2024-12-13 - 10:14 p.m.

Cut out early, at three, and walked up a neighborhood, to the post office there, to drop off some Christmas things. Headphones in, but tried all the same to keep the eyes open, trying unusual, for me, streets. Some blocks may have been entirely new to me. Out front of the packed-in townhouses, the stuff that people choose to signify: here I am, with my passions. The Palestine flags, the Ravens or Orioles banners, the tiny front-yard libraries, the Vote Harris signs. It was nice, peeking into lives, briefly, from the sidewalk, and then moving on, quick, quick.

The air, in this dirty old lovely bruise of a city, was perfect. Cold but not quite freezing, a little breath clouding out in front. Still, though, the thin and brittle air, as I was moving through it, walking fast, backpack tight on the shoulders, just still and cold and crisp. I stopped into a place on the avenue that sells old clothes but cleaned up good, a little more expensive than they should be but then again they went out and got them, didn't they. I flipped through the racks and found a denim jacket that I thought my wife would like. I stuffed that down into the backpack and stopped in somewhere else and got a bottle of wine. I snugged it in there alongside the jacket, neck-first.

Walked back, the smell of snow in the nose, the Friday-afternoon possibility bright in the eyes. It's not a perfect world, and it's not an easy one, but you'll take a cold, failing-light walk when you can. Like a crisp apple that'll turn soon enough.

previous - next