Dear Reader,

Welcome to Issue Three.

The months which followed the publication of StepAway Magazine Issue Two have been marked by unrest both at home and abroad. Here in England, communities in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Nottingham bore witness to the most serious outbreak of widespread rioting and looting in a generation. Libya readied itself for a forced regime change. The United States lost its triple-A credit-rating, a dramatic reversal of fortune for the world’s largest economy. Less than a month later, Hurricane Irene tore through the Caribbean and up the eastern seaboard of America.

Far be it from me to don a sandwich board and traipse up and down Oxford Street declaring that the end is nigh. However, I found it fitting to open this issue of the magazine with two conflicting portraits of civilisation. The first comes in the form of our cover image; a despairing, vertigo inducing print entitled “Reigning Men” by the British artist Paul Baines. The second is a message of hope: our opening poem by Lemn Sissay MBE entitled “Let there be Peace”.

Mr. Baines found inspiration for “Reigning Men” whilst watching footage of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, particularly the manner in which “one Wall Street banker after another, in a final act of desperation, took it upon themselves to end their lives by leaping to their deaths, leaving behind their plush offices and leather-bound executive chairs, mahogany desks and reams of worthless bonds and balance sheets.” “Reigning Men” is a snapshot of the dizzying vertical power structure of the contemporary cityplace and the plummeting weight of an economy in freefall. Much of Mr Baines’s striking and controversial artwork presses the pause button on the fall of civilisation. “Reigning Men” is no exception, presenting with freeze-frame clarity the hopeless instant preceding a fatal crash to earth.

In a review of Mr. Sissay’s most recent collection entitled Listener, the Independent proclaimed: “his poems are songs of the street.” ‘Let there be Peace’ is by no means a walking narrative, rather, an age old message of unity shaped for the current moment. The poem will soon adorn a wall in Manchester. Mr. Sissay states: “landmarks are utterly democratic because people choose a landmark, they refer to it as the place ‘just around the corner from the pub with the poem on it. My idea is that we should paint the whole country with poems”. Whereas Mr. Baines work portends the fragmentation and fall of capitalist society as financial markets and financiers alike are dashed on the urban sidewalk, Mr. Sissay’s poem is a statement of hope and social togetherness inscribed directly onto the city’s walls.

The turbulence of the past months has paid testament to the irrepressible momentum of the city. In the aftermath of England’s riots hundreds of residents showed up on the street with brooms, eager to clean up the streets, rebuild and move on. Many clean up campaigns were coordinated on Twitter using the hashtags #riotcleanup and #riotwombles. In Manhattan’s Battery Park, the BBC reporter Laura Trevelyan braved the onslaught of tropical storm Irene, whilst a New York jogger trotted nonchalantly by her. Yellow taxicabs continued to work the streets and avenues despite instructions to remain indoors. It is perhaps this inexorable nature of the cityplace which deems it most captivating to the walker – and the manner in which the city’s buildings appear indifferent to such dramas having witnessed similar on many occasions before.

Meanwhile, StepAway Magazine has gone from strength to strength. The past three months saw us gather an all time high of 115,000 hits, and attract a record number of submissions. We were also delighted to gain the attention of Professor Chris Jenks, Vice Chancellor of Brunel University and author of a number of important critical studies regarding the practice of walking. Professor Jenks commented that “StepAway Magazine is a welcome contribution to our growing body of understanding of urban culture.” We offer our thanks to Professor Jenks for his support.

In recent years there has been a marked revival of interest in the practice of walking, ranging from the critical re-examinations of the flâneur, to the reinterpretation of the contemporary urban landscape via psychogeographic practices. New initiatives crop up on a regular basis, however one of the most fascinating and ambitious is W.A.L.K. (W.A.L.K. Walking, Art, Landskip and Knowledge) a research initiative co-founded by Prof. Brian Thompson, Dr. Tim Brennan and Dr. Mike Collier at UoS. The aim of the initiative is to interrogate and define the practice of ‘Art Walking’. The team state that “W.A.L.K. can make a significant contribution to research by developing a role as a ‘custodian’ and critical friend for the practice of ‘art walking’ and examining the relationship of ‘art walking’ to the practice of painting, sculpture, photography, music and performance.” A bi-annual academic journal will accompany the initiative. Further information can be found here.

