Long Walks On Leafy Streets

2/1/2015 near 100 Van Buren St NW, Washington, DC
I don’t know why our neighborhood is so absolutely still on a Sunday afternoon but I am enjoying it. Perhaps it is the superbowl about to start that is keeping everyone inside their homes on this cold winter day. As I have written in these pages before I used to be a big football fan. In fact I used to spend a lot of my time watching different kinds of professional sports. But after a while I just couldn’t afford the time and I also got weary of the commercial nature of it. It is like eating junk food knowing that not only is the food unhealthy for you but also that much harm has been done to many people in the making of it. Nevertheless I also know that sports is better than many other things people spend their time on, and also it is something that brings people together. Last year I didn’t watch the superbowl at all. This year Nicole wanted to watch it.
We will be watching it after she comes back from prenatal yoga. I do watch sports that are not entirely commercial such as international cricket and soccer games or the Olympics or college soccer, but these do not take as much of my time nor do they leave me with a case of mental indigestion and fatigue.

Today although it was cold it was nice to walk outside. We walked to the Takoma Park Presbyterian Church to attend the Sunday service. We then took the Ride-on bus 16 to Woodlands, our favorite Indian restaurant at the sprawling Langley Park shopping area. We then took the bus back to the co-operative to get some groceries and then I walked home and Nicole went to the yoga class. We enjoyed the leisurely afternoon together on the streets of Takoma Park. The houses seemed to be hibernating on this sleepy, dreary afternoon. There is still a lot of snow on the ground. Each season brings its own beauty and winter has the spare, bare kind of beauty. I also felt pretty good that we managed the entire trip without a car.

Because we spend so much of our time on our work during the week we don’t get to spend much time just hanging out like this. Yesterday she had spent the day with her friends. It was very cold –thirty degrees - but I managed to bike to Dupont Circle. I did wear my long johns and winter hats and gloves. I spent some time thinking about a math problem while watching the people pass by around the circle. This used to be one of my favorite activities, so it was nice to revisit it. I then browsed some books at Kramerbooks. I came upon a couple of great books. One is by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist monk born in Sikkim, India and now an American citizen teaching in the western US. It was titled “Rebel Buddha” and it talked about the need for people to discover their own path in order to search for the truth, unbound by tradition or dogma. It struck a familiar chord in me because in many ways I feel like I have been a rebel in my own life. Although my belief in Advaita has never faded, I feel like it has been strengthened by my exploring life in the US as well as the teachings of many different teachers from various traditions. The seeking of truth is a lonely path, whether you are studying the external or the internal, in that ultimately you need to convince yourself that what you are learning is true. It takes a certain stubbornness and independence of mind.

Another book I came across was “Ghettoside” by Jill Leovy. It is about this detective John Skaggs of the homicide division in South LA (formerly called South-Central LA) who pursues criminals with a dedication and skill that the best mathematicians would envy. I love detective stories, and some of my favorite shows are Columbo, Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Apparently Mr. Skaggs gets up at 3 am every day. He is also a surfer with a certain detached and calm temperament that keeps him going in this difficult work. As any good writer Ms. Leovy grabbed my attention once I started reading. What sustained my attention, though, were some sobering statistics. Although they make only 6 percent of America’s population black men make up 40 percent of murder victims. Most of the perpetrators walk free because there are so many unsolved cases. I kept reading the book and couldn’t stop, so finally I bought it. We hope the world would be kind to our soon to be born son.

Earlier this week on Tuesday morning we got about an inch of snow. I shoveled snow first thing in the morning before going running. It gives me great pleasure to see people walk on the sidewalk after it has been cleared of snow. I cleared snow from not only the front of our house but also from some of our neighbors’ so that there was an unbroken path from one end to the other of the block. I also picked up a basket full of aluminum cans and plastic bottles from a nearby street corner. Such little acts give one great pleasure because you know right away you are making a difference in the lives of people as well as the well being of our planet, however small it is. Later in the evening as I walked around I was struck by the beauty of the landscape. I wrote this haiku to capture it:

Snow on grass
Sidewalks clean to walk
Ideal winter scene.

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