The bike path in our neighborhood
is a great place to find pale people moving fast and avoiding eye contact. Usually i try to smile and say some kind of hello to everyone i come across, no matter where i am, which ends up being a kind of interesting experiment in social behaviors in different parts of town. One of my favorite spots to notice our cultural complexes is the portion of the Columbia Tapp Rail Trail between Pierce Elevated and Braeswood Bayou. Geographically, it's not far from the spine of Third Ward, a thoroughfare of people and messages and thoughts and conversation and street art, a kind of long, narrow playground, or fishbowl, for public life. There's a field with horses in it, a parked-in-the-grass-for-someday speedboat, three outdoor dominoes "courts", a Y103 fort, muraled corner store, Texas Southern University, preschool back yard, church vegetable garden, benches, benches, benches, and finally, a piece of evermurky but moving water egrets and sunflowers and i love. The bike path in our neighborhood is a good place to learn the lesson of what moving fast or slow does to us, our ability to interact with one another and the worlds we're in. I have the best interactions and enjoy the most beauty when i'm least blinded by the importance of what i'm doing or where i am going. When i forget my sunglasses and headphones and even my bike sometimes and am simply passing through Third Ward common space for a time. Unhurried by selfmade importance. Available to feel, respect, and practice honoring the body of life this long, white pavement spinal column holds and receives. I wish i knew how to shout this at fastmovers in their way through the tre. I wish segregated histories would give way to newcomers approaching slowly, with respect, a desire or at least willingness to learn from the oceanic wisdom of the long suffering steady in the veins of the ghetto. The communities of uncommodified wealth, the Compton, Camden, Bed Stuy, 4th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 9th wards, the birthplaces of a new America, are where we have to slow down long enough to feel through some new-to-some ideas, let them travel up our stubborn spines to our hearts and brains, and learn our way to unity.