no. 20 : An Evening Walk

NOTES FROM THE PANDEMIC

I go outside to check the mail. The hue of the dusk sky, the cool breeze, are so beautiful. I step off the curb, past my mailbox. Leave my house behind.

An evening stroll through the neighborhood, a thing I haven’t done in ages.

Venus beaming above.
The spindle reach of tree silhouettes into the indigo blue I love this time of year.
The smiling light of the first firefly of the season rising from the shadows.

And here, of all of the moments of the pandemic, I feel the most alone.

Strange. Unexpected. To find my path takes me to this place.

Why?

This is my neighborhood, I’ve passed these houses hundreds of times.

I study the yards as I walk by, note the height of the trees now towering, so small when I moved here over a decade ago.

Flashing TVs through open blinds. Kids on clicking bicycles. Dogs straining on their leashes as their handlers apologize.

All of this is familiar. None of it new.

And yet, it has changed.

Perhaps it is the knowledge, most times abstract, that each house has its people inside. The structures are inhabited. Families are not at basketball games or movies or, I don’t know, miniature golf.


Scenes from windows lit:

A man sits working at his computer.

A little girl jumps up and down in the front room.

A couple cleans their kitchen.


Together.

My house is no different, I mean. Yeah. It’s empty right now.

And I don’t want to go back to it, to go back inside.

I want to walk. To keep walking. To cross the street I never have. See what’s on the other side.


I want this, space. Stretching out above me. I stretch my arms up, as far as they will go. I stand on my toes, reaching, no ceiling in the way. No light fixture to bump. No dust. No clutter. No electric light. The hum of my computers. Slow growl of the ceiling fan. None of it.

Chirps of night frogs. A ladybug lands on my arm. Shifting shadows under street lamps.

But I have to go home. Chores to do. Clean up dinner.


Lights are strung tree-to-tree in a neighbor’s yard. I approach in wonder, a festival. A party—no. Just lights. Gatherings under these illuminated strings are burned into my memory. Weddings. Games at bench tables at cookouts. A patio Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, where I find healing in a time of brokenness.


Then I realize whose house this is. A retired man who walks my neighborhood. He’s cordial when you talk to him, but he’s a self-appointed guardian of the neighborhood. This is ok. I want someone watching things. But these lights, filling every tree in his backyard, from fence to fence, are not a celebration. They are erected in fear. He’s told me there are people he doesn’t trust on our street. A house where the cop cars show up once a year. His dog barks as I walk by, large, I can tell, when he impacts the fence. Further underscoring the man’s point. For a moment I hate this man.


“Fear is ugly,” I say to myself, “Makes us do ugly things.” I walk on.


I stop to take a photo of a streetlight in the trees. I can’t get it. The lamp blasts out the details I can see with my eyes, the ones I want to capture. I look down. I am standing on mountaintops.

Chalk scrawl for dozens of feet. A sidewalk mural from a child’s hand. Mountains. Lakes. Houses. Clouds. A jet. A (if this were all to scale) colossus of a horse.

Draw me your dreams. Show them to me. Take in your hand this crumbling tool. Fill the cracks and crevices. Paint it. Paint it all with your color and rainbow. Paint it with your joy, your visions. Your laughter.

Paint it with your hope.