https://stepawaymagazine.com » 15

A Letter from the Editor

dcarlaw — Fri, 19 Dec 2014 17:01:39 +0000

December 21^st 2014

Dear Reader,

For most of us walking is automatic. We rarely think about the mechanics of it all. Rising from the armchair to fetch a cup of tea, or having a stroll to the local post office to mail a letter is something we take for granted. We don’t often take notice of our breathing, we aren’t aware of a slight increase in heart rate, we don’t observe the angle of our foot as it rolls across the pavement, it all simply happens. But next time you step out of your home, I’d like you to think of all of these things and begin to focus on how marvelous the walk really is. All manner of muscle groups are employed with each and every step, from quadriceps, hamstrings, buttocks and calves, to the stomach and the stabilizing muscles in the pelvis. Close your eyes briefly and focus on all of these muscles working in unison to propel you forward. Then focus on how your foot feels in your shoe, and then how the changing terrain beneath your foot feels through the sole. Think of the other sensations acting upon your body – the slight breeze on your cheek, the moisture in the air, the warmth of the sun.

I recently heard someone talk of ‘the boring walk to the office’. I’d argue that there is no such thing as a boring walk, simply a walk where the individual is not aware of what is happening internally or externally. Losing sight of this is all too easy in our hectic day-to-day lives, but it often helps to bring oneself to change pace and focus momentarily.

And of course no two walks, even those that follow the exact same route, are identical. Our bodies and the world surrounding us is in a constant state of flux. In the city, change occurs at every given moment at street level. Each and every street corner yields an infinite number of situations and interactions, none of which will be identical to one another. Walk the exact same route to work every day, and you may see the same buildings, but the crowd that passes you by will always be different.

This is one of the true joys of walking in the city. It is also one of the reasons why I thoroughly enjoy editing StepAway Magazine. The walking narratives we publish can take place in any of the world’s thousands of cities, each from a unique poetic perspective, where the writer is free to train her or his camera eye on literally anything, from a flower growing from the asphalt to an altercation at a stoplight. The possibilities of recording and remembering the ever changing city coupled with the sensations of one individual body and mind passing through that cityspace are limitless.

Issue Fifteen is a real treat. Our cover art is provided by the talented Rikardo Reis, a photographer who describes the world as being “a perfect chaos and an eternal conundrum”. He is an artist who strives to function outside of his comfort zone. His angle on urban life is refreshingly unique capturing those fleeting moments that go unnoticed by most. His cover photograph with sizzling orange and smoky shadows lends heat to StepAway‘s winter issue.

Issue Fifteen’s walking narratives come courtesy of: Catherine Ayres, Robert Boucheron, Vincent J. Chiappetta, Michael Estabrook, Julie Hogg, Jefferson Navicky, Reed Stirling, Mark Pawlak, Benjamin Schmitt and Janet St. John.

Our writers will take from New York to Grey Street, Newcastle (the home of StepAway Magazine) and beyond. Sit back and allow them to transport you.

Wishing you a peaceful, prosperous and perambulatory 2015.

Happy holidays!

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

The Man of Straw

dcarlaw — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 14:54:53 +0000

The man of straw takes a morning stroll. He needs to stretch his legs, which ache with sitting in place for so long. He has done his stint, a few hours at his desk. The stint may turn out to be wasted, so much paper covered with drawings that are neither useful nor beautiful, or it may turn out to be gold. Who can say?

The man of straw pauses to pet each dog that crosses his path. He greets the man or woman attached to the dog by a leash. One woman has a pair of greyhounds. They were rescued from a racing kennel, she says. Tall, thin and silent, the greyhounds are benign spirits in the shape of dogs. They crave the touch of his hands. He has a natural affinity for animals. With people, one never knows.

Striding along at a moderate pace so as not to jar his panama hat, the man of straw remembers his youth. Then he was supple and elastic, made of muscle and bone, blood and sinew. In those days, he had a spring in his step. He carried his weight on the balls of his feet like a fighter. Now he is stiff and brittle, stuffed with straw. As he walks, his joints creak.

The man of straw forgets to eat. The hour for lunch has passed, and the cafes are deserted. Empty tables spill into the street. In any case, he is bored with food and drink. He scoffs at the idea of nutrition. He becomes light-headed. His body feels dry and weightless, as though it might blow away with a puff. Stories of people carried aloft in high wind do not surprise him, not in the least.

