Breeding lilacs.

I grew up surrounded by fields and forests, with alarm clocks and snooze buttons of birds calling through my always open window. I memorized at what time and angle the sun would grow ready to send its rays into my room. I have been writing a book this summer, on a topic that makes me look back to these things. I had a thick sponge of lawn rolled out wide around my house, where I would lay and listen to my neighbours' horses and children trotting about during summer afternoons. These things made me feel simple.

This summer I'm living in a big city. I have always found a honeyed novelty to places like this, where bricks and pavement scab the dirt, the real earth. When I was young my family went to Disneyworld for a vacation, and padding along the theme park street was not unlike my daily wanderings here. There are candy shops and silly trinket shops. There was a magical precipitation while standing on the sidewalk there on Main Street, USA. Here it rains for perhaps twenty minutes every day, and those minutes, like magic, tend to be the ones where I am out for my walk. The rain quiets the sharp buzz of these buildings, and softens the grate of old memories against brinking horizons. The rain makes this all simple, all the same.