Our neighborhoods sit atop a plateau of sediment dumped by the raging Columbia river a million years ago. Where the plateau comes to an end, a steep ridge provides some wonderful views of downtown. I've taken to riding my bike like a bat out of hell down one of the steep side streets that go straight down the face of the ridge -- and then enjoy torturing myself on the return trip, seeing how far I can make it before stopping to give my burning quads a rest before taking off again. (I've found less extreme routes up the hill, but the straight on assault always seems called for when I've been drinking coffee and eating pastries at the bottom of the hill.)
However, I rarely *walk* down the hill because I don't like the experience of coming back up on foot. I broke my left ankle forever and a few years ago, but the limited range of motion in the joint and the steepness of this hill makes it impossible for my heel to hit the pavement on the way up. It wrecks my Achilles Tendon.
Lately, however, I've been taking a Play Therapy class and thus have been doing a lot of reading about the ways in which the act of "play" is commonly extinguished in children and why we, as adults, repress, suppress or sublimate (all differently nuanced acts of denial of) our impulses to "play" in our daily lives.
As adults, we often feel the need for excuses. If we "play," we may think we can only do so in competitive sports, such as soccer or golf (dodgeball being a bit too "childish"). Or we keep play confined to the game table, leaving room for the acting up of pantomime as required by a board game or throwing our poker chips into the pile. The more adventurous among us might engage in play through stage acting, music, art or other creative pursuits.
But it's less common for us to "play" by cutting up in front of others outside of well-defined activities. And, considering how we build our routines and make our habits, more often than not, we stick to them instead of breaking the mold and seeing what unfolds.
Breaking out of the regular and the "normal" and seeing what happens: This is my still early-in-development definition of "play."
Some of my classmates are more inspired to question and engage than others, and last Friday after class, I ran into one of them in the back stairwell of the hall where we have class.
She had revealed last week that her parents disapproved of *any* play whatsoever. She had, nevertheless, squirreled away a simple doll and another toy -- both given to her as gifts by people outside the family. These, she hid in her bedroom closet, and when left alone in her room, she would close herself away in the closet so she could play with her imagination and these two precious toys. In telling this story to the class, she mentioned how difficult it has been for her as an adult to "play." (As an aside, I will venture to say that she seems to be taking this class for personal reasons, rather than professional ones.)
In any case, I encountered her on the stairwell. I was on my way up, and she was on her way down. "How do I get out of this building?" she asked. "I tried to play around with my regular route out of the building, and this is what happened."
If you want to take the road less-traveled, go to the bottom of the stairs, and turn left, I told her. Then take a right.
Leave it to me to give directions to someone who's trying to improvise.... Who knows where she ended up.
But I was thinking about her this afternoon when I suddenly altered my walking route. The first thing I did was let the sunlight guide me. I was wearing just a T-shirt, shorts and sandals, but I had on my bad-ass mutha' fucka' sunglasses (the ones that, when I wore them in Panama, I learned just how rude it is to wear sunglasses that obscure your eyes so completely). It was a little cool in the shade, so I walked on the sunny side of the street.
In the beginning, I chose the sunniest direction at each intersection. This led me to that hill I fly down on my bike. I decided to walk down it, thought perhaps of letting the dog run around on the playground of a school down at the bottom of the hill.
While walking past the school, a woman from the opposite side of the street began gushing *loudly* about the undeniable cuteness of the fair pup Brogan, who has recently been to the groomer. "That is the CUTEST dog I have EVER seen!" she yelled in delight. She was giddy with laughter looking at him, so I walked over to her. She giggled while she pet him. "He looks just like a dog in a commercial!" she said.
For the record, this is a profile shot of the dog in question. He *is* a charmer....
Anyway, from the school, I thought to go in a direction I have never gone before. I headed east. The hill rose truely but gently into a curving street shaded by the mature canopy of large trees. Homes of modest craftsman design on flat lots gave way to ones rising on steeply pitched lots with soaring windows designed to look above rooftops to the south.
Meandering along here, I encountered several other walkers. They uniformly did not look like the people I normally encounter on my walks. Rather than hipsters, clowns and lesbians with big dogs, I kept coming across slender middle-aged women with taut necks who were wearing matching, technical workout gear, good shoes and fancy sport watches. (It was kind of like encountering a platoon of older S2s, to tell the truth.)
Oh, I thought to myself. This is where the healthy rich people take their walks.
I passed an opportunity or two to follow them up one of the steep streets that climb the ridge. I wanted to see where the curving road went, and I began to wonder if there might be another way up. Walking with S2 one day to pick up her first born at school, she showed me a public stairwell that cut between some houses, letting you get from the base of the ridge to one of the streets above.
Shortly after I started wondering if I'd find such a thing in my end of the 'hood, I encountered one. I love these stairwells. They are concrete steps that go on switchbacks up the hillside. Deeply in shade, the fences alongside covered in ivy, it feels like a gift each time I step off the streets and onto a little path only accessible by foot.
I ascended about five or six flights of stairs and came out on a wide street atop the ridge. I was stunned by what I saw there. People have always told me there were big, fancy houses near my neighborhood. Indeed, between my house and S2's, there are a lot of large, beautiful old homes. But I never got why people find them all that big and fancy. At the top of this particular stairwell, however, there was a massive home -- so perfectly European and old, so large, that it easily could be a dormitory at Oxford or Cambridge. Naturally, it commanded the finest view of the city from this corner of town.
I walked through a small neighborhood of similar homes, though this one was by far the biggest. As I headed west, I followed the line of the ridge back down about half way, where I turned toward home. There, I encountered another stairwell, this one straight and steep and about three flights high, with a great view of downtown. They are one block east of the hill I ride down like a bat out of hell.
Surfacing atop the plateau, I walked back onto the streets immediately near my home. Walking up the street, I encountered a woman with whom I had spoken briefly over her fence the other day. She hailed me, and I crossed the street to walk with her. She had a heart attack a month ago and said her doctor just gave her the clearance to walk around the neighborhood.
She's a long-time resident of this neighborhood, and as we walked up the block, she pointed out a few trees to me -- including an almond tree -- and told me a couple stories about how it used to be here. A neighbor's gate was open, and she closed it. "The woman who lives here travels a lot," she said. It was amicable, neighborly chatter. She has been a warm person in my periodic encounters with her over the past year, but she is especially optimistic and happy to be alive following the heart attack, and she says as much.
I returned to my place about 45 or 50 minutes after I left it. The sunlight was softening. My dog was tired. He didn't take to the stairs as quickly as he normally does. Playing had resulted in a good workout.
But more to the point, playing had revealed a secret passage, taken me places I hadn't seen before and given a strange woman the occasion to giggle over the profound handsomeness of my little pup.
Amusingly, breaking the mold, disrupting the routine, playing and seeing what came of it ... will give me a new routine which eventually will become a mold to break.
If I'm doing things right.
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