John Rogers at Vanity Projects was kind enough to send us a review copy of his film The London Perambulator, which follows the movements of urban wanderer and deep topographer Nick Papadimitriou. In this film Papadimitriou demonstrates his unique reading of the urban landscape, finding beauty in the utterly mundane. It is a study of the forgotten, and the broken; a reclamation of those overlooked places which lie in what Papadimitriou describes as the ‘edgelands’. The full length documentary can be viewed online here.

StepAway Magazine continues to follow an alternate path, urging writers to rediscover the ‘dirty magic’ of the street by repeatedly treading the pavements/sidewalks of their chosen cities. Issue Three offers as a dazzling array of urban writing. We begin with “LVIV”, a short by James Robison which is a study of war time occupation set in Lviv, a Ukrainian city at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. This is followed by “Promenade”, W.F. Lantry’s balmy stroll through the rues and ruelles of Nice. “Linda Street” by Jeffrey Alfier leads us to suburbia and the streets of Torrance, California at dusk.

The nineteenth century Parisian flâneur was famed for taking a turtle for a walk. In “Stow Lake, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco” David L. O’Neal goes walkabout with his parrot. Kevin McLellan explores the Memphis ‘edgelands’ in “Postmodern Park”. Joan McNerney’s poem “Lost dream” is StepAway‘s first encounter with the auto-flâneuse, set at night on the icy, twisting roads of Albany. In “Vancouver Visions” Michelle Ward-Kantor explores Vancouver after dark, whilst “Two Twilights: Queens”, a poem by Lorraine Schein, observes darkness fall upon the outer boroughs of New York City.  ”A Geisha’s Shamisen” by Sonia Saikaley visits a nocturnal café hidden in an Osaka alleyway. Meanwhile, Thomas Bacher’s “Buying Dope NYC Style” features a drug run in Sugar Hill, Harlem. Finally, “Broken Glass” by the previously unpublished writer Caitlin Walsh is a collection of broken images and fragments from the street.  

As a surreal antidote to Paul Baines’s cover art “Reigning Men”, I include my own short, entitled “Vertical Axis”. I do not intend StepAway Magazine to be a vehicle for the publication of my own prose. However, on this rare occasion when the magazine opens with the image of thirty-six men falling, it appears rather appropriate to conclude with a story about one man borne aloft above the New York crowd. “Vertical Axis” was first published in print in Fractured West, but has never been published online.

Finally, may I wish our contributor Michelle Ward-Kantor a happy anniversary!

I hope that you enjoy reading our third issue.

Yours faithfully,

Darren Richard Carlaw
editor@stepawaymagazine.com

Let there be peace
So storms can go out to sea to be
angry and return to me calm:
So the broken can rise and dance in the hospitals.
Let the aged Ethiopian man in the grey block of flats
Peer through his window and see Addis before him
Let his thrilled outstretched arms become frames
For his dreams.

Let there be peace.
Let tears evaporate to form clouds, cleanse themselves
And fall into reservoirs of drinking water.
Let harsh memories burst into fireworks that melt,
in the dark pupils of a child’s eyes
And disappear like shoals of darting silver fish.
And let the waves reach the shore with a
Shhhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhh.

Lemn Sissay

My great grandfather is wearing one of these suits in an oval sepia photograph taken in late autumn before the Philharmonic Hall, 1936. The winters are pitiless here — in the Carpathian Mountains, Dracula lived, remember. We have our castles, our Polytechnic University, our international airport, our Carmelite Church, but we are not fully restored somehow –

We now have only a few Jews in Lviv. The Nazi tanks, the Russian tanks. We now have not so many Poles. A French guy called Guy carves a fork from wood and Guy sits on the curb by the cobble paved alley. He says, “Ludmila, pour votre anniversaire, je vais vous tailler un cheval.”

