Speaker 1: In retirement, a person's sense of time shifts. Days are
Speaker 1: both longer and quicker than the years of work. I'm
Speaker 1: not the saw two pines from my rud all angers
Speaker 1: of our old Enian newsletters, but I do find comfort
Speaker 1: and routine the way the city opens up with every
Speaker 1: familiar step. Thirty one years behind a wheel mint, I
Speaker 1: knew both the mapped arteries and the odd little capillaries
Speaker 1: of our coastal streets. So when I say I know
Speaker 1: this patch of turn a quiltrok of salt wash, victorians
Speaker 1: of button crack concrete walkups, I mean it with an
Speaker 1: affection nearly anatomical. I'd always considered myself hard surprise, especially
Speaker 1: by the city itself. That's why the morning in question
Speaker 1: stands out. Sunlight, slanting shop off dam, bassfot, gulls riding
Speaker 1: some gusts behind the roofs, the taste of better drip
Speaker 1: coffee still on my tongue. I set out as usual,
Speaker 1: cutting east along Woodmey Avenue, then coming down the line
Speaker 1: of rowhouses toward Haskell Street. My mind was on the
Speaker 1: blue mail books that used to stand outside the old
Speaker 1: laundrom at, a landmark now replaced by aggressive landscaping and
Speaker 1: a community run little free library. That's how I nearly
Speaker 1: missed it. I squinting across the street, considering whether to
Speaker 1: go another block for a real cinnamon band, when a
Speaker 1: flash of color caught at the edge of my vision.
Speaker 1: A sliver between two buildings, an alley so tight that
Speaker 1: sunlight faded half way down, daubed at the entrance with
Speaker 1: a panel of fresh mural and explosion of bread rolls, warmokers,
Speaker 1: and roads, as if graffiti had collaborated with a hungry baker.
Speaker 1: It wasn't one of the map cut throughs narrow enough
Speaker 1: for a push out, but barely. I paused, listening to
Speaker 1: the hush inside it not silence, more sound, damp and stillness,
Speaker 1: like stepping into side room during a party. I could
Speaker 1: smell yeas fresh and sweet, although the only baker I
Speaker 1: knew had been torn down in nineteen ninety eight. Still,
Speaker 1: the mural's joke was resistible. I slept down the alley,
Speaker 1: running a hand along brickwick that felt just faintless decay,
Speaker 1: as if some one had spilled soda and half washed
Speaker 1: it impossible. Geometry happens sometimes in cities. A street that narrows,
Speaker 1: thin broadens a gap that makes no sense until you're
Speaker 1: in it. I dismissed those in my days on the route,
Speaker 1: explaining them with block angles and foreshortening. This alley, though,
Speaker 1: felt like a crease in the neighborhood, slightly bent inward,
Speaker 1: the sense of distance from holding down at the far end.
Speaker 1: I merged not onto the noisy expanse of Clifton Boulevard,
Speaker 1: as I'd expect, but on to the quieter stretch of
Speaker 1: Timber Line, a two minute deter at best usually. But
Speaker 1: when I glanced at my watch, I covered what should
Speaker 1: have been a twenty minute walkin under five. The digital
Speaker 1: numbers glowed cheerfully. I stood, blinking hot, suddenly faster, half
Speaker 1: convinced I'd misfread something or ridiculous, thought it dozed off midwalk.
Speaker 1: I checked for landmarks that battered via hydrant painted purple
Speaker 1: by the local preschool Mss Chance Flowers shop with its autorariums,
Speaker 1: the bent street signed for Elm Circle. Everything as it
Speaker 1: should be, perfectly ordinary. Yet time had hiccupped. My legs
Speaker 1: told me I had strolled, not rushed. I searched for
Speaker 1: an explanation. Perhaps a block was shorter than I remembered
Speaker 1: perhaps my watch was off, but there was no denying
Speaker 1: peculiarticle at the edge of my mind. For once the
Speaker 1: city had at maneuvered me, And in the quiet after
Speaker 1: that walk, I found myself wanting not cinnamon ban but answers.
Speaker 1: There is a particular satisfaction in thinking ye know a place,
Speaker 1: an entire system of landmarks and shortcuts that feels as
Speaker 1: much a part of you as a pattern of veints
Speaker 1: on your hand. I have claimed that satus faction for decades,
Speaker 1: long after my driver's badge stopped getting me free coffee
Speaker 1: in most places, and long after the city swapped out
Speaker 1: our favorite model buses for sleeker, colder machines. Back at
Speaker 1: my apartment, the afternoon sunlight was already toting gold across
Speaker 1: my tiny collection of route memorabilia, all transit passes for
Speaker 1: driver's cat, the first city map I'd ever collected. My
Speaker 1: apartment is small enough for a person to circum navigate
Speaker 1: before their tea boils, but it holds more stories than
Speaker 1: square footage. There's a warm path from kitchen to living room,
Speaker 1: the sun warm spot on the faded sofa, the wall
Speaker 1: of photos clipped behind a souvenir bus stop sign. I
Speaker 1: paused wallet and fawn on the counter and tried to
Speaker 1: replay my walk in my mind. Could I have skipped
Speaker 1: a block, taken a short cut without realizing? There's little
Speaker 1: mental scouries people make when they are distracted, and maybe
Speaker 1: this was just memories trick. My neighborhood is a stopcat place,
Speaker 1: anchored by allstos like myself, in a constant shurn of
Speaker 1: newcomers trying to land in the city's heart. Every morning,
Speaker 1: I take the familiar loop through the misake of stoops
Speaker 1: on withodmere, past the uneven flagstones of Cali's Row, and,
Speaker 1: depending on the mood, into Massess Porter's corner shop, for
Speaker 1: which she claims is the city's strongest ginger candy. Missess
Speaker 1: Porter herself is a keeper of both facts and fables.
