Standing next to a bicycle in the former capital of These United States, looking westward

yesterday, i stood in the woods less than a mile from here, wandered farm plots largely cover-cropped for the winter, and watched the commuter rail go by through the trees.

this city has history, quite a lot of it for this young country, and a queer sort of staying power. and like most such cities, time has worn it thin, so the landscape begins to show through the holes and the threadbare seams.

and this morning, my friend says to me "I'm thinking about Albuquerque. About how it will be out of water in 50 years. How, when I'm old, I will have the memory of when people started to leave the city, and when it became one of the first American cities to cease. And how all the people who leave Albuquerque will be tied together by that common experience, and how it won't happen all at once, and the city will persist in the cultural imagination for a long while after that...

and after a while, that will just be what is, and I'll get used to it."