if i were a sidewalk…
04 Nov 2008 Leave a Comment
in authors/books, sidewalks, urban Tags: essay, sidewalks
Sidewalks are there with the intention to help you stay safe on course. If sidewalks could talk, what would they say? If they had eyes, what would they see? If we believed that they had consciousness, would we walk upon the differently?
If I were s sidewalk, I would ask that those tread on me, to tread with light feet. I would encourage those upright to walk further and introduce their sheltered selves to my less trod upon siblings on the unfamiliar and not so safe backstreets and alleyways.
There is just something very privy about the stuff known by sidewalks – information privy to the homeless hopefuls, buskers and wanderers, young and old.
Sidewalks are far more travelled and wise than walls. Walls just wait, observe, tower and block. Sidewalks however, lead the curious and the informed toward their destination.
If I were a sidewalk, I would know people. Just ’cause you can tell so much about a person by how they carry themselves, and even more so by the types of shoes they wear.
Sidewalks are like the old wise men of public transport – they hear stories, witness pub brawls, drug deals; consume the chewed gum of the cities; are bathed with urban runoff and spilled coffees; and even happily eat the spit of the tactless! They do all of this willfully, helplessly and continually.
Sidewalks support the feet and wheels of urban existence, and will do so even after the cities retreat and are no longer capable of supporting humanity. After which they will remain cracked and blessed – blessed with the embedded history of what once was. Only to humbly make way for the life slowly creeping out of the cracks – the moss, the dirt, the grass and the other organisms, all of which are by products of inevitability. One day, Sidewalks will be archaelogy.
Sidewalks
03 Nov 2008 4 Comments
in authors/books, shel silverstein, sidewalks Tags: shel silverstein, where the sidewalk ends
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends,
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends
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