Erb Street West, July 31

1

On a Saturday morning about two weeks ago, the air was damp and cool, the sky was cloudy, and I decided to go west on Erb Street and see how far I could comfortably, and uncomfortably, get.

Sheila had asked me to come by and visit, and she lived in that area, so I decided to visit her on the way back in. I was feeling uncertain about a visit with her - although she was warm and welcoming and her house was a sort of relaxed chaos of parrots, cats, and children's toys, it was still on the outside of my zone and I was always subject to a restless feeling when I visited her. Still, a visit was due. I put it in the corner of my mind.

Before Fischer Hallman, Erb feels like an adventure but I've become fairly used to it. After Fischer Hallman, it's a whole new world. I pressed on up the long hill and into the edges of suburbia. Coming up to the roundabout at Erb and Ira Needles Blvd, I came into the great fresh, windy green space that is nearly the end of my universe.

Standing on the corner by the roundabout (watching cars aggressively and incompetently navigate it's channels) I could see, to my left and ahead, a wide, green field, a few big box stores mushrooming up below a sweeping green hill. Dusty bike trails rode the top the hill, and further left, to the south, a line of tall trees divided the field from a golf course. A small pond was shining back in the field. To my right, more stores, and then cornfields to the end of my vision, with another line of trees west. New houses were growing up in the north of the field. Directly west, Erb continued into the country and became a country road

I turned right and coasted along the wide, new bike path. I could smell flowers and dried plants and damp and wind. Such freedom I felt out here on the border between city and country, between ordinary and wild, between motion and stillness. Though terror lurked at the edges, the middle was empty and full, empty of sound, full of wind, empty of meaning, full of feeling, empty of vision, full of scent. My skin felt cool and wet, my hairline damp and touched by the wind.

Arbitrarily, it always feels, came the line of return, that point where the mind starts to feel unpleasantly full instead of delightfully empty, where fear comes into the void. I turned around, freely, joyously, back to the roundabout, and then continued north for another burst into the free green world. Again, came the line of return, where I felt only a little wistful. How could I be sad when there were flowers everywhere, and the spicy smell of living plants?

People rushing past in their cars were completely unaware of the ecstasy to be discovered in the flowers by the road. An old farmhouse with an apple tree in front bordered the south side of Erb and it's apples were all over the street. The smell rose up all around me, alive and bright. The farmhouse was boarded up and beside it, down a lush green hill and then a dusty land of dirt, thousands of new houses were growing. Why do we build this way? I asked myself. I would build so differently. I imagined a world of small dwellings amid deep ravines, wild forests and pretty fields.

Spontaneously I turned off Erb into Beechwood, down a little path between a church and some houses. With a vague sense that this path led to a road that simply turned back on to Erb, about a kilometer further down, I relaxed and noticed the trees growing by the path, feeling sad for their being caught in this manufactured landscape. I shook my silly head, and remembered that they were wild no matter where they grew, wild growing things inherently, regardless of their location, and I opened myself to their wild energies and felt joy.

Coming out onto a suburban street, I noticed a little path going south between some houses and an apartment building parking lot. Now! There was something new: a park I'd never been to before. I wanted to go into it, but, not knowing exactly where I was to begin with, I didn't know where the path was going. My map was of very little use in this situation.

A middle aged man was coming down the path towards me, calmly walking a dog. I stopped the man and asked him, "Does this park come out at Fischer Hallman?" because, although I imagined that it did, I wanted to be sure.

"Let me think," he said, slowly, and then gave me some directions that I found difficult to follow.

I pulled out my map and pointed at the spot on which I guessed we were. He calmly disregarded my map and continued to give more instructions, telling me to turn right and then right again. I thanked him and decided to push forward blindly, pulled by my longing for the unknown, the call of the mystery of parks in the city, little unexpected pockets of wilderness.

Coming out through the path, my heart burst with the joy of an explorer as I discovered a wide, low field to my right, and a great line of tall coniferous trees to my right. The sky was vast over the field and a kilometer of blowing flowers and grasses emptied into my vision. My heart was full and also racing with fear as I knew to turn back now was to run back into the man and acknowledge to him and myself my own strangeness and fear, and to go forward was to not really know where I was going. And in fact there were two paths turning right and when I looked back at the man and gestured towards the one I was taking, he gave no sign as to it being the correct one.

I plunged forward recklessly, graveling flying up behind me. A line of smaller trees on my right side shaded me from the wide field, taking me into a world in which I had never been. My heart began to race and my skin to crawl and I became hot as I realized I had no idea where I was going. Further along the path I could see a street with houses, and it seemed to me that the houses were as thick as a forest between myself and Fischer Hallman. It seemed there could be kilometers of suburban jungle between me and my destination. I pushed forward again and then my heart failed me, overcame me, the unknown too great in my mind. In fear, I turned and pedaled quickly back the way I had come, grateful that the man and his dog were now off to the west and didn't see me turn back.

I bicycled back out to the street where I'd come in and followed it along, hoping my initial guess that it did come back to Erb was correct. At the first street sign - a little offshoot going southeast - I checked my map and finally, with relief, located myself, one block from Erb Street.

