Imagine my surprise, when I woke up needing a cardigan while drinking my morning coffee in my non-airconditioned apartment in North Carolina on July 4th. While the ceiling fan is on full-tilt, it’s still a welcome reprieve.

Instead of hopping in the car and driving to the coast, I decided to stay in this holiday weekend and catch up on correspondence, reading, household chores and various writing and needlecraft projects that have all escaped my attention as of late, all languished in the summer heat. I did escape to Durham for an afternoon of wandering around an old tobacco warehouse, only to get politely told we were ‘trespassing’ and to stick to the main sidewalk. Despite all our jokes about how easy some fences looked to climb, we nicely remained on public property afterwards.

Last night there was a distinct absence of illegal fireworks on my street and the silence kept me awake perusing Ginsberg wishing it was Wordsworth, Baudrillard wishing it was Baudelaire. I fell asleep thinking about Greenhead Ghyll and Tintern Abbey and pastoral poems instead of Ginsberg’s “Mugging (1),” and how the ending “shoulder bag with 10,000 dollars full of poetry left on the broken floor” always leaves me cold.

I woke up to look outside on a greygrey morning full of quiet with the tiny yard across the street full of equally grey squirrels because the woman who lives there feeds them as she chainsmokes her first cigarettes of the day. Despite my sometimes faltering sense of independence, this day always holds fond memories. More than any other holiday, I can remember the most about where I spent past Independence Days. Parking lots, school playgrounds, seaside piers, front yard rock shows, giggling abroad with sparklers bought on the sly.

Still somewhat sleepy, my mind is still lolling over works read last night and revelling in the greyness that pervades the blinds and seems to be casting a rare moment of calm over my normally vivacious neighborhood. One of the most beautiful things about language is its cadence, a word that I can’t also help but contribute to knitting. Doggedly knitting long rows of a blanket last night, I listened to the click-click-clack-click of the needles as they scraped together creating a sound not entirely dislike that of Ginsberg’s somewhat manic readings, his voice waxing and waning with the words.

Often when people share memories with me about their relatives knitting, they speak of the rhythm of the needles. Sometimes it is with great derision, but most of the time there is a profound fondness that is awakened when recounting tranquil times after supper when the house was quiet except for someone dear working on a garment in the corner, keeping time with the needles. It is just this sort of rhythm that so often gets drowned out by traffic, radio, air-conditioning and television these days that we no longer are able to hear it.

Thankfully, instead of weaving in and out of holiday traffic and trying to find the perfect cd to complement I-85, this weekend I opted to turn off the distractions and listen. Noting the repetitive swoosh of the broom across hardwood, the singsong of my needles clashing, the gentle whir of the ceiling fan and the specific word choice of Ginsberg, I celebrated a different kind of independence over the past few days. And it was gorgeous.