It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

June 21st, 2012

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Issue Six.

I was thirteen years old when I first encountered the work of Ray Bradbury. I was swinging on my chair at the back of Mr. Bassett’s English class. If I leaned far enough, I could rest my chair-back on the bookcases behind me and attempt the nonchalant pose that all teenage boys strive for, but few master. The textbooks were passed around. They were dusty, blue and sticky, all randomly deflowered by the customary cock and balls etched in black biro ink.

Page 367. Mr. Carlaw. Read aloud. “The Pedestrian”. Ray Somebody.

I hated reading aloud. As my voice began to break, nature had blessed me with an unfortunate vocal pitch which could, within the space of a sentence, oscillate between the gravely depths of a whisky soaked Tom Waits to the tingling heights of a preteen Pee-wee Herman.

I opened the book and began to read:

“To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o’clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do.”

From that very first sentence, that magnificent first sentence, I was hooked. I leaned forward on my chair. I concentrated. Bradbury’s words spoke directly to my past experiences in the city: walking with my parents as a child, my fascination with the crowd, but most importantly, my interest in the forbidden nocturnal city – a city that I had observed, in the most part, from the passenger window of my father’s pillar box red Volvo 240.

And so, at that moment, I decided to follow Mr. Leonard Mead’s lead. To walk at night. To escape. To explore.

A number of years later, while on a road trip from San Francisco to Mexico, Bradbury’s story returned to me. I remember driving from Solvang, a Danish community in the Santa Ynes Valley, to sunbathed Santa Barbara. Here, we stumbled across a budget hotel called The Inn at East Beach, and decided to stay overnight.

The Inn apparently played home to Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Support Team back when Reagan enjoyed escaping to his ranch in the Santa Ynes Mountains. The jovial, Hawaiian shirted general manager quipped that he still had a store of computer equipment that the agents had left behind.

Heading out into the California sunshine, we strolled along the coastline, overtaken by hard-bodied joggers, rollerbladers, cyclists and Segway riders. Finally, we found ourselves on State Street in search of victuals and libations.

Sometime later, after one too many hamburgers and two too many craft beers, we emerged from a street corner bar to find that the sun had somehow fallen from the sky. We began to trace our steps back to the motel along Cabrillo Boulevard in darkness. The coastal pathway, which earlier was a hub of activity, was completely deserted. Cabrillo Park and the beach too were empty, closed to the public after nightfall. Streetlights served to illuminate the road only. The sidewalk became increasingly shadowy and foreboding.

We crossed back to the north side of Cabrillo Boulevard to distance ourselves from the sinister shapes of the park. Within minutes the pavement had ran out, and we found ourselves walking curb-side on dewy sprinkler-fresh front lawns. Cars slowed, passengers peered at us. We were, after all, the only nightwalkers. As I braced myself for the siren howl of the patrol car, I thought of the ‘The Pedestrian’. Bradbury’s futuristic dystopia – a society suspicious of the nocturnal walker – was right here and now in Santa Barbara.

Later, when browsing the LAPD website, I read an advisory which stated that if an individual is driving home at night and notices someone walking that he or she does not recognise, it is sensible to drive around the block and return after the stranger has left. It is interesting how the walker is perceived as a prowler or predator after dark, and how, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the act of walking itself can be considered a subversive activity just as Bradbury envisaged.

Ray Bradbury died sixteen days ago, aged 91. He left behind him an estimable body of work that has touched and will continue to touch the lives of readers for generations to come. From a personal perspective, Bradbury’s hand has forever shaped the way I see the city and its suburbs at nightfall. Whenever I walk on a dark suburban street, his words will always accompany me.

Issue Six of StepAway Magazine features three nocturnal walking narratives. The first, “Out for a Late Night Walk,” by William Cullen Jr., captures the strange serenity found among the darkened tenements. The second, “At Night,” by Jane Ozkowski, captures a female pedestrian’s fear as she walks on skid row. The third, “On Mannerheimintie” by Meredith Foster, is set in Helsinki, and also discusses one woman’s cautionary approach to the street at night.

Meanwhile, Kristin Fouquet’s short story “The Surreptitious Lens,” is a walk around New Orleans with a hidden camera and Mark Pawlak’s poem, “Admonitions,” casts a camera eye over a city’s forgotten flora.

