Saturday Morning Coming Up

Today I woke up like I have not on a Saturday morning in quite some time: before 2:00pm and less than mildly hungover.

This minor victory to the beginning of my day was quickly turned into a short trip to Wegman's where my roommate and I had our jokes about the lives we were leading somehow oddly reaffirmed when I walked by my prom date, unnoticed, only to overhear a conversation that mentioned she had recently been married.

On the ride home I jumped out of the car at a traffic light to pick up two tubes to fix my bike's two flat tires. And having gotten that out of the way I began walking the six blocks home and noticed it started snowing.

I have been waiting for snow in Buffalo for two years now. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to keep walking in that weather so I hurried home, unpacked my groceries, ate and headed back out to go for a walk.

As I walked south down Elmwood humming songs from Dylan's Time Out of Mind there was an odd feeling that I was somewhere both in my past and my future--a combination of a longing romanticism of previous days and the optimism that there is a pay off somewhere down the road that says everything I've ever done had rightfully lead up to that moment--in the very moment that I was experiencing.

The snow still falling, my breath visible and an unexpected warmth derived from the otherwise dreary gray overcast above me, for the first time in months I felt comfortable right where I was as I was right where I wanted to be. Even though I was just walking, observing, passing by and not actually touching anything, it--Buffalo--was all making an impression upon me that made me feel as though I were as much a part of it as it was a part of me. These were the moments that would always be recalled when remembering Buffalo and I was conscious enough to enjoy the moment for what it was.

I made it all the way downtown on my walk, saw the new M&T building that, while still new and pristine to offer any sort of welcoming feeling, will at least give notice that there were in fact still people living in Buffalo in the '00's, made it down Chippewa and then back up Elmwood before going all the way back north to Talking Leaves on the corner of Bidwell and Elmwood.

And all the while, contrary to usually being too trapped in my head to take in the details of the scenery, I noticed all the side streets--Virginia, Edward, Trinity, Tracy, Johnson Park--that I wish I could live on though felt life's limited length will prevent me from doing so, and I took in views down alleys and through parking lots and up and down the side streets that I hadn't ever seen before despite the number of times I had walked the very same route.

And because nothing can exist without its opposite--a city must first die before being reborn--I felt that the last few months that I've been sluggishly pushing through were suddenly worth it for they allowed this day and these moments, their total opposites, to occur. It might be gone tomorrow and I might return to that limbo place soon enough, but from this serene (re)connection to Buffalo today I saw signs of a personal rebound and again being assured that this is where I want to be and this is what I want to be doing with myself at his point, these thoughts all culminating in the calm realization that this is what I could do everyday if I simply didn't work. Or at least as much and so far from my house. And so all questions and doubt were ended at that moment: I will be quitting by the end of the year and will trust that work will be found and bills will be paid and, most importantly, I will again find myself back in the moments that led me to return to Buffalo and that will, should I leave again, always be calling me back.

Curious to know if every Saturday could be like this should I only wake up early enough.