neural urban renewal

I take a different route. For each day's walk, I go a different way. I go my own way, to paraphrase Fleetwood Mac. Sometimes spontaneous, other times quasi-premeditated. Best is when I embark on a different compass point from the day before. How long can I maintain this variation? The array of streets, avenues, places, drives, boulevards, circles, and lanes is finite. Both the thoroughfares and each day's combination, however haphazard, are finite. The possibilities are not endless, but are they inexhaustible, given the number of days and scenarios available to me? 

Walking out the door, I have a choice. Before walking out the door, I have a choice: Which door? Exiting the Harbor Street side, I obey the sidewalk invitation and refrain from walking on the grass, the grass cancering yellow on its verges. Or I walk out the basement door, near the playground on Emerson, climbing up its steps, a sheet of wind rippling me. Less often, I proceed out via the main lobby; less often in the Age of Coronavirus because of too many chances to encounter fellow residents and other humans, masked or unmasked. 

Which direction?

Toward Tipp Hill? Downtown by way of West Genesee? Downtown by West Fayette Street? Or toward Solvay, on Milton, toward the post office, the paperboard plant, 690, or steep hills hiding munificent mansions in a blue-collar, our-own-electricity town? Maybe industrial, treatment plant-bounded Hiawatha Boulevard slouching toward Destiny? Possibly toward Camillus, zigzagging into suburbia with its mulched gardens, 5 p.m. IPAs, and lace-curtain lonelinesses? 

I suppose I could inspect a map and plot out the precise scenarios left to me. I could chart all the itineraries untrammeled, navigable, and still available. That's not me. What a buzzkill that would be. Add this to your algorithm: Walking to the other side of the street (any street or part of a street) to break up the sequence, to foster the illusion of newness.

Is that it, is that why I insist on these new pathways?

Behold, I make all things new. (Book of Revelation)

Or is it something to do with rebooting, rewiring, overwriting, reframing, and recasting? 

History is a nightmare from which I am tring to awake. (James Joyce)

Don't stroke victims need to embark upon fresh nerve patterns, new neural pathways, to accomplish tasks formerly taken as a given?

Rinse, recalculate, recalibrate.

If it wasn't a stroke, what was the cerebral/spiritual upheaval? Where was (is) its seismic epicenter?  

We are told: Do not leave the teahouse by the same path upon which you entered it.

The journey of a thousand miles . . . . etc., etc., that cliche.

The road not taken?

Take them all. All of them. Individually and collectively.

Walk them all, every which way. And back again.

Then tell us about it.

 

Broken Windows and Silver Doorknobs

Bad neighborhood. Sketchy. Rough area. Borderline. Ghetto. Have you heard any of these descriptions, however offensive they may strike you? Have you heard either more negative terms or their euphemistic replacements?

Come, take a walk with me.

No. Right now. Don't be afraid.

Observe this block. Schuyler Street. Take in the parade of two-story, two-family houses, built in the 1920s and '30s. Lawns manicured, adorned with daffodils, mulch, shrubs, trees. No litter. Structures not thirsting for paint or carpentry. Across the street, much the same: different architectural styles, smaller, more modest. Up the block, historic Myrtle Hill Cemetery. Graves dating to the 1800s, including that of a Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. Several blocks distant, over on Milton Avenue, a house overrun by fallen maple limbs and uncut grass, by weeds, a house choked by its longtime neglect, its metal fence interweaved by sprawling hedge branches, an empty pack of Newport 100s, a discarded Brisk ice tea, a crumpled invoice for car repair, a lone latex glove. An official notice of condemnation posted on a window and door. Blue recycle bins, tires, broken trikes, and split-open trash bags on Herkimer and Emerson. And up the hill, on Pharis Street, overlooking city and suburbs, a pristine lawn with a sign warning against having your dog use the lawn as a private bathroom, in front of a pristine Arts and Crafts bungalow freshly painted yellow, brown, and black, with a shock of red on the door.

