Streets & Walks

The streets I once walked I walked again. Time passed. I walked those streets again. I wasn’t unhappy, but not happy either. I knew some intersections well. Some I found as I walked. I liked the walk. I liked the buildings. I liked how I felt and I didn’t. I learned how to walk the known streets with a new pair of eyes, with thoughts to shower the site with. It wasn’t exciting and I liked it. I thought I unlearned how to associate the thoughts from previous walks to the known streets of new walks. I did and I didn’t. I liked it and I liked it.

The streets I knew reasonably well looked different, of course.  Not because I wanted to see them differently, but because I walked differently. I liked it and I didn't.  The streets were flowing into each other like a film creates an impression of indiscrete moments merged into a flow. One of the streets like a hall leading into a room adjacent to another room with no particular logic overarching the connectivity. Like hastily thrown pieces of space, scattered to form a place or something. The last in the sequence of the rooms—a bathroom. Before it a room. A door in each wall. Questionable windows. Not much light. They say it’s a bedroom. Looks like a degagement. Who cares if its rentable.

Into the other hazy flow of space separated by walls. Small windows, scarce daylight, dependent on how much of it the other rooms allow. Rich in its multiangular layout. Walls know no acoustics. Architecture knows no architects. A long vestibule tired of its wretchedness. Mold flourishes from the threshold. Piles of paper pour out from the corners.  Years layered in an unknown manner over the everlasting desire to rent, rent, rent.

Trains are full of wrinkled clothes, wet hair, make up being applied while negotiating movements, adjusting to the dynamic of the vehicle,  sockless feet  indifferent to moisture, indifferent to cold, indifferent to warmth. Flip-flops against climate variants.  Eating out against tradition. Rented rooms against mortgage. Against the idea of the nest. Like fuck!

I like my walk, but I don’t know how to like it. My walk is restrained partly because I make it so, partly because it just is. I complain about it and I don’t. I wish I could like it differently, but I can’t. Because I like what the steps do to my thoughts. The steps that make me dry my hair and not apply make up on the train, wear my shoes, and feel cold when it’s cold, warm when it’s warm. Hypersensitized to stimuli, they say. Perhaps hypersensitivity is a way of resisting them. Not in a strictly causal way these are related to each other. I don’t know exactly how they are related. But I know I didn't unlearn how not to like romanticized versions of what a walk is, and yet, also not to be averse to tired, insecure micromovements.  I don’t think I will ever be able to understand how I can be sensitized to such a mystery. I don’t even think I want to. My only wish is to learn how to like my walk.