“The Color of the Mother” by Jillian Thaw, is a flash fiction wander through Cape Town. Carol Lavelle Snow’s poem, “Tulsa on a Summer Morning,” describes a sunkissed breakfast time walk in Oklahoma’s second largest city. “The Streets,” by Apryl Sniffen, is a flash fiction flit thorough Williamsburg, Brooklyn, while Robert Cunningham’s poem “Utopia” captures the limitless connections made in Manhattan. Finally, “Three” by Rouchswalwe strips back layer after layer of history from the street.

The cover art for this issue comes courtesy of Shanghai based artist Lu Xinjian. His city DNA paintings are acrylic on canvas abstractions of urban areas viewed from above, using Google Maps. Xinjian’s paintings represent the structure and form of a specific urban space, whilst his colour choice is determined by the design of the city or national flag. The piece featured on our cover is entitled “Hong Kong No.2″. Xinjian’s work is currently on display at the F2 Gallery in Beijing. The exhibition features his new “Invisible Poem” series. His striking collection of artwork can be viewed online here.

We also welcome a new addition to our Northern Wanderer series from north east based poet Keith Armstrong. His poem, entitled “Streets of Tyne” is a stride through the streets and street names of Newcastle upon Tyne.

I sincerely hope that you enjoy this, our sixth issue of StepAway Magazine, which is dedicated to the memory of Ray Bradbury and the many books he left behind.

Yours faithfully,

Darren Richard Carlaw
editor@stepawaymagazine.com

William Cullen, Jr.

Street-light makes this city a shallow ghost of itself.
A man splashes glass from an empty bottle
across the sidewalk like tears.
Last January, someone’s body
froze to a statue on this side of the street.

A sexless voice yells something.
It could be thank you
but probably isn’t.
And a cop car drives past with lights on.

There are kids that will rob you for your jacket
and shoot you for your shoes.
There are drunk drivers and dump trucks.
The elderly have hooks instead of eyes,
but worse are those mothers, locked safe in the suburbs
who judge this city for its failures.

Jane Ozkowski

Even after almost five months there are still moments of disbelief that she’s here, blending in until she opens her mouth to be betrayed once again. It’s strange, to be in a place where everyone recognizes her home country and yet hardly anyone knows were she comes from. Not east, not west, not north, and not south. Not coastal or even in the center of the vast American expanse, her origin is just there, under the radar of most of the planet.

She’s done her best to protect herself from the elements tonight but the Nordic winter penetrates through layers of black wool and nylon to brush along her skin, reminding her she is vulnerable. Still, she is safe, in ways she never was in her home country. Daring has replaced inbred caution and she walks without worry off of the main road, without constantly looking over her shoulder or crossing the street to stay in a well-lit location. Numerous times she has tried to explain this to the women here, but her point never quite manages to transcend language and upbringing. Maybe it’s just impossible to articulate fear.

Somehow the season makes the stars appear sharper when she looks at the sky, squinting a little to distinguish them from the city lights. Her teeth are chattering and she nestles deeper into her coat, searching for any remaining scrap of warmth, but the cold won’t matter much longer. She’ll burn in a few moments, when the music starts and the sound ignites her from the inside out. She’s waited for this like she always does, days filled with anticipation culminate in breathless moments when she is lost in a sea of bodies, taken away to a part of herself where emotion takes over from words.

From the outside it has to look insane, to spend money she can’t afford to be frivolous with on the same experience again and again, but she doesn’t care about appearances. She’s learned the hard way that her happiness is in her own hands here, and she refuses to relinquish a source of such consistent joy. The music brought her but it’s the nuances that keep her coming back, the subtle differences in sound and interaction that can vary wildly on any given night.

The wind picks up and she shivers again, shifting her weight from foot to aching foot, fighting to ignore the toll of winter and the eagerness in her stomach, coiled and writhing and impossible to deny. It won’t be long now.

Meredith Foster

I am hunting truth. I don’t know where I’ll find it. I believe I’ll discover it on the streets and that’s why I’m filming.

My large black patent leather handbag is vintage but unremarkable to the average eye in this sea of people on Canal Street. Only on close examination could one detect a small round lens peeking through a perfectly burned-out hole. This little eye dutifully records everything it sees. I keep the purse close to my body as I slowly walk the wide sidewalk of this palm tree-lined downtown street.

