I usually wake up first, the first human in any case, and pour the coffee and feed the birds who never talk to me despite my hopeful chirping. I think they are on strike for people they love more than they love me, but I love the same people more than I love the birds. Check the cats, clean the boxes. If I can make myself remember that it's not that cold, I will go outside and walk past homes breathing various forms of suburban life support, ranging from trees-grass, trees-grass to someone who's really pushed the concept and included a little library and multiple water elements. Some people have miniature creeks. Many have porches with pairs of chairs but almost nobody sits on them, much as Czechs rarely seem to be on their balconies, which I also do not understand. There are neighborhood watch signs co-existing with (and low-key contradicting) the "in this house" signs, which I normally associate with what might be called gentrification but probably not in the suburbs. There are turkeys roaming the streets (not streets, but ways and drives and courts), modern dinosaurs, hopelessly misplaced, their horrible necks a shade of blue I'd say was not found in nature and I'd be wrong. They are very ugly and very beautiful and I am aware of being brave when I pass them which means that in addition to being absurd they are a little scary. I similarly pass people and don't know what to do because it is neighborly to say hello but I am not really a neighbor. I nod and make a hello noise. I grew up here, walked down a nearby road to the bus stop for school, down another to the Goodwill where we sorted through trash and treasure with the bored sophistication of the universal teen. I was, in retrospect, a largely useless human then; my memories of myself are of cleaning and childcare but I think I did much less than I could have done for anyone, including myself. I guess it was four or five years, a span of time, and there were several versions of me, based on the photos I've unearthed. Watching my face emerge from a thirteen-year-old's curtain of hair and pink-and-beige make-up to what I thought was ferocity but to my eyes now still seems soft, almost fuzzy. Was I ever of use. I joked with one friend that we provided free therapy so I guess I listened to people, maybe that was good. In the evening we watch movies that remind us as little as possible of the world beyond the sidewalk, which is frankly much more terrifying than a whole rafter of turkeys. Today I worked and tomorrow I will work again, at the job I'm paid for, and this is how it goes. Sometimes I think about home and wonder what I'd be doing there (colder, grumpier) but home is wherever I am which is, for the moment, here. "But the thing worth doing well done/ has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident." I am, truly, for the most part, happy.
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