The Unincorporated Areas in The Suburbs Near Chicago
On a windy Sunday morning, I began to walk around the neighborhood that I grew up in. The large willow trees that towered over the three-story apartment buildings, grass that seems to be just as long as strings of spaghetti noodles, and the merciful pond that consists of numerous wildlife. Around 9:40 am, a light brown chihuahua, which I reached over to pet, ferociously pounced at me like I was its prey. My eyes quickly peered at the long, sharp, mean teeth that were nearly an inch away from my face. The chihuahua’s eyes, one glaring at me and the other looking up at its owner, were all black. A demon it was.
Around an hour after my incident with the insidious puppy, I waked toward the large pond and witnessed a family of swans fiercely attack a goose. Never had I seen such aggression from such a gentle creature. The way is fluctuated its wings, the way its pupils widened, the way it screeched; nearly made my ears bleed. My blood surged throughout my body, immediately causing me to be alert. Please tell me why, at 10:40 am, this had to occur to me?
OBJECT 1: When I first began to walk, around 9:30, I had walked close to an apartment building, and as I looked around, I found some metal. It seemed to have fallen off the building. It was a filthy piece of grey metal, with bugs crawling around its edges and dirt permanently stuck on its body.
OBJECT 2: I decided to pick up a dead willow tree vine before I walked home. From where I was walking, there were a numerous amount of willow trees. The gentle vines swept across the pavement, sucking everyone and everything inside. The branch I had picked up was bent in half, its leaves barely holding onto the stems; it was destroyed.
In “The Solitary Stroller and the City,” Solnit writes, “Cities are forever spawning lists” (p. 202). Why do walking, lists, and cities seem to go together?
From reading this passage, I understood that the author presented us with different types of walkers. Some may be urban walkers, some may be rural walkers, and other may be walking because they have nowhere else to go. The author speaks on behalf of other poets, recalling the past and later inflicting their present perception. He speaks about the past and how it was completely different from nowadays.
The streets have remained. With that in mind, the street tells a different story each and every day. One day, it may be the place where a prostitute gets picked up, another day it can be the place where you have an epiphany, or maybe, it’s where you meet the love of your life. Regardless of what it may be, the street is an always changing place.
There is a list of perceptions that others may recollect from walking on a specific street of an urban area, such as a city. People encounter a number of different things; which is why you can’t take judgement off of a single experience, you must experience it a certain number of times in order to see a clear view.
