The rain never went away, but it was nourishing flora, slowing down traffic and pounding windows and blowing so hard that I could feel wind gusts through closed off glass. Throwing in a couple of striking art exhibits, a critically acclaimed movie and a partial grocery store run made it a better than average day. Having a gumball machine ask me “what is time?” and answering a friend’s question about a song and recovering my wallet and pocket knife were all much more to the good than buying unintentional candy bars and forgetting to score other desired items.

Just before the street light came on, I thought about what it felt like to be back in the city. I’ve been making it back on certain weekdays, but not to this corner in a while. It wasn’t the same as going by the hospitals in the city where I work weekdays. Maybe it’s my antenna. Maybe it’s something else.

Sure, it’s going away for a few days, and it’ll feel like longer, but it’ll be back. It’ll be something to remember somatically rather than mentally: pair the walking, the footsteps, the coffee cup with the coffee far too late in the day to do any good, and the warmth of dressing for the chilly office but now being out in public, and call it up once the clouds gather and the drops start falling from the sky and the temperature plummets.

Geography is not a cure, but sometimes it’s a necessary distraction. Call up a corner store for a story, then find yourself walking into the store to satisfy your curiosity and be thorough. Make your way back out to the main drag and catch a ride which u-turns past the last place you remember playing a live gig. Catch a lucky break with a garrulous guy to show off the city of his memories, the mind map against the actual territory, and go forward.

All it takes is a little tinkering at the edges of things and an absence of notice, and whoops, suddenly something is wrong, unevenly distributed, concerning enough to dial a phone number and look up Wikipedia entries to learn about. Anyone can play, on an amateur basis if need be, and anyone can get that work, alas.

I figured I’d hear that song because when do we gather without singing some version of it, either to each other in jest or in all seriousness and awareness of ceremony? But I hadn’t expected to hear the other song 35 years after the first time, no longer a teen but still in need of its tenor and its advice.

Things are sliding, and so are some people and places. There’s no stake to jab into the ground to hold fast. This shouldn’t be more than annoying. After all, if you can control yourself, you’re ahead of the game and in better shape than others. But some days, it’s more than just annoying, and the next day can’t come soon enough to get it away. Distance is the best perspective for those things.

A meeting, settling accounts and signing papers in person, as much seasonal as necessary thanks to technological shortcomings, followed by a light matinee and some meaningful loafing and a barrel roll through a novel just in the nick of time based on an old story made new, all too seasonally appropriate and still too soon.

I spent the day moving between buildings where people are trying to figure out to get things done, and headed home with the welcome distraction of music suggested by a coworker, and neighborhood callouts during my drive from a place that isn’t so much a building as it is an archive or a emergent space.

I think I’m still young and waiting around to get old, and then the streets and the businesses tell me to get off their lawns, and my coworkers tell me what musicians they’re listening to, and I get prompts reminding me of what I was doing on such and such a day, and I hardly know what year it is and which end is up, only that I’m happy to have the city, the job, the moment and the company while it lasts.