practicing walking

Two days ago I took my car into my regular garage in town to fix it up with a warrant. An hour wait was predicted, so I took the opportunity to do what I do best: I went for a walk. It was a cold day, one of the first to truly settle us into autumn.

My route took me along the edge of the cordon in town, where I stood at fences and looked down closed roads that are strewn with debris, seven weeks on. The stench of rotting food that wafted out from the deserted restaurants, and the dust that filled my eyes with every gust of wind was enough to leave me glum. I saw mud patterns of leaves stencilled on the footpaths. I saw broken windows and piles of bricks. I saw warped scaffolding that had failed to perform.

When buildings are torn down they leave an unnerving space. The nearby surviving structures look naked, the sides and fronts of them suddenly exposed like they never have been before. Each fallen fence feels a little like a violation, seeing behind them into yards that were supposed to be private. It is unsettling. I was glad to get back to the car, despite its failed warrant, so I could drive back down the familiar broken streets. It is too sad to stumble across new landscape changes in an old city that used to be so comfortable.


A day ago, reluctant as I was with dusk lowering the sun too early in the evening, I went walking along the river to maintain some activity in my freedom hours - the ones unencumbered by work obligations or chores. The air was still and crisp, the river like glass disturbed only by the ducks. There was no breeze; woodsmoke lingered gently at roof level with its comforting smell warming my spirit, if not my bones.

The chasmed paths were treacherous in the half light. On my return I noted sadly that only one out of every ten houses, on both sides of the river, were lit from the inside. It is a ghost neighbourhood and it feels every bit as abandoned as it is in actuality. Our immediate neighbours have pulled up their twenty four year old roots and moved to stabler pastures. The dark settled quickly and I hastened to get home without stumbling over cracks and lumpy asphalt.


Today, I made the most of having a free hour during my work day to myself. I'd begun to read, but there were my own words nagging at the periphery of my mind that I couldn't quite coax out of hiding. I left the makeshift office - a co-worker's house - and strolled down the quiet streets. The wind was back out in force; one day on, one day off, one day on. The forest towered over me on the left, and beautiful, elegant homes lined up at my right hand side.

With my eyes I consumed each picture perfect property as I passed, hungry for more snapshots to file away in my mind. Dreams are free, but these houses are not and I am too realistic to hope for one of my own one day. Their stylish gardens, immaculate stripes of light-and-dark grass mowed to precision length, sculpted trees as fences to give an illusion of openness while expertly hiding the windows behind them.

I saw a spade forgotten, half dug into the ground in this suburban paradise. Having inside information of the covenants signed up to for living in this subdivision, I wondered at how they got away with this. Perhaps no one else had noticed. Perhaps there is no specific stipulation ruling against gardening equipment lying unattended. Perhaps other things are occupying the minds of the modestly rich at this time. I wouldn't be surprised. Like the portaloos lining the streets. I doubt there is a covenant against them - after all, who would have ever predicted it would be a necessity in such a well manicured suburb in a well-developed city? No one could have guessed there would be a day, a month, a year when our sewer system would be on the brink of collapse.

Being autumn, the air is biting and the wind packs a real punch, even against the defences of a thick hoodie and a knitted scarf. I knotted the latter tighter at my neck and shoved my hands into my pockets, wondering at the discovery my fingers made of an empty sachet of sugar. When was the last time I dressed in this particular article of warmth? A year ago? I couldn't remember where I last wore it, or why I would pocket a small piece of rubbish instead of leaving it in an empty mug.

Maybe it was a takeaway coffee, and I had no other place to stash it. I don't remember much about my actions from the past year, but then, I don't remember much about anything from before the earthquakes. It seems all other life has been pushed out of existence; after the first, we were so consumed with the changes that were thrust upon us unwilling citizens, and the ways in which we could relearn how to live in a city that didn't feel right anymore. This time, for myself at least, I'm struggling to evaluate my commitment to the city. It hurts this time in a way that was only glimpsed in September, and my natural instinct is to flee. Even six, seven weeks on, I doubt my ability to bear the weight of sorrow.

Especially now as the temperatures start their descent into winter. The cold seems so much crueler this year when we are already coping just to get through each day in a new, suspended state of normal. I have been writing about the earthquakes for what seems like ten lifetimes. I feel too old, I am tired of them, and I am tired of thinking about rebuilding when the demolitions have barely even begun. I have not yet made a decision about whether staying here and healing with the city would be of paramount value for my own healing also. Perhaps, but I am so empty of life that it seems too overwhelming to consider.

But all this aside, I meant only to say that it is autumn now, truly, and my last three forays outside with my feet traversing the pavement have shown that the cold has set in, and my fingers have returned to the icy state they reside in eight months of the year. I just got distracted, as seems to be the case these days, by the cracks that have formed.

I have used many words, but said nothing really. We'll just consider this practice; a first step towards the day when I can call myself a writer without feeling like a phony.