'Three O'Clock in the Morning'

One of those crazy dancing-all-night songs, and I like it. For me, this song goes with the ever popular 'I Could Have Danced All Night' and 'Oh What a Beautiful Morning'. Maybe that's the common theme here, the glory of the morning after a long night.

I'm still feeling very grateful, every morning, every evening, for the closing of the nuisance bar across the street. I go to sleep with no screaming on the street outside, and that's a very beautiful thing. No gun shots, less trash, I cannot be tired of these glories.

My sister and I talked last week about loving living in a city, coming from long years of growing up in the country. I love the outdoors, love the woods, the quiet, the animals, crunchy leaves and things rotting under foot, the un-landscaped hills, water running through in all sizes of streams, runs, rivulets, moving in and out of the earth. This was growing up in the woods for me. No neighbors (at least none with kids to play with when I needed this) and much green, many trees, birds and squirrels outside my windows, quiet at night to hear the insects, darkness to see the stars in the sky.

When I went home for my grandmother's funeral, I spent more time at my parents's house than I had on other recent trips. Being inside my parents's home, I can't help but want to clean, to organize, and I remember again and again that this is not my space, not my job or responsibility. It does not have to be my life now, either, and when I find boxes piling up the hallways of my own home I start to panic a bit.

Being outside of my parents's house of late, out and about in the borough, is one heart break after another, until my chest aches and it hurts to breathe. The beautiful rolling hills, the woods, the farms, are all disappearing. The landscape is becoming one suburban development after another. The view from what was my bedroom, once unbroken trees with a deer path through the center, now has a huge house in it. The latest heartbreak was the total breakdown and re-working of an entire intersection of roads nearby--so that yet another new housing development could go in, directly next to protected land. This somehow only feels worse, like more of a violation.

At this time of year it is a wonderful thing to wake up to birds singing, starting before the sky has even begun to lighten. It's another reason that living in the city is good: I can still hear the birds, they still will live here. My part of this city is coming to life in good ways. Living elsewhere, seeing the rapid encroaching changes, might hurt too much, might break my spirit as well as my heart.