The man of straw overhears passersby. They talk on tiny telephones attached to their bodies, or else to invisible demons. Which is it? They relate their everyday concerns in the tone of late-breaking news. How passionate they are! How important their lives must be! They radiate energy. They fill the space around them with light and noise and odor. They secrete a shell or an electromagnetic field that nothing can penetrate.

By contrast, he himself is pierced by a ray of sun, by the song of a sparrow, by the scent of a rose. A blow to the abdomen would break him in two. He would fall to pieces. As it is, he loses bits of himself. He is shedding. A tooth, a clump of hair, a patch of dry skin—they fall by the wayside. Chaff leaks from his collar and cuffs, which are frayed and loose. He leaves a trail of debris on the sidewalk. Someone will sweep it to the gutter.

The man of straw catches his reflection in a plate glass window. Behind the glass is a display of men’s clothing on bland and graceful mannequins. In front, he is lumpy and bent, his clothes threadbare and faded. He looks like a clown. Yet he once assembled a wardrobe, dressed for success, and chose his necktie with care. The reflection is like the recurring dream in which he is naked in public and must proceed straight ahead through a crowd.

The man of straw enters the shop. He and the owner exchange greetings. They have known each other for years. They discovered in the course of casual conversation that they are the same age. While the man of straw is gaunt and feeble, the owner is fat and vigorous. The man of straw does not want to buy anything, but by reflex the owner touts his merchandise. It is all of good quality, and therefore rather expensive. For no reason, the man of straw flares up and walks out. One day, he may burn up completely, leaving a trace of ash.

Returning home, the man of straw grows tired. While he crosses the street, cars approach the clearly marked intersection at full speed. He would like to lie down, to rest his weary limbs right in the middle of the street, where the sun is hot. Would the cars run over him? The street would then be strewn with straw, as if fallen from a farmer’s cart.

In the course of his walk, the sky clouds over. The man of straw gets caught in a shower. He cannot risk getting wet, because the straw would rot and get moldy. He takes shelter under an awning and watches the water fall in sheets. Drops bounce off pavement and sheet metal. When the rain lets up, when it filters down in a light drizzle, he opens a large, black umbrella and steps between puddles.

The man of steel? The man of straw appreciates the metaphor. He likes the colored tights and the cape, rippling behind the actor stretched prostrate in mid-air, an actor so handsome that one could gaze forever. And he likes to repeat the voice-over from the television show, which he watched as a flesh-and-blood boy: “Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” But even a man of steel would eventually get rusty.

Home again, the man of straw sits for a moment and wakes an hour later, disoriented. This is due to the fact that at night he lies awake for hours on a mattress which is firm and springy, stuffed with inorganic material, not straw. His sleep schedule is disturbed. He confuses dreams with memories of things that happened. His dreams contain dialog, as though he were rehearsing a part. The fact that he reads in bed and dozes off while reading further confuses matters. If he slept soundly at night, he would function better during the day.

Robert Boucheron

Walkabout

dcarlaw — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 14:51:11 +0000

I set out with sketchpad, charcoals, and the hope that in some circuitous way I’ll come to understand why I’m walking these streets again. The neighbourhood of my earliest years still holds deep-seated memories beyond my ability to recall clearly and organize into a coherent personal map, a topographical record, so to speak, of childhood discovery and loss — broken bike spokes and bleeding knees, the ragman in the alley crying out from behind his bony nag, the sweep of wood and rubber across the icing snow. I am mindful of Proust’s warning that remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were — a precaution against stumbling down memory lane. Not every step need be a faux pas en route to a supposed yesterday lying beyond the next corner. So I meander, retracing half-remembered sidewalk patterns. I stop occasionally, as I once did with JB, to watch workmen finesse storefronts and facades.

Youth! Its rickety scaffolding long ago jettisoned!

Reaching Mont-Royal Avenue I turn west. Contemporary kohl-eyed figures crowd out the shadowy ghosts playing hide and seek with me as I amble along. Passing through the Métro plaza, I’m surrounded by Gothic Chic, too much of it as improbable as it is imposing. I turn south when I reach Parc Jeanne Mance.

JB always referred to the area as Fletcher’s Field and, with an instructive nod in my direction, doffed his fedora when he caught a view of the cross on the mountain. Beautiful old apartments adorn the east side of rue Esplanade. I walk on slowly, appreciatively. Eventually I stand regarding a second storey address: Marian’s once. Midnight rendezvous in the park, snow angels and hill-rolled embraces, demonstrations, all with their own kinds of reward. Weekend plonk parties with large potted cups forever half-full. Jam sessions when Danny Callahan played. I malinger, indulging the reverie.

