August 9, 2003

• I keep thinking about Tennessee. About being a little kid on the banks of the South Harpeth, learning to skip stones and being afraid to go in the deep part of the river. It was all so big, and so mysterious, and I was surrounded in this strange summer land by people who looked after me. I remember feeling safe, safe enough to spend hours examining pebbles, chasing dragonflies, hiking up and down the path to the cabin from the riverbank.
  
  Crickets, bullfrogs, fireflies. The cool after the sun sets. The sound of someone spraying themselves with Off. Watermelon. Fried chicken. The deep, hollow sound of footsteps on the porch. Crowds of cousins, a seemingly endless array of them.
  
  I've read about places in, for instance, India, where there's a tree in the middle of the village. Everyone goes there and social discourse happens. The whole of the village is united by the tree. A big tree in an open space becomes the definition of community.
  
  Three or four different generations of villagers interact, maybe in a friendly manner, maybe in a way less than friendly, but it's all there, under the shade of the tree.
  
  Whenever I read something like that, I mourn that I grew up in the suburbs, worlds away from a commons, away from a gathering place, away from a 'third place,' as social anthropologists call it now. But I didn't completely miss it. I had summers in Tennessee. Not the same thing, but still along those lines.
  
  And dammit, I want my riverbank back. My wading into the river and playing in a capsized canoe. I want my twilight catching fireflies back. The bluegrass. The angled log fence. The outhouse.
  
  The belonging, even if only by default, in a family, in any group at all.

  • 3:09 am
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