Looking up Proto-Indo-European root words is like watching spores travel and grow in the soil of different languages. Here are just a few for Porch, as listed on etymonline: Sanskrit: ‘parayati’ meaning “carries over.” Greek: ‘porous’ meaning “journey, passage, way.” Old Church Slavonic: ‘pariti’ meaning “to fly.” Avestan (Old Iranian): ‘peretush’ meaning “passage, ford, bridge.”

If you are welcome to sit on a porch, you are welcome to enter. It’s a place where you pass over into pause. Time passes but not really. Not while you’re sitting on this bridge between you and others sharing the porch with you. Not when you cross the entryway between the outside and inside. You talk, chat, catch up, chew the fat, daydream, fly together in each other’s worlds.

I remember before I moved to New Orleans, someone made a snide remark about being bored. “What are you gonna do, sit on the porch all day?” Well… yeah. Why not?

What they didn’t know is my love of porches and their mysterious power to collect and hold stories. We had a porch on our house growing up, and I remember it as a place where a lot of life happened. We’d convene, play, shuck fresh corn on the cob, barbecue, laugh, cry, play music, welcome or wave goodbye, or just sit and talk.

Maybe that memory is what endears me to the porches I see here. While living in New York I had the same admiration for stoops, which served the same purpose. Whether attentively decorated or plain, love is there.

It doesn’t stop at the physical attachment on a building. There is a welcoming in the smile or wave from someone sitting on a porch. The one in this photo, though empty of human presence, is itself an invitation. As a lone passerby, you are welcome to join someone else’s journey.

From late 14 c. ‘reneuen.’ Re-, meaning “again” + Middle English neuen, meaning “make, invent, create, bring forth, produce.” While there are several nuanced definitions for this word, the ones that resonate with these noticings are: Make like new, refurbish; Replenish, replace with a fresh supply; Restore (a living thing) to a vigorous or flourishing state; To increase the life of or replace something old. Synonyms: revive, resume.

I

The poetry of re- is that it works in two distinct ways. It can mean doing something again, such as retell, refill. And it can also mean going backwards, undoing, or going back to a former state, such as recall, retrace, redo.

What if re- involves the self? It means going backwards in order to go forward. Undo and start over again. It sometimes is and sometimes isn’t foundational, but at the least it is repeating the action of building up to a restored, or revived state. Revive: To put life into again.

Neuen. The verb form in Old English for “new” went out of usage over time. Today we use the adjective form. Used a descriptor, we talk about things being in a certain state, or having a particular characteristic. As if a possession, as if external. But I wish the verb form didn’t trail out of use. Plenty of words still use both forms (i.e. clean, still, light, and quiet are examples) I like the idea of “new” being a verb because we inhabit the action of a verb. It expresses full embodiment, a fullness adjectives don’t quite convey. “To new.”

II

Orange as predictor of change
a blanket of perforated sun

Chunks of asphalt
heave and undulate
where roots flex growth

A skeleton frame
awaits reconstruction
where new organs and skin

Orange the intersection
coloring soil
where vibrancy emerges reformed

III

The cityscape is dotted orange with mesh blankets, cones, and barrels. Signs of warning, urgency, and intensity. On the corner where demolition resides, in the space between street corners, the pavement is shaved on one side. The dermis peeled back, bare epidermis exposed. How did it get so wounded? Blocked off by signage, it is saying: Attention is needed here. Healing is needed here. [Re]construction is needed here.

Cones stand small but boldly warn. Barrels appear immovable with sandbags anchoring their protective stance. White and orange diagonal stripes. How they have formed a unique alliance, a blank slate and predictor of change, respectively. They slant right, as in toward, as in forward directional.

Mesh safety nets warn of potholes and attempt to partially conceal. An eyesore and a bother to pedestrians and drivers alike. But then at blue hour, the sun hits at just the right angle and calls them beautiful, burning brightness through thin plastic. The edge of the street blazes with wild blossoming bushes of tangerine and amber aglow, combustible. For what worth is fire but a chemical transition from material to ash? A point from which to start over? From this vantage point, it isn’t so much a sign of injury as it is a predictor of change.

IV

A net fence surrounds the gutted house. Same fabric as the road, but rather than concealing imperfection brings attention to transformation. Rebuilding from the inside out. Renewal has a strong scent of wood chips, fresh paint, and soil, newly unearthed.

