Some Scenes

You see some interesting things out walking on the street. Typically I see these things when I'm out walking for a purpose, but every now and then, I find myself feeling compelled to go for a walk. It may be because I'm bored, or as in a recent case, because I was trying to conceive of ideas and was having no luck cloistered away at home. When the ideas do not come and find you, my thinking is, you must go out there after them.

I for one am perfectly willing to do so with vigor, although if I had known that there would be a sheen of mist falling on the streets, I might have been less eager this time. Sometimes they're not really out there, no matter how much stimulus is out there- and on this occasion there was plenty to be seen and heard. In truth, this recent sojourn did not have any really clear-cut textbook ideas that I would come to and say, "Here is something worthy of my writerly attentions!"

There were one or two mildly interesting fragments of ideas. Passing by the car dealerships that mark the edge of the neighborhood's most habitable core, I saw a man and a women and two dogs on leashes. They looked at me but did not stop their conversation, which somehow revolved around the woman wanting to take one of the dogs for fear of it getting hurt. I cannot imagine what context that encounter must have existed in. They were gone when I passed by again.

There was some kind of film shoot going on in the area of the subway station. I saw some vehicles which suggested this to me, and people who I would not expect to see around there after the last train of the night. It really wasn't very interesting, and I didn't linger as much as I would for a juicy conversation or the sight of a spectacularly rubber-legged reveler struggling home. There is something interesting about being a sober observer of that stuff rather than a buzzed or drunken participant. It looks less fun from that angle, but at least as interesting.