A breeze, cool and alluring, strokes my cheek and whistles in the distance, as if God has heeded Bacall's advice to Bogey.
He put His lips together and blew, ever so gently, through the evening sky, raising a tingly layer of goose bumps on a cozy, contented planet.
Bother me not with wars and ideologies, hatred and chaos, Dean and Dubya. Not now. They don't exist. Not on this peaceful sidewalk, at this quiet hour, under these glowing streetlights, in my balmy revelry.
My once-clipped gait, slowing to a pace that would leave a tortoise impatiently tapping its claw, calms my mind, which gradually eases its grip on my unclenching body, tension draining away, as I turn a corner to discover … a companion.
Short, squat little fellow. Shiny black shell atop spindly legs, spinning furiously forward like tiny black piston rods. Instinct surges at the sight of one of nature's less-loved critters, an urban pestilence nature intended as Fear Factor food.
I shift my foot over and up, reflexively poised to squash with fatal force … then retreat, softening in the sway of my spreading serenity.
Why bother the little bugger? … What harm has he brought me? … He's walking … I'm walking … Me and Mr. C … Two creatures sharing one space … Fellow travelers, taking in a little night air … He's in no rush … I'm in no rush ... We amble on, together … The breeze strokes us both.
"Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains."
Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit
How easy—in this wheeled, wired and wireless culture—to forget that life is still lived close to the ground.
The actual still superior to the virtual, texture lending substance to image, the world still a phenomenon to be felt, not merely seen.
I miss that world, blurred and muted in the drive-by dash of daily life.
Beyond home, auto and office.
Unconcerned with consuming goods, providing services, living a datebook.
Unmeasured by billable hours, accounts receivable, quality time.
Free of punctuality, productivity, preparedness.
The world a couple of inches in front, a foot or two behind, a yard or so to the left, a stone's throw to the right, idling by at 3 miles per hour, unmolested by the impulse to go anywhere, do anything, find anybody or be anyplace at any time.
The world in which sauntering across the street lets one mosey through the mind and take a stroll through the soul.
And if this triggers sniggers of derision—"Hey, this is Vegas, chum, we live semi-obscured lives in peach-tinged developments behind peekaboo half-walls, entered and exited via private garages, and only tacky tourists take the shoe-leather express on a street we mostly shun; while our sparsely-trod sidewalks define suburban sameness, dotted by strip-mall parking lots of commuter/consumers scurrying from home to car to Home Depot and back"—I bid you an amiable ado. No hard feelings, chum.
Me, I don't live on the Strip, I'm blessed with two good legs, I live in Las Vegas.
And as bizarre as it seems in a city that hardly knows a pedestrian from a pelican, I'm takin' a walk.
"Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg a pillar, holding the body upright between the earth and sky. The other a pendulum, swinging from behind. Heel touches down. The whole weight of the body rolls forward onto the ball of the foot. The big toe pushes off, and the delicately balanced weight of the body shifts again. The legs reverse position. It starts with a step and then another step and then another that add up like taps on a drum to a rhythm, the rhythm of walking. The most obvious and the most obscure thing in the world, this walking that wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory and heartbreak."
A mellow nighttime stroll allows meditation, but a brisk daytime jaunt encourages observation, a snapshot of your surroundings.
Once out the door, that sound, my opening bell, brings a smile.
Ecstatic, squealy-screamy shrieks of kids being kids once they're done being pupils, doing whatever it is I used to do—chasing, teasing, cycling, scootering, giggling—which is mostly nothing, but with more raw energy than I now do nearly everything.
I linger, listening, savoring the joyful neighborhood noise and echoes of my own long-ago, before heading left out my side street of stacked town homes, toward South Durango.
As their sing-song sweetness dims in the distance, the visual landscape bending into view—azure sky sweeping over green pines and leafy palms, snow-streaked Mount Charleston ringing a checkerboard of pastel homes—reveals suburban chic at its sleekest. But the emotional lay of the land is less inviting, more severe.
Implacable walls, fronted by eerily calm, people-free sidewalks and cars flexing their dominance at swift, pedestrian-unfriendly speeds, jackhammer home the point like a power drill:
"You and your two-legged, turn-of-two-centuries-ago travel tendencies are out of your league. You're the Flintstones in our Jetsons world. Las Vegas is not made for you, Walker Wimp."
As if any trace of neighborliness and communal life has receded into the weeds, Las Vegas posting a citywide "NO TRESPASSING" sign.
