It looks different at night (Day 7)

Yesterday, I did something I don't do often: I had a cup of tea and later a (vegan, gluten-free) cookie. Thus, at 4:30 PM, after working out at home, I was still really energetic, and decided that I wanted--needed--a walk outside.

(I take that back: on Tuesday I had the same cookie as well as some matcha, but I also had a very long walk that day as well. There is a pattern!)

I didn't have a plan when I started except that I needed to be in my favorite bit of Boston's greenspace while I still had the light. But after I passed through it, my body just wanted to keep going. And so I did for the next 90 minutes, as I lost all the light. Eventually, I got tired, but I kept powering through until I got to a train station (amazingly, the Orange Line of the MBTA still works, though not every line in the system can make that claim).

I grew up in a bunch of places, particularly Cambridge, but I spent a lot of my time before, during, and after college on Huntington Avenue. It's always bittersweet traveling down that street, no matter how often I do it, taking note of what has changed and what has stayed the same. Some changes I approve of, some I mourn (and others I anticipate). 

I consider myself fortunate to have been able to have contemplated them last night on a heady walk, and then fortunate that I had a home in the present to go back to. My relative good fortune was driven home when I got to the train and someone asked to get in on my ticket. I didn't have a chance to say yes--which I was going to--before one of the MBTA attendants came out of their booth to scold the person who had asked me that they should have asked her instead. She let him and two other people who couldn't afford $2.40 for the privilege of riding a decrepit "public" transportation system. (Imagine not wanting to ask someone like that for help.) Maybe those people had a warm home with people who were happy to see them when they arrived, and maybe they also enjoyed a hot drink there as well, but home should shelter us from the elements, not the callousness of other people.

Deb in the City