On foot, we saunter to the folk festival. Twenty minutes there and twenty to get back. Taking everything in, we talk about times and how they've changed. Our neighborhood is peaceful, pleasant, and clean, the closer we get to State Street, the worse it gets.
It's sort of ironic, walking down most of the tree streets, we can take in nature, watch the squirrels chasing each other, and hear the birds chirping. It's pretty quiet, not too much going on. Three blocks down, we hit State. The noise and sirens make you wonder what's happened now. Down the hill, through downtown, the shops are neat, though most of them closed by now, except places to eat and grab a beer.
Traffic, hell if you don't look both ways, your bound to get hit by a car. Kids are driving that shouldn't even have a license, talking to friends and texting instead of watching where their driving! Then up the hill, near the bus station, you can see the cloud of cigarette smoke linger and all you can smell is the reek of stale brew rolling off the bystanders. Ugh! What a nasty smell. It could make me puke!
Coming back, we hear sirens again, no surprise there! This woman is apparently high on something, talking to herself making strange hand gestures. The officer pulls over and walks up to her as she tries to get away. She's hollering, swearing, and lifts her shirt up. We kept walking down this city's street. Days like that kind of make me not want to walk down the city street.
If it doesn't sound callous to say so: the unpleasantness in any city street in Maine is offset by the immediate nearness of its opposite--even Portland has the ocean to wipe away the nasty taste in one's mouth. In the real world, the street is the whole world, but in Maine, it's just a setup to contrast with the real world of the willywags. And the willywags are all the sweeter for the minor stink of city streets....
ReplyDeleteMy opinion anyway.
So, here's a piece of writing that stimulates reflection in your audience, a compliment to the writer, especially when the particular reader has a thousand other things to read!