Wednesday night on the Avenue
© Carolyne Weldon
One fallacy that gets a lot of play around my house is the idea that “going for a walk” helps me write. You know, walking: that wondrous activity that promotes oxygenation of the brain, loosening of the limbs and heightened alpha-wave activity in the occipital lobe whilst taking you further and further away from your desk, with each and every blessed step? Yes. Well I like to tell myself that walks around the hood are precisely what young freelance writers need to achieve prolificness and focus. How that works, I’m not sure. But this is how it happens: all of a sudden, I feel sick from being inside (read “there’s something I must urgently write and that I’d rather die than get on with”), and so I leave every window on the Mac open and yakking: Gmail chat, Facebook, Hotmail, Youtube playlist, Flickr account, Twitter, Skype et al., hop into a pair of flip-flops, grab my keys, and I’m off! In a neighbourhood like mine, this form of mobile procrastination is prone to turn into a fun outing. Just down the street from me, down Victoria Avenue, there will always be someone to chat up, something amazing to eat, or some picture just waiting to be snapped. In this way, going out for a walk, while being the mirror opposite of productive, rarely disappoints.
Tonight the grand plan was to go check out the community gardens, just down from Krazy Kutz barbershop. All kinds of things starting to grow in the individual lots (young, curiously nameless vegetables), and families planted these nice big poppy flowers that blow in the wind, blood red. As I walked down that way though, I thought I’d better check on Debbie instead.
Debbie and I stayed in touch after that time she let me follow her around for the day for a photo documentary project I did for school. These days I’m helping her put her resumé together (an interesting task, as this will be her first), and writing this letter she’s been wanting to send the Régie de l’Assurance Maladie du Québec (Quebec’s public health-care provider), who are apparently denying her a Medicare card because she doesn’t have a permanent address.
I went to King Kutz, where Debbie can usually be found. She’s quite the sight, little Debbie, looking pretty among the barbershop patrons and hoodlums, standing straigt on her kitty heels, a small bottle of Labbatt Blue 6.1% swathed in a paper bag clenched tightly in her fist. She’s broke as broke gets, but she’ll still offer to walk across the street to get you a beer.
But Debbie wasn’t there. Instead I found Peter, the boss, and two homeboys playing dominoes. We talked shit for a while, as Peter was simultaneously conducting business on his android Bluetooth earpiece and winning every game. “Debbie was in earlier” they told me, their eyes on the squares. “She’ll prolly be back later.”
So I climbed the street back up. At home, the computer was all abuzz and clamouring for attention (534 new tweets! Three missed Skype calls!) That’s when I remembered I never ended up posting the photo project I did with Debbie, documenting what she does and where she goes on the first of the month, when she gets her welfare check. I’m thinking it would be worth posting, though. The pictures turned out okay and Debbie’s stories are everything but boring.
Let’s just say I’ll do that real soon, that is, if I don’t convince myself what I really need is yet another thrilling walk around the block.
1JP
wrote on 18 June 2009 at 5:52
I love your extraordinary photography of real people doing ordinary things.
2Daniel
wrote on 3 January 2011 at 9:38
I liked reading this post because it was about walking. I tend to walk around a lot, but I do it for exercise and to listen to music. I do the same route because it has a large incline that cars even avoid taking (walking uphill burns more calories than running).
They say the faster people walk the smarter they are, but I can’t cite any data on that matter. I don’t walk that fast I just happen to be taller than most people so I have a longer stride). I once equated the distances covered by Spanish New World Explores to historical records of measurements for walking distances by troops and realized that the numbers were not the same. *I was reading items that disprove Columbus being Italian – since in my family I was once told I was a descendant and that Columbus was Catalan. I learned that a Catalan units of measurement were used in to measure distances (knowing that just adds more darkness to the history we are taught by society).