This
walking thing is quite novel for me. I am amazed at how new my neighborhood
appears. And I have lived here 18 years. I am actually seeing much of it for
the very first time. This morning a woman was pushing her two-year-old down the
street in a stroller. The little boy raised his arm to me in greeting as we
passed one another. Now that is a friendly neighborhood.
There
are teams of workman digging holes, trimming trees, moving churches in the
neighborhood. I have noticed that whenever there is a team that involves one
man driving some sort of tractor, a backhoe of some sort or a mobile crane, and
two men to put on the finishing touches of whatever is being done, filling in a
hole, digging a hole, moving a beam, the driver of the vehicle is always fat while
the wielders of the shovels are always thin.
I wonder which came first, the belly or the job?
On
my walk I pass an elementary school. Three days ago I saw on the sidewalk in
front of the school the remains of some kind of pipe cleaner figure. It caught
my eye because of its colors, white, green, brown and red. It had been so badly
treated that it was impossible to tell what it was meant to have been. I
mention it because it has been in that same spot on the sidewalk for the past
three days. Surprising, at least to me, how long a bit of flotsam like that can
stay put.
Next
to the elementary school is a children’s park. Parents bring their kids to
play. There is a small fountain where a
kid can get wet if she wants. There is a very large structure in the middle of
the park, a giant monkey bar contraption.
The inner part of the tubular structure is filled with a webbing made
out of steel cable that has been tinted a rust color. Children climb all over
it, including very young children, maybe four years old. I watched one little girl way at the
top. She was bare-foot and making her
way down from one strand to another. I would have found it quite daunting. It
was a long way down, especially for someone that small. Her mother was at the
bottom watching, but not at all concerned. She was, if anything, admiring her
daughter’s agility.
It is
a friendly spot where parents congregate and talk while their children do the
same on the various slides and webs and swings put there for their amusement. Today
I noticed, however, that way off in one corner a little boy was playing alone
in a sandbox. Near him on a bench was his guardian. They were Chinese. Were they
sitting apart by choice? The little boy seemed happy enough, but the two of
them were striking in their satellite-hood. If they were any farther away from
the center of activity, they would be out of the park.
All
this walking has created a number of little dramas for me, like the isolated
Chinese child. There is, for example, the door stoops on which someone has
piled back issues of the Journal of Economics. Who could possibly want
those? But each day the pile diminishes.
Today it was gone. On one step a package leans up against the riser. It is from
Amazon. It is a book addressed to someone named Xiang. I looked. It’s faded
address plate indicates it has been sitting there a long time. How much longer?
I wonder what book it is?