The water is blue. The summer is cool, settled into a splendid peace, and the roof of my house is red pipe tile. But it’s not my house, it’s where there are flats, with curtains, birds, leaves, coffee, bookshelves, and where I live with my journal.

We want to move beyond the convulsions, the quakes and bombs and night trucks, the dark trains in the black wind.

The banal exquisite primitivism of the child’s drawing, that’s our starting point. Yes to the dancer, the sidewalk waiter, the book of short stories, the rain and tomorrow. Yes to a flag of any color — yes to sun yellow and to sea blue.

James Robison

It must have been late spring. Mimosas were everywhere along my path, yellow backdropped by local limestone. All the walls were made of what they found in place. I was used to an invented world, built from nothing within my life, all the materials imported from somewhere else, a designer’s dream of what should be. But if I looked at these terraces closely, I could almost match each wall stone to its origin. The design of the local wolftraps hadn’t changed for centuries.

That’s why I passed up all shortcuts. Yes, the cherry trees were tempting, unguarded by any Alsatian. But I didn’t know where the traps would be hidden. And there were wild boar to consider. Best to stick to my path.

I crested the hill, and the town was red tile roofs and date palms. My descent was a slow glide. Corsica was off in the distance. I couldn’t see its mountains, just the clouds forming above them. The curvature of the earth prevents so many things.

I clambered down the hill behind campus. That was the difference between me and the students: I showed up in walking shoes, they wore furs. Even their jeans were expensive: perfectly formed to their shapes. I taught a few classes and headed for lunch.

Graham was already there, and Odile. Wine was cheaper than water, and mine was already poured. They’d seen me coming. I took up some bread, and mentioned the jeans.

Odile was always laughing at me. “Don’t you know how they do that? They draw a very hot bath. As hot as they can stand. More. We suffer for beauty. Then they put on the jeans and get in. It takes a little while. The trick is to wear them all day after. Do you like mine?”

She stood up, and the space between the tables became her runway. Graham and I toasted the fit. Her field was Contes de Fées. She knew more medieval stories than I knew titles, yet here she was, a demonstration of techniques. I was thinking of how little I knew when Françoise arrived.

I still wasn’t used to ‘cheri,’ but she tossed it around like bouquets. She had to work. I should meet her at eight in the Cours Saleya. It wasn’t a question. Graham offered an eau de vie. She refused, I accepted. She floated away on my wave of spirits. There was a sugar cube in my glass. We didn’t have to teach again until four, and by then, the coffee would take over. I always doubled it up.

My afternoon students thought I was chatty. My mind was on the flower market. I was walking around the room with my book, reading my sidenotes aloud. Someone asked a question, and answering, I looked up.

Right into the eyes of one of the fur girls. Every thought went out of my head. I hardly knew where I was. Everyone started laughing, the students, fur girl, me. I was only saved by her seatmate, who asked me the question again..

It was getting near seven, and I let them go. Forty five minutes, from there to the Cours. Plenty of time. The walk would be mostly along the beach. I put my books away, and headed out through Magnan.

The Promenade des Anglais is a wide walkway along the sea. The English tourists built it a century ago, so they’d have someplace to stroll in the sun. The locals laughed at the time. But it’s still there, and it goes between the town and the beach. There is no sand. Round river stones got trucked in along the water, so there’d be some place to sit. When the waves were low, when the sea looked like no more than a glassy lake, I liked to skip those stones across the surface. The locals mocked me for that.

But I was far too pressed to skip any stones. Françoise would be waiting, with Bruno and Avril. Maybe a few others. If I was late, Bruno would haul us all to Saf Saf, and it would be Moroccan again. One can only have so much merguez in life, and my limit was already passed.

By the time I arrived, all the flower carts had been hauled away, and the place was filling with tables and tourists. Russians, Americans, Swedes. I gave up on counting the languages. There were cameras and mopeds and foreign exclamations. Françoise rode up, and parked. She took off her helmet, and was perfect.

