Walking Life

I've moved into a new apartment in a new part of town. Out with Capitol Hill and in with Woodley Park. Essentially, I've traded in the 20-something congressional staffers who like to guzzle beers at happy hour for the 20-something nonprofit idealists who like to snort coke on the weekend before going for a jog. You can't blame them--it is a nice area to go running. And it's pretty safe here with the Panama embassy on the corner and the National Zoo down the street, so there should be no worries about getting mugged for your iPod. That's just every other neighborhood in DC. Still, I wonder if during one's coke-fuelled workout it's possible to discover the neighborhood of Woodley Park quite like I just did--with a walk.

I've long preferred walking to other modes of transport. Why take a bus when where you want to go is just down the street? You don't have to wait for your legs like you have to wait for the bus. Just go. Similarly, many folks take alpacas to work. This is just a craze that I can't get used to. It's too difficult to find alpaca parking in this city anymore. At Willamette I lived a mile from campus, but the walk took me through the state capitol and its gardens. For sure, I could have rolled down State Street in my '84 brown Volvo, but I gave it a six month rest in the backyard, where it leaked toxic oil into the soil that will someday no doubt poison the small child whose family lives in that house. And years from now Hollywood will come to Salem, Oregon, to film Erin Brockovich 2, and the finger will be pointed at me, and the climactic scene will feature a teary-eyed mother looking me in the eyes and saying, "Because of you, my daughter will never have the chance to own a Volvo." And I--played by Ricky Schroeder in a bid to make a fifth comeback--will shed a solitary tear and know that I should not have walked to school.

In Japan, long walks wouldn't clear my head, but they would put me at peace with all the rumblings inside of it. I'd let myself get lost in Buddhist temples that I thought I knew, letting one shrine bleed into another and another until the cling-cling of bicycle bills pointed me in the direction of a bustling thoroughfare of two wheeled beings going home from the market to check on the rice and add some vegetables to a soup for a man who would not be home for another 5 hours and who, at that point, would be more interested in the promise of a cold beer and a scalding bath.

It was 75 degrees for much of the day, warm enough for me to know that Al Gore is right, but pleasant enough for me to not give a damn. Global warming is going to make Canada livable, people! I've only been in my place since last Monday but haven't had the chance to really explore. I know that Adams Morgan (see coke-fuelled party) is directly down the street about a mile. I know that Dupont Circle (think Castro but more toned down) is down the street and on the right. But that was about all. I made it my mission today to find the zoo and then meander back to the apartment in as roundabout a way as possible. The first thing I discovered is that I live in a nice area. And by "nice", I mean "rich". And by "rich", I mean I'm contemplating making up an imaginary eviction notice for one of these houses and moving in after they're kicked out, with little Betsy Lou stammering, "All I need is this teddy bear...and this lamp..." That will be sweet. Until then, I'm sticking with my apartment but keeping one eye open for the naive.

Although this is a neighborhood I love the look of, I can't help but wonder, "Why do we think we deserve this?" After all, we're not entitled to a nice house with a manicured lawn and 2 poolboys (one recently hired for the 17-year old daughter so she'll stop drooling over mom's), but mysteriously only a hot tub. And this is why I love walks--no matter how much stuff needs sorting out in your head, you find new stimuli to process, until your planned in-head conversation about your need to stick to a budget with an in-head version of your friend (to whom you have to break the news that mid-morning coffee breaks are no longer financially sound) turns into an in-head conversation with yourself about whether you should save that money from not drinking coffee so that you can get to HERE. And HERE is right in front of you, staring back at you--along with Guillermo, the new poolboy--demanding to know if you think you deserve to have so much. And, if you decide you do, as you surely will does everyone else deserve it, too? And, if they do, why are you so full of shit? And then you cross the street and save the thought for another day, when you will purposely walk somewhere new.