The loop’s been established through the woods and we talk about it with all the specificity of novels or New York City architecture tours:
Just past the second brook crossing,
The place where you step on the stick,
The clay cliff,
The little spring,
Where the blood was,
Where you can see the truck,
The large fallen pine,
The old timber road, the one that skirts the property and takes you up to the overlook,
The bridge,
The fern grove,
These places are terribly familiar, and it’s lovely.
Just past the second brook crossing,
The place where you step on the stick,
The clay cliff,
The little spring,
Where the blood was,
Where you can see the truck,
The large fallen pine,
The old timber road, the one that skirts the property and takes you up to the overlook,
The bridge,
The fern grove,
These places are terribly familiar, and it’s lovely.
Burlington felt that way at times: the nice yard around the corner, the decorated fence, Myers bagels, the building, the train depot, the shed full of salt, the grass by the lake close enough for your ice cream not to have gotten melty by the time you’ve sat there.
This feels different.
My time in the city felt like a list, islands of experience or aesthetic on a grid to be made note of as I travel along the X or Y axis.
Life in a little valley by the indigo house feels more like the place between waking and sleeping, or the recollection of a dream, while still under the covers. I become the place and the memory of it. The patterns of my mind shape themselves to the hills of the place, and the logic of it all becomes unavoidable, comprehensive.