I have put just enough time in today to keep from declaring myself a shut-in. A few hours after waking up, at the start of rush hour, I went out walking a few blocks around my neighborhood.
The shadowy, slippery silhouettes of workers scurried away from their offices, in myriad directions. At Underground, some families with children appeared to be making a destination of the place, and a professional photographer with an amateur joie de vivre was capturing the formerly bare storefront consumed by Sunday Southern Art Revival. As I made a left onto the illicit bazaar comprising the bus bay on Broad Street, the evening's first drops of rain began to fall.
By the time I reached Mitchell Street, I was overcome with both an urge to support just one neighborhood business and an indescribable hunger. I slipped into Unique Pizzeria, bought steak fries and a Mountain Dew, and sat in front of the little television. Soon, the deliveryman hurried in, and started an innocuous, impromptu chat with the owner about beards and other things I don't remember. Another customer, a regular, stopped by for only a Dew.
The view from my seat was otherwordly. Here, in the governmental and historical core of a city and metropolis both (sometimes together, sometimes apart) renowned for their boasts to the outside world, I saw through the open doorway only dimness, rain and buses carrying throngs of people home. Too shy to strike up a conversation of my own, for various reasons, I felt weirdly alone.
What are our neighborhoods if we, their inhabitants, make nothing of them? They are housing blocks, industrial parks, skyscrapers, roads and sidewalks, but without us they are not living things.
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