Moving Into Lafayette Square

It’s important that I moved to The City. It marks a jump in bravery for me. Bravery. What is that? I couldn’t make this move the year before because I was afraid of being isolated amongst all the Others I Did Not Know. In the country, or small townishness, one can pretend the world isn’t filled with such a density of Others. This is at least what I imagine to be so. It took a romantic crisis to move me off my paralyzed comfort chair (that’s not literal, Others) and into a life of my own. It had been a long time since I’d attempted a life of my own. Really, since I started having children, lo those many years ago. Without attempting to explain the intricacies here which, Frankly, I think are just boring as hell, I will only say that I thought I would be living alone and that I had no ties save the occasional visiting “grown” offspring, and so I decided to please only myself. I don’t know how many of you are mothers, but I can tell you that in spite of my selfish, selfish ways, this was an impetus that hadn’t moved me since I felt the first stir of my eldest son in that virgin womb of mine, one thousand thousand lightyears hence.

Add to that the simple realization, after getting stalked and peeped upon in the tame country wilds of Jerseyville, Illinois, and heartbroken living close across the street from my true love in a gritty suburbia, I knew I had nothing to fear from The City. In fact – and I knew it to be true – there is no safe place on Earth, so what difference should it make where I live?

Here there is beauty. Color. There are people who know my face (and not from looking through my bedroom window). There are small rewards and sweetnesses just for walking, and flowers and tall, queenly houses painted and arranged around the square park and they speak of permanence, order. There is in them something reaching outward, looking for promenade, for singing, for movement into rather than retreat out of, something safer than the absence of crime or risk. And even though I am at heart a hermit, I think I need the thing that risks friendliness in the face of carjacking. I just need to know that’s what’s outside my door.