Care and neglect coexisting. Pride and privation. Gain and loss. A fabric of multicolored threads and textures, sewn and patched, stitched and shored up. Some more than others, some less, some not at all.

Let's walk some more, keep pace, stretch your stride, down the hill, toward the creek. Oh, you'd rather not, this is a "bad neighborhood"? Be brave. Suck it up. Trust me. Really.

True, that broken, rusted pickup in the driveway looks unsavory, so does the mosaic of tossed Burger King wrappers and soda cups. An eyesore. It makes my eyes sore.

But look across the street, that Victorian painted lady, emerald and cream with surprises of vermilion. Do you see its new siding, every storm window sparkling new, the shiny metal roof? The rebuilt porch? That house could pass for brand-new if you didn't know better.

I am sure this is obvious, but I can't help noting it: we are not dodging bullets, street-corner hustlers do not catch our eye, wondering if we covet their gaze and proffered wares.

Form your own conclusions, as you will. 

In my Age of Coronavirus walks, the gods and goddesses of surprise have been my tour guides.

Surprise, surprise.

If we look for broken windows, they appear. If we search for silver doorknobs, we find them.

p.s. Ever hear the expression "my mind is a bad neighborhood"? (It's popular in wellness and recovery circles and can possibly be traced to an Anne Lamott quotation, but its provenance is uncertain.) As with the physical neighborhoods described above, be careful what you look for. As Leonard Cohen suggested, "look among the garbage and the flowers." You never know what you will find.

a coinage

During his morning walk, he spotted a wet penny on the black glistening pavement as he walked downhill on Lewis and Clark Street. Only a thin crescent of the penny glistened; the rest was darkened by time and decay. He picked it up. He walked a few more steps. A trove of pennies. And one dime, shiny in the damp. He bent to pick them up. Was anyone watching him in the snowy rain? He stooped and rose, stooped and rose. Is this embarrassing? Is this what old men do on their morning walks? Twenty filthy pennies and one dime. Filthy to the point of non-recognition except by shape, diameter, and thickness. Not texture; disgustingly dirtied. He left one penny on the pavement. A statement. A question. A tease. An invitation. Thirty cents. Home. Washed with dish detergent, to little avail; cleanser, same results. Rinse. No. not the steel wool. Rest them on a paper towel. Rinse with finger rubbing. Pick them up. Put them in the coin jar. Will the machine take them? Was it worth it? Why? Worth exactly what? What was the point?

post scriptum: Two days later, I returned to the scene of the dime (and pennies). The penny I had deliberately left remained on the ground. Truthfully, it was impossible to say, because scattered on the ground was a constellation of a dozen or so pennies. Which penny was the one I had decided to leave there, as a "message"? Impossible to say. More disturbing is this notion: did I not see that many other pennies on my first go-round? Either way, on this coin-incidence I kept walking. I had no inclination to stoop to conquer said artifacts. Who would do such a clumsy, doddering thing?

walk a mile -- or more -- in my shoes, or yours

Why does anyone decide to take a walk at 1:17 in the morning? Would it be more ill advised for a woman to do so than for a man, and does that consideration involve common sense, sexism, or practicality, or all of the above, or does it solely depend on locale? 

Questions, questions. 

He walked out the door and into the night. He had brought along a long-sleeved shirt in case it was chilly, now that the storm seemed to break the heat wave.

She wore sensible shoes for walking, more like sneakers but not quite.

His pace was steady, not aggressive but determined.

She had a flashlight and a pocket knife at the ready.

He had a destination.

She had a destination.

Few cars drove by. The streets were as deserted as during an air raid.

Few pedestrians were about, none threatening.

No bicyclists.

No motorcyclists.

Some streetlights, some dark stretches.

No other walker walkers. Yes, some walked, but not as if they had any place they were fixing to go to, not at that hour.

They wore no earbuds to listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks.

He rehearsed what he'd say.

She imagined what she would hear.

A summery breeze made a cameo.

It was as if the footsteps touching the sidewalk, in some cases the roadway, were dissipating anger and anxiety, like waves emanating from an earthquake, weakening over time and distance, evoking fears of a tsunami.