Speaker 1: She knows which stoops to avoid during winter ice, in
Speaker 1: which tenants water their tomatoes with dark beer. Only she
Speaker 1: could detail both the birth of the annual block fare
Speaker 1: and its various ancient disputes. This morning, as always, she
Speaker 1: greeted me with the same cheerful skepticism she reserved for
Speaker 1: those who shop before noon. Early Joe, you are either
Speaker 1: up to something or avoiding Old Marvin's chess invitations, broutine,
Speaker 1: missess porter, or what passes for it. She slid a
Speaker 1: package of biscuits across the counter and cut an eyebrow.
Speaker 1: I saw old Ken waiting outside the coffee shop. If
Speaker 1: you ask me, he's got a new theory about the
Speaker 1: best crossand rat grows more competitive each year. Ken is
Speaker 1: more my nemesis than my friend, if such things are possible.
Speaker 1: Late in life, he claimed special authority over the city's bones,
Speaker 1: a phrase he likes to repeat whenever he manages to
Speaker 1: shave off a minute from our usual walks. I admit
Speaker 1: his sense of direction is sharp, but he's a stickler
Speaker 1: for official routs. When mind driving days were about improvisation
Speaker 1: in the face of construction, sudden parades, or a flock
Speaker 1: of ducks. Ken worship's printed schedules. The morning routine is
Speaker 1: an unspoken choreography. I buy my groceries, then wander to
Speaker 1: the coffee shop, a narrow fronted place where the barriston
Speaker 1: knows more about cities owning than about making cappucciner. Ken
Speaker 1: sits by the winter, already making marks on his little
Speaker 1: weather bus map. Cut through on Brook Street, he asks
Speaker 1: without preamble blocked off some utility digging had to wiggle
Speaker 1: around by evergreen ha that lab. Minutes he sat triumphant.
Speaker 1: We went back and forth as usual. Nobody beats ken
Speaker 1: at predicting official time. But my pride was never in
Speaker 1: published numbers. I deal in Goughfiel, inside streets, in knowing
Speaker 1: exactly when mister Andreotti's bakery opens, and were touvoid to
Speaker 1: middle school exodus. I nearly mentioned the alley, but maybe
Speaker 1: out of pride, maybe because I hadn't quite decided if
Speaker 1: it was an 'er. It stayed on the tip of
Speaker 1: my tongue. Missess Porto, when she popped in later with
Speaker 1: the delivery for the coffee shop, lolled. Another mystery, my way,
Speaker 1: did you ever hear about the city? Historian Ferris giving
Speaker 1: a public lecture to Night at the Hall Invisible Connections,
Speaker 1: Secret histories of urban space could be your thing, Joe
Speaker 1: I grain and pocketing her card. A lecture sounded more
Speaker 1: like a lock than an answer, But you never know
Speaker 1: what old bones the city might turn up. Where most
Speaker 1: people see the city as a static backdrop, I can
Speaker 1: only think of it as perpetually alive shape shifting under
Speaker 1: a new bus schedule here, and new condos spreading there.
Speaker 1: Even the flavor of their change is the salt tang
Speaker 1: near the old ocks, the metal bye after rain, the
Speaker 1: odd bakeries, and at for some reason, lingered in my
Speaker 1: mind all afternoon. Back at my table, I traced a
Speaker 1: finger across my old bus map rat's color coated in
Speaker 1: marker key cut through his double circled, and annotated in
Speaker 1: my tidy, blocky handwriting, the city's streets to sit out
Speaker 1: like veins. But that alley wasn't there. Neither was the mural,
Speaker 1: nor any notation of a fast path between Woodmere and Timberline.
Speaker 1: But wasn't that always the way in a city like this,
Speaker 1: connections matt others lost in memory or repaved into obscurity.
Speaker 1: I stood for a long moment, watching the way the
Speaker 1: afternoon let up the alley. In my mind, cities are
Speaker 1: routines and interruptions, memory layered over change. Maybe I had
Speaker 1: missed something, or just maybe the city had decided to
Speaker 1: show me a short cut of its own choosing. Maps
Speaker 1: do not lie, but they also do not care much
Speaker 1: for the details of living. The next morning, curiosity at
Speaker 1: full boil, I shuffled the old bus map onto my
Speaker 1: kitchen table, a paper testimony to decades of detos and truncasions.
