Walking in Troy

 I drove to Troy to pick up Yuna from her new gig working as a server at Sunhee's Farm and Kitchen. I got there early and parked the car and walked around the block. It was Cinco de Mayo, and kitty-corner from the restaurant, the Mexican taco place had set up an impromptu seating area in their parking lot. There was a DJ playing Latin music, and a booth serving tacos outdoors, and lots of guests enjoyed the beautiful May weather and the festive atmosphere. 

There wasn't enough time for me to sit and eat anything or to order a drink. So I just wandered into the parking lot to soak in the atmosphere on the cheap. I could see many local Troy residents attracted by the music making their way over to the restaurant to enjoy the offerings. 

I live in a suburb. It is a dense suburb, where from my living room, I can just about look into the houses from my neighbors on either side if the angle is just right. The lots in my town are measured in SF, not acres. So it is a small/dense suburb. But it is still a suburb. There are no stoops for people to sit in front, to have a coffee or a glass of wine after dinner. There are just a handful of places you can walk to: a coffee shop, a deli, and a couple of pizza places. Most of the people walking around in my town will not happen on any chance encounters. You may run into your friend/neighbor out for a walk, or running, perhaps. 

There is much value in chance encounters. It enriches your life by offering unplanned, real-time simulations. Maybe you were on your way to the grocery store and chance upon a  new great restaurant. Maybe you work in a certain department in your university or laboratory, and you bump into someone with whom you share no common areas of interest or research, and the conversation opens up new avenues of thought or exploration. Or maybe you just make a new friend or acquaintance from a different walk of life, someone you don't work with or live near. All of these random variables exist in an urban environment that is less common in suburbs or rural areas. 

I am attracted to the unplanned, the random offerings served up in real-time, and the sudden twists and turns that come up. I feel comfortable changing gears mid-walk and find that it is exciting in a way that the predictable, limited variables lifestyle offered up by the suburbs. Living in a free-standing house in a suburb, it is possible to get into your car from your office garage and drive home into your house garage, and not set foot outside anywhere in the public domain. And what chance encounters would your life offer in such a hard dualistic existence, between work and home? It is those minutes walking on city streets that open the door to hopefully pleasant opportunities to step outside the planned daily patterns of life, and I crave such unsolicited stimuli.