We all met near the fountain. It hadn’t been there long. I couldn’t follow the conversation: when they’re debating, things move too fast. “Saf  Saf!” They looked at me and I shook my head, then went back to rapid debate.

They led me down the street. We walked by a butcher shop, still open. A boar hung in the window, with the usual deer and rabbits. People were walking their dogs, and the tourists parted to let them by. We settled down at some tables.

I wish I could say it was different from every other night. It should have been special, filled with omens or signs. It was dark by the main course. The plaza was clearing. The salad came last.

Someone was playing music from across the way. A few of the tourists started dancing. Why not? They were far from home, and could let themselves go.

One of the girls broke free from the crowd. She was turning and turning in a long black skirt. Her arms were extended, swirling a shawl above her head. She gave herself over completely to the dance. Why not? No-one was watching.

No-one but me. Françoise followed my eyes. “Cheri, they have profiterolles here!” I was distracted a moment. When I turned back to look, she was gone.

W.F. Lantry

In the distance beyond it, the Palos Verdes
hills climb in the failing afternoon sun,
streetlamps the dim amber of signal fires,
or your woman’s hair, singing with light.

On your walk homeward, your mind
revisits the rooms of the last house
shared with her on Whidbey Island,
a place also losing light at this hour.

As you pass once more the untaken
house, the indelible ink of its bright red
door darkens in the opulent twilight
that steps slowly out of its rooms.

Jeffrey Alfier

Late spring. The Garden is an emblazoned
botanical candy shop
of fragrant kaleidoscopic shimmering colors: 
butter yellow, purple, reds, apricot, orange, pink, white,
other colors. Some of these queens of flowers,
including densely clustered floribundas, are labeled
Mardi Gras, Dream Come True, Sans Souci, Sheer Bliss,
Roman Holiday, Mystic Beauty, Rainbow Knockouts.
A rose is a rose is a rose. Smells sweet by any name.
Streak, now on my shoulder,
a burst of color too – green, yellow, blue, burnt-umber -
bobs her head comically to passersby. 

We cut through a fence of rose-laden trellises
to a secluded bowl-shaped field perfect for picnics,
then across a larger field strewn with small portable soccer goals
for practice when the nearby grammar school lets out.
Used to play soccer. Great game.

We cross JFK drive
to the cr-r-uck, c-r-uck, cr-r-ucking  of  ravens.
Tricksters in Indian mythology. Smart.

Moving up Stow Lake Drive
we pass a California Pepper Tree,
several reddish-pink flowered New Zealand Tea trees, 
pockets of gay wildflowers, flowering shrubs,
carefully planted flower-beds,
and ferns such as Western Lady Fan. 
Wish I knew more about flowers and trees.
In Florida, when I was five,
fell out of a Banyan tree. Broke my arm.

The grassy areas of the park
are pock-marked by dirt-mounds of gopher holes; 
the little brown burrowing buck-toothed creatures
are hard to see, but there’s one
near the sidewalk darting its head back and forth
like a soldier in a foxhole overcome by curiosity
but refusing to come fully out. 

Streak and I pass the bicycle rental office
on the way to the boathouse and snack shop
where elderly from the neighborhood
hang out on benches overlooking the lake.
I often see the same man
taking pictures from the west bank
in a spot where still water reflects foliage, birds float,
and Strawberry Hill is framed between Cypress trees. 
The fascination of water, gently rippling, restful.
Birds so tame.
Most of the colored paddle boats and green row boats
are tied up; on weekends they are much in use 
by lovers, or by families.
I love sailing in San Francisco Bay.
Scary wind sometimes.
The water birds, especially gulls, geese, and Mallard ducks
whose males are gaudy -
Gaudeamus  igitur…Juvenes dum sumus -
congregate near the boathouse
and squabble over thrown bits and pieces.
Streak regards her feathered cousins with curiosity.

