I will wander the streets of this fragile city and count my blessings, cripple by cripple, beggar by beggar. I will cross the canal’s black fetid waters and find a rare abundance in the flotsam that curls round the bridge piers like unruly kittens. I will smile at the roadside chess players high on bad heroin and the tired, footsore prostitutes who wait on bridges for a better life that never quite arrives.
So as not to frighten children, I will wait until the coast is clear and rub my cheek over pockmarked walls that even now replay ghost stories of last stands as this city fell. I’ll pick my way over broken sidewalks and past legless shoe polishers, through moonlit moth-infested gardens, fertile gutters and untended graves.
I’ll pull this thick rotting air into my lungs because I can breathe. I’ll walk because I have legs. I’ll sit and watch the bats at sunset because I have eyes. I’ll smile at toothless old women selling lottery tickets and politely decline the cyclo-driver’s persistent entreaty because I have a face and a voice too. I’ll listen to the blind singer led through the dark market alleys by an indentured child.
I’ll do this to remind myself that I’m a fortunate daughter of affluent parents. Recipient of a good education and a sharp mind to use it. I have a place to sleep, food to eat, clothes to wear and an inevitable tomorrow.
And I’ll keep on walking until I stop feeling so fucking wretched. This is why I live here.
Humbling
I appreciate this. I just finished reading an English translation of Primo Levi’s The Drowned and The Saved ( I Sommersi e I Salvati). I think if you have not already read it I think you would enjoy it. For some reason it made me feel to an extent the way you describe here and reawakened fragmented thoughts I once had relating to some of the things you mention. Or maybe that’s just my interpretation since that book has consumed me for the last few days.
“Recipient of a good education and a sharp mind to use it. I have a place to sleep, food to eat, clothes to wear and an inevitable tomorrow.”
I particularly like those two sentences. Those are the kind of thoughts I like to think when life overwhelms me as I walk home in the evenings after a particularly long, stressful, working day and I notice others much less fortunate than myself sleeping on the steps of schools or in the train station (I live in southern Italy) or I am annoyed at myself for being overly negative when there is greater suffering surrounding me.
Those sentences are very well put. I rather enjoy your writing. Thank you 🙂
Hello Pearl. I think at one point, quite a while ago, I read pretty much everything Primo Levi wrote. I’ve definitely read the Drowned and the Saved. Thanks for reading and commenting.
I have seen my own Pock Marked walls and walked in my own battle torn cities. They were in Europe and I walked on a new hill made of debris and stared in wonder when told what it was. I have run forest trails that showed signs where bombs had fallen 45 years earlier and think of a city I have never seen but a country I have been when I am the age of WWII veterans in the 80s that I stood in awe of. RG thanks for reminding me why I must confront the ghosts.
RG,
I’m glad that you recognise the necessity. 😀
Warm hugs,
Paul.
My daughter is going through a difficult time and your words may be the salve to soothe her wounds.
Thank- you.
Hey Jeff, honestly, I don’t think this is the sort of knowledge you can transfer. I think she probably has to find her own ‘walk’
This is really quite an amazing piece. Steph summed it up perfectly: humbling.
Some of the phrases echo in my head while others leave me baffled. I have never been outside of Canada so am unable to picture the ‘blind singer led through the dark market alleys by an indentured child’ however the walking until I don’t feel so wretched is something that we all must feel at one time or another.
It makes me look at myself & question what is so ‘wrong’ in my world when I have the basic necessities that some strive for.
Thank you so very much for sharing this one 😀