Speaker 1: My plan was simple, were trace yesterday's steps on paper, then,
Speaker 1: with phone in hand, with the clarity of proper preparation,
Speaker 1: walk the shortcut again. First the map woomir ran east
Speaker 1: west Timberline parallel, but never perfectly. The physical city pooks
Speaker 1: one at perfect geometry, Streets that dick were they ought
Speaker 1: to zag, blocks that shrink or swell with little warning.
Speaker 1: In the decades old paper map, the alley between the
Speaker 1: two avenues was enough to thought a faint gray stop,
Speaker 1: neither named nor marked for traversal. The online map app,
Speaker 1: which cleans live updates and never sleeps, showed the alley
Speaker 1: as a dead end, not connecting to timber Line at all. Impossible.
Speaker 1: I had walked it plainly the day before, as quinted
Speaker 1: cross referencing, then reached for the old schedule sheets as
Speaker 1: familiar as poetry, listing transfer times and estimated walks between stops.
Speaker 1: Even in a most optimistic version, no route shaved more
Speaker 1: than five minutes from the traverse between those two streets.
Speaker 1: The short cut, as I experience, inst it simply didn't exist,
Speaker 1: not according to the city, the map or the schedules
Speaker 1: that paid my salary. I decided to turn to human memory,
Speaker 1: where the real city is stored. After all. Kin was
Speaker 1: out front of the coffee shop again, nose in the paper,
Speaker 1: feet propped on a rickety outdoor table. Kin, you ever
Speaker 1: cut through that back alley between Woodmere and Timberline. Not
Speaker 1: the one by the hardware store, the one after the
Speaker 1: old mail books, he snorted. Not a short cut, Joe.
Speaker 1: That Alice's blocked up at the far end or was
Speaker 1: last time I jacked? Think they chained it up after
Speaker 1: the fire wherein he's still working. Then there's a mural
Speaker 1: now open as anything, He shrugged, the universal sign of
Speaker 1: a man who hasn't reconsidered a low back pain in years.
Speaker 1: If it's open, it doesn't go through. Never got your
Speaker 1: cross faster than taking Haskell anyway, He pointed at his
Speaker 1: with a map as of challenging me to a duel
Speaker 1: magazine in hand. I strolled to missus Porter as to
Speaker 1: quizz her before she ducked out for afternoon errands. She
Speaker 1: frowned at my question. That alley I barely remember it
Speaker 1: had a big blue mail box. Didn't I think they
Speaker 1: tore that out the year they closed the bickery, or
Speaker 1: maybe it just disappeared. She pressed her fingers to her temple,
Speaker 1: sprinting in the way people do when excavating memory. I
Speaker 1: used to let the kid run through it when you
Speaker 1: could still see daylight from one end to the other.
Speaker 1: Felt like a shortcut then, but I remember they complained
Speaker 1: about it being a dead end. Her past and Ken's
Speaker 1: memories did not match mine, and neither matched the map.
Speaker 1: This left me floating between three versions of a city
Speaker 1: I thought I knew as well as anything. I resolved
Speaker 1: to try the short cut again. If I was misremembering,
Speaker 1: i'd know. If not, well, that's a kind of mystery.
Speaker 1: Retirement gives you the luxury to chase on the next walk.
Speaker 1: Intent on precision, I checked and reset my watch before
Speaker 1: leaving dusk, this time a gentle coller settling over the city,
Speaker 1: making the alley seem like the inside of a corn shell.
Speaker 1: The mural had changed subtly. The bread loaves ranged into
Speaker 1: a crescent, a new streak of blue paint glunting. Each
Speaker 1: step was careful and deliberate. Halfway through the air changed
Speaker 1: wherey yesterday there was bakery scent to day. It was
Speaker 1: a whiff of perfume, something citrusy and light, not clawing
Speaker 1: on a breeze that shouldn't have penetrated the alice tite
Speaker 1: stone jaws. The sound, too was off a faint bell somewhere,
Speaker 1: a score or a trolley I couldn't tell. Against the
Speaker 1: wall a scattered cluster of bicculls with dusty seats, none
Speaker 1: of which I recalled from before. I slowed, trying to
Speaker 1: memorize every patch of light and shadow. Near the far end.
Speaker 1: I stopped again, reassured myself at the ticking of my watch.
Speaker 1: Five minutes. Ten steps out onto timber line, the familiar
Speaker 1: batter fire hydrant winked at me, but the trash bin
Speaker 1: to its left gleaned freshly cleaned, as if readied for
Speaker 1: an inspection. My cheeks tingled. No other pedestrian, no hint
Speaker 1: at anyone else used the alley in anything approaching regularity.
Speaker 1: The clock confirmed I'd crossed an impossible span of city
Speaker 1: blocks in less time than ever take to tie my shoes.
Speaker 1: I paced off the distance, careful for accuracy. It didn't
Speaker 1: matter how thoroughly I walked, or how hard I concentrated.
