20190622.0430

This date has been a good one for posting to this webspace; I've managed to post each year, 2012 on. Not desiring to repeat yesterday's mistake, I am not looking for a common thread among them, though I might note that the 2012 piece marks the onset of summer, and today is the first full day of summer in the part of the world where I am. At least officially; we had a weekend not long ago that felt more like August than anything else, and my fool self was working outside in it.
It has been a long time since I've seen a summer in The City--six years, now. As I look back on that time, doing so while I sit in well conditioned air as the sun shines down with a force that rarely happens in that part of the world, I find there are some things I miss about it. While I do not long to be immersed among the smells of the place--and The City stinks of millions of people in close proximity, not all of whom are able to bathe regularly, so that it cannot help but smell--I do long at times to return to the cultural offerings that are ready to hand there. I miss having access to knowledge and insight that I had then, and not because I was still in academe, but because the sheer mass of people ensured that its public systems could compete with the most rarefied halls of learning, concrete and steel and some marble veneer equaling ivory for the value of what was within the walls.
Where I am now does what it can, I know. But there is only so much a few dozen thousand people can do against what so many millions can.
I miss it, yes, and I appreciate having had the chance to enjoy it, even if looking back on what I've written tells me that I did not make enough of the opportunity while I had it. And I probably ought to move forward with the thought that I should look for what I have the opportunity to do now and seize upon it so that I do not have the same regrets about yet another place.