Too must placid to run, I decided to take a walk. There were too many things on my head when I set out and there are still too many things remaining. Perhaps I shouldn’t call what I just did a walk. Walks are meant to be pleasant ambles with a kindred spirit as the evening slowly falls. Instead this was a furious tearing down of four miles, the anxious pacing of a panther in its cage, to use the words from a Ted Hughes poem, Panther.

The first thing I noticed in my field of vision was the yellow flowers on the wild brush that grows in the cracks of asphalt in the abandoned gas station at the corner. In a small way that represents the journey of this civilization growing crazy at its seams back to nature. I much rather see these wild flowers in an boarded up, chain link fenced gas station than tired people pulling up in cars (like sardines in a can) for gas. However much folks try to beautify them gas stations for some reason are the most depressing places in the urban landscape. I walked further up the road passing a place called Kountry Kitchen, with a fax pas well before it, all dolled up to look like a place in the country, it would have succeeded pretty well weren’t for the credit cards accepted board attached right to front porch. Up street a TV broadcasting van was pulling up onto the 14th street, with all its instrumentation hung above it, a strange metallic creature. It was perhaps dashing off to some accident scene, so that viewers of tonight’s news can get their fill of car wrecks (6,356,000 car accidents occur in US annually) or a drive by shooting. In fact I was walking outside at what is considered the most dangerous time of the week, Friday night. Enough people have been mugged for I guess cash to buy some liquor. But then lately I have grown more reckless about life, which seems to be as lucky as shooting fish in a barrel or wining at Russian roulette.

The sky, at least the part of it that wasn’t blocked up houses, gigantic TV transmitter towers and power lines, was a beautiful wash of red. I wished I was sitting at that time, with my feet dangling off the ledge at Standing Indian (the closest peak above 5000 ft to Atlanta) watching the sun set somewhere in the distance in Tennessee, with nothing but thin air and an endless carpet of trees between me and that red orb. In this reverie I didn’t notice that the sidewalk had ended. Atlanta and I suspect most of US is anti pedestrian. In some areas if one decides to go for a walk one is forced to walk in drainage ditches, through parking lots and climb fences, almost a Marines type obstacle course, only for the strong of heart. Anyway I was stuck next to the road and got to examine some old sedimentary rock and a cove of trees. I realized this whole place must have been nothing but rock and trees just around 150 years ago. Now we have blasted a road through the rocks and instead of trees have all these houses. I guess we can’t stay like the Indians did, in tepees can we?

Then I took a turn up Hemphill. This road makes me sick, it has three fast food places next to one another. MacD with it’s “We love to see you smile.” That statement is so loaded with hypocrisy that it always makes me want to laugh. The folks who work in these places work for slave wages that are barely enough to survive on. No wonder you can never hear a really happy person at the other end of the drive through places. It’s as if they are sleepwalking through life and perhaps in a way they are. Anyway all along the sidewalk I saw what Edward Abbey calls signs of Solbvious Americanus: discarded coke bottles, cans, food containers and other litter. Now I shouldn’t complain, US is a zillion times cleaner than say India. After all waste management is a billion dollar business here!!

I soon walked into Tech campus and after a long time on what was an older path that I used to walk from that old house to office through Burger bowl. I saw a couple playing with two dogs, a couple of guys kicking a soccer ball and felt myself hungering for someone to walk along with me. Then I started running and ran for a while.

That thought recalled, suddenly seems to have killed my urge to write. So I think I will end this note here.