Images

The texture of life feels different to the touch in different places. In Colombia it's rough, like natural wool, but colorful, strong, and warm. I was walking home from a meeting of delegates elected from my neighborhood to set our priorities in social programs (which involves a substantial amount of yelling, if you wondered) when I walked into the kind of scene that I will carry with me long after I've left Colombia. Two mariachis were practicing, and the clear notes of their trumpets cut through the traffic and noise, leading the way for a lumbering Coke truck making its way slowly up the potholed side street, flowing over the lushest purple flowers you can imagine, growing in beautiful disarray across a brick facade.

The rest of the walk got me thinking about how people use, I mean really use, public space here. I passed groups of university students sitting outside a little grocery store, laughing and drinking; street vendors on their way home after a long day but still hoping for one last sale, more couples than I could count enjoying (but how) the grassy spread of the national campus, in short, people everywhere conducting important parts of their lives and social interaction on the street. To me that's a beautiful thing. Too much of the life I'm used to happens inside, and it feels so confining, so small. Give me the noisy, dirty, alive streets of the so-called developing world any day. I don't think I'm going to re-adapt to Atlanta well...then again, there's no Macondo in Atlanta!

And the Lilburn house is a haven of peace and quiet, a place with actual birds in actual trees, where you can hear the crickets chirp on hot summer nights, well, when the AC isn't drowning them out. I think I could get used to that again - lately we've been honest to god fantasizing about shooting out the sound system across the street.