a piece of home…

strange how the simple act of stepping out one’s front door can be an act of being, within a space which gently unfolds each day, as my feet become my main means of transportation. the city has always had this way of speaking, and after two years away, rediscovering it, continues to emerge within this familiar space.

And what does this have to do with a revolutionary, rediscovery of urban landscape, filled with strange concrete structures, overlapping layers of aging highway, and the random corner, where the red brick buildings meet each other, in their silent cold embrace, while strangers wander through their lives just on the other side of our thin sound filled walls.

Perhaps it is the fact that when fetching fruit and vegetables, my name is known, and the Indian run store is watched over by a colorful Ganesh. Or the park, staged setting for various plays, ranging from the nighttime battle scenes of a group of armor garbed medieval swordsmen (paper, cardboard or plastic? I am not quite sure). Or perhaps scene two, the quietly sitting gentlemen, whose conversations are interrupted by cigarettes and passing acquaintances. Or there is always the more vivacious third scene, caged delight, as canine creatures run about madly, hobnobbing, while their owners gather for verbal discourse.

At night the streets vary, between the garish neon purple signs above the local bar, to the orange hued wall, fully tattooed with bright graffiti, behind a line of cars standing outside the local garage. And despite the pervasiveness of man made structures, the lines of trees defy the cold material, creating patterns against the night sky, along the rain filled street.

Guy Debord wrote in his work Society of the Spectacle that “within a world really on its head, the true is a moment of the false”. Perhaps it is because of the slow movement of my feet along the familiar, at times derelict, sidewalks, or along the edge of the road, that suddenly stopped at the north side of the Sherbrooke street, as a caramel hue coats the facade of a taupe brick building, and I suddenly see for the first time, both the external detail inlaid along the edge, by an unknown architect and builder, while also slowly constructing stories, of the lives within those walls, the studio, above the pizza shop, a dentist above the 24 hour bagels… the spectacle, disappears amidst this delightful array of familiar neighborhood stores, and a potential truth of being may just perhaps be glimpsed, somewhere in the melding of this constructed and inhabited space.

enough for tonight. this is just a start by Sarah