thumbs up to...

...white eggplants.

I wasn't sure when I'd say this, but it's good to be home in Syracuse. Home has had multiple meanings for me over the last few years, but our little apartment above Terry's beauty salon is filling the role out quite well these days.

We bought this white eggplant today at the Central New York Regional Market. (Reason #1 to like Syracuse) The farm boy who sold it to us didn't know the difference between it and the purple ones but his older sister did. Not as bitter...sounded good to us. (We're enjoying it's quirky greeting too much to have sliced into it yet.)

Summer in Winnipeg was more homey and welcoming than I could have even hoped, but there's something about having your own little corner of the world--whether it's rented, borrowed, or owned. Whether it's in cafes you visit only once, or under the thin nylon walls of a tent.

Arriving in Syracuse three days ago for some reason felt different than all the other times. It felt a bit like slipping into a pair of perfect sandals you bought on sale but saved until bare feet season. They are the perfect fit, and you forgot how great they were. You feel excited and yet comfortable at the same time. Syracuse is like this sandal for me. I know some of its curves--how it might support me over here, perhaps rub a little over there. I really hope the excitement lasts, despite knowing it will be tempered by the everyday.

Buried in one of the four issues of Paste waiting for me upon arrival, I read (in an article on Winnipeg's Weakerthans of all things!) that the hardest thing in life is to get through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon. The days of weddings and funerals carry their own "hypercharged momentum," but it's the "crushing weight" of the daily that deadens us to meaning. These words by novelist Walker Percy are not everyone's fear, but sometimes they're mine. Sometimes, despite my somewhat silver-spooned life, I fear the silliest things: a gray morning presenting me with few reasons to get up. A morning that the church bells are muffled by the sounds of the street--a morning that finds me uninspired, and without passion.

That morning hasn't come yet, but I know it will. And when it does, I'll always have eggplants...and comfortable sandals.


For more in the "Reasons to like Syracuse" department, visit us at Colony of Two!