Speaker 1: The short cut was a fact unto itself. I began
Speaker 1: to test it in small ways. Returning two days later,
Speaker 1: I started from a different corner, one block up, approaching
Speaker 1: the alley from the focide. This time I emerged not
Speaker 1: quite on timber Line, but a block earlier than expected,
Speaker 1: Having bypassed an entire intersection ron for the direction, I
Speaker 1: had entered the familiar Linemark's Flowers shop VI. A hydrant
Speaker 1: felt slightly off, as if repainted in a Sutler key.
Speaker 1: What I noticed, too, was the changeability of the as
Speaker 1: tiny features. A staircase at one entrance that didn't exist
Speaker 1: in previous walks. The echo of a song war was
Speaker 1: at a radio, drifting from no work on as soon
Speaker 1: as I tried to place it, and always the unkenny quiet,
Speaker 1: not desolate, but eleven its own way. It was never
Speaker 1: the same place twice, and yet always deposited me when
Speaker 1: approached from my usual re precisely at the heart of
Speaker 1: where I wanted to be in suspiciously little time. Frustrated
Speaker 1: by memory slabrinus, I attempted documentation. Back at home. I
Speaker 1: found my stubby colored pencils and drew the short cut
Speaker 1: as I recalled it, overlaying my old bus map. The
Speaker 1: path laid out a straight line, but when I tried
Speaker 1: to trace it against an online map print out, the
Speaker 1: alignment veered off, as if the alley balls sighed ways
Speaker 1: halfway through. Approached from my kitchen table, the short cut's
Speaker 1: orientation changed in ways. The physical streets simply do not
Speaker 1: need a matching grid. Noorgut one day away laid our
Speaker 1: neighborhood post all worker Sam, just outside missus Porter's. Sam,
Speaker 1: you ever cut through that alley, the one with the
Speaker 1: bread mural, He glimpsed up from his bag. Don't know what.
Speaker 1: There's an alley near that at Dumpsey, by the train tracks,
Speaker 1: but you can't get a cat through. I just take
Speaker 1: the long way around. He shook his head, already sorting
Speaker 1: letters for the next block. That alley, by every person's
Speaker 1: account existed in fragments. For Ken, it didn't count as
Speaker 1: a path from a cess porter. It led to a
Speaker 1: mail box gone for decades. For Sam, it spotted out
Speaker 1: somewhere near the train lines of geographical impossibility. Each investigation
Speaker 1: brought a new contradiction, but none threatened me or made
Speaker 1: me worried. If anything, I grew more delighted nipping at
Speaker 1: the edges of some quiet urban magic, as if the
Speaker 1: city were playing a game. Only I remembered the rules.
Speaker 1: For now I started playing more actively. On different mornings,
Speaker 1: I made deliberate variations, timing the walk, noting the weather,
Speaker 1: or trying to spot any other shortcut seekers. The alley
Speaker 1: shifted under different lights, some mornings wider, other day's joke
Speaker 1: with puddles were strange echoes. Once I noted a newspaper
Speaker 1: on the ground to day's date, then another walk the
Speaker 1: same addition, but unstained by rain, as if coppered. Of
Speaker 1: all the changes, one remained constant. My passage drew always
Speaker 1: brought me to Timberline impossibly quick. No one else seemed
Speaker 1: to use it. By now, my ordinary walks had taken
Speaker 1: on an edge of anticipation. Habit had become experiment. I
Speaker 1: waited for an explanation to crystallize. My bus driver's mind,
Speaker 1: well trained to spot the variances that cause a late arrival,
Speaker 1: wanted reasons pedestrian only, mapping, subtle urban design, or perhaps
Speaker 1: my own sense of time tell by retirement. But each
Speaker 1: point of reference only pulled me deeper. The city, once familiar,
Speaker 1: felt more elastic than i'd ever guessed memory and plays
Speaker 1: I began to suspect were mixing in ways I hadn't understood.
Speaker 1: The real pivot came quietly, as such things do. One morning,
Speaker 1: after yet another shortcut success, I descended into her different
Speaker 1: sort of experiment. By this point, I was convinced it
Speaker 1: couldn't solely be a matter of distance. The map didn't
Speaker 1: allow it. Yet my experience was a refutable I asked myself,
Speaker 1: what if it wasn't about the al's physicality, but about
Speaker 1: how I walked the whole pattern of routine before it.
Speaker 1: That morning, I left her earlier than usual, purposefully breaking
Speaker 1: the rhythm. No cup of trick coffee, no visit to
Speaker 1: missus Porter, straight to the ELL's math. The short cut
Speaker 1: didn't work. I emerged after what felt like a normal,
Speaker 1: if pleasant stroll with nothing remarkable about The duration turned
Speaker 1: out to twenty minutes, just as the map would suggest.