I really don’t expect it to be Marian when the door opens and a woman in black appears and starts down the stairs, but in the realm of wistful remembrance it is Marian. The woman offers me a smile when she passes.

A Greek flag hangs from the gallery railing. The fleur de lis serves as curtain in a window of the third storey. Colours match.

“Are you lost?” a man wearing a turban asks when I turn to cross the street.

I walk through the maples and playing fields up to Avenue du Parc. A funeral cortege emerges out of the traffic flow, and then heads up the mountain, giving me a metaphorical nudge. I am reminded of where I ought to go—Notre Dame Des Neiges Cemetery. Perhaps before I leave the city I’ll muster the courage to do just that.

“Notice the swan’s neck pediment. That’s rustication there.”

Where exactly? Further north on Parc: JB observing architectural particulars of The Rialto Theatre to his somewhat interested teenage son. Today I rest on a bike stand, sketchpad and charcoal to hand, but I don’t know where to start. I pack up and keep walking, while faces continue to materialize out of the passing moment to be contextualized by electro-chemical impulses operating in their own brainy force field. At the Café Souvenir on Bernard, I grab a coffee and a fresh Mile End bagel. Returning to Parc, I catch a bus for downtown.

The McGill ghetto is the draw, and I slowly make my way through its canopied recollections. I respond to individual streets, synaesthesia working overtime: grey-stone porticos, bicycles bells, the aromas of pizza and smoke meat all evoke heightened impressions in the here and now of what once was. Sensation interfaces with memory, reproducing the emotional highs and lows of long ago.

Marches, St Patrick’s Day antics, compositions à la mode, amicable perambulation through the new-fallen snow, and sweet abstraction reduced to hack poetry aimed at seduction. Those chance encounters where the forsaken furtively watched the other from across the street, or from behind a library stack, or from the edge of contrived conversation? Merely the ruse of former lovers intent on one last one-night stand? Annie’s old digs on Durocher, I notice in passing, have new stairs. The bookstore on Milton, however, has changed little but its display window titles. In Ben’s Delicatessen window down on De Maisonneuve, I make out the effigies of bygone personas, and realize how time takes what was and turns it into what will be, not all of it to your liking. Wistfulness passes as no more than a kind of added seasoning when you’re sampling all these flavours of the past.

During my years at university in the mid-sixties, I lived in a small, street-level sanctuary on Tupper Street surrounded by evangelists, rue Saint-Mathieu on the east, rue Saint-Marc on the west. The simple accommodation was more grotto than flat, having a hide-a bed next to a bathtub, and a very hot hotplate that I used frequently to cook up excuses for poor academic performance while justifying an over-indulgence in living out fantasy. We certainly lounged about here, Danny, Annie, Vanessa, and me. The place has no doubt had many an upgrade over the intervening years, and along with the adjacent structures resting quaintly among the neighbouring Beaux-Arts apartments, the new signage indicates, it forms part of Shaughnessy Village. Worth a sketch? I can’t decide. But did authorities take into account our little history here when they designated the area a heritage location? Is this street in fact a personal lieu de memoire that the city fathers overlooked?

A nude in charcoal drawn from the past: Vanessa, a study in solitude, Tupper Street, 1967. What might I read in her features today? The powdered wrinkles of her apotheosis? Or something akin to wisdom that age supposedly bestows? Proceed cautiously, Proust reminds me as I make for the next corner, because as we revisit past experiences, we alter the facts to fit the present narrative.

Reed Stirling

The Flavors of Loss

dcarlaw — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 14:42:15 +0000

La Bebere turned fifty-three on Saturday, the last great French restaurant in New York. As on its birth night, there was snow outside the old speakeasy on Mulberry Street, and this made the soft, glittering light of the brocaded interior seem all the more inviting, the flowers towering out of the corners all the more welcoming, the sheer elegance of the place all the more arresting, important, rare.

Dr. Mowatt had never been in such a restaurant. A Moroccan Jew, he owned a restaurant in Tel Aviv known for its lamb. When Dr. Mowatt first opened the restaurant, he’d hung the lamb to age on meat hooks outside his kitchen window.

—

La Bebere turned fifty-four this year on Sunday, the last great French restaurant in New York. As on its birth night, there was snow outside the old speakeasy on Mulberry Street, and this made the air even crisper, the warmth inside even more enveloping and the sheer elegance of the place even more pronounced.

