Day 9: Puddles without a Splash

This morning was another test of will. I awoke to the thundering of heavy rain on my window and had to overcome the comfort of my bed and force myself out the door. I took the first step with my umbrella in hand, but immediately turned and set the umbrella back in the house. There are few things as refreshing and liberating as an unshielded walk in the rain. It acts as a baptism of sorts, cleansing us of all the seriousness and stress of adulthood, allowing that inner child societal norms have so suppressed to take over for an instant.

The pouring rain echoed from the rooftops and clanged into the gutters, filling the streets with a hypnotic sound. To add to the effect, the trees danced in the wind illuminated by tiny droplets hanging from each branch reflecting the streetlights. I felt like an unwelcomed guest to some great midnight ball.

Soon I crossed paths with the early morning paper lady, sporting her bright yellow jacket and headlamp, and realized I wasn’t the only one joining in on nature’s frolic. Remembering my own days as a paperboy, I doubted whether she was enjoying the rain as much as I was. What for me was a great blessing must have been to here an even greater burden.

The puddles blanketing the streets continued to tempt me to jump in, to splash around while no one was looking, but my slippers and flannel pajama pants begged me to act my age. Not to mention that by this time I was soaked and starting to get a little cold.

Unfortunately I allowed reason to persuade passion and I passed the puddles without a splash. Oh, how often rationality spoils a good time!

Mormonism 101

Although I've created this blog mainly to highlight my and others' creative work, I post this to make up for all the times I've floundered while explaining my faith to an academic audience. Elder Holland does an excellent job of summarizing the core beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Day 8: The Flagless Flagpole

As I walked out this morning I inhaled the refreshing, recognizable air of home. There’s something about being home that makes you always long for vacation, but there’s something about vacation that always makes you long for home. By the end of the week in Hamburg, I couldn’t wait to get back home to my own bed and my own messy apartment. This morning's scent of home persuaded me to re-walk a familiar route instead of charting one anew.

This morning was not as silent as usual. Spring weather has reintroduced the medley of avian arias as countless birds flutter about their morning business. Their songs transformed the mysterious darkness, which is also beginning to brighten with each new day, into a more cheery mood.

I passed the familiar cigarette butts, the trusting house with open shudders—each window now has a crack or a hole from some non-neighborly passerby shielded by the other homes' upgraded, roll-down shutters. I continued past the burned out garage. The scent of burning has vanished. The garage now stands as a ruin. I strode down to Main Street, turned left towards the bakery to see the middle-aged woman tirelessly kneading the dough for the neighborhood’s breakfast. Everything was just as I had left it.

One object on my well-trodden trail, however, stood out to me: a flagless flagpole.

It is curious how new experiences make you more aware of things you have otherwise overlooked. It's like learning a new word that you were sure you had never heard before. Once you have learned the word it seems to pop up everywhere. While in Hamburg, I asked my old friend why Germans seldom fly their national flag? Unlike in the United States, in Germany you can search all day to no avail for a business flying the German flag. And it is almost impossible to discover a private residence with such outward patriotism. He told me the answer is simple; before and during WWII, Germans were forced to fly their flag. Germans could be punished for not flying a flag. My friend told me of his grandfather, who did not support the regime and thus did not raise its fabric symbol of servitude. One day a knock came on the door and the police scolded the old man for having a flagless flagpole. My friend’s grandfather simply replied, rather than announcing his death-sentence disdain for their practices, that he did not have the money to purchase a flag. The police disappeared back into their patrol vehicle and returned a moment later with a flag. They attached it to the pole and raised it themselves, announcing “Now you have no excuse!”

As a result of coerced patriotism, this and millions of flagless flagpoles throughout Germany stand as a defiant symbol of their freedom to not fly a flag.

Day 7: Stelle, Germany - A Morning at the Museum

As I mentioned yesterday, last week I inadvertently went without the Internet and without walking. I was visiting an old friend in Stelle, a quaint town just across the Elbe from Hamburg. My friend is a 72-year-old divorced, lonely, extremely German man, whom I hadn’t seen for six years. During the 6½ hour train ride, I just hoped that we would still be the friends we once were. 