There was no turning back now.

The tsunami warnings were posted.

The pebble had been dropped in the pond.

gambol

I walked our dog in Burnet Park, where she gamboled in the snow, merrymaking and frolicking just for me, to give me a smile, as she sported in the fluffy lake effect snow. No. You're right. She did it for pure dog love, total abandon, canine self, yielding to the moment and the next the next the now.

Iceland, day 1: future forward (contd)

I followed the directions to get in to the Ice Apartments lobby. That was easy, despite being told to "pull" the code numbers when it was really "press." Hey, we've all pulled when we should have pressed, and vice versa, right? For the life of me I could not find the box for the key for the room. I tried the lobby; I tried the fourth floor. I went to the desk of the Black Pearl and had them call Erla, the manager. Daniel, of the Black Pearl, went up to the fourth floor and showed me the "box" on the wall and we got the key. The box looked like a thermostat, but what do I know? The place is spacious for about $100 a night. Lots of white. Modern to the point of science-fiction. All the light switches, in Icelandic, have dimmers and on/off and rocket launchers and artisanal pure air pumps. Or something. Sleek style. I do look out onto the Old Harbor but aside from the new opera house it looks industrial with mountains in the background. 

I hit the pavements, not yet tired. Not yet feeling or acting tired. It was cold and windy, always windy the locals say, with the sky finally brightening. I ambled up the main street of shops and walked uphill toward the Hallgrimskirkja, a Lutheran church that sits atop the cityscape. A statue of Leifr Ericson is in front of it, a gift from the U.S. I went in to the church and heard echoingly loud organ music. It sounded like Bach, but the organist told me it was a French composer. Again, travel surprises. We do not experience what we expect. I assume massive churches to dwarf me, to make me feel struck down with awe. The nave was bright mint green and airy. It felt loose and open, almost retailish in its modernity. The interior was stunningly modern and simple (the Icelandic way), but I was trained to expect the moody candlelit somberness of a European cathedral. So when I walked out and viewed where I had been, the structure, though shockingly huge, seemed less. Granted, that is all conjured by my mind and its anticipation.

After I left, I used a free public WC. Then I went down the street and had a cup of coffee and fruit-laden and grainy bread with Icelandic Butter at Reykjavik Roasters. I chatted with Sebastian, British, I believe. 

I still needed to get to Kringlan shopping center to take care of my phone issue. I stopped a man walking two dogs to ask for directions. He intimated I was crazy, that it was that far. Take a bus, he urged. It was around noon. I brushed his concern aside and walked on. It was a lot of walking, on icy and snow-packed streets. They do a dreadful job of clearing sidewalks. It's a real hazard. I studied my map and turned left onto Miklabraut, a four-lane heavily traveled boulevard that sounds like a German dish. I asked a man shoveling his driveway if I was going the right way. He too tried to dissuade me, telling me to cross the street and take a bus. I trudged onward. Who knows why? I was almost there by now, I supposed. A few long blocks from the mall, I crossed under the street in a tunnel for pedestrians. It had graffiti mural and filth: rubbish, wrappers, plastic, scattered paper hearts in the swampy detritus. I asked another fellow if I was close. I was. For once, he (young, unlike the others I had asked) saluted my walkable mania. 

Here's the bad part. I got to the Simm-inn store and they said it was an AT&T problem, my phone was locked, they couldn't help me, and they couldn't give me a refund. Maybe they could at the airport. Good luck. This was distressing and deflating. Now I felt tired and hungry but mostly tired. In a word, I hightailed it out of there and took a bus back "home" and finally took a nap. Just that hour or so helped.

As for tired, I dare say: has Reykjavik, Iceland ever had a 67-year-old tourist walk so far in one day all by himself? I'll match anyone, though that was not my intent. (What was my intent?)

Then I took the most modern of showers.

