Author: Sofia Samatar

Look at this row of redbuds! Stunning—the clusters of violet-pink flowers blooming right on the branches, bursting from the bark. The word redbud fully describes the blossoming tree, a single color devoid of green: the special austerity, the purity of the redbud.

There are two walks I often take on the campus of the large public university in the Friendly City: the Lake Way and the Hillside Way.

This week, on a First Friday, when the Friendly City filled with walkers exploring the art and music that sprang up all over downtown, I was struck by the way the character of the city seemed encapsulated by its two bookstores: Parentheses and Downtown Books.

“You have to be very happy to live in a small city,” the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector once remarked, “because it enlarges happiness just like it enlarges unhappiness.”

Let’s go east up the hill today, then north along Jackson Street, on this keen, sharp-edged morning, when it feels good to climb up through the alleys dotted with azure speedwell.

Public space is a border zone, made for everyone and no one.

In the Friendly City, March has many moods. It’s not just that it comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, as in the proverb. March is a grab bag of textures, featuring extremes of hardness and softness that seem unrelated, as if they’re happening not at different times but in different countries.