When we arrived at his apartment, he showed me to my room, then my wife and daughter to theirs. I asserted that we could all sleep in the same bedroom and wondered where he would sleep in his two-room apartment. He said not to worry about it, which I soon realized meant he was sleeping a few floors down in his neighbor's extra room. Every night he left us alone in his apartment, walked down a few flights of stairs, and appeared the next morning with a bag of fresh breakfast Brötchen. It was quite the accommodation. The only problem was that he never left us the key to his apartment, so we were trapped from 9pm to 9am, hence my inability to walk.

Although I took advantage of sleeping in a little longer than usual, one morning I did wake up early to my daughter’s hungry cries. My wife took over as those cries always demand and I decided to go exploring rather than going back to bed. I know it sounds strange to go exploring through somebody else’s apartment, but his apartment was really more like a museum with a couple of beds and thus invited inspection. In our bedroom the walls were covered with paintings and the bookshelves were lined with aged manuscripts and antique organ music to be played on his old-fashioned pump organ and his custom built pipe organ. He later told me that this organ is his most prized possession.

Though the keys remained motionless, it seemed to accompany my exploration with a distant dirge. 

As I exited the bedroom and entered the living room, I realized why. The walls and floor were decorated with Testamized animals. (After viewing the commercial I posted a couple weeks ago, I think it’s time, in this year of verbification in the sports world—Jimmer and Tebow—to verbify Chuck Testa.) I first saw this fawn packed into the bookshelf.

It’s hard to imagine that it looked so calm while being hunted. And if so, it is hard to imagine the mentality that would pull the trigger. As I turned toward the center of the room, a similar, sickening image caught my attention, two foxes, mother and child.

My friend affectionately calls them Max and Moritz. The bullet wound in the kit’s back was still visible. Directly above the dining table, two owls peered down at me with their hypnotizing eyes, attesting to the violent scenes that have been transformed into decorations.

The owls’ eyes seemed to force mine to the floor where I found a bearskin rug. I crouched down to examine its face.

Its plaintive features made me fear the hunter more than the hunted.

The animals were only one of many displays in my friend’s living room exhibit. The shelves were covered with statues, fine china, mementos from a lifetime of traveling the world, and relics from both World Wars.

The furniture encasing the artifacts was an exhibit in itself.

The walls were covered with art encased in the most decorative frames from artists around the world. His favorite and my wife’s too, was this English painting.

My friend calls her his girlfriend and his only complaint is that she seldom returnes his affection.

As I returned to my room, I ruminated over the tendency of man to prove his mastery over all other forms of life. It must be a distortion of that same tendency that pushes man to prove his mastery over mankind. Perhaps it is my recent transcendentalist readings that persuade me to argue that fulfillment comes through pursuing a mastery of self. A course of self-mastery would also prove effective in curing man’s propensity to collect substitutes rather than substance, to collect Max and Moritzes rather than real friends table, to collect artwork rather than one capable of reciprocal affection. It would do us good to seek self-mastery and substance rather than others and substitutes.

Earworm of the Week: The National - Start a War

After a week of inadvertently going without the internet, I'm back with a smooth tune, and I'm afraid it won't be out of my head anytime soon. I'll be back tomorrow with another walk.

Day 6: Windows and Wars, Sheetrock and Cement

This morning was the first morning I woke up feeling already alive. It usually takes me a block or two to really wake up. Perhaps my body is finally catching on. I walked out the door to a welcoming sight of dew-covered, rather than snow-covered cars. 

Along the sidewalks, I noticed daffodils beginning to shoot up out of the thawing ground. Soon a thousand tiny trumpets will announce the season’s arrival.

Around the first corner, a pile of yellow garbage bags signaled that today is the pick-up day for plastics.

Here in Heidelberg we separate our garbage into paper, plastic, glass, bio, and the rest. It’s quite the process and I often get mixed up, but I agree with the underlying initiative. I often worry, however, about the effectiveness vs. image ratio. Because going green has become such a status maker, such an image maker, I worry that corporations are coming out the greatest beneficiaries.

A sudden iciness came over my bare legs as the morning dew turned into a morning mist. There was no rain, but the air became wet like the rising mist of some distant waterfall.

I noticed a street sign at the next corner that reminded me of a recent vacation to Salzburg.

We were driving circles around the city trying to find our hotel when my Mom pointed to a similar sign and said, “I think we passed this sign already.” We all laughed as I explained that the sign means one-way street.

Down the street to the right, I spotted a house that has been being worked on for months. The renovation has finally become visible, a set of new windows. 