The windows wink showing off fresh squares of glass. The doors stand unadorned yet confident in their freedom. Open floors, clean wood, bare walls, new staircases. No furniture, no dishes, no trinkets, no cabinets, no bookshelves, no books, no pantry, no tables, no curtains, no lamps, no souvenirs, no beds, no linens, no shoe racks, no shoes, no clothes, no life. What care will one day fill these empty rooms?

Jam (v.) “To press tightly” or “to become wedged,” comes from the late 14th cen. Middle English word “cham,” meaning “to bite upon something; gnash the teeth.” The noun form is of course that delicious fruit confection that we spread on toast.

Session (n.) Comes from Old French “session,” meaning “act or state of sitting,” tracing back to the Latin “sedere,” meaning “to sit.” The meaning of sitting together for an activity was first recorded in 1920. Specifically in reference to recording music in a studio, in 1927.

Wedge these two words together—yes that was a play on words—and you get a “jam session.” Jazz players gifted the term to us in the 1920s, defined as a session in which the whole band plays and improvises.

I

To describe witnessing a jam session, being surrounded and enveloped by the collective musicality of the players, I like how etymonline.com elegantly invokes taste, landing the whole experience on the tongue. It is “something sweet, something excellent.” Saturday night was exactly that.

II

The players pack together on a stage where every note is confection. Acidic and so tangy it stings the teeth, the high-pitched trumpet swings in from the sideline and takes center stage. The snare pops, high-hats applause. A sweet satin song flows from the guitar. The bass is born of dark soil as it slaps and hums a black coffee undertone. The trombone slides its soul into an assertive Yes and confirms for the entire room that we are here for the verses. The piano chants in percussive harmonies and plucks at the explosive mood. And so we converse.

Among us, the energy bounces between nodding heads, closed eyes, and foot taps. Our rhythms rhyme. We nod yes, yell yes, in agreement that yes, the now is sugar. But let’s not confuse sweetness with nonchalance. There is a great deal of intention behind each note, and we revel in the tasting.

III

As we settle into this gourmet sound, I realize that you can’t achieve lightness without a hefty degree of concentration. Notes wedge themselves so tightly that they can’t fall or break, but they stabilize and ascend. That right there is the jam. And so the session is as serious as it is sweet.

In poetic agreement, a scene. It is the lack that reminds. We hold the present negative up against the light of memory and notice something is gone.

I

Three-day old snow just isn’t the same, like three-day old bread. Fresh powder turned stale, browned, crusted over.

Cars parked on the side of the road are a row of igloos from a full night’s worth of snow plows clearing. I watch a man dig his car out from under the icy mass attacking it with the full-body stab of a shovel, as if one last heave will obliterate the heap. I think of how angry he’ll be when he realizes he’s dented his own car after the ice melts.

The scrape of shovels converse and echo the length of the street. Thick hats, insulated gloves, and puffy coats with humans inside as they bend and toss, bend and toss in an unspoken rhythm. It dawns on me that not one homeowner on this street has a snowplow, not even for the sidewalk. And how strange, all of this labor but not one puff of breath that I can see. No vapor plumes, just mouths lidded with fabric.

II

What is the difference between memory and nostalgia? Between reliving a memory and living in the past? Between that which reminds and that which clouds or clarifies? Between wishing and missing? How much does a memory acknowledge or deny? And how much is inverted, the opposite of how we remember it?

A hit of nostalgia, the drug we’ve most consumed for eleven months. I miss the post-storm buzz and jangle of snow plows clearing driveways in my neighborhood growing up. My earlobes redden and numb. Eyes water from the cold, rims puddle. What’s missing is that final signal, the sting of nose and cheeks that says it’s time to go inside for hot chocolate. They are now snuggled beneath two masks, and for the warmth that is by no means a complaint.

It just isn’t the same. Three-day old snow turned stale, muffled, iced over.

I

The vendor outside of my building is tall and thin like the umbrellas he is selling. He understands the urgency. “Get your UMbrellas! UMbrellas right here!” he shouts, raising his voice loudest at the soggiest passersby who hastily scurry along.

II

There is no romance in maneuvering through a sea of umbrellas on a New York City sidewalk. No “Singing in the Rain” choreography, no slick elegance, no graceful footwork. Everyone has their own personal awning, which by its nature makes the sidewalk an obstacle course. We duck, side-step, and swerve. More than once my hair gets tangled in someone else’s umbrella wires (or my own), and I accidentally poke someone in the arm while fighting with it. It’s an awkward dance, and the sight of more than three people on the sidewalk makes me nervous.

