Consider them both,
the sea and the land;
and do you not find a strange analogy
to something in yourself?
– Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Chapter One
A $100-million city project, and it’s mine! All mine!!
I now realize it’s become a habit, walking along this newly constructed riverwalk. It’s been years in the making and I think it was built just for me. From my office to the train some nights, through this third largest city in the nation, I realize I’ve only passed six people along the newly opened way. It’s simply wonderful.
So, I can’t be blamed for becoming intensely jealous for my walk. Where did these joggers come from and why are they using my walkway? And these bicyclists, they’re even worse, faster and with even more heedless mechanism.
Yet, in spite of these interlopers, the way is still enjoyable; it still allows my mind to wander. As the river flows to far off places, my mind flows with it. Sometimes clear and sometimes clogged with trash — the river and my mind.
I am intrigued by the varied architecture of this new urban water feature, although there are portions where it’s quite apparent that the architect had never lived anywhere near a river. The jagged, artful ins and outs of the newly designed water’s edge have quickly filled with the floating detritus that rides any river, even more in one that flows through a major metropolitan area. Someone had noticed apparently, as the city engineers have recently installed bright-yellow floating bumpers — usually meant for oil spills — to corral and fend off the floating debris. An efficient yet truly ugly solution.
Along one artful stretch between the city’s many bridges I wonder at the odd inclusion of architectural steps down to the river’s edge. Like an old Sunday School painting of the ancient pool of Siloam, the steps enter gracefully into the water. disappearing quickly into its murky depths. Though, in this case, in the absence of an ancient Palestinian sun, the verge is slimed in green and littered with cigarette butts.
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This is the segment I currently walk. Today is like any other. The weather has chilled slightly as October wanes. I’m on my usual route, enjoying the soothing solitude after only a half-day at my desk, heading for the train and the suburbs for an afternoon appointment.
The riverside eateries and drinkeries have closed for the season and the crowds are even lighter than usual. It’s like some post-apocalyptic setting with no damage. No rising smoke. No corpses in the streets. Just peace and quiet. I could enjoy an apocalypse like this.
Then, like a long-foretold convergence of stars and planets, there appears from the left a cluster of tourists, camera-phones pointing skyward at buildings so familiar to me but totally amazing to them. Then, from the right, two yoga-pants joggers breezing by in tune with their earbuds. And, to finish the deadly conjunction, a Lycra-laced rider on his thousand-dollar wheels appears. Like clockwork, they all round the corner with deadly symmetry and I — the lesser of four evils — tumble headlong down those strangely worthless steps toward the avocado-skinned water.
Read Chapter Two…
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