I’m sure, or at least I hope, more renovations took place inside, but the windows themselves must have been quite the project, having had to literally cut the windows out of the cement and then refill the excess void with cement blocks. Germans often criticize American construction for being out of wood and Sheetrock, vulnerable to tornadoes, fires, and floods. It makes perfect sense, coming from a people whose history has been a constant cycle of destruction and reconstruction with each war, to seek security. Coming from a less war-stained background, a part of me still prefers the mobility and re-moldability of wood-framed houses over lock down security. I’m afraid the day may come, at the rate we’re going, that I too will prefer cement. I hope not.

Down the street a few houses from the new windows, a little farmhouse, nestled between cement houses reminded me of how life was before war, before streetcars and stoplights, before roll-down shutters and car alarms, before cement facades hid the classic wood.

Now typing on my laptop, inserting digital images, and posting the outcome for the whole world to see, my sometimes excessive use and enjoyment of modern luxuries contradicts the inner longing for yesteryear this remnant farmhouse awakes. The Art of Walking is reminding me to maintain a balance.

Earworm of the Week

I don't know what it is about Monday mornings, but I almost always wake up with a song in my head. They are always the most unexpected songs: songs I haven't heard for years, songs I wish I had never heard, and some of my all-time favorites. I usually end up singing these songs around the house all week until my wife also begins to unconsciously hum along. This week's was both a song I haven't heard in a while and an all-time favorite. Enjoy!

Day 5: A Chain of Chance

I went out on a midnight walk tonight. My daughter decided not to go to sleep and my wife was exhausted, so Daddy and daughter (Zinnia) sent Mom to bed and went for a stroll.

Zinnia wasn’t so excited about the idea at first, but within a block or two, she was sound asleep against my chest. It was a lot warmer and clearer tonight than usual. The stars were bright and the crescent moon reminded me of childhood summers spent sleeping out on the trampoline.

I felt less observant and more reflective tonight than I usually am in the mornings. Perhaps it is because night is the time to wind down and reflect on the day’s events, whereas morning is the time to be on the lookout for new experiences. The daily cycle is one of the most profound phenomenons in life. We can have had the worst day one day, only to have the best day the next. No two days, even in the most routinized lifestyle, are ever exactly the same. My morning walks serve as a reminder to always see the spectacular in the everyday. I finally realize why my Dad used to wake me up every morning for school—I’ve never been able to wake up to an alarm—always repeating the same, optimistic phrase, “Wake up Mike, it’s a new day!” He was right. Every day is a new day, and it’s up to me to make the most of it.

As I walked, I began to think of how life is a chain of chances, each chance linked to the next. In everything we do, we take a chance. Some links are low-risk: if I go to sleep tonight, I will wake up tomorrow; if I go to work, I will get paid; etc. Yet, even these low-risk decisions involve chance. There is always a chance that I won’t wake up. There is always a chance I won’t get paid. There is always a chance.

It seems, however, that the length and make-up of our chain depends much more on the high-risk chances we take, chances where success brings complete happiness and failure brings the deepest depression. We take a chance to give ourselves completely over to another in marriage, aware of the ever-increasing rate and disaster of divorce. We take a chance to have a child, cognizant of the realities of morning sickness, miscarriages, still births, emergency c-sections, birth defects, etc. We go to school for years aspiring toward that dream career, mindful of the increasing joblessness of recent graduates.

While wrapped in thought, I passed a private orchard of fledgling, but healthy looking fruit trees.

I thought of how the chance the orchard’s owner took in planting and caring for the trees is fundamentally the same chance we take in getting married, having children, or getting an education. There is a chance that those trees will never bear fruit. Late frosts may freeze the buds, strong winds may break the branches, and worms may eat the fruit before the owner ever gets a taste. But, those young trees, with the proper amount of water, sun, and pruning, may grow to bear the most delicious fruit the owner has ever tasted.

Recognizing the risks in all chance, it can be tempting to take the securer route. Never marry, never have children, never work toward that dream career, never plant a tree, and thus, never feel the sorrow of divorce, of birth defects, of rejection, of frozen fruit. It may be tempting to live this life of settling for self-security, but settling always robs us of the joy that could have been. The settler may never divorce and may never be rejected. But, the settler will never experience true love. The settler will never make funny faces at their daughter until her laughter fills the soul with the most profound, inexplicable joy. The settler will never whistle at work. The settler will never taste the delicious satisfaction of having planted a seed and watched it grow. I feel sorry for the settler.

