patrickrhone

Among the reasons I choose to live where I live and love where I live are the sidewalks. My community is a very walkable one and I enjoy doing so when I take the care to. They are long urban blocks filled with curiosity, interest, activity, and things unchanged.

I walk to our local grocery co-op (2.5 blocks) no matter the weather. I walk to our local bread shop (4.5 blocks) and wine shop (4.75 blocks). On a nice day, I walk to a small independent bookstore I love (6 blocks). The great little park , recently refurbished after years of city neglect, where my daughter likes to play (3.5 blocks). When the time allows, I enjoy meeting a friend for beer at a great restaurant and bar with a fantastic selection of beers (5 blocks) which I enjoy more than the one with less selection across the street (100 feet). These places are designed for walking to. They have limited parking if they have any dedicated at all. In the time it would take to get in the car and navigate traffic, one could be there already on foot.

What I love most, beside the walking itself, is the occasional friend or neighbor I run into. And, even when I don’t, most of these shop owners and barkeeps are friends and neighbors as well. For this is where I find out the news that matters most — that which is happening right around me…

“Did you hear about the break-in just around the corner?”

“What’s the deal with the two seemingly competing chocolate shops opening on the same street two blocks from each other?”

“Mr. Councilman, sorry to disturb your coffee. Can I ask you about your vote against the stop reminder I asked about for the pedestrian walkway?”

Thus, though a walk may be only a few blocks it can sometimes take an hour if I’m in no hurry which is just fine with me.

Increasingly it seems, so many of us live in places without sidewalks. So many suburbs and exurbs we are moving to are without them. So many of these communities we build are purposefully absent this integral part (in my mind at least) of community. Though I can’t imagine a worse fate then to be somewhere without them, I increasingly feel in the minority.

The planners know that less people want them. They are moving out of the urban area for a sense of country living. Part of which means, in their mind, to have lawn that extends to the road. Even though that road may be a asphalt beach. Sidewalks are simply a reminder of all those things they are trying to venture from.

These concrete paths are not technically ours. They belong to the city — the community. Even the ones that are just in front of where you live you must share and allow others to pass through. As such, you must maintain them despite this domain. You must shovel them when it snows. You must keep them free of ice. You must pay the cost to repair if damaged. More people, it seems, would rather have a few feet of green space instead. One that they own outright and can tell people to get off of when crossed.

Because there are less sidewalks in these places, people tend to make their connections elsewhere. At work or at the kids hockey practice or at the dog park. They tend to know their actual neighbors less. There are few opportunities to do so since they never cross each other’s paths except within the protected bubble of vehicles and traffic laws. They drive to all the places they need to go. Which are the similar to the places I go but all decidedly further away and designed for cars. Upon return, they go straight into the garage and then shut the door.

They turn on the TV before dinner to get news that is happening half a world away and consider themselves informed. Why should’t they? For the news they may get from conversations with people who do not live near them might as well be the same distance and equally as relevant. And because these connections are with people who live not near us they must discuss what things we have in common which does not start with community for there is none.

I wonder too if our communities in the virtual world are following this same path.

My first sense of being “online” was on a dial up connection to a local BBS. I knew the people there offline as well. It was small enough that one could. The topics discussed were often a continuation of the ones we did when we were together. If there was a problem that needed sorting (or a quarrel that needed moderating) one messaged the sysop who, once again, was a friend as well as neighbor. There were sidewalks there.

Then AOL came along. The first suburb. A place where you could form relationships, of a sort, with people from all over the country. They were not neighbors or people you would likely see in real life. Yet, you felt like you knew them just as well. You felt like you were being informed about things that mattered. And, as long as you stayed there, there were sidewalks.

Now we have Facebook and Twitter. The exurbs. Communities and relationships that span the globe. People on the other side of the planet that we know better than those real humans right next door. We can now know the first hand, on the ground, news of a community in Iran in real time. Or assist in the search for someone we barely know who has gone missing and is feared dead. Are we building sidewalks here?

If you pressed me to come up with one reason I feel so drawn to a service such as Path versus the rest is that it feels like a sidewalk to me.

