From Home for Life:

A last survey finding worth reflecting on: Fully 85 percent of the respondents agreed “somewhat” or “strongly” with the suggestion that “community is just as important as the home.” What exactly they meant by community is hard to say. Friends in the neighborhood perhaps? An interesting mix of neighbors? A vibrant shopping street? A nearby Starbucks? Community is notoriously hard to define and perhaps even harder for builders to provide. But it should be given as much attention as building equity.

This idea, that we are building communities and not houses.  This idea is one that I’d like to hang on to.

(via even*cleveland)

Self portrait, future self included

by Masin Persina

[ poetry - july 10 ]

Always, I’m at the center of an immense eye.
Sometimes I’m its pupil, while at other times
I am one of those floaters the eye sees
while staring at a blank, blue sky.
This morning, it rained.
Also, I rode a train to substitute at a school
for which I was paid enough to write this poem.
I do not recall the grade of light
or a single thought I held.
This evening, under some loose change of stars,
all the city’s windows are speckled with water stains
and I’ve lived with Ally six months.
Some days we’re happy with our very little.
Other days, we are sad.
Tonight, it is sadness, so I tell her, “Someday,
all of this will look so funny to us.
We will eat calamari, not sweat the bill
and look back through our Ray Bans
and laugh at how small we now seem,
how out of context our troubles, like two squirrels,
on tiny water skis, being pulled across a pool.”