I’m on my way to town as I write this. A place I hate going to more every week. I used to joke about New York City just being a place to spend money and occasionally catch a decent concert if you’re not that kind of thing. Which I am not. That feels closer and closer to my relationship with Burlington.

Why would I go there? Just to spend money on things I do not need and cannot afford?

It’s nice to see family and old friends, but in a context where we might see a drug deal or a bank robbery and will have to spend a deranged amount of money on food?

I’m not about that.

I want everything at my house. The tools and materials for projects, the people I love, a garden. I don’t ever want to leave, and I’d prefer to build a wall along the road. That’s what I’ve been fantasizing about lately, a beautiful Japanese style garden wall.

Abby doesn’t share my enthusiasm for the wall. It’s a little obstreperous and not a little expensive. It would be an insane project. But truth be told I think it would make our house feel like heaven on earth. It would quiet road noise, it’d allow us to roam about without being perceived, it’d be lovely in a way that I can only really grasp in dreams.

I had a wall at one of the houses I grew up in. It protected us from a street far busier than the road we live on. Some of my fondest memories are reading in that back yard while listening to people walk and drive by. I loved that they didn’t know about me, couldn’t see me. It turned their passing from an inconvenience to something lovely and private and tender.

I would like to have that feeling again.