Cold and closed, unwilling to socialize.
"Retrieve your keys, beep that computer-blip door-release and fall in with the motorized masses, fool. Resistance is futile."
No it isn't, damn it. No it isn't.
"Walking is about being outside, in public space, and public space is also being abandoned and eroded in older cities, eclipsed by technologies and services that don't require leaving home, and shadowed by fear in many places—and strange places are always more frightening than known ones, so the less one wanders the city, the more alarming it seems, while the fewer the wanderers, the more dangerous and lonely it really becomes."
Approaching the bustling convergence of Durango and Charleston—where traffic thickens, a strip-mall, bus stop, Grumpy's gas/mart and apartment complex link the corners and commuters slip out of mobile steel cages to sprint to store aisles and cashier lines—life resurfaces, albeit warily, reserved, but tentatively engaging with me.
And I will engage it back.
OK, I'll play.
Press these bulbous crosswalk buttons so that stern, neon-red hand ordering HALT across the way will surrender to the strolling Little White Dude and a four-way traffic frenzy will momentously part to clear my path, like God directing biblical traffic for Chuck Heston. Who's kidding who here? In the Kingdom of the Car, it's simply a ridiculous ruse to provide peon pedestrians an illusion of control and a dollop of dignity. Realistically, we have little standing unless we're sitting behind a wheel. …
Little White Dude skeedaddles before I get barely three feet from curbside. A game of Gotcha! …
Damn the four-tired torpedoes—MY speed ahead. …
I amble toward the curb as a right-turning trucker slows and nearly stops beside me, waiting for me to cross, front grille lurching impatiently. The moment I inch out of its path, he blasts the gas, accelerating into a whisker-close swivel turn, tire spewing pebbles into my pants leg and dust onto my shoes, then screeching recklessly down Charleston and outta sight. …
Pissed at pausing for a piddly foot traveler. …
Well, ya know what? …
I'M WALKIN HERE! I'M WALKIN' HERE! …
"Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors—home, car, gym, office, shops—disconnected from each other. On foot, everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it."
Southward and onward on Durango, prowling the east side of the street as cars zoom westward, kicking up quick, stiff puffs of wind in my face, Steadily, I pick up speed and adrenaline, leaning into my strides with renewed urgency. This is defiance erupting toward a four-wheeled world seemingly allayed against me. …
That trucker with the itchy trigger foot really burned my butt. Walk it off. … Calm it down. … Cool, boy. … Cooooool … Take a swig of that Snapple you've been saving. Lemonade. Bottletop trivia: "Lake Superior is the largest lake in the world." Hmmm. "Real Fact No. 145." …
Slow the prowl back to a stroll. …
Pheeeeeeeew. …
Bright, brilliant Vegas sun blazes and gazes down like a cordial companion, the only stranger on this journey willing to walk with me, pace me step for step.
Rows of homes peek out and over layers of restrictive red bricks, shielding anonymous neighbors from anonymous neighbors, as if living life as street theater—naked, full-throated, with urbanized, big-city gusto—is a social disease. This is a world of neatness, discretion, concealment. And on a largely unacknowledged level, loneliness. …
"… Walking may in some way still be subversive. At least it subverts the ideals of entirely privatized space and controlled crowds, and it provides entertainment in which nothing is spent or consumed."
School crossing, ease up on the pedal, fella, limit 25 mph when the yellow lights flash … Ah-ah-ah, you're not quite down to 25, are ya? Cheatin' at 30 and itchin' to accelerate. Bet you're a parent. You'd probably keep it to 15 or so at your kids' school. …
Gorgeous emerald-green golf course of loping hills, the privileged awash in their perks, right across the street, as I cross over an abandoned, pock-marked, gunk-caked lot, a vast expense of ugly nothingness stretching several blocks, seemingly until the Stratosphere rises to turn it away. A juxtaposition of beauty and beastliness in one 360-degree swoop. I stop to savor the irony. …
At the intersection of Durango and Sahara, Speedee Mart shouts out to motorists: GAS, REGULAR, 158.9, UNLEADED-PLUS, 169.9, SUPER-UNLEADED, 179.9. Thanks, really, but I'm fine on my own internal fuel. Snapple filled the tank. ...