Having a little rest in the shade, I straddled my bike and reviewed the map. With this street to orient me, I began to make some sense of the park system I'd evacuated moments before. I could see that the arm the I'd been following didn't lead directly to FH as I'd hoped, but that very quickly it did connect to Keats Way, which, shortly after, met with FH. Looking at the map, I felt reasonably confident that a connection could be made with less anxiety than I had previously anticipated. I thought to myself, maybe I will go around to Keats Way and FH and come up from the other direction, just to show myself that it isn't really so bad.

Then the idea came to me that I could simply go back and try it again, from this end. Fairly radical at first, it seeped in quickly and became a reasonable project. Taking a good breath, I turned my bike around and headed back to the trail.

2

As I came back to the trail, I saw the same man with his dog coming calmly out of it again. When he saw me, he spoke out loud what I was thinking: "I didn't expect to see you here again!"

"I had to leave to figure out where I was, to get my bearings," I said. "I get anxious going into suburbia without knowing where I'll come out. Besides, it looks like it might rain."

"You went a different way than I expected," he said, "I guess the park has changed since I was here last. It's been a while."

Not reassured by that comment, my mind was already on the challenge ahead when he wished me luck and walked away, returning to his suburban world which would always be a mystery to me. I turned my body and mind east, across the wide field, set my feet to the pedals, and pressed forward.

I made especial note to myself when I passed the spot from which I'd last turned back. Very shortly after, as I drew closer to the road that earlier had inspired great mistrust, I felt the mistrust grow again. Armed with the image of my map in my head, I reassured myself that it could not be far to the main road. Unconvinced by my mental map, I pulled out my actual map, attempting to open it, read it and be reassured by it while also navigating the dusty path. By the time my map was in my hand and the images more securely in my head, I had turned a corner into a lovely path lined with rosebushes and flowering trees. I could see ahead a road, which could very likely have been Keat's Way. But I did not know for certain. I decided to decide it was, to go forward confidently, not because I was confident that it was the road I wanted, but because the alternative was for my mind to fall apart again. It occurred to me that there are moments in life when one must have irrational confidence in the direction one is going, right or wrong, to maintain ones ability to reason at all.

I was arbitrarily rewarded in that questionable strategy by recognizing the signs that this was indeed Keats Way and there indeed was FH a few hundred feet to my right. I swept down to FH, crossed, turned right and full of joyous irrational confidence, headed towards Brenda's house.

As I pedaled through the gentle late morning, I thought about a life of choices made with unreasoned confidence. I thought about living a life in which every option, even a wrong one, was made with full confidence in the rightness, until something proved it wrong, and then the next choice was made with that same confidence in rightness, until eventually through random chance the actual right decision was made, or, at least, the original objective obtained. Do I have the strong heart to live that way, to withstand the blows of disappointment in being wrong, the terror of disorientation in having made a choice that seems to have taken me further from my goal, to keep believing until I find what I'm looking for? I imagined that if I did, I would be a much different person than I am today. I wondered about the possibility of becoming this person, but it seemed to be as likely as becoming a hard working Type A CEO or a real estate agent, or, retroactively, a cheerleader in high school. Or one of those people who goes to Grand Bend on the May 24 weekend and regularly frequents outdoor music festivals and doesn't bring sunscreen. My doubts in my choices are vast and subtle, unless I have made them a hundred times. And then it takes only one failure for me to revert to uncertainty.

By now I was at Sheila's house and dropped the train of thought completely. She wasn't at home so I sat on her front step and listened to her parrot scream occasionally while her two cats came and swiveled and purred around me, hoping I would let them into the house. We all sat there waiting for Sheila and me not even really wanting her to come home, wanting to avoid the anxiety of being in her house, even though I dearly loved her, just wanting to be alone with my thoughts, until I felt quite damp and cold, and then I left to go for a short bike ride down her street, and began to feel very lonely and unloved and with no one to love and with too many thoughts, and decided to go home. However, on my way back past her house, I saw her, her boyfriend and her daughter climbing out of the mini-van. I felt great joy at seeing them, their cozy little family and the love which they so generously share with others.

Being invited inside, I spent a pleasant hour playing Sorry with Sheila's daughter, eating vegetables, and playing with her parrot, whom her daughter announced as, "George, King of the Shoulders"! He did very actively work to get on to shoulders, climbing out of his cage, walking across the floor, cocking his green head to the side at your feet until you picked him up and then beaking his way up your shirt and into your hair. Tess, his mate, was a much better cuddler, leaning her red feathered head on your chest and swiveling her face up to look lovingly at you while you stroked her soft body.

While I was playing Sorry with her daughter, the anxiety that is ever present outside of my zone and had abated in my original joy at seeing the family in the driveway washed up a little more strongly, such that I felt forced to confront it. The feelings grew, and the image was of struggling down the road home, overcome with anxiety, depression, dark feeling, rain, bluster, general malaise and suffering. I was worried about that happening. And then something lifted a little, and I thought, I am so content to be playing this game with this child, in this warm little house, and my mind is so happy, so why would the ride home be other than that? And the wave broke over me, the realization that fear and suffering doesn't meet you, it comes with you, and the road you take is the road in your heart, and the fuller your heart is with happiness, the happier your journeys will be, no matter the conditions of the road.