Stow Lake is a moat: it surrounds
Strawberry Hill
which can be crossed to by two bridges:
the simple Roman Bridge
or the rough-stoned double-arched Rustic Bridge.
Strolling around the lake,
on a path originally used for horse-drawn carriages,
we see an occasional squirrel,
a single blue-jay, a robin or two, some cowbirds. 
As a kid, I shot birds and squirrels.
With a .22. Yuck!
Until I grew ashamed of the blood and guts. 

A Canadian goose perches on a shore-rock
standing sentry over its gaggle of fluffy goslings;
further on a paddling of under soft ducks dip, bottoms up
like bathtub toys,
in the nourishment-laden
soupy pea-green water tinged with emerald.
Should have been an ornithologist.
Bird man of Stow Lake.

I take Streak off my shoulder
and we rest on a bench while she 
scuttles sideways along the backrest
as I gaze in awe at a slate-colored Great Blue Heron
standing on one leg, silent, stately, composed.
Guten tag mein herren.

We move along and see
more than a dozen western pond turtles
on a half-submerged log.
The turtles crane their dark-brown necks to the sun;
Their deep- olive shells seem like stepping stones to heaven.

School children, fascinated with Streak, approach us.
I encourage her to talk English
but she just bobs and weaves, pins her eyes, jabbers and croons.
Hey, bird. Can you talk?
Yeah, I can talk. Can you fly?

We cross over the Rustic Bridge to Strawberry Hill
and walk eastward along the shore -
what is so appealing about islands? -
to the Chinese Peace Pavillion.
Ah Buddhism!  So sane, so sensible,
so psychological. Om Mani Padme Hum.

The pavilion, dark red pillars,
bluish-green glazed tile roof, marble stools,  
ornately painted arabesque ceiling panels
with dragon motifs, is a quiet place
near the steady splosh of Huntington Falls.
People get married at the Falls,
a place of glistening spiritual quietude
where water drops 75 feet and
flows into the lake over flat gray stones.
Snowy egrets wade here,
far whiter than milk or cotton
or a white wedding dress.
Streak and I linger in this numinous place.

Then we climb to the top of the hill
where I put Streak on a branch
and take in the 360 degree views:
the city, the ocean,  the Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Tamalpais.
Can see the Farallones on a good day, they say.
On the way back down beside the Falls,
I put Streak on the iron banister which she slides down 
until, losing balance, she flies to my shoulder.
We enjoy this and do it several times.
What would I do without this silly,
 playful bird I am so fond of?
And what she without me?

We walk north from the Falls over the Roman Bridge,
then east along the north end of the lake
where a clutch of gulls, ducks and geese are feeding
on bread and popcorn.
A pair of Brown Pelicans fly past
like two old front-heavy Boeing Stratocruisers.
Pelicans are my favorite birds.

Leaving the lake we take a path
that winds through English Ivy ground cover, small palms,
purplish-blue wildflowers,
flowering cherry trees.
In a glade, a stand of Yew trees
How do you do, yew? It’s me and Streakadoo
and a fan-leaved Ginkgo tree.
Gingko. Oldest plant on earth. Living fossil.

Streak and I re-cross JFK Drive at the Rose Garden,
go right and descend into the Hollow which
lies between the Drive and Fulton Street.
The Hollow, a calm and soothing woody place
is a deeply-shaded natural temple of tall Monterey Pines
and camphor-scented Blue Gum Eucalyptus;
a lush grove whose soft dappled ground is strewn
with fallen branches and trunks and criss-crossed by dirt paths.
I feel whole here. At peace.
Streak is riding backwards now;
I see and feel  her tail near my left cheek.

We climb up the side of the Hollow.
I put Streak under my jacket to cross Fulton Street again.
For me and my fine feathered friend,
our walk has come to an end.

David L. O’Neal

These are not parks, no.  Parks are intended: fenced and manicured and dotted with baseball diamonds, soccer fields, and playgrounds where people have fun. Here no gateways beckon. There might be an aimless sidewalk, coaxing, as it disappears into the woods, a ribbon of cement for that new subdivision which never quite materialized.

