The seventeenth and the last of the exploring expedition... I finsihed exploring the area yesterday!

Dear readers,

It is finish! My exploring and mapping of the city had been finished. I had walked every streets, alleys, parking lots, bridges in an area bounded by College Ave. on the East, Alpine Ave on the West, Wealthy St. on the South and Leonard St. on the North. It was such a great experience. I learned so much about the city and its people. I enjoyed every conversations and its participants that took place during my explorations. It was truly a blessing for me to able to see the city in such a way - two feet, a note book, lose paper of maps, camera, a book about edible wild plants and my pair of glasses.

The day started with pouring rain which forced me to took shelter at a local coffee shop. I enjoyed the sight of the rain and deep down, I was sad about my yearning for a shelter at such a beautiful sight. I wish I can freely in the rain. I can, I must say. I had chosen for myself not to be free in the rain. I cannot blame anyone but me. Maybe next time.

The rain come to a halt at around 12:00pm. I arrived at where I left off at the end of the last exploring expedition with a hungry stomach. I explored a bit on a main street and trying to find a cheap bite. I realized how many Mexican restaurants were around me. I am guessing that the high population of Mexican immigrant who reside in the area had brought rise to the Mexican food businesses. As I further explored, I came across a Mexican bakery. I never been in a Mexican bakery and tasted a Mexican bake good. I was so very excited and I knew then and there that I had found my lunch. I walked in the door as the pleasant odor escape. It was not easy to make a choice on all the variety all delicious looking bake good but I did. As I was paying for the purchase, the gentleman behind the counter smile and say,"You take this one for free, and if you like it, come back and get more!" It was so kind of him. To him, it was not the money transaction from the purchase that is most important but the appreciation that I might have for his bake goods. It was so beautiful. I can tell that it is a family runs business run by a local family as the friends of that gentleman behind the cash machine were gathering next to him, awaiting for him to becomes available again. Something about a local restaurant that runs by a local family that is so wonderful to me. It is so much more personal and communal to me. I can ask that gentleman what is in the bread, when they first opened the business or what is happening in town tonight, and he would be able to answer me all those question with confidence. Since he lives in the area, it made him a neighbor for the people in the area. People in that area no longer buying from stranger, but a person, a family, a business that share some of the same history as them. It is truly a beautiful thing to have such relationship with someone so close to our life. Had you ever realized how close our postman, our cashiers in the grocery store, our brewers in the local coffee shop and our waitresses in our favorite restaurant, are to our life? They are so close to us at any of those given shared moment, if you really think about it.

 Another event that left a deeper mark on my mind is the image of a drunken man with a empty liquor bottom in his right left pocket, lying lifelessly in front of the front step of a home. I came across him as I traveling through a neighborhood composed mostly minority according to my observation. He was lifeless with his eye close. I did not know what to do at that moment. I was speechless. He is not the first drunken, lifeless body that I ever saw in my life, but the ones that I had encountered before never was at a place like this, a neighborhood full of house. I had came across them in a street famous for its homeless shelter and food kitchen; I had met them on a street in a slum at Nairobi, Kenya, but not a place like this. There was a car pulling right up to that front step as I was contemplating on my next action. A group of teenagers and few young child came out of the car and walked up to the house after few glance of the lying body. I don't want to put my noise into someone's business so I slowly walked away. I know that the people of that house know that man as they call the man by name as they try to wake him up. It was a sad picture as I watch them to just yelling at him without offering a hand to help him up. I always wonder, is this world of ours truly this unbearable that some of us have to knock ourselves out so we don't have to face it no more? I wish I helped him, in any way.

The exploration of this part of the preparation for the project is finished and I feel so good about it. I hope you also had enjoyed following this journey of mine. Thanks for all your support throughout this project.

Now, I will be organizing my maps and notes to make a new map that is more clear and easier to follow. I will be also starting to build the tool kits for the experiment. I will be getting ready for all the tools that I will be needing during the experiment. I have about 3 more weeks before it all begin!!! I am so excited!!!