Here are a random and incomplete collection of things I learned this year…

• Having a regular weekly check-in with someone who challenges you and helps you think beyond your limits is vital to creativity.

• I don’t listen to music nearly as much as I wish I did and am reminded of this fact whenever I look up from my keyboard after a long writing session to run off to an appointment and think to myself that I should have turned on some music before I started.

• Writing a book can drive one between the polar extremes of self-loathing and grandiosity so violently that it really can send one prone to madness and depression to the edge of the abyss.

• Why writers drink.

• In the very short time I have done so, one can find frequent utility from a good knife if one carries it daily.

• Forming a habit is really difficult and takes an nearly life or death desire to do so. The trick then may be to fool your brain into believing that your life actually does depend on that thing you want to do.

• Doing the things you really want to do is easy. If something feels hard its because you don’t really want to do it.

• When it comes to my online work, I want to own as much of every word and pixel as possible.

• I want the same when it comes to my offline work too.

• One can safely ignore most information and communication for a few days or a weekend with few ill affects. Especially if expectations are appropriately set and there is a system in place for folks to get in touch should a urgent need arise.

• I could not recommend AwayFind enough.

• For thinking and tasking, nothing beats good old pen and paper and I should stop flirting with anything else.

• That a life well lived is a life well loved, and vice versa.

• That, for me, solitude is essential to living and loving.

• The only thing more valuable than telling the truth is having a truth to tell.

• One can also safely ignore most news and information sources. 99.9% of it is information theater designed to titillate and distract one from digging deep into an issue through research, analysis, scrutiny, and bias. Such digging takes time and effort so choose those things you wish to know about carefully. Then, form an opinion based upon such research.

• Don’t think you have the wit to debate any subject unless you have done the above.

• That our fear of death is, in fact, a fear of missing out.

• That when you have purpose, intentions and actions follow naturally. If intentions and actions are not flowing, examine your purpose.

• My Pinboard public RSS feed could (and perhaps should) replace most of what I share other places.

• I should make a point of writing one thing I learned down in my journal every day from this point forward to a) make learning a habit and b) make this list easier.

• Life is a big place shared by many. Ignore most of it and concentrate on yours.

• That the line between technology and magic is increasingly blurred for me.

• That all things are impermanent and transitory.

• That one should embrace the delete key, the trash can, and the word no.

• Saying no is actually saying yes to other things.

• That when you have said all you can about something, it is OK to be done. Shut up and walk away.

Every well known artist I can think of has a singular transformative work. A turning point if you will. One that is clearly better than anything that came before it. Also, one that distinctly shapes everything that will follow. At times these works are a pinnacle of sorts. A point at which an artist has stretched themselves and given the full limit of ability. Therefore, everything else to follow is less great. Other times, such work is just the beginning. Where an artist has finally found a stride that sets them up for a long and successful run.

Sometimes these are obvious. For instance, a great indie band that has a hit single, gets signed to a major label, assigned some famous producers, and suddenly things are no longer the same. They are markedly different. Perhaps it is the production – less or more raw. Perhaps it is that the band, now flush with major label money, has fewer or more creative constraints. Perhaps it simply because now they can afford steak dinner over ramen.

And, of course, there are countless stories of film actors who spend the later half of their lives trying to regain the career making performance they once had. Or the visual artist who after years of struggle in their medium finds that one element that sets them apart.

Sometimes, the forces of change come from within. The author who decides to stretch himself and take on a subject much more different and requiring much more research than he previously has. Or, perhaps she has been featured on Oprah and now has experienced success so great she can’t possibly live up to it again.

In rarer cases, such transformative work causes the author, actor, or artist to go nowhere from there at all. JD Salinger and The Catcher in the Rye being the most obvious example that comes to mind. Following the success of this work he became a recluse, published infrequently, and what he did produce were clearly things he could have just as easily thrown away. Perhaps he knew the work had transformed him in such a way as to never want to produce such work again.

Of course, as this year draws to a close and I reflect upon it, thoughts of transformation are natural. Along with impermanence, I’m going to make transformation part of the scaffolding that supports the structure of my work in the year to come. These are two of the three chairs I plan to sit upon and dialog around in the coming year.