There are several lanes of traffic on either side of the neutral ground which accommodates red streetcars- the Canal line. City buses, tour buses, taxis, limos, and motorcycles roar down the street.

I am not alone on foot. There are many walkers of various paces. The business types and delivery people move the fastest. Workers head quickly, if reluctantly, to their places of employment. Yet, even the strolling tourists have their agendas- their destinations- their must-sees. I am free to wander.

A helpful local asks a group of out-of-towners, “What are you guys looking for?”

“Bourbon Street!”

All too familiar. As I continue on my random way, I may not know my path or where my adventure will take me, but I do know I will not be on Bourbon Street.

A couple moves in time with my saunter, unknowingly caught by my camera.

There is a distinct Midwestern accent in the woman’s voice. “I know Elaine paid for the wallet and the purse. That’s why I am so upset. I just don’t know what to do.”

Her companion, a man with a full head of white hair, flicks his cigarette into the street without a verbal response.

I wonder if Elaine has a shopping addiction. Maybe she is continuously picking up the slack for some stingy relative. At least she didn’t steal them. Am I really hunting truth or am I just eavesdropping? My camera doesn’t ask questions; it continues documenting my directionless journey.

As I pass the shops, a strange medley of conflicting music adds to the myriad of the landscape. Cajun music is followed by pop; an 80s’ hit is trailed by Hindi music. The wares and services stretch from Japanese electronics to Swedish massages.

A white cane moves right and left. The owner shakes a plastic Mardi Gras cup holding coins. “Help the blind.”

I hear stilettos click-click behind me. I allow them to pass me as I marvel at the balance some women can manage on the thin heels. I wear them too, but not today. I consider these black patent leather penny loafers decent walking shoes. I have skipped the traditional pennies and put in nickels instead. I prefer the silver coins and justify it as inflation. Unfortunately, they do squeak as I walk and I know my audio will be tainted.

At least they aren’t flip-flops. The sound of such a sandal now hits my ears. While I love the onomatopoetic name and have worn the shoes frequently, this slow drag of a certain wearer is almost painful. There is definitely the flip, but less of the flop as it shuffles bedroom slipper-style down the sidewalk. Yet despite her lack of speed, the woman is clearly on an errand, shopping bags in hand.

I turn right on North Rampart. People say it’s dangerous. It’s the back of the Quarter. I’m the lone walker now. I see a man passed out in a doorway. I detect a faint smell of beer and urine.

Rastafarians on bicycles leisurely pass me on the sidewalk. As the cars rush down the street, I can’t say I blame them for avoiding the road. My sinister side wonders if they are cruising for something. It is not my business, but my camera keeps filming. It catches my image in the mirror glass of a door.

Two tourist-filled buggies make their way down Conti Street. Seeing the mules on the job, I decide to turn in solidarity- I too am hoofing it. As they clip-clop, the guides holding their reins relay tales of our city’s colorful past.

I take in the hanging ferns above balconies. I love how the French and Spanish architecture blend. I feel lost in the beauty of the Quarter. Just when I truly believe I am invisible, I’m nudged.

“Where’s Bourbon Street?”

Slightly shaken, I reply, “It’s just one block ahead.” I am a proud agent of my city. As much as I wish to go unnoticed, at least I’m not mistaken as a tourist.

Despite my earlier declaration, I cross Bourbon Street, technically traversing it no matter how briefly. As I walk over air vents I call “Lady Traps,” I’m relieved I’m not in stilettos. A quick gust raises the skirt of my black dress in a brief Seven Year Itch moment. I am no Marilyn.

Further down Conti, I spot a parking lot attendant, less attentive as he leans, eyes closed, against a sign reading “Lot Full.”

I realize the camera will be turning itself off soon. I take a right on North Peters. Two elderly women are ambling.

One asks, “Do you like those pralines?”

“Oh no. Too sweet,” the other replies.

I foolishly believe again I am undetectable in urban camouflage when two young women approach me.

“Ew, she Goth,” says one. They both cackle as they pass me.

Goth? I didn’t think Goth existed for anyone over the age of nineteen.

As I consider a wardrobe change, I see temporary signs for “No Parking.” Reason? Filming.

