My little experiences with the truth: The seventh expedition... Full of discovery!!!

Dear reader,

I woke up with a thunder storm taking place all around my safe home. There were lightings all around and I thought to myself that maybe I won't be able to explore in the city today, but the sun came out about a hour and a half later and I was back in the city again after a big bowl of hot steel cut oatmeal.

I covered a lot of ground today in 8 hours. I went from an area full of empty shore front spaces and churches to an area composed of more public structures and buildings, then to a community college's campus then to a blooming medical hot spot in the nation. It was truly interesting to see the shifting and changing of the landscape. I learned much today and experienced many interesting things also.

Today I got to explore a street that I came to know quite well due to my interest and my volunteering location. The street is South Division Street. It is such a complex and hopeful street. It is the street that named as the Avenue of the Art due to its blooming art scene there, but also, it is a street that most people know for its population of homelessness and drug use and people who had given up. One side of the story is so hopeful while the other side of the story seem hopeless and rejected. As I mentioned in the last blog entry, such diverse groups of people with different backgrounds and directions in life are meant to have conflict with one and other. Nevertheless, the street is growing and advancing in its social ladder. More investments had been put in and the price of rent in the area had increased which eventually will drive both the aspirated artist and the population of homeless out of the area as I mentioned in the last blog entry. It is sad.

In the day or night, on the side walks, it will be a hard task to find any other people other than the less fortunate ones who might be homeless or might be living in low income housing projects. The street is filled with the less fortunate as they go from one end of the street to the other end, to talk to friends, to make friends, to ask for a free smoke, to eat a meal at different charities, to kill time... To be honest, the less fortunate ones are the one who are making the street alive, who is making the sidewalk once again the place for spontaneous gathering. Through the way the less fortunates form community, I was inspirited. Even though it might not be the best community, or even it is a bad community... the fact that they know each other's existence for they know they rely on each other, had already by past the community that we see in a different, more affluent, part of the city, like the Heritage Hill. Most people in Heritage Hill or any kind of suburban area, they don't know or care about their neighbors as they isolate themselves within their own safe, private home.

I also realized that today how much space in downtown Grand Rapids that are being use to park cars. There are parking lots and parking garages everywhere I go. The usage of cars do consume a lot of lands. Land to to build highway and side walk, lands to build parking garage and parking lots. So much lands.

Also, quite to my surprise that there were so much empty store front spaces in downtown. I always thought that the downtown is a hot spot of business and investment that empty spaces is just not possible, but a personal exploration had proved me wrong. I never quite understand why more shops and restaurant in a city make a city better. Who are we that we see progress on how many store front space being occupied. What are we? At times, it seem as most of the world runs by the question: "How one get what one wants by selling what one thinks other wants."It is sad that when most exchanging of goods is only about getting what we want and not about what we share. How can we change the world over and make the reason for exchanging goods as sharing and not solely about getting what we want.

There were many other thoughts that had came to me during the exploration but I have to run now, so maybe in the next entry I will tell you more.

Here is what I marked on the map: