Little Moments of Inexplicable Joy

There’s a magic in seeing the cherry blossoms in Tennessee: not there one day, there the next.
For three years, my residency in the Nashville neighborhood of Germantown overlapped with the celebration of Oktoberfest. On one glorious October weekend, with the leaves in full autumnal bloom and the weather still cooling off from summer, the otherwise mundane streets of my neighborhood would transform overnight into a festival.
Some years, it was literally outside my doorstep. Festival-goers sat on my stoop, drinking steins of lager and eating bratwursts. Cheesy tracks of polka music wafted in through my window (except when the karaoke booth was set up, when the waft brought in out-of-tune country standards). If I wanted dinner or social interaction, I just walked outside.
I loved it.
But what I loved even more were the moments of relative solitude. Late into the evening, a handful of stragglers would be finishing their beers and ambling back to their cars, or wherever they were going. Vendors would be zipping covers over their booths, slowly, as if they were still waiting for one last customer to come by. I’d wander back home, taking care to walk in the very middle of the car-less streets, and I’d pretend this was a party of one: a festival thrown just for me.Read More »Little Moments of Inexplicable Joy