In the interim between stop and go on the street corner, I look out further than my shoes and further than the hotdog cart on the next block. I look out and see four blocks’ worth of humanity sheltered beneath the protection of fabric. Undulating, multicolored pieces of it. It is as if the sidewalk has become a steady stream of marbled lava. 

Two tourists standing next to me share a wide bright yellow umbrella with “Large Pineapple” written on it in bold green letters. There is nothing pineapple-y about it, except its deliberate coloring. They peek out and look upward with a wide-eyed childlike fascination. Standing beside their youthful glee, I transcend the gray and burst into a warmth reminiscent of the sun. The storefront lights seem to glow a little bit brighter. The chorus of taxi cabs swooshing by sounds like ocean waves.

III

I don’t know what it is about the rain that inspires childlike joy, making us forget we have a few decades behind us. For a form of weather known for being so ugly and mean, it sometimes gifts delight. It can be uplifting if you let it.

Ruins are at once a spoiled version of what was, what remains, and the beauty that has crept in and flourishes. Let them lie fallow and the overgrowth is a rebirth. A stillness akin to sleeping in which this lush dream has taken 70 years to uncoil.

Of all of the ruins we’d visited in a weeks’ time, it was in Vieques where I felt the past was still alive. I thought I smelled burnt sugar. “Burnt sugar?” My friend asked, unbelieving. The sugar industry thrived here in Vieques for over a century and closed their doors in the ‘40s. “The mills haven’t been working for decades. I don’t know if that’s what it is,” she said and walked ahead. Twigs snapping, leaves rustling, geckos flitting. 

But why can’t our footsteps churn up the past? Isn’t that what soil does when tilled, releasing what’s been trapped inside? And what of our curiosity? What of our digging when we ask and history answers? Isn’t that an act of stirring and setting free?

The past fertilizes new growth and tints the air with charred confection. Old structures collapsed and devastated, broken yet still breathing. The scent of renewal unfurling.

(Photos taken in Puerto Rico: Vieques Sugar Mill Ruins, Salt Flats in Cabo Rojo, Aguadilla Lighthouse)  

I

Forward. That’s the only way to go, and right now we’re gonna need a little push, okay? On second thought, please make it as big a push as you can. 

II

Here at West 123rd Street where runners turn the corner from Fifth Avenue, it’s mile 22. The hardest mile, so I’ve heard. The mind and body are tense. Nerves and anticipation, hope and elation, racing toward that finish line that is nowhere in sight, but it’s a whole lot closer than mile one. Here, it becomes a fight.  Mental versus physical. Strength versus stamina. Weariness versus will. Fifty thousand runners, guides, partners, and allies. A throng of legs and sweat who take on this mile with the same goal. So we mustered up the strength in our lungs, a collective gust of go go go.

So we pushed. At first we followed the lead of an enthusiastic woman who was yelling and clapping so hard it sounded painful. “Stay strong, Stay strong, you got this!” She was in the front row, partially obscuring our view. “Is your person close? We can switch places when they get here.” She was there for Jonathan, but then cheered for Jamin and Magdalena when they found out who we were there for. I lost track of all the names we yelled out and cheered on.

III

To the man who slowed to a stop in the middle of the street, bent over in pain and sheer exhaustion but picked back up at a shuffle. To the woman whose legs suddenly stiffened like planks and forced her to snail to the sidelines but threw herself back into a steady jog ten minutes later. To the crew of five in wheelchairs, pushing in synchronized unison. To the runners pushing wheelchairs and their occupants. To the guides running beside their visually impaired partners. To the cancer survivors. To the diehards. To the runners on their nth marathon in a string of marathons. To the first-timers. 

All of that shouting and whistling because we knew you could do it. You did.

The city weaves its conversations, we spin our threads. Loom set, the warp held taut as the woof loops over, under, and through. We are millions of knots and holes.  

Fabric can’t be fabric without holes. Knots make tiny fists holding everything together while opening up spaces one between the other. In storytelling, Hemingway spoke of the power of omission; when done well, certain things are left out of a story in order to strengthen it. How many knots are we, and how many spaces? Where does our strength reside, in our knots or in our void? 

The city’s fabric is as thick as the steel ropes that suspend its bridges. Steel woven, the warp and woof of interstates and histories individual, slipping arms into each others’ cabled sleeves. Conversations with a city reveal the tension between bodies and beams.  

The beauty of ellipses is that not only are they the keepers of that which has been left out, but they  represent forward trailing tangibles. A void of conversations that haven’t happened yet.