{"id":5763,"date":"2013-12-05T07:00:57","date_gmt":"2013-12-05T12:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/?p=5763"},"modified":"2016-12-02T17:32:58","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T22:32:58","slug":"where-the-sidewalk-ends-suburban-enchantment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2013\/12\/05\/where-the-sidewalk-ends-suburban-enchantment\/","title":{"rendered":"Where the sidewalk ends: Suburban enchantment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I hate the suburbs. \u00a0Which is ironic, because the white picket fence suburban ideal is one I chased for most of my life. \u00a0Which is why I now live in the suburbs. \u00a0But now I want to escape. \u00a0I\u2019m finding the whole idea of a yard absurd. \u00a0Cultivating grass seems the height of insanity. \u00a0Sidewalks are overrated. \u00a0I long for mature trees and space where \u201cweeds\u201d can grow. \u00a0The suburbs seem to me one of the most unreal places on the planet, surpassed only by professional office parks. \u00a0Give me the woods. \u00a0Give me farmland. \u00a0Give me the city. \u00a0Anything but the \u2018burbs.<\/p>\n

The other day, the \u201cquiet desperation\u201d which accumulates from living in a place like this moved from the background to the foreground, as it sometimes does, and I felt an overwhelming urge to flee. \u00a0It was a crisp autumn evening. \u00a0I put on my jacket, my gloves and my hat, and told my daughter, who was the only one home at the time, that I was going for a walk. \u00a0Walk? \u00a0I felt like running. \u00a0I decided to leave my cell phone behind. \u00a0But I got a half block away from my house and thought better of it. \u00a0Half of me wanted to cut off all connection for a little while, while the other half wanted to make sure my daughter was okay. \u00a0So I went back to the house and got the cell phone and told me daughter she could reach me on it if she needed to.<\/p>\n

I set off again. \u00a0The houses were illuminated by the soft glow of street lamps and the whole scene seemed both quaint and eerie. \u00a0It reminded more than anything else of the nightmare nursery rhyme village in the caves under Lookout Mountain at Rock City, Georgia. \u00a0It consists of caves filled with fairyland dioramas lit by blacklights, and it is one of the oddest tourist attractions I have ever seen. \u00a0I don\u2019t think it\u2019s intended to be disturbing, but it is. \u00a0Neil Gaiman describes it well in his book, American Gods<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cRock City begins as an ornamental garden on a mountain side: its visitors walk a path that takes them through rocks, over rocks, between rocks.\u00a0 They throw corn into a deer enclosure, cross a hanging bridge, and peer out through a-quarter-a-throw binoculars at a view that promises them seven states on the rare sunny days when the air is perfectly clear.\u00a0 And from there, like a drop into some strange hell, the path takes visitors, millions upon millions of them every year, down into caverns, where they stare at black-lit dolls arranged into nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale dioramas.\u00a0 When they leave, they leave bemused, uncertain of why they came, of what they have seen, of whether they had a good time or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how I felt that night walking through my neighborhood that evening. \u00a0The houses, which should have looked charming, seemed ominous. \u00a0I could not make sense of what I was doing there. \u00a0That I should live in this place seemed beyond comprehension. \u00a0Of course I knew that people lived in these houses, but I could only imagine them occupied by mannequins. \u00a0And I was one of the mannequins.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A couple of turns and half mile from my house and the sidewalk came to an abrupt end near a creek \u2014 actually a drainage ditch. \u00a0It\u2019s the only place for miles where wild vegetation is allowed to grow freely. \u00a0I really didn\u2019t know where I was going. \u00a0But I was looking for something. \u00a0I followed the creek a little ways and came to a small hollow, set aside I think as a retention pond, mostly dry now and covered in grass, except for a tight grove of cattails in the center. \u00a0The cattails stood taller than me, taller than I could reach. \u00a0I went down the depression to where the cattails were growing in the spongy earth and sat down in the shadow of the little grove, grateful for a moment of unlikely privacy.<\/p>\n

