A note

The last note of the harmonica solo in this song gets me, every single time.

New beginning

I began, in my head, listing things I'll miss about Saratoga Springs:

1. My loft, and the cat playing goalie in it.


2. Our skylights, and the clear bright light they fill our living room with.


3. Our fireplace.


4. Uncommon Grounds.


5. adfamiliares's colleagues, and her students.


6. Ducklings in Congress Park.


7. Looking out the bedroom window at an extensive Civil War cemetery.


8. Proximity to the Adirondacks.

I'm not sure why we do this, catalog our future losses, but it might be a way to encompass the things we will lose, to break a great looming mass down into manageable slices. Of course, it doesn't work. There is an infinitude of tiny things I'll miss, too many for any list: the crane the stone carvers across the street use to lift headstones into the truck. The tiny mysterious garden downtown, hidden behind a white wrought-iron fence and wedged into an alley. But they are, none of them, as big as they seem; the new place will be wonderful too, and everything I think I'll pine for will transmute into warm nostalgia before it can hurt me. It is an infinite series of losses that sums to less than one.