Horton Hears a Who
Tonight was the first time in a while where I felt a sense of being one of the people in Chicago. Watching from my seat on the bus as it lumbered west, I saw other humans with silly hats clustered in lit-up hotel lobbies, or in front of them smoking and shivering a little, underdressed in finery. There was snow dusting the planters and sushing the gutters, though compared with past years the weather is relatively mild.
The new year doesn’t mean much to me, since I have a handful of personal anniversaries more useful for marking progress: sobriety, breakups, deaths, moves, birthdays. It was nice to see other people out and about anyway, their eagerness making them seem oddly vulnerable, even harmless. I had a sense that I could have stepped off the bus at any stop and joined one of the knots or queues and been welcomed. Even if I hadn’t been on my way home I wouldn’t but it’s always nice to feel invited.
The year has just turned and as it did the whole neighborhood began to reverberate with thundering and doubtless illegal fireworks I couldn’t see from my corner of the closed-in porch. It’s hard to imagine those same people I felt a bit of kinship with raising such a din, but actually not that hard after all, I suppose.