Great neighbourhoods

I spent last night getting drunk on our neighbour's front lawn. It looked for a while as though I would need to be dragged home by my feet. The offer was on the table. There we all were, a mass of children huddled over a blanket making corn husk dolls, ringed by a circle of adults sipping cocktails of one kind or another, passing favourite drinks around. For some reason, many of them landed in front of me. For obvious reasons, given the day I'd had, I didn't refuse any of them. The words were never spoken, but my Gilbert grief was not a secret. It was interesting to sit amidst all of this relaxed goodwill and friendliness, and to reflect from my bleary state of intoxication, on what was happening here. In a way, we're near strangers. We've only lived on this street for a few weeks. Yet there's a crazy intimacy among us. We know many of each other's secrets -- who is sick and who is well, whose marriage is working and whose isn't. There's an easy and natural sharing like nothing I've ever known before. These people already feel like family. What kind of alchemy is at work here? I write about how the raw configuration of streets and houses can affect people's behaviour. But here there's certainly much more at work. One day I may understand more of it, but for now I think I'm happy enough to float down the river of tiny weed-covered lawns, looking up occasionally at trees that may have witnessed such gatherings for many decades. There's knowing, after all, but there's also being. I'm learning that this applies to human relationships as well as it applies to other kinds of ecologies.

In the middle of the party, the woman who sold our house to us walked down the street, returning from work to her new home. There were tears on her cheeks. She hadn't wanted to leave. No wonder.