Goodbye Winter

Perhaps it may seem a bit ironic to be posting a photo with snow as I am announcing the arrival of spring. But my Canon is broken!! Ugh. Anyway.

Earlier today I was watching a teenage boy throw bricks and do other destructive things in an abonded yard across from my apartment. One half contians abandoned buildings and the other was filled with miscellanous piles of (de)construction materials: windows, cinder blocks, shingles, rebar. The site lay dormant for most of the winter other than a new graffiti tag every few weeks or so. Over the past few weeks there has been a surprising amount of activity which I have taken note of day by day. I remember one night when the sky was a hazey purple and I was coming back from a party quite late/early in the morning. About 3 unbelievably giant tractors and diggers were working on the rubble with their mobile worklights flashing over and lighting up all the piles and occasionally hitting the purple sky. It seemed like a dream. I have also seen a man tearing heavy shingles in strips like wallpaper, a group of street people (yes, they do exist in Copenhagen) sitting by a fire, and "HASH!" written in big white letters on one of the roofs.

I don't really know why I'm talking about an empty yard which is across the world from most people reading this blog. But I suppose my sadness and fear of the yard changing to some development signifies some sort of attachment to the land. For me, this is probably one of the greatest signs of comfort toward the ability to call a place home. Many of my most vivid memories of places are a kind of tactile geometry of places - legs on the grass in a park, the sound of a river, birds in unseen places, faces on the street, buildlings on the horizon...

A city lives on the street. After a winter in which I have spent an alarming amount of time insidoors, I am excited to spend more time in Copenhagen's landscape. YAY SPRING!