Kristin Fouquet

You stand on the pedestrian median between lanes of traffic,
waiting for the walk light,

gazing down to where rain has washed up
winged seeds, flotsam of sodden leaf-litter,

the butt ends of cigarettes, crushed under heals…
paying no mind to the Chicory sprout

that has put on just for you,
this display of pinwheel petals

under an echoing blue sky,
with not a single cloud in sight.

2.

Lift your eyes from the gutter —Yes, you! —
and behold this pastel-colored-Easter-egg sky

with jagged line of white light
streaming through the crack in its shell.

3.

Go ahead.
Be astonished

by this Zen painting
framed in your window:

the flowering pear tree’s
network of branches—

bold black brush strokes—
surrounded by clouds of white petals.

4.

Chicory sprouting in the crack
between curb and sidewalk,

its petals now pursed
against this summer drizzle—

why do you spurn the praises
of friends and strangers alike?

5.

Mist rises in coiled cornrows
from the surface of Fresh Pond;

sun just peeking over the tree line,
not a breath of wind to rustle leaves—

how many more sleepless nights
can you endure?

6.

Waste lot bordering
abandoned harbor-side pump house:

This used to be real estate,
as in the Talking Heads’ song,
Now it’s only fields and trees.

Where clover, sumac, elephant grass;
where pheasants, wild turkey, field mice and rabbits;

where, in milkweed patches,
Mexico bound Monarchs down from the Maritimes…

now bulldozers scrape bare and level the earth
to put up a parking lot!

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
’till it’s gone?

7.

This ornamental cherry
the city planted at curbside

today is a branched candelabra
tricked out in flames

as in the Shaker painting “Blazing Tree”
each wick of leaf is burning

bright autumnal orange,
a “gift” to us

homeward bound commuters
on the 73 bus, stalled in traffic —

Mother Ann would’ve approved.

Mark Pawlak

The kids on the streets are brown and red and black and bronze, dark and dirty against their bright, bold homes. The kids look at me because I am a small white girl who doesn’t open her mouth to betray her homeland, but whose eager steps, bouncing up and down in excited glee, give her away anyway. They are too eager, too optimistic. Too idealistic. I give myself away and everyone says to rein it in, to shield myself and wear the veil, but I don’t care. I am the wide-eyed wanderer come to the motherland through the Gateway to Africa itself, and you can’t stop me.

I know they are looking because my friends tense up. Their arms fold across their chests and their footsteps hasten. But slow down, I want to say, because look where we are! Look where we’ve come. Stroll down the rainbow road. The children on the steps, they’ll go back to their soccer. Their football, I mean.

The houses in Bo-Kaap are multicolored, like the sherbet selection in an ice cream store, like the 64-count crayon boxes everyone boasted about having in grade school, sitting them atop a dented wooden desk like a Lombardi trophy. Maybe Crayola came to the Malay Quarter of Signal Hill, to look at these Cape Malay homes. There is mustard yellow next to sunshine gold, there is fuchsia next to French violet. Sea foam green and robin’s egg blue, Clemson orange and Nebraska red. I want my future home to look the same. I’d pick cerulean, the color of the skies above Cape Town.

My flip-flops catch in the cobbled streets occasionally, and the children in the streets giggle. High-pitched, happy giggles, innocent where their eyes are not. They smell like the homes surrounding them, a sweet scent of ginger and marjoram, of curry and lemon rind. Pots of bobotie stirred at a stove next to a window. Foil-wrapped mutton rotis. A slender boy sits on the stairs before his house, tamarind sauce dribbling down his chin. He wipes it from his face with the back of his hand, and moves to the children playing with a makeshift soccer ball. A football, I mean.

The ball comes my way and I kick it back to them. It’s a poor kick, with a draw, but a skinny girl grabs it anyway and waves. They laugh and look at us some more, but turn away thereafter. We’re white and foreign and think we can change the world. They’ve never seen us before, but they’ve seen others like us. We continue down the rainbow road, south now, Table Mountain in the distance beyond Signal Hill. The ocean to the west.

“It’s like California,” says the sun burnt girl from California.

“It’s like Hawaii,” says the bronzed boy who’s vacationed there twice.

Well to me it’s unlike any place on Earth, and I’ve never been to every place on Earth and probably never well, but where else can you walk on a rainbow road? And at its end isn’t a pot of gold but a mountain wide and tall and then flat at the top, brown the color of topaz, green the color of emeralds—and just beyond its western facets, the sapphire sea.

