the dharma blog

The number 61 bus takes me clear across these cities on my way home from work. First, it’s out of downtown Minneapolis (crowds of office workers at the stops, usually waiting for other busses) then across the elegant Hennepin Ave. Bridge (the giant Grain Belt Premium sign on my left, the green suspension cables, St. Anthony Falls on my right, the Stone Arch Bridge beyond, the university hospital towers in the hazy humid distance).

I see a group of tourists having their photo taken on the bridge, all of that in the background, and I love that I love this place. I realize that I love it because I know it, and that I know it because it is home.

I know a lot of folks who have fled, or else drifted away, not enough holding them here. That hasn’t happened to me, and I consider myself fortunate, though I also can’t hold it against anybody who simply didn’t develop the same attachment, or felt a stronger pull from elsewhere.

But yes, this is home, and what a complex thing that is. Everything this bus takes me past, I seem to have some connection to from the life I have lived here so far. A neighborhood where a friend once rented the first floor of a house, a grocery store where I used to shop, a park where I once laid on the grass under leafy trees and blue skies.

Heat lightning blazes
    The cavorting gods of the ancients
Watch it from a backyard