On the walk home tonight, I passed by a sidewalk covered in chalk drawings. There were spiders and rocketships and a sailboat perched on a rocky sea getting pummeled by lightning. You could tell which of the drawings had been done by adults and which had been done by children, because the ones drawn by children were much more imaginative. I looked at the drawings for a little while and thought about how nice it would be to just lie down next to them. The sidewalk would be cold and I would get chalk on my clothes but it might feel like disappearing into another world, a world where dinosaurs still exist and the sun has a sweet, charming face.
The trouble with living in a city that isn’t built on a grid is that, with a sense of direction like mine, I get lost very easily. On side streets that turn suddenly into 35% grade hills, in BART stations on the outskirts of the city and in gourmet produce markets I am consistently lost and alone.
I think that caring about someone is not minding getting lost with them, and last night I told the only person in this city willing to do so with me that I couldn’t see him anymore.
Keep reading…
This American Life gave me a real appreciation for the oral story, and in this ‘new media environment,’ I wanted to see if I could do anything cool with the medium. If you hate to read, or you simply prefer audio to text, you can listen to me read some of my essays on my podcast page (I did not pay for Pro, so forgive the design hideousness). I’ll embed the ones I’ve recorded after each post.
We’ll see if this sticks.