, and like me they have put down roots in this beautiful city where they stand.
The magic is going to fade but for now I have pictures and a railroad spike and this blister on my heal to remind me.