I feel a little like a creeper. I’m sitting here staring out of my window and into the windows of people blocks away trying to make out their tiny forms moving to and fro and imagining their lives; imagining what this city means to them and how they breathe it in each day. I am a tourist here, but I am trying to understand what here is as I intend to spend more and more time here with my partner. We are working to become part time residents and working to enjoy this other space and the other life it brings, but that begins with understanding it.
I don’t yet understand the rhythms of this city. Just after 8 am the downtown area looks entirely dead. Nobody on the streets and few cars moving beyond the ones on the highway. By 8pm most of the stores shut down as if trailing dusk by three hours in their disappearance. The homeless take over by then. The streets of Pike and Pine are so flooded with those without homes that it becomes a community unto itself. Dangerous? perhaps, but only in the sense that we are foreigners to them and lookey loos at worst. Nobody wants to feel like they are being watched or pitied in the watching. That isn’t what we are doing, but curiosity can be mistaken for a great many things.
I don’t know what today will bring on these streets but I remain curious and excited to find out.
Some Thoughts:
- Sometimes I still look at the keys when I type. They are blurry this morning–early eyes and all.