Come what may, I’ll always take the chance to experience greater happiness, despite the risks of failure, before I ever settle. Speaking of which, it’s time to go to sleep, chancing that tomorrow will bring a new day.

Day 4: Hundetoilette and the Modern Ark

I woke up late again this morning—I hope my body adapts to 5AM soon—so, as I walked out the door, the streets echoed with children laughing and shouting as they made their way to school. Down the street ahead of me, two friendless students, sporting identical backpacks, moseyed along slower than the rest.

I can never help but laugh at these backpacks. Almost every German toddler wears a similar one, proving the success of what must be a remarkable marketing campaign. The backpack is called the Scout. The backpacks sell for close to 200 Euro a pop  for an awkwardly shaped, plastic box, covered with pictures of unicorns, mermaids, and other fantasy creatures. Thinking of my own hand-me-down backpacks growing up, I didn't even spend $200 on my school year's worth of clothing, let alone a single, silly backpack. This morning I thought of the struggles poorer parents go through to provide their children the popular pack. But, I do have to admit, we picked one up for my daughter the other day for when we move back to the states, and I'm sure she'll love it. I say picked up because it was lying on the sidewalk with a sign that said FREE.

After I passed the elementary school, the local architecture again caught my attention. As noted before, the majority of homes in this area, including my own, are block family houses, usually inhabited by multiple families (one on each floor). The exteriors are completely cement with only minor alterations from house to house. Awhile back I saw such a house being built. After having set the foundation, the construction crew arrived with giant slabs of cement that they simply put in place, and voila the exterior was finished. This morning I was drawn to the length people go to make their cookie-cutter home look different than the rest. Some do it by painting the whole exterior a bright color.

I especially liked the single flower in each window to go along with the spring pastel paint.

Others display their uniqueness through their choice of door.

I really liked this door's vintage vibe along with the matching rain gutter, mailbox, and window frames

Others make their homes unique through their choice and color of shudders.

Although the architecture is uniform, they decorate the walls, the doors, the gutters and the shutters, everything and anything they can to stand our from the crowd.

As I heard a man yelling at his family through the walls behind me, I realized that others make a name for themselves, whether consciously or not, from what echoes from within. It sounded like he had woken up late, was now in a hurry, and it was all his family's fault.

The next thing I noticed is quite disgusting, but hilariously ironic. I noticed a wall of dog dejection, or as my Mom is wont to say, doo doo. This wall was definitely a favorite pit stop for the dogs’ walks around the block.

Sorry if I just ruined your breakfast! Halfway down the block came the irony.

The stand was obviously misplaced. The true Hundetoilette was 50 feet back down the wall, but again what did those city planners expect when they put up a sign for dogs in German. Dogs don't speak German, except for maybe German Shepherds, but even so their first language is dog. If the city wanted the dogs to obey the laws, they would write the laws in dog. It only makes sense. I can imagine the furious city workers, scooping up the doo doo day after day, cursing the dogs for not being able to read, swearing that if they ever got hold of one of those unruly mutts, they would give him a punishment he would never forget. But, then again the whole mess could be solved if the dogs’ owners would simply translate the law to their dogs, and pull out a potty bag with their opposable thumbs. How often do our laws treat speakers of other languages like dogs? I’m sure the dogs wonder why we humans don’t follow their laws. I’m sure they are often confused about whose house, whose car, or whose wall is whose with no urinary mark of ownership.

A few yards past the toilet, I spotted an abandoned pacifier, announcing the parents’ failed attempts to press their interests onto their child.

I pray only that this free-spirited child will never feel the same abandonment.

Around the corner, a local church made a bold claim. 

The metaphor may be sound, or perhaps it is not meant metaphorically at all, that modern churches serve the same saving purposes as Noah’s diluvial ark, but with so many self-proclaiming Noahs, and so many make-shift arks, I wonder if any will stay afloat when the final flood comes. I believe in a Noah; I believe in an ark, I believe in floods, and I believe in a God capable of flooding and inspiring a Noah to save those willing. But, I’m afraid brick edifices will sink not swim.

Last night, my wife and I were reminiscing about the glory days of high school soccer, so I decided to conclude my walk today with a jog and game of me against myself at the local field. But, when I arrived at the pitch I was instantly reminded of my current station. 