Damn pedestrian button again. Quite the charade. Little White Dude finally beckons me on, as turning drivers register mild shock at Walker Wimp in their crosshairs as I step into the crosswalk. Does anybody signal anymore? Your forefinger broken? Cool your jets, A.J. I'm still shaking pebbles from my pants cuff, so let's not replay this. Pretend I'm a steel chassis with legs and LEXUS imprinted on my forehead, and we'll emerge from this encounter without incident. …
"The indeterminacy of a ramble, on which much may be discovered, is being replaced by the determinate shortest distance to be traveled with all possible speed, as well as by the electronic transmissions that make real travel less necessary."
Diagonally across: The Lakes, fronting Arizona Charlie's restaurant, facing a self-serve 76 station, decorative fountain obediently parched, before a strip mall starring Blimpie's and Little Caesars. Love that little Roman-runt mascot with the pita-bread schnozz. "Peeeza! Peeeza!" Directly opposite, a Subway's. Hey, Jared—wanna really drop the pounds? Drop the sub, get off your ex-fat ass and take a brisk walk. …
WHISPERING LAKES APARTMENTS, BLOWOUT SPECIALS NOW, 2606 Durango. … PRINCESS BY THE LAKES APARTMENTS, TWO AND THREE BEDROOM FLOOR PLANS, corner of Durango and West Eldora. … "Lakes" in Las Vegas. We are a delightfully deluded city. …
Coming up on Santa! Vigorously spinning an arrow-sign toward the Princess by the Lakes rental office. Ho-ho-ho! Lease! Lease! Lease! As I approach, Santa is … Ms. Santa. "Why don't ya dress as an elf instead—at least it'll be cooler, Santa!" I joke, punctuated by a giggle.
"Huh? Yeah. Um. Grrrrrr …"
At a motoring distance, a balled-up red-and-white blur at 45 mph, it's a cute, crinkly Kris Kringle. Up close, Santa has a sleigh up her ass. …
Past Edna Avenue toward Carmine's Little Italy restaurant, 24-hour food, poker, ATM. Today's special on the streetside menu board: MAHI-MAHI. Dolphin flesh? Flipper Killers! CARMINE'S, ORIGINAL FOUNDER OF VILLA PIZZA LAS VEGAS. In smaller letters, lower-left: "No longer affiliated with Villa Pizza." …
Sidewalk curves to loop me around the outer edge of Desert Breeze Park, skirting the lip of the expansive greenery, a sign announcing PARK RULES, a necessary downer, I suppose. Yes, public spaces need to be regulated and consideration of others enforced, but there's something about regulations superimposed on playful anarchy that is just a tad … dispiriting …
NO DOGS ALLOWED. …
Across the street: Villa Pizza. How negligent: No sign declares it no longer affiliated with Carmine's. …
More park. More rules! …
PICK UP AFTER YOUR DOG. …
Huh? …
Bureaucratic logic at its bureaucrattiest. Might I suggest …
NO PICKING UP AFTER YOUR DOG ALLOWED. …
Corner of Twain, Strip to my left, sun glaring harshly off Mandalay Bay's faux-gold façade, black, blocky, triangular Luxor, the Rio's vivid red and blue hue. I take an extended stare at an over-familiar landscape I'd long ago learned to dismiss whenever I saw it, without seeing it. Truly a stunning work of architectural grandeur and absurdist theater. Mountains looming over its colorful shoulders, a triumph of thematic inscrutability. And I do, I realize, like it. …
I like it a lot. …
Gazing down, lovers' names scrawled in once-wet cement, now hardened into history. Signs of an ancient, urban civilization amid this shiny suburbanalia, an acknowledgement that graffiti isn't merely street art, but divine right in a maturing city. …
NO TIME TO COOK? THE CUSTOM COOK. PERSONAL CHEF SERVICE. LESS EXPENSIVE THAN YOU THINK. GIFT CERTIFICATES AVAILABLE. …
A strip-mall positions Southwest Baptist Church beside a hair salon and Bee Tan, a smiley-faced bee buzzing in place. Religious freedom, democracy and consumerism as only America can manage it. Pray a little, tan a little, rinse and set. …
A bike-rider passes on my right. We don't know each other. We smile at each other. Trade high-spirited "Hi's"! Why? Because in The Kingdom of the Car, alternative travelers unite. We are a breed of rebels, bonding. Pedal on, my brother. …
Durango Plaza—Mascot Video, Ameriview Blinds, State Farm, Water of Life Lutheran Church, Arthur Murray Dance Studio. Pray a little, then spin your partner across the pulpit. …
Crossing Peace Way, which ends in a NO OUTLET. Bullshit, froufrou language. Whatever happened to DEAD END?. …
"What is often taken as the pleasure of another place may be simply that of the different sense of time, space and sensory stimulation available anywhere one goes slowly. ... It is the movement as well as the sights going by that seems to make things happen in the mind, and this is what makes walking ambiguous and endlessly fertile: It is both means and ends, travel and destination."
