My neighborhood in Jackson, MS is lush and verdant year-round, which is one of the best things about living in the humid subtropics. The birdsong is constant, and the symphony of katydids rises and falls, and has at times arisen so loudly I had to go inside to be heard on the phone.
I walk the same 2.5 miles most days – the dogs along the route know me, and I in turn know the trees where the cedar waxwings can be found, and the pine tree where the hawk that terrifies my chickens lives, and the house where the angry man who voted for our President lives, and the house where the bougie bohemian folk live, and the house where the man who came here to live from the Caribbean decades ago lives, and the house where the prominent Civil Rights activist lives, and I love that my neighborhood is big enough to hold all of them safely.
It has been said that Southerners love individuals and hate classes of people, and I admit to the truth of this, even as I work to overcome the fault in myself. There is something tribal about growing up in a small town, and these are “your people” and the outsiders, however that is defined, are the ones you should be afraid of, even when “your people” are of the same class as the outsiders.
No doubt in the past, this sort of tribalism was valuable as a safety against marauders. But in our current world, where teenagers have friends who live across the globe, and where a tragedy in Europe can have implications in Ohio, its usefulness has run its course. As Auden said, we must learn to love each other, or die.