It’s hard to pay attention. It’s hard to be in the moment. It’s very easy to walk around with your face buried in the internet. I’ve started making a game of it – when I’m standing at a busy street corner, how many of the other walkers are staring at their phones? When I’m coming down the escalator to a metro station platform, how many fellow passengers can I spot who are waiting for a train while doing anything *but* gazing into a lighted piece of glass? (Not many.)
This evening as I walked the mile home from exercise class, I probably managed to spent at least half of the time looking at the actual physical world.
And looking had such rewards! I exchanged smiles with an older man watering his hydrangeas. I saw some other hydrangeas and thought, “wow, there’s a lot of hydrangeas around here.” I had the small and uninteresting epiphany that hydrangeas probably have a season, and this is it. I even noticed some things that didn’t have to do with hydrangeas.
Like this here violet.
Now, first of all: When I saw this plant, I thought “violet!” but I can see that it kind of looks like a pansy in the photo. So I’ve spent some time in an Internet rabbithole (on my phone, but not while walking around) trying to determine if this is a violet or a pansy. What I’ve learned is that “violet” is generally used for the ones who breathe free and take over your lawn, while “pansy” is for the ones that are showy and planted from seed. Given that this one has planted itself in a sidewalk, I’m calling it a violet.
Anyway. Look at this violet! Look at it! Bravely growing up between the bricks, six blocks from the U.S. Capitol building.
In this neighborhood, I’ve realized, you can tell the patterns of sidewalk use by the quantity of weeds growing between the bricks. In the straight lines where everyone walks, the bricks are bare. At the edges near the less-used curbs, green weeds flourish. From the presence of this violet, I conclude that most people don’t walk within a brick’s length of this fire hydrant. And I guess we can conclude that violets are resistant to dog pee. Or that the dogs around here prefer trees and low stone walls.
Please note that I am not claiming to be much better than other people at looking up from my phone. Right after I took the first two photos of the brave sidewalk violet, I walked onward, to the corner, while checking the photos on my phone. And then went back and took four more. And then admired those photos as I continued on, and then put the phone away and imagined the little essay I would write.
While I walk, it’s so easy to follow a train of thought to something I’d like to google, or to feel the buzz of a friend’s text message and get involved in an amusing conversation.
But oh, golly. The rewards for looking up. They are many.
Photo: Helen Fields, obviously