I can't tell whether or not I love this city.

Sometimes I wake up and the rain pounding in my ears makes me want to pitch a fit and buy a ticket to San Diego. Sometimes I wake up and the sun teasing me from the edge of the steady incline east makes me want to throw on a tank top and ride until I'm blissfully sunburned, exhausted into the afternoon. Blight is at once depressing and beautiful, in an urban-landscape sort of way. I can't quite get used to the downtown lights at night.

This afternoon I spent a couple of hours on a rooftop in Tremont, watching fighter jets perform in the sky above the lakefront. If nothing else, I avoided the cost of the annual airshow, and had quite the perch; no neck-craning involved. Thus I passed the afternoon, not only marveling at flight patterns but taking in both the neighborhood immediately around me and those further out.

I am not invincible. I am not unhurt by Cleveland's slushy, persistent winters. I don't pretend to be always at ease with the inconsistent poverty speckled around my bike routes, or the weirdos dotting the streets and livening the bus lines, or the noises or traffic, bar crowds, or baseball games. I won't be here for much longer, I'm sure, and I won't be here forever.Still, for now, or at least for today, I am okay with my location.

Not that the winters are going anywhere, and we're on the tail end of a temperamental summer. I've found, though, some things that at the very least will keep me afloat, if not inspire a little more affection for my hometown. Climbing, biking, working at the bookstore- all things I enjoy, things that introduce me to people, things that expand my knowledge of the world with every hold, flat, and inside front cover. They're important because they fulfill me, and they're important because they are here.

We'll see how long I can hold on to these things. I hope to cling to them like ski poles until it stops snowing and I have more mornings waking up to rides than one- way plane rides.