City Morning, Beautiful Morning

My walk this morning was through a different world than the one to which I'm accustomed. Where I usually stride down village streets that meander around 75-year maples, today I walked along rambunctious city avenues, lined with trees encased like prisoners inside brick squares cemented within sidewalks.

I encountered the usual city smells: the stench of dehydrated urine, probably a stopping point for hordes of canines, the rank odor that is part yesterday's trash mixed with a smear of poo, then that delicious block surrounding the bakery with hot yeast bread and sweet pastries.

The fellow pedestrians walking dogs, the like-minded exercisers, joggers and strollers, children with giant musical instruments strapped to their backs dragging parents buried in smartphones heading to morning music lessons, all working the sidewalks with purpose and intention. I headed towards the boutiques and bodegas in the dodgy end of town and away from towering brownstones near the picturesque park. Knowing that walking in a big circle would allow me the space to stretch my legs but not the worry that would keep me checking my directions, I simply took the time to notice things around me. One young woman wore a face that was taut with either overwork or the search for a morning fix. An older man swayed with last night's liquor still coursing through his veins. Another spoke to me in Spanish but I didn't know whether it was proposition or insult or comments about the marvelous weather.

One of the most wonderful things I encounter on walks through busy cities, is the appearance of street art on odd corners and down alleyways. Not wonderful because you wouldn't expect to find beauty in a city - because there is already so much beauty, even within the dappled leaves of certain trees, intricate wrought iron bannisters, and turn-of-the-century architecture with its statuesque curves and aristocratic lines.

But street art is wonderful because it requires such intention and making so much with very little. These artists' canvas is the sandpaper of a flaking, crumbling wall; their paints come in a rattle can, their inspiration is the tagging of gangbangers and colored by social justice themes.

When one is in Rome, there is nothing to do but do as those Romans do. When in the city, what else is there to do but to revel in all that makes a city what it is? To smell the smells, even the really disgusting ones; to cross paths with random humans of varying trajectories; to find beauty and inspiration down dank alleys; to appreciate the unique in every place. What a wonderful world.