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cosmolinguistI walked to work through layers of orange leaves blanketing the pavement I trudged along. Some hadn't long fallen -- one whooshed into my face as I was walking -- but some were weighed down by rain or trodden underfoot until they're dangerously slippery and beginning to decay.
It's no one's job to clear them off the path; sometimes last year's can be seen tucked away in corners or under hedges. It's no one's job to make everyone wear masks on buses so that it'd be safe for me to use them and I'd be saved from having to make this walk at all.
Under the leaves I can see the sidewalk is seamed and patched everywhere: irregular patches belying repairs over neat regular lines that indicate pipes or cables neatly arranged below the footpath. I long for that kind of municipal attention, instead of the governmental abandonment Greater Manchester now faces: one day there will be a vaccine but will there still be any businesses, pubs, anything for me to go back to when I can go back again?
My walk back home started in a half-light that reminded me of the podcast that'd finished just as I got to work, which mentioned liminal spaces and times. Liminality is an interesting concept but an accessibility nightmare for me: almost worse than the dark because there's no possibility of good contrast. I'm more conscious of my feet sliding on the leaves on the tree-lined edge of the park I walk past. The lights get brighter as the sky darkens, and the bright spots disorient me for the darkness; my eyes take longer to re-focus than most people's.
At one point I swear a weird UFO (or UNFO, unidentified non-flying object) is bearing down on me, but when I get close enough I see it's four joggers in a weird square formation. The lights are on two of their heads, the front left/rear right diagonal of the square. The jogging makes sense of the wiggle in the lights which had been driving me crazy until I finally got close enough to see the people behind them. I skidded off to the side since the joggers stuck to their formation that took up the whole sidewalk.
I detested their weird forehead lights but also now I want one myself for these walks. The other day I was reminded of the existence of LED-light tape, and thought it might be good for my white cane. Maybe it'll help me see, but maybe it'll just make people think I'm weird enough to keep out of the way.
I hadn't been using my white cane for this walk, but I'm going to have to start now that it's actually getting dark. The white cane is tricky on such a long walk because to use it properly is actually kinda overwhelming: rolling it across the ground in front of me gives me a lot of information -- while also skidding on wet, decomposing leaves just like my feet do, so that's a bummer! -- and just processing that is quickly exhausting for me. But the dark and the leaves are obscuring things to the point where once today I found myself asking "where are the curbs in this road crossing? am I on the road still or is this the sidewalk yet?", so it's crossed the threshold where too much information is better than not enough. The white cane makes me think about dependence and independence again, like the patched-up pavements. Sometimes my favorite thing is being able to rely on strangers; sometimes the most tiring thing is having to rely on strangers.
I walk past an ad on a bus stop for some kind of candy, with two hands reaching from opposite directions to the same open bag. "It's the little things that bring us together," or something like that, goes the ad copy. The mere sight of two different people's hands converging like that feels unsettling to me now. I wonder if we'll end up with weird taboos, like if we'll treat the lower half of people's faces like Victorians did a flash of ankle. But then, I think from behind a mask slightly damp from the rain, no one else is wearing these things. It's tiring having to rely on other people.
But all the way there and back, I'd been grateful for the warm, waterproof bootsmother_bones had lent me the other day after I complained about not having anything sturdy or waterproof enough for more wintry walks to work. Sometimes it's comforting being able to rely on other people.
It's no one's job to clear them off the path; sometimes last year's can be seen tucked away in corners or under hedges. It's no one's job to make everyone wear masks on buses so that it'd be safe for me to use them and I'd be saved from having to make this walk at all.
Under the leaves I can see the sidewalk is seamed and patched everywhere: irregular patches belying repairs over neat regular lines that indicate pipes or cables neatly arranged below the footpath. I long for that kind of municipal attention, instead of the governmental abandonment Greater Manchester now faces: one day there will be a vaccine but will there still be any businesses, pubs, anything for me to go back to when I can go back again?
My walk back home started in a half-light that reminded me of the podcast that'd finished just as I got to work, which mentioned liminal spaces and times. Liminality is an interesting concept but an accessibility nightmare for me: almost worse than the dark because there's no possibility of good contrast. I'm more conscious of my feet sliding on the leaves on the tree-lined edge of the park I walk past. The lights get brighter as the sky darkens, and the bright spots disorient me for the darkness; my eyes take longer to re-focus than most people's.
At one point I swear a weird UFO (or UNFO, unidentified non-flying object) is bearing down on me, but when I get close enough I see it's four joggers in a weird square formation. The lights are on two of their heads, the front left/rear right diagonal of the square. The jogging makes sense of the wiggle in the lights which had been driving me crazy until I finally got close enough to see the people behind them. I skidded off to the side since the joggers stuck to their formation that took up the whole sidewalk.
I detested their weird forehead lights but also now I want one myself for these walks. The other day I was reminded of the existence of LED-light tape, and thought it might be good for my white cane. Maybe it'll help me see, but maybe it'll just make people think I'm weird enough to keep out of the way.
I hadn't been using my white cane for this walk, but I'm going to have to start now that it's actually getting dark. The white cane is tricky on such a long walk because to use it properly is actually kinda overwhelming: rolling it across the ground in front of me gives me a lot of information -- while also skidding on wet, decomposing leaves just like my feet do, so that's a bummer! -- and just processing that is quickly exhausting for me. But the dark and the leaves are obscuring things to the point where once today I found myself asking "where are the curbs in this road crossing? am I on the road still or is this the sidewalk yet?", so it's crossed the threshold where too much information is better than not enough. The white cane makes me think about dependence and independence again, like the patched-up pavements. Sometimes my favorite thing is being able to rely on strangers; sometimes the most tiring thing is having to rely on strangers.
I walk past an ad on a bus stop for some kind of candy, with two hands reaching from opposite directions to the same open bag. "It's the little things that bring us together," or something like that, goes the ad copy. The mere sight of two different people's hands converging like that feels unsettling to me now. I wonder if we'll end up with weird taboos, like if we'll treat the lower half of people's faces like Victorians did a flash of ankle. But then, I think from behind a mask slightly damp from the rain, no one else is wearing these things. It's tiring having to rely on other people.
But all the way there and back, I'd been grateful for the warm, waterproof boots
mother_bones had lent me the other day after I complained about not having anything sturdy or waterproof enough for more wintry walks to work. Sometimes it's comforting being able to rely on other people.