tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31882020215384116032012-02-16T14:09:37.031-08:00Nuria_Atwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12455073431609259157noreply@blogger.comBlogger11100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188202021538411603.post-81950311494480174042008-02-03T03:14:00.000-08:002008-02-03T03:30:12.021-08:00<span style="font-size:85%;">The city was my first home, my first love. The first place I walked through alone and happy and healthy. Every city is like that to me now, full of every type of humanity. I have read that people find cities frightening, overwhelming, dark and tortured places. Not for me. For me they are home. Full of life and warmth and comfort; their coldness is a reassuring blanket to numb a damaged body, their darkness a cover to hide one person from the world. </span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">I lost myself in my first city, a whole place too full of difference for me to understand. So I stopped trying to understand, and started accepting, just looking and knowing. My first city taught me how to love something you can never understand. You can know it, see it, touch it, but never never understand it. All that and then some love. A whole lot of love, just love for something that does not have an innate capacity to love you in return. But my city will protect me, hide me, welcome me and keep me warm. That is a type of love I had never known before the first city. </span><br /><br />------------------------------------------ <br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">I will visit the first city again in two weeks. I worry my heart will not be able to leave again. That I will not be able to come back here to this wonderful life I have created. I imagine the pinks and blues and orange light play on the cream sandstone of the city walls and I know my heart has stored the warmth of that place. I will take that warmth back with me to share with the greatest heroes of our time.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3188202021538411603-8195031149448017404?l=watchingtheworlds.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Nuria_Atwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12455073431609259157noreply@blogger.com1