Speaker 1: For plexed, I altered my experiment, returned to my established
Speaker 1: routine the next day, greeting Missess Porter, collecting a bag
Speaker 1: of groceries, sipping coffee with Ken, keeping Mum about my
Speaker 1: experiment as he laughed me right out of the shop,
Speaker 1: Tracing my habitual route vial Woodmere. When I took the alley,
Speaker 1: this time it folded for me again, distance complain, a
Speaker 1: turn or two, snapping away, and I popped onto timberline
Speaker 1: after what felt like no time at all. My watch
Speaker 1: corroborated the story. I tested variations, approaching from different angles,
Speaker 1: starting the daud of order, sometimes forcing a jog or
Speaker 1: pausing for a phone call. Whenever my routine was skewed,
Speaker 1: the shortcut refused to appear as anything but a regular alley, damp, narrow,
Speaker 1: nothing unusual at all. It became clear that my old
Speaker 1: city routine, and grained by decades of the same streets
Speaker 1: and turning points, was an integral part of the shortcuss existence,
Speaker 1: like the city was rewarding me for honoring its pathways,
Speaker 1: a private thank you for a year spent reading a
Speaker 1: hidden rhythms of routes and blockages as adele. Further, I
Speaker 1: dredged up about a chief of busquedgele from decades ago,
Speaker 1: unnurt from a shub box of memorabilia. One folded page
Speaker 1: listed proposed cut throughs for future routes, which full lines
Speaker 1: scrawled in pencil, many abandoned to the city's bureaucratic indifference.
Speaker 1: There in ters print was an entry for Woomer timber
Speaker 1: Line proposed ali cut abandoned due to ongoing boundary confusion.
Speaker 1: The phrase lingered even on paper. The alley had insisted
Speaker 1: on ambiguity. I began to feel that what I was
Speaker 1: experiencing was less a quirk of the city's design and
Speaker 1: more a mirroring of some larger truth away. Our habits,
Speaker 1: our histories, and our own roles in the city's machinery
Speaker 1: bent its shape to fit us, if only for a moment.
Speaker 1: But the contradiction ran deeper. Yet all my experiments depended
Speaker 1: on me alone. I'd never tried to bring some one
Speaker 1: else into the short cut. Would the city reveal it
Speaker 1: quiet magic if I shared it? Oh? Was this a
Speaker 1: private arrangement? It hasid agreement between retiree and urban grid.
Speaker 1: That's when I decided to test the short cut's bundaries
Speaker 1: with another person, brain Ken, half outraged by my secrecy
Speaker 1: and half tempted by my curiosity to see if the
Speaker 1: city would band for us both. He was suspicious in
Speaker 1: a way only the perpetchale best it can be. So
Speaker 1: this is your big reveal some alleys he beats the schedule.
Speaker 1: Walk it with me, I said, let the city prove itself.
Speaker 1: We started together from the shop, Me with my habitual
Speaker 1: bag and coffee, Ken with his skepticis and folded tide.
Speaker 1: Every step was familiar, so much so that I found
Speaker 1: myself reciting old bus shifts in my mind, the rats
Speaker 1: that used to be second nature. At the mouth of
Speaker 1: the alley, Kens quinted at the mural, I never saw
Speaker 1: this before, must be new. We stepped in together. This
Speaker 1: time everything changed. Ken grumbled about the incline, muttering that
Speaker 1: it was muddier than he recalled. He moves lower than me,
Speaker 1: stopping to complain about an abandoned bicycle blocking the way.
Speaker 1: When we reached Timberline, he declared himself unimpressed. Long way round, Joe,
Speaker 1: if you want to cut time, take haskell Ye. City
Speaker 1: boys get too attached to old habits. He pointedly checked
Speaker 1: his watch, grimacing at the wasted minutes. I felt a
Speaker 1: strange fiss inside my skull. My experience of the walk
Speaker 1: had been different. Times slept away, whole moments skipped, and
Speaker 1: I felt as if the alley had swallowed a handful
Speaker 1: of minutes at least. Yet we'd started together and did
Speaker 1: it together and had opposite experiences. After Ken departed, still muttering,
Speaker 1: I began approaching more people with the story, careful not
Speaker 1: to sound like a crank. Neighbors blinked, some saying they
Speaker 1: sort of remembered using the alley in their youth, but
Speaker 1: couldn't recall how it connected now. One made a half
Speaker 1: joke about ending up on the wrong block by accident.
Speaker 1: Another claimed to have come out by the ice cream
Speaker 1: shop a full half mile away from any possible connection.
Speaker 1: Another shyly mentioned getting turned around and finding a newspaper
Speaker 1: on the ground with the rong date. With each account,
Speaker 1: the alley's reality grew more slippery. Some had new matches
Speaker 1: to my experience, but all had subtle contradictions of detail misplace,
Speaker 1: a time of day, rom a feature missing or multiplied.
Speaker 1: Whenever I asked someone to join me to replicate my
Speaker 1: habitual walk, the result was always unsatisfying, either lost time
Speaker 1: or long deader, sometimes a moment of confusion, but never
Speaker 1: mind folded saving shortcut. It was as if the pathway
Speaker 1: my shortcut, was not a feature of the city, but
Speaker 1: a feature born of my decades of pacing its bones.
