Walking it until I was limping it, and understanding my strange not quite agoraphobia

BLOT: (25 Sep 2011 - 03:42:22 PM)

Walking it until I was limping it, and understanding my strange not quite agoraphobia

There was a performance of Killer Joe* at UAHuntsville. I did not go. Which is to say, I went but did not see the play. Due to a few false starts on my behalf, I got there a bit late, like twenty minutes. I was walking to campus, so I was a bit sweaty (only a bit, sure). The idea of going into a play a few minutes late and covered in any amount of sweat threw me off enough that I practically could not.

Since I have started working at UAH (aka UAHuntsville in the new venacular) I have walked to and from work a fair number of times. At least dozens. Maybe not hundreds. Maybe. I don't know. In that time, I have had a few weird experiences**—being kicked out of stores because they knew I was a pedestrian and assumed the worst, having people assume I'm homeless, getting stopped a lot by people looking for money and/or weed, having people swerve towards me in cars because they are freaking out about a pedestrian and can't take their eyes off of me, having people stop beside me in their vehicle and just stare for a moment before driving off, idiots thinking they are being funny for honking loudly or shouting obscene things as they drive by—and there is a sense, as a walker, of being cut off from the flow of traffic around you. At least I get that sense.

I think it is mostly Huntsville. We do not get pedestrians, here, in the way that a lot of readers do not get Infinite Jest. Sidewalks show up and disappear in sometimes random intervals. Even well maintained ones are likely to disappear for a stretch of business fronts or for even less tangible reasons. Whenever roads are expanded, sidewalks are the first things sacrificed, and rarely do you see the reverse. There are a number of stores I can attest to treating pedestrians different, meaning worse, than people they visually watched drive up in cars. Around downtown and the Five Points area, this is largely mitigated by the old neighborhoods where family sorts work for pleasure if not so much for practically, but in North Huntsville it's a major issue.***

Huntsville's hatred of anyone in any form of transportation lesser in size than a passenger car—see: any news article where a cyclist is killed in Huntsville and half the comments decry cyclists being a nuisance and so forth—notwithstanding, getting a chance to walk around by myself has made me definitely aware of a state of high contrast alone time versus crowd time. You walk for minutes, maybe even quarters of an hour, and then you suddenly get into a store or a place where there is a crowd and you go from being about and around no-one to being about and around people. These moments strike me as pretty weird at the best of times. If I am on my own, maybe a little bit sweaty, maybe carrying a bookbag or something if I actually am going to or from work—then it feels even weirder.

It is not agoraphobia, at least not precisely. I work in public service. I did retail for four Christmases. It is hard to be agoraphobic after that much flooding. Instead, it is more like: if I have a reason to be someplace outside of whim or chance, I feel just fine. If I just enter a crowd without there being a set reason, I feel disjointed from the crowd. It is very much so based on the vagaries of my mind. When I stood in line with large crowds during the power outage, I did not feel out of place at all. Had I just walked up, say, to Walgreens without that emergency going on and there was small crowd outside, there is about a 50/50 chance that I would just walk on by, not feeling comfortable ejecting myself into that situation.

When I am with Sarah, it is not bad. If I am with an even larger group, I don't even notice it. If I am at a job, I don't notice it. If I am going someplace for an appointment or attached to some other regimen, I don't really get it but if it is the first time there I will sometimes feel it. If I am just out walking or visiting, it hits me pretty hard. The walks back from work, where the late night environment coupled with some of the odd looks I got being out past 10pm as a walker, ended up feeling so weird to me that I would often go without stopping to eat, or drink, or whatever else I might need because I was tired of the fuss.

I did not get it very often when I was in undergrad. I did not walk a whole lot outside of campus and the neighborhood, but I rarely got that sense of being a complete outsider even if I went outside of my comfort zone. In fact, even now when I just take off across alleyways and in weird locations, I do not get it. It seems compounded by the downtimes being in places that feels kind of familiar to me.

Partially to try and fight it, I got out and walked for about three hours on Thursday. That helped. It was hot and pretty miserable, but it was still good fun. I got nice and tired. Ending up eating at Jamo's with Sarah. My mood was much better than the night before. The downside, though, was my left ankle which, at some point, became pained. No clue what happened to it. It just started hurting. Not during the walk, but hours later while I was at my desk chatting with a friend. The next day, it was stiff. Felt like I had a crick in it. I tried stretching it, and some motion helped and some motion hurt a lot.

On Saturday, Sarah and I got out and about. We went by Blue Plate Cafe for breakfast, but by time we got there it was lunch-only, so settled for lunch. Then drove out to Madison to look at a motorcycle and scooter dealer that has Vespas. There has been a bit of planning on our part to figure out what vehicle we want to replace her car. Part of that reasoning includes the fact that if we were to get a scooter of some sort, even two, we would be able to keep the car and have new transportation as well. Finally, swung by the Botanical Gardens and walked around for about three hours. This is the last week of the Tree House exhibit—where tree houses and things that are claimed to be tree houses are constructed around various themes and you can climb on them and play around and stuff—and one of the first for the Scarecrow Trail—so we got to see both as we meandered back and forth across the park. It was fun. Too many people. Just hot enough to be uncomfortable. Still, it was a nice time. The picture below is of Sarah from when we were sitting down for a bit a couple of hours in and enjoying the shade. There were other pictures, but apparently pics taken in bright sunlight by her phone's camera look like bad bootlegs of homemade 1994 direct to VHS movies. A problem not entirely absent from the below picture, but definitely mitigated as best it can be. We'll mostly let it stand with this one picture.

For those paying attention to an earlier moment in this post, this means I walked around for a total of about five hours, on a gimpy ankle. Yes, stupid. I'm paying for today, but really the swelling isn't too bad. It is mostly pained. My Achilles Tendon does not like me, but outside of pain does not feel particularly stiff. I'll be as good as I can to it, today, and maybe it will clear up soon.

As for today, I'm at the reference desk until nine. Things are pretty calm, here. Some odd queries but also interesting ones. The "printing to real reference questions" ratio is about half and half, which really is better than your average day by a notch. Here's hoping it stays this way.

* The first play by Tracy Letts, of whose work I have only seen Bug performed.

** The weirdest happened the night I was walking to see the play. As I came down Brickell Street, near the campus, I saw a person of roughly my same shape, size, build, and even outfit coming towards me. Except he was walking backwards at about the same pace I was walking forward. As he got closer and closer, it definitely woke up whatever part of the brain it is that responds to weird things. He eventually turned around, saw me, went "Oh" and walked on. I have no idea why he was walking at a fair clip while backwards, though, unless it was an exercise thing.

*** Jimmy, an ex-roommate and still-friend, would walk home through Governor's Drive, west of Parkway, which can be a bit rough of a neighborhood. People would throw cans and such at him as they drove by.

Me in 2011, Huntsville AL

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: September 2011