walking

In Baltimore when you walk somewhere, unless you’re in the inner harbor part of downtown, you can count the number of people you pass on two hands and still have seven fingers left over for making shadow puppets. You can say hello to each person you pass, although in Baltimore different races look through each other as though they don’t exist. You can walk for thirty minutes and not pass a single public trashcan. You can, however, pass dozens of dead trees. It’s a town where bike lanes “end.” And a town that requires you use a car but where the streets are pockmarked as if by war and warped like a record in the sun. Not a place for pedestrians.