Speaker 1: My own internalis grew pressing up against the worlds. I
Speaker 1: bought a notebook and kept the log times walked notes
Speaker 1: on whether since details of what felt different, records of
Speaker 1: Ken's and others attempts. I drew maps aligning my afternoon
Speaker 1: shortcut against my mourning routines. Each overlay shifted, twisted, like
Speaker 1: a kaleidoscope of possibility embedded in the ordinary. The realization
Speaker 1: landed with a peculiar comfort. The short cut was not
Speaker 1: a static place. It existed for me because it I
Speaker 1: could my rhythms, old muscle memory from years of securitous turns,
Speaker 1: block watching at the wheel. For others, it meant nothing
Speaker 1: or meant something else. Entirely, the city's logic was both
Speaker 1: shared and astonishingly personal. Night settled through my window outside
Speaker 1: a cat wound and twin circles under the street lamp.
Speaker 1: In that shining dusk, the line between routine and possibility blurred,
Speaker 1: and I understood that my curiosity had shifted. I no
Speaker 1: longer wanted to prove the shortcuts reality. I wanted to
Speaker 1: understand what it meant to live in a city that
Speaker 1: folded so intimately to fit our invisible individual geographies. I
Speaker 1: slept with the shortcut sketched and pencil on the table
Speaker 1: by my bedside, the city keeping its secrets for now,
Speaker 1: but knowing as I did that I was not quite
Speaker 1: the only cartographer here. The pencil map on my nights
Speaker 1: and led a smudge into the page, city blocks dissolving
Speaker 1: into a pale fog. With a short cut. My shortcut
Speaker 1: curved between Woomir and timberline. Moonlight came through the half
Speaker 1: open blinds, cutting stripes across the old scheduled print outs.
Speaker 1: In the corner of ken'sdaal g eared map he'd left behind,
Speaker 1: I traced him for retrace the line with my finger,
Speaker 1: searching for some slight groove evidence that the paper had
Speaker 1: given in become pliable. Let the short cut exist in
Speaker 1: more than memory. It was nothing but graphite and habit
Speaker 1: At fifty eight, I expected curiosity to contract, the world defined,
Speaker 1: my role, diminishing with each winter. Instead, the city had
Speaker 1: forked open with strangeness. People say retirement gives you time
Speaker 1: to idle, but I was busy, busy with puzzles. I
Speaker 1: only half admitted to caring about busy, standing at the
Speaker 1: age of possibility and routine. The next morning, I decided
Speaker 1: to take the kind of deliberate, systematic approach Ken would
Speaker 1: never expect from me. I'd map it, really, map it,
Speaker 1: not just for memory, and not just as a game,
Speaker 1: but to see if the alley was ever exactly the
Speaker 1: same twice in any recordable way. Stop, porch, notebook, and
Speaker 1: about a digital camera, the kind that takes four seconds
Speaker 1: to snap a single blurry photo, were my tools. My breath.
Speaker 1: Missed it in the morning, chill as I side stepped
Speaker 1: trash bends and recited to myself each landmark passed on
Speaker 1: an habitual route. Misses porter stocking bottles of ginger ale
Speaker 1: in her window, waved without questions. Ken's coffee cabsolute through
Speaker 1: the plate glass was muted by some glare, his skepticism
Speaker 1: a fixed point in an otherwise shifting world. The alice
Speaker 1: entrance glistened with fresh dew graffiti nearly shimmering on today's mural.
Speaker 1: The brave rolls appeared, dusted in flower, and a tiny
Speaker 1: painted spurropursh atop the crusts. I took three photos, paused
Speaker 1: the start patch shrode purposefully threw hands on warm brick,
Speaker 1: The scent to day more like cinnamon. The nast the
Speaker 1: camera froze as I tried to document the shimmer of
Speaker 1: air just with the alley arrowed, and when I reviewed
Speaker 1: the imagies, the light had pulled oddly, flattening angles and
Speaker 1: erasing the mural behind a white flare emerging into timber line,
Speaker 1: just as before the numbers did their impossible dance. Seven
Speaker 1: minutes had passed, but by pac and muscle memory alone,
Speaker 1: I had walked a third as far as I should have.
Speaker 1: Sitting on the curb, I drew a little more of
Speaker 1: my prodate transit mapped tiny arrows, dotted lions, swelling reminders.
Speaker 1: I called Ken, leaving a message on his answering machine,
Speaker 1: not a warning or both. Just wanted you to know
Speaker 1: I'm still working on the city's bones. I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: he'd understand, but some messages are more for the sender.
Speaker 1: Later that afternoon, as the sun angled into the low
Speaker 1: western sky, I made my way to the University Library,
Speaker 1: outside my usual range, but doctor Ferris, the urban historian,
Speaker 1: taught Tuesday seminar there on invisible connections, margin lines in
Speaker 1: real Cities. I'd never spoken with her directly, but i'd
Speaker 1: heard her enough times, her dry wit, her insistence that
Speaker 1: every city deserves at least one good myth. The Leccher
Speaker 1: Hall was packed with students on a few pensioners who
Speaker 1: light me clung to the city for both fruits and mystery.
Speaker 1: I found a seat near the back notebook already open.
Speaker 1: Ferris began with a map overhead, a city grid overlaid
Speaker 1: by pencil lines highlighted in yellow and blue. Some roads
Speaker 1: erased and drawn again. Cities, she said, our palumsyst were written,
Speaker 1: were paved, re imagined. One a short cut does not
Speaker 1: exist on the city's maps, but persists in memory. Is
Speaker 1: it an error, a rumor, or deeper sort of truth?
