My good friend and collaborator who’s living in Dakar, Senegal, flew in last night to teach a weekend course here. He arrived around 8p and I was prepared with a six pack of Goose Island IPA, and a bag full of soft shell tacos and burritos from a new favorite place that opened up near 126th and Broadway across from the new Columbia spaceship buildings.

When my buddy arrived, it was instantly like old times. In the first hour we talked about nationalism, poverty, conflict, power structures, barely taking time to exhale. It’s hard for us to speak about casual things when there are so few people who can really engage with us about the things we’re most interested in. So reuniting becomes a raucous free-for-all. The books, movies, articles and podcasts from the last year are thrown about like paint at a Holi celebration, hard to keep track of yet harder still to retrain from spreading around even more, and only after a couple hours are we able to move onto more important things, like telling jokes.

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I’m in the office trying to work but I find myself distracted by the perfect day outside. It’s crisp and blue and green and hoody and happy. The fall is exciting. It’s new people, it’s freshly cut grass and cold morning soccer tryouts, it’s holding hands nervously through fallen leaves. In the fall, I want to stay out. In the fall, I come alive, as everything else seems to be headed in the other direction. The bugs are gone, now, and the wild places in the Northeast are waiting for a reunion.