Growing Versions

Come on down from the wires and join us in the mud. Pledge to become vapour. Let go of that form and enter another. How can I coax you to cycle through a little faster? Your molecules so want to spread apart. The wind is my accomplice, liberating you from your confinement.

 This time of year is trying. It tests our nerves as we are hemmed in by frozen banks of hardened snow. We obsess about keeping warm and every step we take requires a calculation. But a warm day comes along when we don't have to try so hard for an afternoon or a morning.  It gives us hope that the trying season is about give up.

A couple of years ago, the city's Victorian era Public Gardens were finally opened (after years of pleading) for times throughout the winter.  Prior to that, the gardens had been closed during the winter to protect the grounds from being trodden on through slushie, freezing, thawing cycles. However, this past year, it was closed again through the winter. I am glad. The reason it is so good is that something that is closed has to one day be opened. Finally, after several months wondering what was going on in there under the frozen pond bottoms and frost encrusted hedges, the gates swung open.  It was open for the season.

I went back to my old childhood home town on the weekend. Early the next morning I woke up and walked from the place we had rented and took a walk around the old neighbourhood. True to form, everything was closer together, older, smaller than I remember. I brought my camera but the pictures I took could not sum up well enough how my memories merged with the real live houses and trees I walked past.  The landmarks of my walk from home to school are already mapped out indelibly in my mind, they form grooves along which I walked, I don't need pictures of them. It was the morning before a snowstorm swept in.  The sky was white, and the day was just beginning. There were no people walking around but it was so loud. All the people I remembered living in that house or that one, chatting and talking and clamouring to be heard.  The curtains rustled as I imagined them peeking out. The snow that covered everything brought to mind all the times we slid down that hill....

"For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”  ―  Thích Nhất Hạnh ,  Being Peace Walk away from home. At the end of the day, walk away from work. As you walk toward the other, resist anticipation of what is ahead, just leave what is behind until you arrive again.

"Your own exploration therefore has to be personalized; you're doing it for yourself, increasing your own store of particular knowledge, walking your own eccentric version of the city. ”  -Lost Art of Walking, Geoff Nicholson

We spent a lot of time walking together this weekend.We walked downtown and uptown and back again. The companions along the journey were these little creatures and their strollers, bikes and scooters.  They were acquired at a yard sale on Saturday morning and every hill and decline they met they were tested.  They passed every one. These friends in a can drew into my son's fold a host of new and old friends along the way.

waldeinsamkeit (german) n. The feeling of being alone in the woods. Not loneliness, but solitude in/with nature.

Walking home in the beginning snow storm empties out all the words that were said or that could be said. shush shush shush...I walk to wait and I insulate myself deeper inside my jacket. Small talk is difficult in such weather.

Everything is somewhere else, and you can get there by car.-E.B. White

We followed each others' foot prints. We walked in thigh deep snow towards the  road with no cars. We were kept warm by the idea of the lick of flames from a camping fire. We rested against the furry green moss covered rocks all the way along. We had just found out that he did not see his shadow. We walked as far as our snow legs could carry us.

We missed the bus on the way to the skating oval. "No matter" said my eight year old.  "It's better if we walk there." "Oh yeah?"  I was a little skeptical, such long walks were not usually so enthusiastically endorsed. "Sure.  It's close to your work and once I get to the hotel it all gets a little misty, a big blank white. I would like to know how to go there. On the bus I am not paying attention." So, we walked.

An elderly neighbour says he is "as good as can be expected in the circumstances." That's not nothing. The sunshine is finely tuned to just the right frequency, hovering between static and song. I don't have to strip off, the breeze does an expert job filtering away excess heat and regulating the temperature without adjustment. Flowers get noticed on days like these because their fragile lives are about to get brittle. He opens buttons. He sticks a flower in the shirt and the stem rests against his hot skin.  He suggests we take the flower home and put it in water so he can wear it again tomorrow. Just like this day. I take it home and save it for later.

In the winter, I walk along a splinter of cold pavement.  I exit a warmed up work space and enter another warmed up space at the other end of that shard of unrelentingly harsh cold wind swept street. In the summer, walking is a different experience. I weave in and out of streets , curious about people's flowers and properties and signs of growth. A street's shading or lack of it compels me to ease onto it depending on my mood. The shade and the sunlit ways alternately help me to regulate my atmosphere so that I can experience the splendour of summer at just the right temperature. Like pulses travelling through a circuit board, the shade and heat conduct my walk back home.