Speaker 1: I slipped a question into the Q and a tongue
Speaker 1: half in cheek, half trembling. Is there any record of
Speaker 1: recurring urban features alas for insance since or cut throughs
Speaker 1: that are real only for certain people or at certain times,
Speaker 1: She brightened. Absolutely, every older city is anecdotal routes'liminal lanes,
Speaker 1: if you will, not ghost stories, but stories about how
Speaker 1: the shape of the city flexes for some residents at
Speaker 1: crucial moments. We find survey's records with corrections in the margins,
Speaker 1: boundary and consistent with street plan, while Alley appears wider
Speaker 1: and field than an office. Many chalk it up to
Speaker 1: poor record keeping, but the stories stack up featureless blocks
Speaker 1: that once held a shock according to those who needed
Speaker 1: them most. After the lecture, I approached Ferris in the hallway,
Speaker 1: her satchel bristling with outated maps I drove city buses
Speaker 1: thirty years. I began, there's an alley in my neighborhood
Speaker 1: that doesn't just save time, it evades mapping altogether unless
Speaker 1: I walk it my way. What would an evernest oriend
Speaker 1: you with that? She laughed, not unkindly. First we'd ask
Speaker 1: how often you need it? Because there was precedent for
Speaker 1: routes that appear in all plans intended but never bill,
Speaker 1: which people recall using all the same. We call these
Speaker 1: not mistakes, but city intentions, apertures that open for particular
Speaker 1: itineraries then close. Just as quietly, she handed me her
Speaker 1: card and invited me to her office, promising access to
Speaker 1: plat maps and survey notes for anyone persistent enough to
Speaker 1: notice a shifting alley. Ferris's confidence was the kind that
Speaker 1: didn't require knowing the answer to delight in the question.
Speaker 1: Her corner office was stacked seiling high with rolled paper.
Speaker 1: Each bundle tired with a year in ward. As she
Speaker 1: hunted for old maps, she declared, I guarantee whatever you're chasing,
Speaker 1: some one at some point tried to put a fence
Speaker 1: around it or build a stair through it. She slipped
Speaker 1: open a full labeled Boundary Oddities District BEE, revealing a
Speaker 1: sequence of plat maps from the nineteen thirties to the
Speaker 1: present teach with faint penciled lines suggesting ephemeral connections between
Speaker 1: Woodmeir and Timberlane. In the air list, a firm black
Speaker 1: line described an alley, but read excess and notes crowded it,
Speaker 1: impassible building error, A door shifted over night, A through
Speaker 1: path unlocable survey lost one field worker's scroll in the
Speaker 1: margin of a nineteen fifty survey camp map were does
Speaker 1: Unkno alley opens from a cessl B only between deliveries.
Speaker 1: The next decades map eraised the path entirely, yet every
Speaker 1: few years the route returned not as a legal street
Speaker 1: but as a hesitant mark never bold enoughering we paid
Speaker 1: through field notes surveyor after severe writing, impolite exasperation, boundary
Speaker 1: and consistent with plans, a lost sense of direction emerged
Speaker 1: elsewhere there is grinned. The city's hidden history can only
Speaker 1: be traced by those who care to overlay their own story.
Speaker 1: The rest remains in the ground or slips between cracks
Speaker 1: and city logic. I shared my own findings, my locks,
Speaker 1: the failed attempts to bring ken, the stories from neighbors
Speaker 1: who recalled only fragments or alternate endings. Pherris listened with
Speaker 1: obvious pleasure. It's almost as if the shortcut adapts, attaches
Speaker 1: itself to memory, the way a tree root will find
Speaker 1: any crevice to press through. The more ewalk it his habit,
Speaker 1: the more the city keeps it ready just for you.
Speaker 1: That phrase just for you stuck in my mind. Back
Speaker 1: in my apartment, after Ferris sent me home with a
Speaker 1: sheaf of service gands and the promise to keep hunting
Speaker 1: for formal complaints about shifting hours, I found myself comparing
Speaker 1: my own painted maps to hers Mine Called and Shermid,
Speaker 1: a study in barely repressed optimism. The official versions were angular,
Speaker 1: full of erasures and ovlays. No one else in neither
Speaker 1: record had managed to lodge the alley in place for good.
Speaker 1: My next walked high all I had detailed both constant immutable.
Speaker 1: The baker's center at the entrance sometimes swapped for coffee
Speaker 1: linyard stubbornly. The mule grew more elaborate, then shrunk back,
Speaker 1: as if embarrassed by attention. Sometimes a clean trash bin
Speaker 1: at the exit gleaned under an impossible patch of sunshine.
Speaker 1: Other times the air pulsed with the sound of news
Speaker 1: radio or a child whistling a tune I half remembered
Speaker 1: from my earliest bus shifts. I started to see the
Speaker 1: city differently, not as a place defined by its fixtures,
Speaker 1: but by the possible lines between them. One morning, pocket
Speaker 1: warm with Ferris's annotated notes, I will, it'd sound the
Speaker 1: postal worker again. How long did it take you to
Speaker 1: deliver the Timberland packages to day? Longer than it should have,
Speaker 1: he replied, shifting his mail bag. Had to bathtrack twice.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever built a straight route through there. You'd think,
Speaker 1: with all the short cuts, I'd find one that really work.
