It's amazing how instrumental weather can be in shaping social consciousness. For the past seven months, I've had next to no awareness of living in a neighborhood with actual neighbors. When it's 30 degrees and the inappropriately festive sounding "wintry mix" is pouring from the sky, my universe shrinks to a chain of warm, closely confined spaces (home, subway, office, subway, home) linked by sprints through the intolerable wasteland of outdoor nonspace. And then yesterday, it's 70 degrees, dappled sun and resounding bird song. I'm reading out in the backyard and listening to the conversations in the house next door, where the windows are thrown open, Floor Two is calling the kids in for dinner, and Floor Three is hollering at Floor One in a boozy Boston accent:
"Paaaauuul.... You fuckaahhh... What are ya doin'? Come ovahhh and drink with us!"
"I don't have anything to drink!"
"We have stuff to drink! Get ovaaah heaaaah!"
And suddenly a lump of optimism swells up in my throat and I get kind of hopeful that a head will pop out of one of the windows and call me in, too. I'll come up to Floor Three and get handed a Bud Lite in a Bruins coozie, or maybe even a plastic cup full of Yellow Tail, and I'll deploy strategic local idiom in a chat about the weather ("That rain last week -- wicked crazy!") or pretend to know some rudimentary thing about sports ("Erm, yeah, how bout them Sox!"), and for once I won't feel like quite such a rootless transient, floating through 25 years of life with no national, regional, class, or social ties. I'm so friendly and easygoing and nice! I can fit right in!
It doesn't happen. But I have another four months, at the least, to doggedly hope it does.
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