life outside the bubble
My friend Sean likes to foment community in unusual and interesting ways, and for him this isn't entirely an outward thing as it is an inward thing as well. "I was thinking," he said to me last night, "that maybe I don't need to ever leave my neighbourhood at all?" Naturally that'd short him on the odd opportunity for cornbread and company in the west end, but I occasionally see his point, somewhat like a fantasy, wherein everything is contained and makes sense and is proximal in a way that feels not limited, but full of blessing.
I feel that way about my own city, for the most part (it can only give me what it is, of course, and other places can only give me what they are), and today I imagined for a moment I might get away with the same kind of thing myself—only stay within these walls, shun the last-summer-flingness of Labour Day, buckle down and work before one of the city's main pleasures—that ten day stretch of sitting in a dark room, I mean—swallows me whole. If I haven't stayed in town for more than two weeks at a time in four months, shouldn't the counterbalance be to stay inside all day some days when I am home, reconnect with the pleasures of cleaning one's basement? But just as I was questioning my motives, I was reminded that you don't decide these things for yourself: invitations came loudly as four-fisted bangs on the door.
"We're going to be having a magic show today. In twenty minutes. Excuse me. The next one will start in twenty minutes. And my little sister tried to eat out of your ashtray but I'm not going to smoke until I'm sixteen, because my mother said you should try everything once in your life, and I'm also going to try cola, I'm eight and I've never tried it, but I think I'll have one bottle every four years. We'll be starting in twenty minutes. I'll come back and get you then."
And so of course I went, and even the (other) grumpy widow and the (other) disaffected hipsters on the block straggled over for the 3:40 showing: mostly sleight-of-hand, a pair of rigged dice, some sidewalk chalk and a stolen tampon. Everyone clapped, and everyone left themselves for a moment and joined what was going on around, because, and in spite of them. You can't fight it, I guess—I left the house and drank coffee and got all my work done, smoked out by the buzz of snowbirds and the trickery of children. And I have a feeling that the full goodness of days can't often happen in a tiny vessel like my own house. But at the top of the street, where the wildflowers bend and encroach into the sidewalk, and you can almost forget you're in civilization—well that may just be a portal.