Friday, June 3, 2011

Urban/Escape

No more the twenty-mile commute each way in rush hour traffic. Now I walk to work, through a continually astonishing landscape. And people are friendly. Friendly! They say "hi" and "good morning". Children -- they'll stop on their tiny bikes, look up at me and smile. Dogs wag. Even the cats run down driveways to greet me.

Yesterday, on my walk home, I saw a man playing catch with his son in the street. I saw a teenager using a skate board for transportation. I saw a man jogging, a bulldog at his heels. A woman tending her parking-strip vegetables: onions, beets, potatoes, spring lettuces, carrots just beginning to show their feather-tops. I saw peonies so lush and ruffled and deeply pink they made me want to weep. I saw chickens in an A-frame coop: cluck. Knee-high sunflowers. I inhaled the scent of irises: root beer!

It's the time of year now when I can walk out my front door for a stroll around the block that will generally take at least an hour -- and not because it's any great distance. I am once again inhabiting a social landscape, absent of the cookie-cutter shrubbery, the chemical lawns, the guarded-fortresses of the 'burbs that, for all intents and purposes, have alligatored-moats.

(I've dropped the letter "u" from the word "morning" and have modified it with the word "good".)

10 comments:

  1. Thanks for taking me on this walk with you. I so enjoyed it.

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  2. Sounds like heaven. Get yourself some serious walking shoes!

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  3. sounds wonderful, T. Back into 'real life,' eh? Thanks for the sights and sounds of your world.

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  4. Glad to read of so much good coming from such devastation. Your perspective seems alive and well. xo

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  5. that's not just "good" that's "great"

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  6. Well, that's made my morning; I'm happy for you.

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  7. Great that you are starting to feel more positive. Loved the walk around your neighbourhood. You will come out of the darkness into the light again.

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  8. So glad that you're enjoying your neighborhood walks and life again. That's exactly how I felt when I moved back to my old neighborhood, after my ex and I split up, ten years ago. Cheers, cher!

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  9. Dear T - ah, happy dollops of beauty and kindness. . . Thank you for taking us on this walk around your new/old neighbourhood. Walking does wonders. xo

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