[more to come but not tonight]

Man Down

He was sitting on what might be termed a grassy knoll, not far from the arboretum. Sitting on a patch of grass between the curb and the sidewalk. A man with a dark beard, and glasses. Maybe in his forties. Or fifties. Or sixties. Who can tell anymore? Sitting, almost reclining. Not looking ill but possibly so. Not looking anxious; but possibly so; looking tired. Looking like someone with COPD who can only take so many steps. I was driving by. I was on the way to the bank, already late for an appointment scheduled after my stop at the bank. (Actually, my appointment was scheduled for 10, but I was late by virtue, or vice, of squeezing in this bank visit, a visit later deemed beneficial owing to the fact I paid with cash.) I gave a glancing thought to stopping, at least to ask if Man Down was okay. He wasn't writhing. He looked almost comfortable. (What do any of these ludicrous adjectives or perhaps a participle mean or imply? And who is to say?) Still, I fought back feelings of guilt. I even sternly lectured myself, in imaginary, half-comical fashion: "Sure, if it were a lovely damsel in distress you'd stop, wouldn't you?" Would I? What would I say or do? I drove to the bank and conducted my bit of business. I then drove up the hill, in the same vicinity where I had spotted Man Down. This time, however, he was sitting down, almost reclining, looking tired but not injured, on a grassy knoll on the golf course, meaning he had advanced, perhaps a quarter-mile at most. He had seemingly progressed in his journey (was it a purposeless stroll? or a challenging walk toward a destination?), leaving me with a half-ounce less guilt.

walking

I used to walk nearly every day. I don't mean: walk across the room or up the stairs to the bedroom or office or bathroom or walk to the car. I used to walk the dog every day, typically in the evening, in the park, by the same shrubs and pines and grass, by the same knoll, the same hill, through the seasons.

And now I do not walk every day. Only on occasion.

I miss it.

The dog misses it terribly.

She tells me so whenever I see her.

well regarded walking

Walked today from Tipp Hill to Carousel.

And back.

The angry cars snowbanks slush melted snow sidewalkless paths.

Footprints of the poor and young and old (me).

Not so much the human stain as cats and their piss making a mess of the once-pristine.

The army of cars zooms at you, if you're on the left, facing your threats head-on.

Drivers driven and grim. Some even seem to angle toward you, just for spite.

I got a loud "FUCK YOU!" angrily hurled at me from an open car window on Hiawatha Boulevard.

Now why is that?

What did I do?

"I'm walkin' heah" as Ratso Rizzo put it.

I concluded it's all perspective such as when you're in a car you come upon the pedestrian so fast then gone bang bang no time for reflection while the walker sees it in slow motion as it were.

Still.

A matter of regard, regard as in the French version or the America too, meaning:

LOOK.

So a walker is literally disregarded.

Not seen.

You are pretty much invisible.

And there's no time anyway.

Auto-mobile-ly speaking.

"He didn't notice that the lights had changed"

To sunset step by step regarding self

And Syracuse.

(I even played Sisyphus scurrying up an incline near Lord & Taylor like the claws of a scraggling crab.)

aural borealis non erat

Much of blogging is verbal. Or visual. Little of it is aural, though I can't back this up by any data. But neither do I care to back this up with data. I merely care to share some of my urban aural experience, with words, not with recordings of the sounds themselves. Why? I'm a wordsmith, and I paint with words. What's it to you?

Walking on Thursday under Route 690, known as 690, in Syracuse, I walked in the cold but glinting light, backpack heavy on my shoulder, under a highway bridge. The whooshing sound of vehicular tires was almost ominous. A planetary zip, echoing under the bridge. A cosmic skid. (Is that what this life is? A cosmic skid lasting less than a second?) I wondered to myself what sound effect in a movie these tire-on-pavement-above slices of life would evoke. Intergalactic ray gun bullets? Internal thought pulses? Erotic temptations? (In all honesty, that did cross my mnd one iota, for once.) Traffic would not be the listener's first thought. I don't think so.