 

Germany offers an array of some of the finest artificial and natural soccer fields I’ve ever seen, but fences and club memberships block my admittance. Instead I played this morning on the neighborhood, free-for-all field of non-netted goals, gravel, and broken glass. It sure made me excited to return to my hometown in the states again where there is always an open stretch of grass for any kid and his ball.

Song of the Week

So, I haven't found much time to write yet this week, but I promise a few walking posts within the next few days. Meanwhile, enjoy one of my new favorite songs.

Video of the Week

I'm sure many of you have already seen this, but if not, this beats every Super Bowl commercial ever. NOPE!

Day 3: Façades

I woke up a little late this morning and expected to walk out my door into more light and noise as people hurried down the streets to work, but it was still dark and silent, at least in our part of town. A slight sprinkle formed puddles along the gutters replacing the snow and ice from days before. The weather has gone up at least 10 degrees (Celsius) since my last walk, making me excited for spring. I walked straight to Main Street this morning wanting to cross over to the other side of town. I quickly passed the pile of cigarette butts in front of my neighbor’s door, the still-shuddered windows, and the burned-out garage. Nothing stood out to me except this crushed Uludag can.

Beyond making me want a Doener Kebap and Uludag for lunch today, the crushed can came to life telling a story of the difficulties of Turkish immigrants living in Germany, their struggle to overcome stereotypes, racism, and the physical violence many continue to endure at the hands of xenophobes. I’m sure similar crushed cans—Latino cans in the United States, African cans in France, and Caucasian (the geographic region not the skin color) cans in Russia—lie all over the world sharing similar stories of their fight to exist as a minority.

All of the shops were still closed this morning except for the bakeries and a little shop to buy lottery tickets.

I guess it’s never too early to purchase false hopes. As I thought of the hopes I have, false and firm, I was startled by the honk of a car’s horn. I wondered what type of person had the gall to honk this early in the morning. What could have been so impeding to the driver to justify waking up the rest of the city?

There were more cars on Main Street and more people in the buses. When I crossed to the Southside of town, I passed an interesting array of people. There were construction workers in coveralls, business men with briefcases in hand, and the occasional student hurrying along on a bike, a worn out backpack to attest for long nights in the library.

As I passed a bakery this morning, the shelves were already full of breads and pastries, filling the block with the smell of home. The first customers were already sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. Directly across the street, another woman was making a meat salad in the local butcher shop as she prepared for the day ahead. I wonder whose work brings more satisfaction, the baker or the butcher. The one brings seemingly dead ingredients to life through the life-giving catalyst of yeast. The other cuts, seasons, and packages those once living beings, making death more desirable. Or does each return home with an equal satisfaction having put in an honest day’s work, providing life’s necessities to their neighbors?

Just around the corner, an arts and crafts store held on to last year’s Christmas spirit.

Why is it that Christmas lights, which are so magical in the season, become so tacky and out of place in every other season?

Just passed the Christmas lights I entered a dark alleyway I had never before noticed. There is always an eerie feeling that accompanies dark alleys, but I went down it anyway. On the one side, a home had been suffocated by vines.

I crouched down to take a picture and could hear a subtle creaking in the vines as if they were preparing to strike and swallow their next victim.

The alley turned out to be a dead end, but as I backtracked across the street was another before unknown, but more welcoming alleyway. This sign combined with the early chirping of birds announced that this side of the street contained more life than the last.

The first building to the left, however, made me second guess my first impression. It was a large, brick building, each brick was weathered and worn. It looked like the remnants of a fortress, even the windows were bricked in.

The building’s only visible entrance or exit was these large pipes protruding out of the back wall.

As I made my way home, I spotted a building that has often caught my attention before, but became more fascinating in dawn’s more critical light. It displays an architectural style found throughout our little town made up of a thick, cement façade, which hides the old, decaying farm wood that makes up the side walls.

