Here, Now

So this is how it is now: I walk my dog 3 times a day, descending & then ascending 5 flights of stairs (no dogs allowed in the elevator). I bike to and from work on my nearly 5-decades-old Sturmey Archer, newly outfitted with bell, lights, Kryptonite lock, and a new seat that doesn't kill my ass. I'm sore at the end of the day and sore when I wake up. But it's worth it.

When I can, I travel without a bag, stowing the essentials in the pockets of my vintage leather jacket. Slide the metro card into one skinny outer breast pocket; in the other, stash debit card, cash, and ID (still my MI driver's license, though I no longer own a car and no longer live in MI), secure the iPhone with its water resistant case in the one hip pocket where the zipper still works, hide keys in inner breast pocket. Slip in a Bert's Bees tinted lip balm wherever there's room.

The bag I carry when I must carry a bag I bought for $18 from a guy on the street. Black, waterproof, with a shoulder strap, a zipper-pocketed flap that covers the top, and two internal compartments. I got it the same day I got my new boots: black Timberland hiking boots, boy's size 6, laceup, thick soles, waterproof too.

Tomorrow afternoon, it will be 3 weeks since I parked the 16-foot Budget truck in the west village & walked my travel-traumatized dog in a park, where a mom threw snowballs at 2 laughing kids. 4 weeks since the dog and I hauled ass out of Detroit in said truck, with an excellent friend in the passenger seat and a snowstorm clouding the windshield. It does not seem remotely possible that a month ago, I was in Southeast Michigan, frantically packing the rest of my stuff, or that 2 days later, I was in rural North Carolina, watching birds in the snow from my mom's kitchen window.

What seems much more real is this: all my bags and boxes are unpacked. I have a new used desk, dresser, and armoire, and they all actually fit in my room. I have a new bike helmet that (for the first time in my life) doesn't make me feel like a total dork. I ride or walk down Nostrand Avenue past convenience stores and nail shops and wig stores and tax return places and cheap clothing shops and places that I don't even know what they are and a record store with piles of dusty CDs and the black nationalist shop that says "The Truth Lives Here" on its awning and runs Farrakhan videos in the window all day, and Zen Caribbean Flavor, and the Roti House with its big red awning, and Trini-Gul restaurant with its framed NY Times review on the wall, and the all-night fried chicken and pizza joints, and I feel, somehow, easy. Grateful. Like I'm home and I've been home for a while.

Unpacking

is all I'll be doing for the next 48 hours. Or so.
You know how this goes...
I'll be back as soon as I'm settled.
Meantime, gathering many stories -
Just walking down the street in my new neighborhood is an experience rife with material for new writing.

And so! More of that soon, once the boxes are emptied, broken down, and safely stored high in a closet, not to be accessed for at least 12 months...

Did I mention I love my new place? And my roommate? And my block, and my street, and my 'hood? I do. More on all that later...