Here is some of things that I marked on my map today:

• 32 fruit tress
• 54 fire hydrants 
• 33 dumpster
• 2 card board dumpster
• 7 empty spaces

Here is some of what I saw today:

 

 

 

Thanks for your reading again. 

All the best

Patrick

Rain...

Dear readers,

A hard rain surely is pour down from the gray sky. It been a while since the rain had fall. The weather lately been hot and humid, a bit suffocating. It is so refreshing to finally have this hesitating, heavy humility break lose, over come, and just let go into a millions of bean size rain drops. It is truly a beautiful sight, the rain, from the window of this coffee shop. I was planning to explore but with this rain, I was confine to indoor. I been wondering if there was a time in which the rains don't bring people indoor but take them out to the open air and rain, take them out to dance and sing, take them out to enjoy the moist. I bet there is still pockets of places in the world that people still celebrate and rejoice when the rain fall. I hope there are still so. I want to go out and celebrate the rain, the symbol of life for the human race and the world, but I don't know how. I felt as I had lost the ability to celebrate rains, further so, I felt as I had lost the ability to celebrate anything of nature. When spring come I only celebrate for the leaving of a cold winter and not the new life that spring brings. When summer come I only celebrate the ending of another school years, the long summer vacation and not the abundance harvests that will be taking place. When the fall come, I don't even notice it until the winter had arrive and I realize the fall had come and pass me by again. When winter arriving, I pay more attention to the man made holidays of thanksgiving and Christmas then the resting and recharge that the nature is undertaking. I had lost in touch with nature; I had came to fear the rain; I had came to be less of a human being as I slowly drifting away from my very own human nature.

I still love the rain, I just need to learn again how to rejoice in it, appreciate it and celebrate it. I want to learn that. Where can I learn that?


Patrick

The sixteen exploring expedition... another hot one!!!

Dear readers, 

Today I worked myself from Southwest up to Northwest part of town. The area that I was exploring today was mostly residential area with a few shops along few main road in the area. That big residential area was very quiet, only at the later afternoon that few sounds of children playing and a ice cream music came across the neighborhood. As I traveled through the neighborhood, I cannot help but realized that I was in a grid, a very unified pattern in which each home's front door faces the street with a small backyard. The homes point to all direction, East, West, North and South but never to each other without a street between them. The grid like pattern gives me an impression of traps and cell and boxes. I felt as though that the neighborhood that I was visiting today was rigid and without life and flow. The neighborhood was solid and pointy instead of flexible and smooth. My family home is out in the country where the landscape of our neighborhood really follow the natural landscape around us. Neighbors interact with each other with the flow of the natural landscape and not with the rigid pattern of the grid like neighborhood. I wonder what is the impact of random families come together accidentally to a rigid, grid like neighborhood like this one. Do they feel pressure, trap, or liberated and communal? Will there a difference if all those random families come together not to a grid but a neighborhood fill with Nature and its flow? Will they be happier?

I also have the opportunity to witness a installation of a fire hydrant. I realized through the experience the amount of works that the workers need to put in to install a fire hydrant. Then I looked down the street and thought to myself, "Wow, all these buildings, street lights, roads, bridges and underground pipes... all these progress and developments must had taken so much man labors and resources." I realized that what I been walk on, seeing or being within... they are all works that compose of so many works and resources. I have to admit that I been taking those infrastructure for granted. I did not realize until today that all these, what we had built for ourselves as a enclose habitat within nature, cost so much resources, labors and time. 

Here is some pictures:

 

 

 

 

The finish result. 

Here is what I marked on my map today:

• 44 fruit trees 
• 33 fire hydrants 
• 16 dumpster 
• 1 card board dumpster 

Here is some of what I saw today:

Thanks for reading. 

All the best

Patrick