Then I thought of a sparklingly exuberant blind woman I know. H. smiles frequently. This is the world she encounters. She displays a visage of delight. Not that she walks under this particular bridge. Of course not. But this is her world, isn't it? Wasn't I blessed with a tiny insight into her aural borealis, her light show of sounds, her spectral wonder encountered radically from her perspective, not ours of the sighted world?

Plus, deciding to get off my high horse of pedestrian profundity, I realized that walkers like my former colleague M. walk all the time. This is their world too.

Blessings on our quotidian, pedestrian world, its mundane marvels.

Including its Latin phrases, its sentence fragments.

american eagle

so i exited the delavan center too tired or hurried or apathetic to worry much about uppercase letters and walked across west fayette street and headed east, under the railroad overpass, facing traffic, the minutues of living dangerously by walking on the side w/o a sidewalk like a knucklehead. seeing an american eagle shoe box or sneakerbox smack dab in the middle of west fayette street near west street I picked it up, angry to find such a blatant display of street rubbish. i carried it in my right hand. my left shoulder held my heavy backpack w/ my white MacBook; sometimes i simply carried the pack, almost dragging to the ice-melting pavement or roadway, with my left hand. the red american eagle empty shoebox or sneakerbox served as a display to oncoming traffic that someone was afoot, like ratso rizzo in midnight cowboy saying 'i'm walkin' here!' but as i went along the pedestrian-forbidden west street ramp and over west genesee street and down herald place i saw so much litter that i was tempted to toss it in the road. who'd know the difference? bottles boxes cartons wrappers plastic cans glass metal. the detritus of urban what? decay? carelessness? morass? lassitude? a pity. you walk you see it. you drive, you don't. i became sad at my quixotic quest. who notices? one piece of litter or one million pieces of litter in syracuse, new york, or nearly any other city in america; who notices? what is it about our national character, or lack thereof? (it's not national; it's individual and individual and individual ad nauseam) americans especially those so-called lowercase tea-baggers would be hugely insulted if they heard someone say that americans are dirty, that america is a dirty country; they'd be offended. but compared to some other places on the globe -- oh no, not all, not all, that's for sure -- we are sloppy and litter-strewn and not proud at all of our living space. proud american. eagle. but people get all up in arms, literally, about symbols of america, flags, eagles, etc. as if they are pristine, but the same people, do they accept the presence of a landscape strewn with litter? but i held onto the american eagle box until finding a plastic, bag-lined trash barrel (empty) over by mission landing. i tossed it in there, feeling vaguely as if i was being watched disposing of contraband. i continued walking across the mission landing parking lot and my left leg slid out from under me, the victim of melting black ince [now there's an everyday oxymoron]. my left hand caught the fall. my kneck and back wrenched. i got back up, uncut, unbroken unbowed. this reminded me of two years ago when completely invisible black ice caused my left leg to rip out from under me almost making me lose my breath and tearing my hamstring such that it was bruised, bruised!, for weeks afterward, even while in berlin, germany. i marched onward, to freedom of espresso, an oasis, a welcome respite.

why don't we do it in the road?

No, not that.

"It" here refers to walking in the road. I don't get it. A local columnist has written about snowswept, unshovelled sidewalks, as if that's the cause for kids walking in the road, or street. Well, snowy or icy sidewalks may indeed be a causative factor now and then, but how do you explain this practice in other seasons? Leaves? Litter? That's why the sidewalks go unused? What about when the sidewalks are as clear as a saint's conscience? How do you explain it when the nearby sidewalks are indeed shoveled?

I don't get it.

It is not uncommon for young adults -- not usually adults, but sometimes -- in Syracuse to walk in the road, especially in winter, when it is difficult for drivers to avoid pedestrians.

It sometimes seems to me to be a gesture of turf ownership or posturing or proprietary walking or challenge. I've tried to determine if such gestures fall along age, racial, or class lines but do not have enough data to make a sound conclusion. Maybe it is an ancient tradition; maybe it is a local Syracuse custom dating back more than 100 years. Maybe the pedestrians are under a druidic trance.

What do you think?

