The Long Walk

Because I absolutely despise cars and because public transit has gone… down the tubes (a-ha-ha!), I have been walking to (and from) work for over a year now. It is four and a half miles and takes about an hour and a half. It means there are weeks in which I get a solid 36 miles in.

Typically, mornings are the worst time of day for me. I wake up thinking about every regret I can remember and it takes me awhile to bring my brain to heel and knock it off, which can be difficult when you’re underground, inside a tiny metal box with a bunch of other people who haven’t had their coffee yet. I miss the Red Line being operable (not everyone can walk), but I don’t miss taking it.

It can be interesting to experience the same stretch of road during the same time of day over and over. Plus, I can catch up on all those albums I’ve fallen behind on. Apparently the Decemberists had a release in 2024.

I must have been running a little late this morning because I didn’t see the bright red Pigott Electric Co. van. I worked with Mr. Pigott at a previous job and it’s vaguely amusing to me that I’m often walking the same stretch of street that he’s driving down (at about the same speed – I keep up with him until I have to wait to cross at a busy intersection).

Before the sun comes up, I get to pass by some haunted-looking mannikins (maybe all mannikins are haunted looking, especially in the wee hours of morning, in a dark, closed shop), shortly before a powerful scent of bacon from the not-yet-open diner. This morning, Colin Meloy was belting out an extremely Decemberists song about some people attacking a wedding.

It feels vaguely like I’m walking into sunrise, like eventually I’m going to catch up to the light and see the darkness behind me, but of course, that isn’t how it works. All of a sudden the sunrise is gone and the full morning light is here. I never see it coming. A watched pot, etc.

Every time I go by a certain CVS, I remember that my oldest son, for the first time in his life, heard a song that he liked on the radio and asked us to play it at home later (“the CVS song,” which was Olivia Rodrigo’s Driver’s License, and I have to say, he had good taste on that one; really takes you right back to the pain of those adolescent break-ups.)

Along the way there’s a dentist’s office with an ostentatious sign: on it is a big smiling, cartoon tooth giving a hearty thumbs up and wielding a tooth brush as though it were a flag. There’s sometimes a woman who does outdoor yoga in the apartments nearby, but she wasn’t around today; maybe it’s too cold anymore. I am not sure what to think of her, since she does her yoga near a pot with a sticker on it that says, incomprehensibly, “JUST SAY NO TO THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY!” That seems like a strange sentiment for a town in Massachusetts, but so does doing yoga in the street when your apartment is right behind you, I guess.

In the middle of an album about folksy tales with archaic language, ghosts, and disasters (again, typical Decemberists), there’s an earnest, basic love song:

Everyone has earned at least one of these songs, I suppose, but then, I’m coming back from a short vacation celebrating my tenth wedding anniversary, and I’ve probably always thought they were the most important kind of songs, anyway.

Down under a bridge where the commuter rail tracks are, someone has spray-painted the word “NAKED” at least four times, in increasingly elaborate designs. I would like to see it as a commentary on vulnerability, but more realistically it was probably thoughtless, everyday horniness.

There are other political advisories: a sign big enough for an entire store window begs people to stop voting for more bike lanes and to focus more on infrastructure, because not everyone can cycle. “FREE PALESTINE!” signs stuck in fences and on mailboxes are evergreen, regrettably, because nobody in power ever seems to listen. A poster stuck to a pole, (newish now, but it will likely be weeks or months before it gets taken down), notes that “men’s rights activists” will be marching to abolish abortion in Boston and calls for counterprotest. I have been following the arrests in the news and can only feel disheartened that these weirdos are at it again. They’re never going to shut up now that their idiot king is about to be in charge again. I guess functionally overturning Roe wasn’t good enough.

Of all the signs and graffiti, my favorite one is on the imposing wall outside a venue I once booked for an offsite. The gray wall has a patch of lighter gray on it, on which, someone has written in a darker gray, “THIS GRAY NEEDS MORE GRAY.” Someone has since added, in yellow, “less imo,” which I think misses the joke. The one sentence was enough.

I drift away from the Decemberists during the twenty minute song about Joan of Arc, which is so dull for a walk that their catchier music bounces back into my head.

All I want is…

The slalom of street-crossing and bicycle dodging due to construction takes up a lot of the second half of the walk. The fire station in Inman is forever roped off in front, some huge biotech is building towers for both labs and living space that looks like it will take years to finish, and the sidewalks are being torn up in half a dozen places at any given time.

This part of the walk is also more heavily populated; before, it’s mostly a few dog-walkers and joggers on the sidewalks, who are too preoccupied to do much more than notice somebody walking the other way. During the second half, it’s all loud construction workers, rushing cyclists and people unloading crates into restaurants.

For awhile, there was a very old woman who would pop her head out of her apartment to feed the birds as I passed, greeting me with a “Good mooooooooooorning, honey!” and winking in a way that was vaguely lascivious, but I haven’t seen her for awhile. I hope that she is okay. As inappropriate as it was, it helped to pull me out of my own head, which, in case it isn’t obvious, has always been one of the biggest challenges of my life and is the reason my mornings are so dismal.

Maybe she’s the one who did the “NAKED” graffiti. Stranger things have happened.

Every time I pass the Kantipur Cafe, the same half-assed Abbot and Costello “Sure, why can’t you pour?” joke pops in my head. No wonder I didn’t keep up with improv.

Don’t want summer Mondays

Don’t want stunning wordplay

All I want is…

Most of these storefronts and restaurants are places that I have never been inside, despite passing them by 6 – 10 times a week. But I still feel vaguely sad when I see that one has closed or changed hands. One of the easiest ways to divide the eras of my life is by my commute. The walk to Ruggles, the endless bus ride to Salem State, the two busses and a train to get from Somerville to West Roxbury, the walk from Roslindale, the times it was too cold for the Green Line and I’d walk down Commonwealth Ave, stopping at the grocery store on the way back, walking the Minute Man bike trail to Alewife to take the few stops to Harvard…

You start to recognize things. The specific place that smells a little like sewage, the same guy, wearing a fedora, getting on the train car with you. You invent names for people and places. Strong Bad the Eternal Orange Line Denizen. Here at the Turn. “Can I Borrow $20?” Medical Device Guy. Names of dire importance for the mundane, not to drown out the tedium but because they have inexplicably become a part of your life and you’ll miss them when that part of your life is over. People and places that mark an era deserve titles of import.

What I try to remember by the end of the long walk is that the trajectory of my own life, at least, has largely only gotten better. This commute is better than the one before it, which is better than the one before that, and on and on. What right do I have to wallow in regret? A lot of the people I miss are fine, as far as I know, and I have everything I need.

I have, in fact, just been to a nice hotel in New Hampshire with a woman that I have been with for thirteen happy years, to celebrate the anniversary of our marriage and take some time to reconfirm our commitment to each other, and when we returned home, both of our children flocked to hug us.

Amidst the exploding Decemberists fairy tale of the walk, there’s that one, earnest love song.

Drag me to your altar

When my footing falters

All I want is

All I want is you.

Well… that and a couple of cups of coffee.