Dr. Mowatt returned the following year as a birthday present to himself and La Bebere. His wife had left him that year, and he had gained ten pounds on his already hefty frame. But the way the mutton melted in his mouth made sense of the year, as if his body had been cooking slowly in a pot with red wine, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, onions and cubed potatoes, and now he was eating himself, finally taking in the flavors of loss.

—

La Bebere turned fifty-five this year on Monday, the last great French restaurant in New York. As on its birth night, snow fell outside the old speakeasy on Mulberry Street, but this was the final evening that La Bebere would serve the public. She finally decided to close her doors and we all mourn her as we would a friend who has lived the city, enlivened it, but now has finally chosen, as she always threatened she would, to move to the country where she’ll walk quiet roads alone and only read descriptions of a city.

Dr. Mowatt walked out into the whiteness on that final evening into a desired solitude only possible in the pockets of soundlessness inspired by a sense of snow. His shadow varied itself, spreading out far beyond him, doubling, then shrinking to almost nothing. He could hardly recognize his shifting form, now, after the weight of years had been shed and he was so much lighter, possessed of a suppleness that only arises when one is able to fly above the imperfection of the present moment, when everything becomes a flight of shadows. Dr. Mowatt walked out into the snow wondering how many things could he throw his image against.

Jefferson Navicky

A Sidewalk in Louvain, Belgium

dcarlaw — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 14:29:36 +0000

Incessant rain, clearing the smoky
bus fume spew and dark dirt
from the air, keeping the ancient
cobblestone streets clean and neat.
Lumbering trains like tired snakes,
old women peddling bicycles, sacks of groceries
strapped to their bike racks,
old men eating their pommes-frites steaming hot
in the cool gray dusk,
window-boxes with red and yellow flowers,
iron railings, and dark attic windows above,
like the windows in my oh
so tired mind as I look up into the sky and down
at the dreary bustle in the raw streets wondering
about the meaning of it all
and knowing I’ll never know.

Michael Estabrook

Cigarettes on Grey Street

dcarlaw — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:59:02 +0000

corner seem appropriate.
You’re telling me you’re a
Redsmith for a contemporary
gallery and some northern
university or another while
assuming me up and down.

I’m wearing a plastic red
mac and nude heels with
slack slingbacks lacking
any firm ankle support
but more than adept at
softly killing wet pavements.

Red hot tar’s spread on my
soul, which you’ll never
see, and my black silk scarf
is strangling me with a
permanent knot I just can’t get
out with usual, casual dexterity

and we’re licking our tongues
on mendacity, treated like
a noun, personified to within
an inch of its life. Where will
we go tomorrow? Who will
we be? At the red lit man

pack of cards pedestrians seem
happy to crash into the same
old routine of a rush hours
matt grey sky and twilight
petrol fumes, pushing hectic
around before Dean Street.

Through the vision in your eyes
I can see you’re approximately
years and years behind me, I
need breeze from the quayside,
feeling inclined to find my own
highlights, perfect timing or a

shot of some other metallic, without
looking back I step into the traffic.

Julie Hogg

Alnwick Town Limits

dcarlaw — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:52:08 +0000

There are things I haven’t told you
like how we went for a walk last night
at ten, striding out past the flickering TVs
to the motorway bridge, as the day held
the memory of itself in a thin strip on the
horizon and you spread slowly inside me
like a bruise. Before we reached the railings
we could hear cars scoring tarmac, the soft
howl of lorries singing of places we would
never see. And I wondered if we should join
them, make love one last time in a spatter
of bones and blood on black and white.
But look at the trees, you said, look how
carefully they hide the trembling hearts of a
hundred birds in their deep, gentle pockets.
Does this not give you hope? I kissed you then,
pressing your words against cold steel, as the
night uncurled like a fern frond, leaving me alone,
wrapped in the shroud of a street lamp,
only five minutes from home.

Catherine Ayres

En Route

dcarlaw — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:24:14 +0000

1. Riddle (Boston)

Coed on subway platform
swigging OJ from a carton:

knee-high black leather boots,
black leather short-shorts and halter-top,

hooded black face-mask
with pointy ears sticking up.

Costume? What occasion?
Ah, METRO’S got the answer:

“DARK KNIGHT.
Premier today.”

2. (Somerville)

Outside
Eglise Baptiste de la Bible
a formerly Catholic
neighborhood church
now Haitian Baptist

a signboard proclaims:
HELL IS REAL—
Sunday’s sermon
in foot-high letters.

Added in italics beneath
(an attempt at outreach?)New!
English Translation!