I wondered how often architecture reflects its inhabitants. How often do we also build up thick façades to disguise the rest of our being? Yet we all wear our cement masks for different reasons. Some of us hide dirty, decaying wood, as this building did. We hide shame and guilt, loneliness and self-doubt. Our façades make us invulnerable. But, as this juxtaposition of buildings suggests,

our façades also make us normal. We conform to the stylistic norm to cover up our uniqueness, resulting in a dulling uniformity. Each building appears the same as the next, different sizes and colors, but sporting the same styles and trends. The monotony observed in these architectural façades made me want to find the nearest sledge hammer and break down the outer wall and get down to the real substance. I found the hidden walls more beautiful than the façade. I wanted to see and get to know the old, decaying wood hidden behind the cement surface. Why are we afraid to be vulnerable, visible, observable? Why are we so afraid to be unique? What do we have to hide?

Day 2

It was a lot brighter this morning as the street lamps reflected their yellow light onto the freshly fallen snow.

There’s something about snow that beautifies whatever it rests upon.

The snow also heightened the morning’s sense of mystery, framing the movements of every passerby. I immediately noticed a line of drawn-out footsteps signifying that someone was out earlier than I.

As I took a closer look, however, I noticed that they led from a car into a house and the drawn-out effect in the snow was caused by dragging, signifying that this person had just called it a night while I was beginning a new day.

I went the opposite direction today—my goal is to never walk the exact same route twice—and I was immediately drawn in to a door stained with bleeding, black letters, the markings of an amateur artist.

I wondered how it must feel to see those letters each time you enter your door. I wonder how many times those letters force the tenants to take one last anxious look over their shoulder before locking the door behind them.

Bolted to the outside wall of the building was a disturbing display of vending machines. The juxtaposition of a cigarette machine, 

a candy machine,

and a toy machine

created the perfect meeting place for people of all ages to get their fix. Each machine hung at different heights according to the targeted audience, a street school, of sorts, where parents unconsciously teach their children the addictive process from toys to treats to smokes. Each deep inhale and cough of smoke teaching, “One day you’ll grow out of treats and toys, and be a grown up.” There were three more cigarette machines on my short walk. I wonder if they’re strategically placed in this part of town.

The next block down, a house door slammed as a large man stammered drowsily out into the cold, letting out a leonine yawn and stretching his back before crouching into his undersized car. At the same time, a woman under an umbrella dragged her luggage along the sidewalk setting off for an exciting journey. I wonder where she’s going? Packing and unpacking luggage is always exciting.

To my left, a small light reflected off of the shuddered windows. I headed toward the light only to find a woman wearing a head lamp as she delivered newspapers. She must feel underappreciated these days, knowing that the news she delivers has already been published online hours before. A few yards further, I passed a man, digging through a pile of garbage and we exchanged a “Guten Morgen!” In the background, a window reflected the flashing images from a TV that seemed overused, signs of a sleepless night.

I turned the final corner and entered my door, still silent, wife and daughter sound asleep; I sit down and begin to write.

Day 1

In Thoreau’s essay “Walking,” he writes, “I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.” Thoreau goes on to admit that in order to keep up his own health, good spirits, and inflow of literary inspiration, he was wont to saunter at least four hours a day. Having chosen to have and support a family, which I'll never regret, life’s demands allot me much less than four hours a day for sauntering. Thoreau’s assertion, however, recently kindled a desire to discover the genius—the art—in walking. Thus, today I begin a journey, one I hope will last a lifetime, of early morning walks. This blog will serve, in part, to record the art I observe on my morning walks.

I set my alarm last night for 5 AM, but my three-month-old daughter’s hungry cries woke us all up at 4:45. (This may seem ridiculously early to be going on a walk, and it is, but my typical day’s demands begin at 6. So, in order to always get my walk in, I’ll be waking up a little earlier than usual for now on.) My wife took over the daughter duties—hungry babies don’t usually care much for dads—as I pulled on my coat, scarf, hat, and gloves and ventured out the door.

I accompanied my first step with a deep cough that shattered the dark silence as the freezing air rushed into my lungs. My first thought was to turn around and go back to bed, but I walked on. The sky was black, no stars or moon, only street lamps suspended between block houses to light the sidewalk.

I immediately recognized the mysterious beauty of shadows and darkness, Hawthorne and Poe tapped into so many years ago. My next cough ricocheted from house to house ahead of me announcing my coming. A part of me felt strange, not wanting to be discovered, walking about the silent streets dressed in Christmas pajama pants while mumbling impressions into an iPod. I was sure some onlooker would suspect me a drunk, though I am an ever-sober saunterer.