No, not parks, but green space abandoned and forgotten in the headlong rush to organize and pave every last square inch that will support a mortgage, or two. Not quite wild, but refuges, escapes, sanctuaries where trees and grasses begin to reclaim the land: pines, maples, oaks, hickories, and pecan trees bound together by underbrush. The big tracks of an earth mover, now shallow and worn and grassy, furrow the soil.  Birds and field mice and squirrels nest here. Somewhere a possum or a raccoon waits in her den for night.

Children find this space first. Boys on bicycles seeking a hideaway, school kids wandering out beyond the edge of the school yard, leaving their calling cards: a soda can, a candy wrapper, an old shoe. Brush and brambles cover it all now.  In the larger of these abandoned parcels, the trees have matured, and one can walk deep into undergrowth and feel quite lost. But though you become very still, it’s never quite silent. The sounds of suburban life intrude, though muffled, barely a whisper, the whoosh of cars and trucks passing in the distance. These parks are nameless. There are no visiting hours. They’re not on any map. No adults go here. A faint path winds through the trees, drawing you more profoundly into peace and solitude beneath the green canopy, amidst lush undergrowth.  But it ends quite abruptly. An office building, a gas station, somebody’s backyard bursts into view. A human voice.

You stumble back into the woods. The quiet returns. Lost in the green of trees and leaves and flowers and shrubs and the vines that grow along the loamy ground – you celebrate, surprised.

Kevin McLellan

This road transforms into
a snake winding around
coiled on hair pin turns.

At bottom of the incline
lies a dark city strangely
hushed with secrets.

How black it is. How difficult
to find that dream street
which I must discover. 

My fingers are tingling
cool, smoke combs the
air, static fills night.

Exactly what I will explore
is unsure. Where I will find it
unknown. All is in question.

I continue to haunt gloomy
streets in this dream town
crossing dim intersections.

Everything has become a maze
where one line leads to another
dead ends become beginnings.

Deciding to abandon my search,
I return for my automobile…
nowhere to be found in shadows.

Finally I look up at the moon’s
yellow eye…my lips forming
prayers to a disinterested god.

Joan McNerney

tottering in damp streets
ears ablaze
                              bass-line bouncing

through power house walls
threatening to hush voices of those
caught in the industry’s
                              blackmail sidelines

hear the lamps hiss in gastown;
glowing daylight kisses
pale faces
distraught from lack of sleep
trudging through day-jobs
waiting hornily to
                              bash through

rave parties in east-side depths

joyous fireworks on display where the
symphony of fire
                             burns hottest

in daylight those with solace in their step
tread lightly on yoga mats
frolic with orcas on frisky
                             beach settings

feast on Granville Island’s bread
magnolia long-stems
escape over the lion’s gate to
                             bold rocky

outcroppings

greenery blending with night-gazing
shooting star wishes
and it all seems sublime until
someone wrecks the
                             beach with
nightly
                             beer bottle antics

sunburned
                             breasts and
                             bottoms

too close to the heat

Michelle Ward-Kantor

Deposed Majesty–
abandoned white Chiclet factory
of Long Island City.
Over the deserted trainyards
the silhouetted mirage of Manhattan beyond
prevails on the fading day’s horizon,
too far to matter.

Against this color from space are
darkened bars, the Sunnyside Yard,
an abandoned, graffitied train station.
And that empty lot was a ferry landing –
the past in New York is
a ghost that scares no one.

Dusk’s silent movies are playing above
the Kaufman-Astoria Studios.

2.

On Roosevelt Avenue, walking past
winter’s glittering sari palaces
an Indian woman in her
bright green, silver-edged sari
and thin coat, wears
only sandals in the January cold.

The man on the train last summer
wore pointed silk slippers that
curved like a scimitar from the Arabian Nights.

The moon’s a gnarled ginger root.
Soft floating tofu. A white corn cake.
A tiny glass bottle from the botanica labeled
Angeles Guardianes–Perfume by Selene.
Or Four Winds. Desperation.
Don’t Forget Me.
Restless.

The # 7 swerves redly into sunset–
The Swingline sign staples the night with red.

Lorraine Schein