By the way, the term "anecdotal evidence" strikes me as mildly humorous, as if the scientist were saying, "A funny thing happened to me as I gathered data points" or some other anecdote, doting on truth or assumption.

Decarceration SitRep

Living without a car is doable, so far. I find that

• I walk more
• depend more on others
• consume less
• eat less junk food
• feel more restricted
• consolidate trips
• use my wife's car more
• buy gas for her car
• save on car insurance
• try to avoid self-righteousness over this condition

Walkable Wannabe Talkable

So, what does one experience while walking? It differs daily. It differs from place to place. One person's walkable community is another person's talkable inventory. To wit:

strewn birdseed pecked at by three squirrels, five darting fiches and sparrows, four cautious mourning doves; tired and worn dog waste in the grass; a game of baseball (hardball!) on a copper-sunset diamond, young players, middle aged coaches, no umpires; three green barrels, as in 55-gallon drums, brimming over with trash; a swimming pool filled with silent emerald water, no lifeguards, no swimmers, too cold; green upon layer of green upon darkened or lightened verdure, rolling in contours and 9-hole frustration and pleasure; a pruned bush with a dangling branch of Y; a sacred grove of Tuscany-laden shrubs along the pathway; the robin's evening vesper recitation, persistent and mournful and prescient of dawn

Walking the Walk

It is easy to possess simplistic (yes, simplistic and not merely simple) and sentimental notions and to take them seriously. For example, someone might hold dear the quaint idea that if we all had a front porch, life would be safer. We would be more of a community. We'd engage each other. Of course, that assumes that one could, and would, use that porch constructively, interacting with neighbors cordially, and so on (picture the opposite of the character Clint Eastwood plays, at least initially, in Gran Torino).

A similar notion, I've long felt, applies to square dancing. Yes, square dancing. Why? Because it permits, even encourages, a limited form of physical flirtation. Theoretically at least, square dancing allows one to experience the margins of marital infidelity or the borders of sexual experimentation or the contours of gender exploration, all within permissible realms. The thinking here is that if more people went square dancing, they'd get "it" out of their system; they'd find ways to sublimate carnal mischief, as it were.

Both of these quaint examples are clearly flawed, but, hey, that's what "simplistic" is all about.

My new simplistic notion is this: if we walked more, we would not only be more physically fit but also more mentally and spiritually fit. We would have better communities. I got this idea empirically on Saturday by walking to Wegmans from Tipperary Hill, about, oh, 1.5 miles each way. I could have driven, but it was pleasant and I did not mind spending the extra time needed to walk.

Walking, you discover lots of things.

You find out first-hand and close-up whether you live in a walkable community.

You see where there are sidewalks, and where there are no sidewalks.

You see litter, nearly everywhere.

You see what it is like to live without a car or a bike or a bus.

You experience life at a different speed. (Read that again, s-l-o-w-l-y.)

You see things differently and you hear things differently.

You experience gratitude for the grace of being able to walk, or you see how difficult the terrain is for someone in a wheelchair.

And here's the simplistic and sentimental part: what if we required all our political candidates to walk in the places they serve, all by themselves? What would be the implications? What if people sentenced to community service had to walk and pick up litter (I know, there are at least two drawbacks to this: why make walking a punishment, and why not prevent littering to begin with?)?

What if we literally walked the walk?

What if we really did walk a mile in someone else's shoes, or at least trod their path?

This is not a liberal or conservative issue, neither left nor right.

I invite you to try walking.

I do not mean a little stroll in the park with your dog (as I try to do anyway nearly every day) or around a suburban cul-de-sac. No, I mean something like this: going to buy that milk or bread or cereal. Take a reusable cloth sack and walk to the grocery and back. Live in the country? Hmmmm, you probably do a lot of walking already. Live in the city, you probably do a lot of walking already.

But if you live in an exurb or suburb, you probably drive.

Walking.

Tell me what you find.

What are the hurdles to walking?

And what are the rewards?

Just imagine if our communities made walking easier.

And how will we ever know how hard it is or how easy it is to walk in our communities if we don't try it for ourselves?