As the temps pitched downward in the past few days, the little dog has decided that nesting under a warm blanket trumps getting up to walk and eat. This throws a bit of a half-step in my morning ritual, but it does mean that I get a little longer to wake up and think about the day. Another half-cup of strong Peets and the words just flow…
The new Dirt Rag arrived yesterday, and my interests found Jaquie Phelan’s* article on the Single Speed World Championships held in Scotland last year. I’d stumbled across her blog a month or so ago, and have been enjoying her punwomanship and topics. It’s nice to read her voice in print for any number of reasons - the phrase “optimistic wackiness” comes to mind - but one of the themes that she hits on in the blog is the neighborhood when most are sleeping.
Maybe I like it because it’s geographically near, and the themes of paradise-lost-to-the-SUV-driving-aquisitives and overlay-of-lavishness-upon-what-is-already-paradise ring very true. But, I really enjoy the listening-to-one’s-world posts that are there.
If you are wandering around your neighborhood much (well, maybe if you are wandering around my neighborhood much…), you come to the conclusion that most folks are at best blissfully disconnected from everything around them. They walk the 23 feet from door to car door, tumble in, tether themselves down, fire up the engine and lurch away seeking goddess-knows-what. These days when the thermometer gets depressed and the canines hunker down, the defroster is blowing and tunes or what passes for radio commentary is blasting. Swaddled in layers of distraction and diversions. Probably whipping their phone out, if my non-scientific observation is correct.
But, when the amalgam of clatter, slipping drive belts and thrumming combustion finally departs, the block again seems quiet and deserted. I wonder if those folks know that the house four doors down is home to the woman whose husband must’ve died recently, since he’s nowhere to be seen and the daughter seems to come by much more regularly.
The gang of crows have clustered at the top of the highest leaf-losing branches, trying to catch the first warmth of the sun’s rays as it edges over the ridge. Down here on the ground, my breath causes fog and the dog gets wetter and colder as dew dampens her thin layer of fur. I wonder if those departing folks know about the house on the street (and there’s probably one on every street) where no one seems to live. Papers show up, disappear, garbage cans roll themselves out to the street and retreat when emptied. But, in the years we’ve lived here, I’ve never seen a human appear, nor - as I realized yesterday - a light burn in a window after dark.
Our walk continues. Past the house with the garage door that is always open, the car that always gets parked an extra foot away from the curb, the house with the two RV’s parked in front which are jam-packed with, well…stuff. This one always seems to cause a slight bit of sadness within me. The front yard of the same house always looks like a huge garage sale is underway, but the items all sit behind a locked fence - an odd museum of the accumulated. These RV’s act as the storage units, their window’s showing stacks of magazines and found objects, wedged in with a frightening fierceness. You wouldn’t notice that at driving speed.
Streets intersect around here with a casual oddness, routed by the confines of nature combined with the regularity of the grid. This allows all manner of loops, to the delight of ever-peeing little dog. The other morning, I realized that one person up a street on which we tend not to travel had a big honking flat screen TV thoughtfully positioned so that passersby could enjoy the visuals through the front window. To my great suprise, the images at 7:15 am were bicycle road racing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t convince the dog that interesting smells existed in the foliage directly across the street, so we slogged along as brightly colored jerseys duked it upon the roadways of some European villages. Another bit that would be but a flash of peripheral noise from behind tinted windows.
It’s the walking, repeatedly and slowly along the same pathways, which tend to give rise to realizations and discoveries. Maybe it’s all low-level stuff - the natterings of the monkey-mind jabbering encouragement to save these shards of thought like the person with the RV full of Newsweeks. But, I guess my hope is that somehow it’s cutting down through the noise of culture and momentum of aquisition, finding a different and more observant pace. And from that place, you can begin to think about all that which surrounds you, all that which is worth ackowledging as truly important. Maybe from there, you can begin to utter a meaningful thanks or two.
Best to all today.
*I’m assuming that everyone reading knows who JP is, just ‘cuz I assume everyone reading knows the history of mountain biking. But, if you don’t, go here, read about WOMBATS here and catch up on Marin-centric MTB history here. Hopefully I’ll keep building up the mtb lore and history pages here.