You can think airplane wing, or that the lights are beautiful at night:

Looking out an airplane wing at the lights of a city always makes me feel like my life has cleaved in two: there must be one of me here, on this airplane, in between everything and looking down, and another of me down there somewhere, living in the lights. And this time, on my way to my fifth-year high school reunion in Boston, the two of me were separated in time. On the airplane I was twenty-three and drinking water. On the ground I was driving on a suburban street, maybe with Doug or Colin, maybe having just seen a movie I didn't care for that much. But the song on the radio had good cymbals and it was finally warm enough to have the windows down.

Being back here reminds that spring has a smell.

I know that I keep writing this same thing, that somehow it is always high school--but not the real high school, just my new version of it--and always there is driving and pop songs and a weird taste of potential. Elanor wonders why I'd go to the reunion, why I'd mythologize high school. I'm not sure. It's because it was rich--richer than anything I'd lived up to that point--and scary at times. And because maybe it's not just about high school, but also about this house I don't live in anymore, this lake, New England, the smell, and the feeling that I could still do anything.

And maybe I still will do anything, because the lake smells good tonight.
posted by Adam at 10:10 PM [edit]

My name is Adam Rosenblatt, I am twenty-three years old, and I currently live in Austin, Texas, though my heart is sometimes in Austin, sometimes in my hometown near Boston, and often in a string-bean shaped country far to the south called Chile.

This site will be for Border Diaries, which are tales of my work in the colonias (low-income housing settlements) in Starr County, along the Texas-Mexico border. It will be for Detective Stories. It will be for comics, once I get quicker at producing them, and master the art of scanning them in (thanks in advance for the help, Tomacito). The site is called "Hope First", for Hope First Comics, my imaginary publisher. A nod to my belief that hope is the basis for all creative and political work. It is also called "This is Cyclical", which is the name of my comics magazine. Enjoy, and write to me at ad_rosenblatt@hotmail.com about anything.


posted by Adam at 5:12 PM [edit]