The landscape is a memory map.
Jul. 15th, 2022 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormThe city doesn't look the same to me but my body remembers. Tapping the transit card and swinging through the gate, those stairs at the station I've walked a million times. To get there I went past possibly the home I most loved before I moved, looked up at the plants on the deck.
Now the high pitched vibration of the cars on their rails that always reminded me of star trek when I was very little.
The mix of skin tones is familiar, heavily Asian and some south asian in the areas I frequent. There are no more masks than there were before, at least not covering faces, there are a couple pulled down.
Looking down on yards familiar from years of commuting across suburbs a couple folks have updated gardens or roofs, one has paved the front yard, one has tarped a presumably leaky roof.
Houses don't get upgraded in this city but they do get replaced, as I draw closer to the center, with row home or low-rise apartment blocks.
My mask almost protects me from the clouds of heavy morning perfume.
One more new roof, one demolition, a few gaggles of high schoolers out for the summer, iced coffees in hand.
On the sidewalk there were more skirts and shorts than usual but here everyone is in black and jersey knit.
Every station the train goes through I remember living there, often at multiple places, some for a few months and some for as much as a year. I lived here, I lived here, I lived here.
At the stop where Juggler owned his house for twenty years I crane my neck but can't quite see the spot. He sold it this summer, I think they're developing it into apartments. I planted raspberries and saskatoons there, and I ate the fruit. That never happens. There was feral elephant garlic in the beds and a pawpaw that didn't have a pollinator friend.
The next station has been changed, they've added a platform. The doors open on both sides of the train now. Soon we'll plunge underground and there will be nothing more to see.
Exit the train at the end. Turn left when they say to turn right. Weave through tunnels to the secret bathrooms, only two stores have changed. Skin tones are white outside the counter, dark behind.
Cruise ships, flower baskets, I worked here with my watering can longer than I lived anywhere in the city, wove these tunnels for years and years.
This plaza, they changed it 8 years ago they took my grove of trees out.
Unlike home, here I know how to camouflage. I'm a background character, brown shirt blue jeans. I'm probably more unseen here than anywhere.
Around the corner, glide through the tour busses, wait briefly at the light. Like a fish in water, no cognitive load at all, but it's not my water.
AndI lived here, and here, and here...
Now the high pitched vibration of the cars on their rails that always reminded me of star trek when I was very little.
The mix of skin tones is familiar, heavily Asian and some south asian in the areas I frequent. There are no more masks than there were before, at least not covering faces, there are a couple pulled down.
Looking down on yards familiar from years of commuting across suburbs a couple folks have updated gardens or roofs, one has paved the front yard, one has tarped a presumably leaky roof.
Houses don't get upgraded in this city but they do get replaced, as I draw closer to the center, with row home or low-rise apartment blocks.
My mask almost protects me from the clouds of heavy morning perfume.
One more new roof, one demolition, a few gaggles of high schoolers out for the summer, iced coffees in hand.
On the sidewalk there were more skirts and shorts than usual but here everyone is in black and jersey knit.
Every station the train goes through I remember living there, often at multiple places, some for a few months and some for as much as a year. I lived here, I lived here, I lived here.
At the stop where Juggler owned his house for twenty years I crane my neck but can't quite see the spot. He sold it this summer, I think they're developing it into apartments. I planted raspberries and saskatoons there, and I ate the fruit. That never happens. There was feral elephant garlic in the beds and a pawpaw that didn't have a pollinator friend.
The next station has been changed, they've added a platform. The doors open on both sides of the train now. Soon we'll plunge underground and there will be nothing more to see.
Exit the train at the end. Turn left when they say to turn right. Weave through tunnels to the secret bathrooms, only two stores have changed. Skin tones are white outside the counter, dark behind.
Cruise ships, flower baskets, I worked here with my watering can longer than I lived anywhere in the city, wove these tunnels for years and years.
This plaza, they changed it 8 years ago they took my grove of trees out.
Unlike home, here I know how to camouflage. I'm a background character, brown shirt blue jeans. I'm probably more unseen here than anywhere.
Around the corner, glide through the tour busses, wait briefly at the light. Like a fish in water, no cognitive load at all, but it's not my water.
AndI lived here, and here, and here...
