I walk through the ghost town, this would be my city...

Two huge cups of coffee in front of me, woke up to the dog whimpering last night, I don't know from loneliness or kidney stones, her family comes back today and I've become adept at administering medication through canine teeth but end up opting to sprinkle the contents of the capsules atop the kibbles and bits like sugar on corn flakes. If austerity ever really hits, maybe I can work at a kennel or something. It'll be nice to come home and sleep at my own place.

I think the cat actually misses me, because I hear her crying when I come up the stairs to check on her water and food while I've been gone the last two weeks. I'm sure we'll have a movie night soon because I'm still sleepwalking and while the weekend felt like a vacation, I don't know how I got through grad school taking a full load, working 30 hours a week and still finding time to go see bands every couple days back when such acts came through Clevelandia, Kent, and Akron on a frequent basis.

With the game cancelled, I took the other dog I watched down to the valley where the lush canopy of green filtered the sun like stained glass, the river sparkled, and we ambled through side trails down the side and if I was home more, maybe I'd get a dog, because I kind of like this companionship thing. Having another breathing mammal along for protection and accompaniment, with its drooling adoration for you are the one who pours the water and the food, and takes it on car rides with the windows down, it's something I could get used to.

There's a garden walk even in Clevelandia so me and one of my community garden people end up driving around parts of the west side I've never explored getting inspired by these green spaces created in other almost-hoods, these serene enclaves with spiraling wisteria vines and repurposed scraps as trellises. Her son isn't interested so we drop him off and drive out to the east side with a map that isn't terribly accurate, driving through the parts of the city where my relatives once lived before white flight.

She's not from around her so she has no loaded assumptions or fears of environs like St. Clair, Hough, Superior, and it's been awhile since I've come through these parts now that my friend who used to live down there now lives further down in the hood and would rather come to the west side to see me than have me drive over to his parts where drive-by shootings have escalated more to the occasional mortar round being tossed on someone's lawn.

We drive by a couple of gardens in vacant lots, and I think about all of the data that I pore through at work about the problems of the urban core, one of which was once overcrowding and now there are vacant lots everywhere, and where there are no vacant lots there are so many houses empty, curtains blowing in deglassed windows, crumbling front porches, because not only did white flight decimate these neighborhoods, the people that moved in get out if they can.

But yet, there is a greenhouse on the land of a deconsecrated church in the heart of a forgotten neighborhood, across the street from the Hell's Angels clubhouse, where the vast space has some people from the neighborhood singing soulful acapella renditions of Steely Dan songs and people playing piano in the former sanctuary and chalkboards scrawled with ideals, and the girl who shows us around shows us heating built with adobe for the greenhouses in winter and the former nunnery getting restored to be livable again and it reminds me of some hippie commune or crusty squat but the people were pretty friendly. I think about how I would have been all about this when I was 22 and idealistic and prospects for life were bleak, and I'm glad The Kids still have this energy even if I've more or less sold out to The Man.

I took her through the streets of the old Polish neighborhood, where St. Casimir's just reopened, and where my grandpa's side first settled, where he played tennis and went to dances, where his brother got mugged on East 79th, the house that my dad was born in, the house where one of my best guy friends lived where I'd sleep on his couch beneath the African mud cloth on the wall listening to the Fugees while he got ready.

And then we ended up in Hough, where there were race riots back in the day, and shiny new homes where the streets once burned, and an older lady there shows us and the cops who came through her massive gorgeous garden on a side lot, full of flowers from Alabama and vegetables and I wonder how she does it. We're all talking about what we're growing and I'm finding it kind of surreal that we're all here together with common ground that we otherwise wouldn't have if we weren't connected to the earth that we walk on. I'm also kicking myself for not having a camera with me even though that might have ruined some of these moments.

But I love driving these streets, getting lost in forgotten corners of shuttered factories and crumbling towers, to the amusement of the old men sitting on front porches at these crazy white girls driving through with the windows down and the Screaming Trees on the CD player in the beatup car with the front end taped together. She's of a similar mind, someone who appreciates the grit without romanticism, curious, friendly, and pondering. I feel so thankful that I get to see these places with her and that we're equally willing to explore.

It feels like a coda to to the end of the day when I pick up a former bandmate to go see Agalloch at the Beachland again. I wasn't feeling the opener all that much, but we got two hours of meandering alternately beautiful and heavy tuneage, and while the vocals will never be my thing, the songs hit me in that place I can't explain, those guitars and the bass lines and Aesop's drums. She wasn't as into it, but one of my fellow DJs was there so we enjoyed it together. I guess I'm not the only one who goes alone, there were a lot of solitary folk there. Once again, I wish I had a camera, but at least Randal was there to document a little closer.

Drove back to the house of my friends for one last night to get five hours of sleep, feeling like there were few wasted moments in the past days, and so much strange and surprising beauty.

swoon

the debate will probably always rage about non-The Man-sanctioned art in public spaces, but despite whatever murky moral waters those might involve treading, I've always loved street art in any form that brings beauty and color to the cityscape.

pedestrianity

It was still warm enough last night that I could walk and despite losing some cash between my apartment and the drugstore, it was so liberating to not feel trapped within my walls come sunset. While others are talking about the end of the world, this is feeling like a new beginning.
I grew accustomed to walking, not having a car for so long, and weekends in my teens were spent wandering through Parmastan, pilgrimaging to the record store, the Goodwill, and the library, or down to Timeless to get new bass strings and wish I had the money for the vintage Gibson SG on the wall.

In college it was getting out of my dorm room to walk through the empty streets of Kent past the house parties and barfights to clear my head and ponder and soak in the way the street lights glowed golden after sunset, swing on the playground swings or when the church was open, to go sit in the sanctuary and just be still. Most of the crimes in the town back then involved underage drinking or the kinds of things that happen at places I didn't go to anyway, so I moved with relative impunity, at all hours of the night. It's said that bad things happen at that time, and they probably do sometimes, but those hours under the moonlight and the streetlights and the neon have always been when I've had the best conversations and felt most alive. This thing I dearly love to do that others find strange. At least I'm not the only one.

Upon moving out, I found Lakewood perfect for these sojourns too, enough people on the street all the time, at the bars and the pizza parlors, hanging out at the record stores, sitting on the balconies overlooking the main drag. When I moved to the Almost-Hood last year, I loved wandering through there in the summers when I lived with roommates and such, but found living alone extremely isolating, as certain streets at all times, and most places after sunset, felt like no-go areas and it killed me to drive one or two blocks over to hang out with some friends or see a band, because of the drugs and the prostitution and the drama that could go down. What's the point of having everything nearby if Cinderella's going to turn into a pumpkin by midnight?

It never occurred to me that this act of wandering with some purpose not so much of destination but observation had a precedent, though I make no pretense towards originality. But my fellow peon, with his Francophile leanings and recommendations of sundry literature inevitably led to my discovery of the concept of flaneur, which resonated strongly, that while I don't do the pleasure-seeking more akin to Baudelaire, the restless spirit, the insatiable need to observe and understand the workings of the urban space and to be inspired creatively, that I understand even if it seems strange to those who don't do these things.

And while I've done these solo so often, having another companion for these journeys brings its own pleasures, to share the sights, to see what I might have missed, the conversations that ensue, the moments of silence, of shared camaraderie, the occasional sense of awe, and the knowing that the laughter will bubble up at the same time. These are the souls that I know are kindred, because they understand.

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs
Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos
Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing
White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.
The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word
But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken
Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew
And after this our exile