A moment later, I almost slipped on an unnoticed stretch of ice. I most definitely would have if it wasn’t for the encased cigarette butts that roughened the surface. I’ve never been so grateful for my neighbor, who sends more smoke into our atmosphere than any chimney on the street. I was surprised when I looked up and didn’t see him. I thought if anyone would be out at this hour it would be him, standing on his doorstep as he always does, a cigarette hanging from his chapped lips, staring off into some unknown abyss until I startle him with my daily “Guten Tag!” (I’m currently studying in Germany, hence the German greeting.) He always returns my greeting gruffly, but I imagine that beneath his ashen surface he is glad someone acknowledges his existence with more than a choking glare.  

I soon passed a burned-out garage at the end of the street with boards over the windows. The fire happened about a month ago. Could those iced-over cigarettes be to blame? The garage belonged to a retired couple and had been in the family for centuries. Before the windows were boarded up, the street stank of those possessions forever lost. I had often stopped to look in on the remains of an antique sewing machine, garden tools, and hunting trophies, reminding myself to collect memories more than material. The reminder was even more penetrating this morning, coupled with the morning’s silence.

The silence broke suddenly with the ignition of a delivery van as I approached the nearest bakery on Main Street. Behind the window stood a stout, middle-aged woman next to a case of freshly baked rolls. She had obviously been awake and working for hours. One of these days I need to drop in and thank her for waking so early and working so tirelessly to make our lives so delicious. In front of the bakery stood street lamps decorated with flower pots, filled with last year’s flowers, brown and rigid, yet seemingly content, knowing that springtime sun will bring resurrection.

To my right, David Beckham stood staring at me in his underwear. Just yesterday my wife took pictures of me standing in front of a similar ad, fully clothed of course, but trying to imitate Beckham’s face. Those of you, who know me, realize how comical this was for my wife since I can't make a serious, model-like face for the life of me. Seeing my reflection in the advertisement this morning reminded me of my own normalcy.

Behind Beckham sat an old couch begging me to investigate its abandonment. Its worn cushions testified of absolute loyalty, having always provided immediate comfort to the family it had served only to be tossed aside when financial circumstances proved capable of more modern furnishings, a testimony to how rapidly fidelity gives way to fashion.

Finally the morning’s first bike passed, a flickering headlight guiding the way 

as a woman approached the tram station from the opposite direction. The tram appeared from around the corner, proving the woman perfectly punctual, and announcing that the city was slowly coming to life.

To my right, the local bank's digital thermometer attested to my insanity and my right hand begged for a glove as it shivered to take another picture. 

Opposite the bank, a gift shop display caught my attention, tempting me to take a closer look.

It seems there is always 50% off of something somewhere, yet big red letters continue to prove persuasive in making us buy things we don’t need. When will the justification, “But it was on sale?” ever make up for an empty wallet and a garage boxed to the brim with superfluities? Oh, spring cleaning can’t come soon enough! This walk is proving to be a self-spring cleaning of sorts.

Just before I turned back for home, I spotted a set of electrical boxes stained in graffiti in a language I didn’t understand. 

In retrospect, I count my linguistic ignorance a blessing, for graffiti never fails to remind me of adolescent obscenities. There’s something about graffiti, though, despite the language, and despite the message, that gives a city a certain flare, a unique character; yet an undeniable, inner anxiety.

Directly behind me, a tall steeple bid sanctuary, yet the surrounding trees bid a much gloomier welcome. I entered the chapel grounds only to discover the doors to be locked. It seems that steeples and sanctuaries often fail us when we most need them, proving our inner conviction the deciding factor when man-made edifices lock their doors.

 

Down the street a block or so, a single light flickered as I passed. The rickety sound of opening shutters drew my attention to a man staring out from behind the glass, half-awake and half-confused at the strange looking, self-conversing saunterer returning his stare. Outside his house stood a BMW, the interior blinking red to scare off intruders. The ever-blinking red reiterated the feared dangers of darkness. There would be no light to blink if there was no burglar to break in.

As I turned the final corner back onto my street, I observed a refreshing home, displaying less worries than the rest. It was equipped with the old wooden shudders that emanate a welcoming charm, an open trust in the common good of the neighborhood. Its open shudders were singular, however, as all other windows hid behind their upgraded, more fear-repellent, roll-down shudders.

I saw my last, visible breath as I opened my door and entered the warmth of home just in time to relieve my wife of dirty diaper duties.