And something happened.<\/p>\n

The fall air was that kind that crisp that makes everything appear particularly clearly. \u00a0The wind was blowing gently and the cattails waved back and forth like they were animate. \u00a0And I felt, for all the world, like the cattails, the wind, that place \u2026 were talking to me. \u00a0Not talking with words, but saying something nonetheless. \u00a0What were they saying? \u00a0I think this is what they said to me:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is real. \u00a0You are here. \u00a0You are alive.<\/em>\u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Moby Dick<\/em>, Melville wrote of the home island of Queequeg, \u201cIt is not down on any map;\u00a0true places never are.\u201d \u00a0And this little spot was one such place too, a true<\/em> place. \u00a0A place that cannot be found on a map, because it is as more of an experience than a set of coordinates.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I was less than a mile from my own house. \u00a0I could see another subdivision off to my left a few hundred feet, houses lit from within, people living their lives inside. \u00a0And even closer to my right was the road with occasional car traffic passing by. \u00a0I still could hear the Interstate a half mile away. \u00a0But in spite of all that, here in that place, in the shadow of the cattails, I felt connected again \u2014 connected to the mystery of life. \u00a0And I was astonished that this little miracle could happen in such close proximity to that unreal world that I had fled from.<\/p>\n

Novalis calls this \u201cromanticizing\u201d, a word which has lost its original meaning, and now means a kind of naive idealization. \u00a0\u201cTo romanticize the world,\u201d writes Novalis, \u201cis to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.\u201d \u00a0We Pagans have another word for the same thing: enchantment<\/a> \u2014 as in re-enchanting the world<\/a>. \u00a0It\u2019s not about idealizing or \u201cromanticizing\u201d, in the pejorative sense of the word. \u00a0I wasn\u2019t pretending the cattails were sentient. \u00a0It\u2019s about experiencing the world as a subject, instead of as an object. \u00a0It\u2019s about experiencing the world as something that we are a part of, instead of standing separate from with an artificial objectivity. \u00a0And it is not our natural way of being in the world, at least not anymore.<\/p>\n

I stayed there for a little while, soaking in the feeling. \u00a0And then I got up an went home. \u00a0The houses still seemed strange to me. \u00a0Unreal. \u00a0The grass seemed artificial. \u00a0Nothing had changed, except me. \u00a0I had changed. \u00a0I was healed a little bit. \u00a0It\u2019s the strangest thing. \u00a0If anyone had seen me, they would have thought me insane, but it was the most sane thing I had done for weeks. \u00a0I wondered what other true places my neighborhood might hide, waiting for me to discover them.<\/p>\n

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
\nAnd before the street begins,
\nAnd there the grass grows soft and white,
\nAnd there the sun burns crimson bright,
\nAnd there the moon-bird rests from his flight
\nTo cool in the peppermint wind.<\/p>\n

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
\nAnd the dark street winds and bends.
\nPast the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
\nWe shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
\nAnd watch where the chalk-white arrows go
\nTo the place where the sidewalk ends.<\/p>\n

Yes we\u2019ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
\nAnd we\u2019ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
\nFor the children, they mark, and the children, they know
\nThe place where the sidewalk ends<\/p>\n

\u2014 Shel Silverstein, \u201cWhere the Sidewalk Ends\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

ADDENDUM: Synchronistically, Traci Laird just published a piece about urban witchcraft<\/a> and the methods she used to connect in an urban environment. \u00a0Go check it out!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The chill wind was blowing gently and the cattails waved back and forth like they were animate. And I felt, for all the world, like they were talking to me. Not talking with words, but saying something nonetheless. What were they saying? I think this is what they said to me: “This is real. You are here. You are alive.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[72,643,170,362,9,562],"class_list":["post-5763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-connection","tag-enchantment","tag-life","tag-mystery","tag-nature","tag-suburbs"],"yoast_head":"\nWhere the sidewalk ends: Suburban enchantment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The chill wind was blowing gently and the cattails waved back and forth like they were animate. 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