3. A-Train Riddle (Manhattan)

Eyes drawn to
gilt-flecked lettering
on the black t-shirt

of the brown-skinned,
middle-aged woman
seated across the aisle.

Keeping Jesus Strong, 1611—2011
printed above the silk-screened image
of an open book.

Below, another cryptic caption:
400 Years, Keeping Jesus Strong,
variation on the same puzzling theme.

Wait! Got it!
The King James Bible’s
400th anniversary.

4. (Brooklyn)

Only two storefronts
not shuttered
on this Sunday morning
Brooklyn side-street.

Outside one
sandwich-board
on sidewalk
(black print,
all caps)
advertises

SHOE REPAIR
CUT KEYS
CASH 4 GOLD

The other
three doors down:
signboard
written in cursive
with blue Magic Marker,
invites:

LOST LIT?
COME BE FOUND!
WRITING WORKSHOP.

Who said poetry
and commerce
can’t mix?

Mark Pawlak

The Arrival

dcarlaw — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:09:58 +0000

Mingling skin and sheathes
of clothes
Caress fifth and 79^thLooking eyes     come out
in anxious mouths
tongued dry
Waiting      time
hair      flairs    in wind
& buttocks   jounce
in   saucy         risk
of   bursting.
A   seamy   day of   hazy
Hot and−−−
−I cool it with a 2 buck brew−
settles        but       searching
always    a sight to
glisten in   shine
as he arrives − to smile − no glee−
she waited for −
The eyes mouth and wince
He misses it all
in the hurry of his own askews
Suited attaché case        /mindless ramblings/
she stares up
love came out − as he swoops
her up and across the street while
she’s giving      and − only I
see it appreciatively. He’ll
probably argue later
and miss the beat

V. J. Chiappetta

Visitation

dcarlaw — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 12:57:15 +0000

Something like a cathedral emerges
from the cruciform shape of Chicago’s
Lake Street intersecting LaSalle
beneath the girdered vault of elevated
tracks. This autumn you are everywhere:
black-clad behind a Macy’s counter,
small figure pacing Loyola Beach,
channeled through the painter’s voice
at the artists’ colony. Even the wind
sweeps you in, specter-like, to climb
the stairs with me, to board
another “L” train, to travel home.
No one steps aside or lifts their eyes
as we fill vacant seats near doors
that press their thin lips shut, shut out
the violent sounds of our city.

A woman sends words through the air,
hollow of her lips forming o of thou
and a of any, forming a passage
in Exodus. Thou shalt not make…
any graven image…of any thing…
in heaven above…in the earth beneath, or…
in the water under the earth. Sunlight
splinters through train windows.
Why do you come back?
Downtown’s rush and swell gives way
to aging ballpark, live-in hotels, Asian
markets, burned-out buildings.
Why did you leave me?
There must be more out there
than aching, things that are easier
than desire or addiction, something
more like constant revelation.

A man exits my train at Southport.
He does not see me. I do not see him
fully, just the smallness of his back
sagging with unseen weight.
I imagine him squinting his eyes
as he walks the avenue’s stretch
of sidewalk to the theater marquee,
that dark house of visions he wants
to enter, to escape the sunlight
now fracturing everything.

Someone is following me. Or I am
going mad. Maybe madness makes
our strongest beliefs visible. I want
to believe you are always with me.
But I need the salvation of shaking
loose my darkest deep convictions,
the ones that tighten their grip
in the wake of each loss,
each shattered illusion. These hours
merge. These trains I ride always lurch
and move, re-circle their loops,
follow iron courses, rusted sameness.
You are right to think I fear the dark
within me. That hollow I know.
Why always this searching?

Early evening, I arrive at a stopping point,
perfect place, right spot. A world,
other than this, where interior takes over.
I see you slumped against a wall outside
my train stop. You speak to air,
no one listening. When you come back
there is no snap, shizam,
or abracadabra. No hocus pocus,
blink of genie eyes. It is fluid
the lapse of time between your departure
and arrival. You have perfected
the art of living in shifting worlds.

There is longing in the air, and the eyes
of everyone I see seem to say, Desire.
Words swell within me. I want to shout:
Listen, we are water and heaven.
I have conjured you toward a purpose.
You must lead me through. The sun now
is blushing as it has through time, distant
clouds gathering to cradle its setting.
Show me what will come to fill the gaps
inside. Once, before you leave for good,
tell me what action can make the light
expel immovable darkness.

Janet St. John