Melody and Silence
An evening at the riverside on Madison
I bounced on my heels when I waited at the crosswalk. Since I’d left my dorm, I’d been crisscrossing through the streets, running myself in circles, trying to get a bit more lost. I’ve been exploring the places near me new home a lot recently. These spaces envelop me. The city wraps me up in its tangled arms and holds steadfast. It’s very easy to get lost without a sense of direction, and easier still when glancing at my phone gets me ten more yards down the sidewalk. In some ways, getting lost frees me. I don’t worry about the woman ahead of me trudging at a snail’s pace, or the busy rush of cars around me. Getting lost is being thrown into a river of thoughts and movement and people. It’s a discovery, a stepping stone and a glimpse into the microcosm of the human experience. I took a few turns, walked in some suspicious circles around a bank, and crossed a bridge before I considered myself sufficiently lost (despite my proximity to home).
Sounds at 6 PM: a boat tour speaker enthralling his passengers with some trivial history; birds, chirping complaints at me blocking their view of the river; restaurant-goers clinking their glassware; a distant, enraged driver pounding on their horn; a mail cart clicking along the pathway; a plane; a woman murmuring into her phone, kindly muttering humored assurances; the thunk-a-thunk of cars gliding across the bridge; a clatter of some sort on the ground; a power tool across the street, buzzing away at a problem: big diesel engines; a child calling out for his parents; a few phrases (“you know how lengthy the process can be”, “in her class… and… it’s very soon…”); the chairs of a patio being put up; a giggle that blossomed into a riotous laughter and a cry of, “We just walked around the building!”
There is no small beauty to witness in this observation of life. In the people that walk by, stories are born and retold again and again. Beauty is held in the limbs of trees as they sway in the wind. Art is in the smattering of umbrellas on a restaurant patio, each advertising a different brand of beer. There is something eye-wideningly devout in the power of “Public Parking” signs, in skyscrapers drowning the streets in swathes of shadow. Beauty, a pure form of art, lies hidden in so many details of the world.
People: a bald musician carrying a keyboard and debating some obscure topic into an earpiece; a woman smoking a cigarette; swarms of little human people on a bridge a ways down the river, far away enough to look nearly like one mass of movement; a man, leaning over his crossed legs to peer, frustrated, at his phone; an elderly couple, both wearing pink shirts; a lanky grey suit carting around a backpack; a goth wearing a long, black scarf; a short woman with a shorter pixie cut; a lady in a red flannel speed-walking through a pedestrian thoroughfare.
Concentrations of hideously ugly things hide just as easily in beautiful places as they do in hideously ugly ones. Gender is a restraint in walking not only because of the danger it might bring, but the cause of that danger. There is a common culture, dating far back into history, that focuses on restricting women. Learned fear has ingrained in perceptions the repercussions of late-night strolls. It is a fear of sexual violence; sex workers and women assumed to be sex workers have been stigmatized and targeted by extreme violence.
Walking in the city is an act of defiance when there are matters at stake, safety chiefly among them. There will always be a risk in walking the city, no matter the time or person. Knowledge of this, however, is what might change these spaces. The city is a breathing, living thing. The people in it address its issues and fight like antibodies for change. It is never just one person battling for a place to feel safe. Every person who leaves their home to engage in a welcoming space and community fights, in their own way, against the violence. Every person who cares makes a difference.
(Reply: 197 words).
(Title from The Verve — Bittersweet Symphony).