Left turn and eastward onto Tropicana, prettiness ascending. Tree-lined streets of pines and palms protecting the onset of tony Spanish Trails. Gazing to my left, a shock: a house with a gray roof—no Pepto-pink, thank The Bug Guy—draped in a breathtaking bushel of leafy gold, kissed by nature, a symphony in shade. Wavy, lazy reflections of pool water shimmer off the windows. I stop and I stare. And stare. Bemused drivers stare at me. I don't care. I still stare. …
Trees pregnant with leaves, trees shedding leaves, trees free of leaves, falling away as autumn is chased by winter. In Las Vegas, the shift is subtle at best—no New England are we—but traces of seasons hide in the periphery.
Gaining on my destination—yes, I do have one—when the Bus-Stop Billboard Blues descend. …
SELLING SPANISH TRAIL. JERRY MASINI. AWARD REALTY CORP. … Nice photo, if a bit oversized for an Average Joe kinda joe. … A guy walks toward me—another auto-less brother!—in Yankee T-shirt. We exchange thumbs-up (I'm a die-hard, born-in-the-Bronx Yankee, Spanky!). … Overhang ahead! Attack of the Un-Trimmed Trees! Shrubbery Gone Wild! Wicked Thicket Slays Helpless Pedestrian! DUCK! … Hey, there's Jerry Masini again on the bus-stop billboard. Hiya, Jer! … F&B-BBQ. That's a restaurant, by the by. FISH, CHICKEN AND LINKS. … Links? … MICHAEL FAHEY, SPANISH TRAIL REALTY. … REMAX, PATTY HYLANDER. … Yo, Jer, they're cuttin' in on yo' turf, dude. … Jerry again? Persistent pitchboy, ain't he? Nobody gets the better of ol' Jer. … And Jerry AGAIN, across the street, 'nother billboard. Go away, Jerry, you're beginnin' to bother me. … Oh, shit! … I'm warning ya, Masini, block my path one more time, I'm calling 911 and mobilizing a CAT strike. … I don't wanna buy Spanish Trail. … I don't care if ya throw in a bowl of Spanish Trail Mix. ...
"The random, the unscreened, allows you to find what you don't know you are looking for, and you don't know a place until it surprises you. Walking is one way of maintaining a bulwark against this erosion of the mind, the body, the landscape, and the city, and every walker is a guard on patrol to protect the ineffable."
My pilgrimmage to this Temple of Temptations culminates here.
There it stands. Mecca. Nirvana. The Holy City.
The Black Bear Diner. Trop and Jones.
Inside its sacred walls await a friend, a burger, a plate of fries, a squirt of ketchup, The Meaning of Life.
And, after seven and a half miles of a supremely soleful sojourn ... a ride home.
"Walking has been one of the constellations in the starry sky of human culture, a constellation whose three stars are the body, the imagination, and the wide-open world, and though all three exist independently, it is the lines drawn between them—drawn by the act of walking for cultural purposes—that makes them a constellation."
A brisk daytime jaunt encourages observation, but a mellow nighttime stroll allows meditation, a snapshot of yourself.
Laptop cursor blinks next to my carefully crafted prose, "New Document." For 90 minutes. Truth be told, the computer wrote that. It's two words up on me in this story, mocking my writer's blockage with every sterile blink of its electronic eye.
Hell with it. Slam the laptop shut. Why dither over such dilemmas when there's an evening walk to cherish, a monumental peacefulness to savor, a soul to be soothed?
Bother me not with wars and ideologies, hatred and chaos, Dean and Dubya. Not now. They don't exist. Not on this peaceful sidewalk, at this quiet hour, under these glowing streetlights, in my balmy revelry.
My once-clipped gait, slowing to a pace that would leave a tortoise impatiently tapping its claw, calms my mind, which gradually eases its grip on my unclenching body, tension draining away, as I turn a corner to discover … a companion.
Short, squat little fellow.
We journey on together, me and my muse, eventually parting company in amiable silence. I wish him a happy, Fear Factor-free life.
He—and the hushed night air—have given me a precious gift tonight.
A creative logjam, un-jammed.
I slide behind my laptop.
A breeze, cool and alluring, strokes my cheek …