I Go Walking

After the last day in H's lab, I went walking. I didn't have a destination in mind, but I had my iPod and my coat and a pack of cigs. Periodically, I take these walks and end up somewhere in Old City, or somewhere around the Art Museum. I almost always cross City Hall, and I usually take a minute to stop and watch the scene down Broad Street.

I go until I feel I've gone far enough, and then I head home. Tonight, I went until I figured out there is no wall. From the last post, I mean. I didn't hit a wall. In the hour and some odd minutes I was walking, the reason came back. Science is what I do, not who I am. It feels like it sometimes--that it's who I am, when every spare minute is spent thinking about it, or writing about it, or talking about it, or planning for it. And that's when I lose perspective, when I'm too close to see the forest for the trees.

All of us get there every once in a while. In this evil cycle, when any little defeat feels like a major setback. All of a sudden, the effort and work we've put in all this time is not paying off, and we feel like failures. So we work harder. And then it sucks more. Tonight I realized it's probably not unique to science nutcases.


There was an old woman on the corner of 13th and Walnut, trying to cross. She was carrying about three bags too many, and still trying to use her cane. I wished she'd had a little folding trolley cart, but it looked like she was just toughing it out. For like five blocks.

On the way off the bus at 3rd and Pine, a young black kid had somehow dropped this beaten up notebook on the sidewalk out of a corner of his backpack, but his iPod was on and he didn't hear it.

Waiting for a green at South St and 14th, a woman pushing a ridiculously adorable little baby boy was talking on her cell phone and struggling to take off her gloves to get a better grip on both the stroller and the phone. He started crying, but she didn't see that he had knocked off one of his shoes on his blankets and that his left foot was just cold. She was just irritated and apparently pretty stressed out, and looked like she was about to pitch the phone and push faster.

The old woman didn't trust me, even when we went up her front steps and I waited without saying anything while she found her wad of keys. The young black kid didn't say thank you, when he grabbed the notebook out of my hand and went running. But he did look back over his shoulder at me, about ten feet away. The young mother looked relieved and mouthed thank you over her cell phone, when I held up the shoe. She let me put it back on her kid, and continued with her conversation.

These are not the reasons I go walking. I go because I want to feel like a person again, not just a walking calculator of buffers and antibody dilutions. Fresh air, even Septa exhaust; new people, even though they don't make eye contact; the sounds of society, even though I have my iPod on. The best walks are the ones when I keep going until I'm so cold I can't feel my legs. When I can't feel anything, I get the feeling back. A sort of relativity.
And then I head home.