Walking through Ithaca, I watch streets torn open and repaired, trees pruned, workers tending the ordinary machinery of a city. This is not a war zone. Neither are other American cities made into battlefields because the government describes them as dangerous or proposes using them as military “training grounds.” September asks what happens when the language of climate, dissent, and public life is changed to obscure what is plainly before us. Reality does not yield to the words used against it.

Some things I found because they were signs. Some were flowers, raindrops, animals, clouds, painted lines, arrows, a cat sleeping in sunlight, a dead bird, an empty discarded drawer, a painting of birds, and the sky opening again and again. Sometimes I had time to stop down and frame the shot. Sometimes I reached for the camera as fast as I could.

In recent months, I’ve been spending more time walking through Ithaca. Most days, I leave from North Plain Street, cross Buffalo Street, past the Children’s Garden, and follow the inlet trail toward Treman Marina and Cayuga Lake before circling back home.