Outside

It came back to me today when I was mindlessly browsing through one of those women's magazines: a rather hip 'n trendy lingerie designer posing under a cobblestone bridge by day. It wasn't so much the picture that brought it back, it was the notion that at least two people (the designer and the photographer) had to be standing there, by day.



It brought me back to those days in high school when we rarely got to see the world outside the school walls. Actually, there were low-maintenance pine trees in front of the walls. Cover-up nature. But whenever we did get the chance to go outside during school hours, I was jealous of all those people and their freedom to go and walk about, do their thing on the street, simply be part of the city. The same envy sometimes overwhelms me when I see journalists on tv waiting at the steps of some court house or a guarded gate. Inner city jobs are different; sure you'll hate the rain and bus delays and buses that -in all their haste not to be delayed- rush through puddles along the pavement, but you'll come across scraps of paper, roof top poetry and people you'd never see in OfficeVille.

Maybe tomorrow I'll deviate from the daily A > B and back > A route, to recalculate.