budding scholar

I leave for the metro at 7:30am. The day is young, air still cold, the sky just growing light in the distance. I pass a mother carrying loaves of bread, and I see a line has already formed at the bakery. A man talks on his phone, sitting next to a bucket in front of a hotel, hand lightly resting on the window-cleaning brush. The grocery store, pharmacy, bank, and produce stand are all still dark, most not opening until 9 or 10. I stop at a crosswalk and the buzz of motorcycles taking off fills my ears, while I fumble in my pockets for gloves. I hear a train just leaving as I walk down the metro stairs, and the platform is empty of people. No one taking the train this time of day, I think. Then the next train roars up, the doors open, and I have to slide my bag down my arm to fit in the car, my gray wool coat crushing against the blacks and browns and whites of other winter coats.

My days are colored by these pieces of city life. The first thing I see out the window when I wake up are which windows in the loop of apartments outside have light. When we go to sleep late, I notice which windows still have light. There are too many to keep track of which ones have light from day to day, so I invent stories about anyone and everyone. On the weekends, I see people hanging their laundry on drying racks that take up half the balcony, covering them with plastic when the sky threatens rain. The traffic is a distant roar, punctuated by the honk of sirens during rush hour. The elevator takes my attention more when I’m home, and the distant rumble of a train 8 or 9 floors down under the ground, and the hum of the neighbor’s motorized shutter. Quiet, compared with our apartment in San Francisco.

And yet, all I crave today is open space, somewhere else. A different kind of noise. The sound of wind in pines, or rain soaked leaves whipping the windows at night. Birds singing, or the silence of fresh snow. Perhaps the slap of waves on a lake shore, or the roar of a river. After five years and two different cities, I’ve never yearned for trees and water the way I do now.

Yet here I am, in this city, at my desk in a windowless spare room, hearing the elevator gears and clink of a neighbor’s dishes. I sip peppermint tea and turn my thoughts to tomorrow’s school visit and interviews.

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What are the sounds of “here” for you right now? Is this where you want to be?