I stop on the streets and take in a breath. Science says Cape Town has less wind than San Francisco, but I’m blown over by the gusts come down from Table Mountain all the same. A saving grace, the lucid wind from the jade mountain, a cool splash through my hair as the sun beat down still. If I could I’d slide down the rainbow and splash into the ocean, and the kids next to me would look at me and shake their heads and say, oh, that crazy foreign white girl. We see this every day. We see this beauty and we live on the rainbow but we live in black and white here, I think they’d say. Silly white American girl. You don’t really belong here. Soak up the sun and walk down to white-sanded Clifton. We know you can. The rainbow road will take you there, and once you’re off it, you’re colorless and dark.

But they can say it all they want. The truth rings clear, and I’m no fool. But it’s the color of Cape Town, of the mother herself, and we’ll all take the steps ’til we reach the golden end.

Jillian Thaw

I walk between Starbucks customers
savoring the rich aroma of coffee,
marveling at the composure of an English spaniel
lying at the feet of a thin, elderly woman
in a yellow dress, a wide-brimmed straw hat,
and sunglasses. My cocker couldn’t be that still.

A young man in shorts and a blue t-shirt
hurries by looking worried.
But everybody looks worried,
even a woman sitting alone with a book.
Did people appear this harried twelve years ago?
Did I look that way myself?

No free tables outside Queenies.
On a whim I cross the street to a breezeway
where my favorite bookstore used to be.
Nothing but empty windows there now.

The Cherokee, before they left on the Trail of Tears,
wept as they touched trees and rocks
and told them goodbye.
But sometimes we don’t realize we need
to say goodbye until a certain place is gone
or changed forever.

Fortunately Queenies is the same,
and a customer is finally leaving.
As I hurry back, a strong wind rises,
rustles leaves into a roar,
and the chimes in the large clock at the north
end of the mall play an unfamiliar tune.

Carol Lavelle Snow

An old bookstore, “New and Used!” is bright in the darkening street way. Christmas lights drape from storefront to storefront, uniting the neighborhood. We step through the wooden doorway of the bookstore and it smells like old pages turned by old hands, new ink on new white paper, both new and old exquisitely braided in Brooklyn.

Katie browses the old tomes. I, being useful, find The Best Restaurants of New York City, 2010. “Bam, I found the address for the place. Now we have to convince Din—” and like a predicable movie, my phone rings.

We find each other through shiny dark cars and blinding headlights and Katie and I run through stopped traffic, curved yellow cabs, and suave black chauffeur-driven Fords to find Dina on the Brooklyn street corner. She stands under looping green garlands with her skinny jeans tucked into short boots, hair frizzy underneath her knit hat.

“Chinatown?” we ask, and walk towards the subway, the orange line, without waiting for an answer. We have no idea if the orange line goes to Chinatown, but we’ll figure it out.

If you’re ever in Brooklyn? Sometimes the orange line doesn’t go to Canal Street. We transfer twice. Finally journey up the brown-gray cement steps pit marked black by lost rejected bubblegum and enter the Orient. Or as close to it as you can get in New York City.

The streets are loud with cars and subways and languages I can’t understand. From the subway station, to the right, is the first fish market, and the odor of fresh fish is pungent, embedding the scent in my nose. Their eyes watch, unseeingly, shiny silver scales fallen from wet skin and flaking the cloudy white ice that has become their home until some Asian woman points a finger and the sinuous flank of flesh is wrapped in white paper and handed over.

Asian markets line either side of the street, their signs unreadable by my English-only brain, but we step in the grocery, the full body of a pig hanging from a string in the front window. Advertisements plaster the door, bilingual for those who want to “Look beautiful, the Korean way! (Beauty products straight from Korea).” The woman on the front is so beautiful; I’m tempted to shell out a ridiculous amount for face cream I can’t read the ingredients of.

Katie is tempted by little cups of gelatin, a small piece of fruit suspended mid-cup, colorful little swallows of sugar. I convince her to buy it—ulterior motives because my favorite is red—and she does. We peel back the plastic covers and suck the gelatin from tiny plastic cups, Dina’s first experience. Then, throwing out empty cups into the overflowing trashcan and pretending we don’t see when they tumble down, we head back to subway.

Apryl Sniffen

Robert Cunningham