I took a walk yesterday. There's a little side alley along the way. Normally I gaze into the mouth of it's mysterious little gateway, and continue my jaunt toward a path that crosses the main highway. I enjoy gazing into the local Cafe windows, reading the daily lunch menus, watching pedestrians with their little dogs, children gallivant to parked cars with shiny new playthings from tiny corner stores. However, today I was feeling more slow-paced. My stomach had been aching for days, and I really just wanted to avoid as much social interaction as possible. So, I looked both ways, and then crept into the void of an old side alley.
My detour was, perhaps, only about 30 yards in length. To any common naked eye, the place would probably appear to be decrepit and forgotten, what with it's broken concrete and back-alley trash dumpster. For me, though, it was a gaze into the past of a part of town long forgotten. Old shop signs, once shiny and hanging across front awnings, now lay tattered on their ends, probably discarded by shops long gone out of business. I could hear the laughter of children long grown old now, either by age or life, respectively. Even the sky looked a different shade behind this lane of forgotten downtown. Old paperbacks had been thrown out and had found their way into the wind, they lay scattered and open, as if a phantom reader lay in the grass nearby, vying for the last chapter of Gulliver's Travels.
I walked slowly, soaking in this vast, odd, forgotten panorama. And I felt a little like I'd stumbled into
a dimension rarely visited these days, if ever. A little secret to keep between this tiny town, and me. And the moral of the story? Sometimes it's okay to walk in the opposite direction...you just may find yourself in someplace new.
I can't pretend to understand the back-alley type of life. I've only observed it from the bright end of a black mirror...a reflection thrown back into the gray face of itself....
