Sunday, 20 April 2003 | How to skin a knee

I'd forgotten what it felt like, the sharp sting that surges before it dissipates, and the surprise of seeing a circular piece of skin missing, having been traded for blood. My left knee, and the left arm of my sunglasses: my first casualties of my new roller skating hobby. After it happened, I pedaled home from the park on my bike, propped my knee over the bathtub, and played scientist with peroxide and an open wound, filling the jagged circle with wincing white foam.

...

This weekend I learned that my upstairs neighbors have moved away, which means I no longer know anyone in my building, that I will no longer get to hear Joy Division and the Cars and David Bowie filtering down through the ceiling, that I no longer have any reason to write notes in German and wedge them in the space between the door and the frame, that I don't have convenient cat sitters for when I leave town, and that the corkscrew-bug spray-music trading system we'd installed is dead. But mostly it means it will take more effort to maintain the something that had maybe started to form, before it goes the way of our trading system.

But it was also the first weekend that I realized that I have quite a few acquaintances in my neighborhood, which I only noticed because I kept running into a string of them every place I went, which kind of surprised me. I also made a new friend (albeit one that lives on the other side of the country), I saw an old friend, I went out with an old acquaintance (twice), and I discovered some new venues conveniently close to my place. Everything changes quickly, and pushes forward. The trees on my street are blooming.