The Walk Home Teaches Me

I've been walking home from work the last couple of days.

It's lovely out of course; winter Portland weather. Dark, so I can admire the downtown cityscape and then, the reflections above the shiny river. I house-shop, picking one and then another house to be my ultimate residence. Vanity, or comfort? I grin at my flip-flops. There's just enough variety in the drizzle to make me picture the variations in the clouds above. I love this climate. I love the smells of the soil, cuddled in its new blanket of leaves, a solstice gift from the trees above. The smell of bark and cedar, juniper and holly. Perfect.

The bus was taking me through this route, too fast. The drivers at night are philosophers, given to commentary on the world that whirls past our fishbowl view, in a way the daytime drivers seem uninterested in. (In LA, the busses have signs saying Don't Talk to the Driver.) As charmed and warmed by these encounters as I've been, I still like the speed that Home comes to me when I walk.

It's infinitely preferable to being alone in my car, at least for commuting. In LA, I'd informally polled people on whether they would take mass transit or not. Most would reply that it's impractical for their route, hours, etc. I could tell most had not even considered it. The more honest ones would say, "I need my alone time."

For me, that "alone time" had a large percentage of literal screaming and sobbing. Funny how the "need" to do that diminishes on mass transit and disappears when I walk. Coincidence?

I loathe commuting. It's boring, wasteful and bourgeois. It teaches people to not care about the problems that pass by one's gaze. Whereas, if one's "commute" is one's own neighborhood, one stays engaged. Why is that garbage sitting there? Why is that building being neglected? Why are their so many homeless people gathering in that area? It's different when it's your neighborhood. And oddly, I noticed that the longer a person's commute was, the more limited a conversationalist they seemed to be. Coincidence?

People tell me that I'll really enjoy the days getting longer and the fantastic spring bloom that overtakes Portland. I respond that it's pretty great now.