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| Walking on Webster Avenue (M.A. Reilly, Bronx, 2015) |
“There comes . . . a longing never to travel again except on foot.”
When I'm off to a new place or seeing the familiar recast by morning or late afternoon light, I like to walk about a bit--to saunter, to move without an agenda. Mostly, I want to name the place in a way that unsettles me, recasts the familiar in new cloth. This is mostly what it means to be an artist. To (re)see.
II.
The landscape alters, changes when you shift from train or cab to foot. It alters when you walk down six flights of stairs and find yourself out on the street in the early morning light. A brisk breeze catches an edge of the wool scarf you so carefully tucked into your coat--unraveling it and you. And in that moment you are no longer a visitor.
The landscape alters, changes when you shift from train or cab to foot. It alters when you walk down six flights of stairs and find yourself out on the street in the early morning light. A brisk breeze catches an edge of the wool scarf you so carefully tucked into your coat--unraveling it and you. And in that moment you are no longer a visitor.
Everything is in motion: You, your scarf, your feet, the morning light, the mix of voices sounding English and Spanish, Creole and Italian. A cacophony of discourse that volleys across the vast space of alleys and streets, boulevards and concourses. A polyphony of languages not bound to the voice alone, but also spread across store signs, street signs, and notices pasted to walls and tucked under windshield wipers of cars left hours ago--each announcing, We are here!
We are.
We are.
We are.
We are.
III.
It is all bright texture, bright hope, bright light--this big city, The Bronx.
It is all bright texture, bright hope, bright light--this big city, The Bronx.
Sounds root you to a present that is always becoming. Light locates you. And now, the noticing takes on a new dimension. The hardness beneath your shoes may well be a story worth telling. The man opposite you on the north side of the avenue who walks with such certainty, such dignity may be a poem you have yet to write.
You are the very subject you most seek and yet you best find yourself in the faces of those passing by.
We are always becoming.
We are.
We are.
IV.
Thoreau reminds us: every walk is a type of crusade. And I want you to know that here on this corner I am thinking of his words, mulling them over as I think about this place, your former home.
In some fundamental way we are always walking towards home with each forward step we make.
You are the very subject you most seek and yet you best find yourself in the faces of those passing by.
We are always becoming.
We are.
We are.
IV.
Thoreau reminds us: every walk is a type of crusade. And I want you to know that here on this corner I am thinking of his words, mulling them over as I think about this place, your former home.
In some fundamental way we are always walking towards home with each forward step we make.
