2001-04-10 - 10:07 p.m.

I got the spirit, people! So much to think and say and such feeble means of communication! Nothing ever translates. Our brains aren't big enough to understand what we feel, let alone communicate it.

The only things we can come up with is rubbish like:

I submit that Rubber Soul, Pet Sounds and Revolver were the biggest 1-2-3 punch in music history.

I went for a walk this evening while listening to Rubber Soul. Here's what happened the last time I went on a walk.

Note to Nate: Don't read this, please. I hear Andy has a real cool diaryland page.

----

It�s too nice out not to enjoy this first spring evening outside. I tell Nate I am going for a walk. �I feel energetic,� I say. �Enjoy your walk,� he says.

So I go tromping down the stairs and out the jangling gate, wondering whether it�s the enjoyment of walking or the enjoyment of this one cigarette that�s sending me out; this cigarette I�ve absconded from the apartment so Nate won�t see me smoke. The wind is really blowing as I take out my cigarette and matches, and I see I only have five or six matches left. The first two blow out before they reach the cigarette. I huddle up to the Aragon Ballroom, the glitzy, ornate Aragon Ballroom that clogs up this tiny corner on Saturday nights, step into a nook in its fa�ade and light my cigarette. The wind, the cigarettes, the ballroom � I imagine myself the hero in some movie, struggling to get by, a poor soul in this crazy world.

I walk on with the cigarette in hand, letting it turn me into some mythic figure for a moment, a rebel who isn�t afraid of anything. I feel powerful. This neighborhood is mine. I will walk around the block.

To my right is a bald old community garden, and a dark figure leaning over in the distance. Someone gardening on a Saturday night. To my left is a building I see from my deck nearly every night, off in the distance with its rows and rows of windows, the inside undistinguishable. Now I see it is a co-op apartment. I don�t know quite what that means, but is sounds like people working together, helping each other in their day-to-day living, perhaps staking out a claim in the community garden.

Beyond the garden, a small bulldozer rests in the dark. Behind it, the elementary school with its cardboard projects barely distinguishable behind its foggy windows. The school and the bulldozer reminds me of the story of Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel I used to read as a child and suddenly, all I want to do is read stories to kids. And I think of the textbooks I�m typing out in the suburbs, and I wonder if the kids will figure out the love through those cold numbers, and I think about how maybe I could just love to teach, rather than produce something great, like I can learn to love a walk around the block more than any travel around the world.

I turn the corner onto Sheridan Road and I think about how I�ve been spending my time, how I�ve just been working a bit here and going for a walk there, and how will I explain myself to them? I�ll just tell them that I will cobble a little life together, cobble a living together, and have my little pleasures and my little sufferings and just live my life. I think how I�ll take my little sister, my little sister who I love, on a walk around the block, and tell her how I�m coming to see the worlds now, how it doesn�t matter if you do something great or if you�re remembered. It doesn�t matter if you have the best job. It only matters if you�re happy. If you�re happy number one, and if you�re good number two. That can be my going theory for the world � my mission statement if you will, stated clearly to my sister on our walk around the block.

I pass an empty lot to my right and wonder if someone will come to fill this void. Somebody will come by and will perhaps cobble a living from this spot. Or perhaps it will be a true capitalist, who can make this spot part of an empire and make a bundle off it and lose sight of why he�s alive. He should be trying to be good and happy, but too many people wind up as neither.

I come up to the corner convenience store and I think how I should take a walk to the park to make sure the cigarette smoke is off me, but the wind�s blowing onto me from across this parking lot and I�m getting cold and it�s just a short walk home from the store. So I grab a Coke for Nate and I come walking down the final walk and a man from the street corner barks out to the kids down the road and the cars down the street, and I�m wondering if I�m intimidated by him. I tell myself I�m confident. I belong here. I can walk around my block. This is my home. What am I afraid of?

I smile at the barking man, and he smiles at me and says, �Hi. I�m Dennis the Menace.� And I just say, �Hi,� and smile, while I�m thinking, there�s a guy who�s just doing his thing. So what if it includes standing in street corners barking at cars; he�s doing his thing. And I think how I�ll never remember this well enough to write down when I get back inside.

previous - next