Speaker 1: His gunt slid sideways, as if he suspected me of
Speaker 1: holding some secret, but lapped the patience to chase it. Curious,
Speaker 1: I spent an afternoon at the munics blockouts, less interested
Speaker 1: in maps, now more in the rhythm of city complaints
Speaker 1: and proposals. There were letters from small business owners lobbying
Speaker 1: for handricks to run in a passage from Woodmere to
Speaker 1: timber Line, counted by residents petitioning for its klosure. After
Speaker 1: a spate of lost children, urban development plans would propose
Speaker 1: a service ali, then the project would vanish into red tape.
Speaker 1: In some years, children's sketches of the neighborhood featured and
Speaker 1: obvious the secret route, sneaking past landmarks. Odd years, the
Speaker 1: passage was left off entirely. A librarian, catching my interest
Speaker 1: in fading blueprints, confided my grandmother's wore there was a
Speaker 1: lane just east of Timberline where she could shave ten
Speaker 1: minutes off the walk to school. My dad said he
Speaker 1: never found it and told her she must have taken
Speaker 1: the trolley without remembering. She smiled, some things belonged more
Speaker 1: to people than to pavement. That evening out for groceries,
Speaker 1: I asked missus porter about shortcut stories. She clucked hert arm.
Speaker 1: I used to swear there were two post boxes on
Speaker 1: Elm side by side, but what passed now? And it's
Speaker 1: just the traffic cone. In some letter memories of funny
Speaker 1: thing makes for routes out of things that never quite
Speaker 1: existed for any one else. Why Joe, are you drawing
Speaker 1: more allays than the city engineers? Again, it became impossible
Speaker 1: to ignore that each person's sense of half through the
Speaker 1: city depended on memory, need, even childhood habit. I began
Speaker 1: to wonder if shortcuts were in fixed structures, but a
Speaker 1: dynamic and urban logic that followed those who most needed
Speaker 1: an easier way for as long as they woke a
Speaker 1: certain way. I met Ferris again at her office, this
Speaker 1: time with a thick, spiral bound stack of old council
Speaker 1: hearing transcripts she'd pulled from me The city trade half
Speaker 1: a dozen times over fifty years to pay fence a
Speaker 1: survey that passage. Every time they reported impossible variants. One
Speaker 1: team found it too narrow, another too wide. Some got
Speaker 1: blocked by brick wall that wasn't there the previous week.
Speaker 1: There's even a note from seventy nine. Ali seems to
Speaker 1: rotate fifteen degrees compared to map orientation deliveries terminated at
Speaker 1: Rome address twice. Not a haunting, but an error that
Speaker 1: won't be laid to rest. We sat together, page by page,
Speaker 1: matching personal logs with flickering institutional memory. She pointed at
Speaker 1: a subheading Unbuilt Lane's Community Proposals nineteen fifty two. Her
Speaker 1: finger traced a paragraph Residents of Woodman Petition City to
Speaker 1: restore the quick way, describe route from bakery to timberrel
Speaker 1: line as childhood Habit cannot produce formal map, several recal
Speaker 1: mural of brid rolls artist unknown. I let out, all, all laugh,
Speaker 1: There is a mural right now, though it wasn't there
Speaker 1: six months ago, or if it was, it's been repainted
Speaker 1: on top of itself. Ferris's eyes gleamed perfect that. How
Speaker 1: ye know a city's collective memory still functions? Your following
Speaker 1: a groove left by generations, each a little out of register,
Speaker 1: but together they blur into a path. D'ye think there
Speaker 1: are other shortcuts, other people with their own impossible routes,
Speaker 1: I asked, I'd be disappointed if there weren't, She replied.
Speaker 1: Cities have built on leaves, sometimes pass lay. I guess.
Speaker 1: Then enough warm, by routine, by nostalgia, by needed that
Speaker 1: it glimmers drue. If you know how to step into
Speaker 1: the right rhythm, you're walking both in your present in
Speaker 1: a dozen past cities at once. The answer sued something
Speaker 1: unsettled in me. It wasn't about proving myself right or wrong.
Speaker 1: It was about noticing where memory meets pattern, and pattern
Speaker 1: lets us cheat time just long enough to remind us
Speaker 1: were physically present, but also, in some sense, part of
Speaker 1: the city's mind. It was Ferris who gave it a name.
Speaker 1: As we walked between her office and the bus stop
Speaker 1: Lemino Lanes. She called them the city's open secret, never
Speaker 1: quite secret, never quite official. They emerge for those whose
Speaker 1: routines are tunta vanished schedule, for them who remember where
Speaker 1: gates used to be, or who walked a path so
Speaker 1: often the stones agreed to move aside. It was the
Speaker 1: first time I felt not just included, but surrounded, a
Speaker 1: part of a living, half visible tradition, each person carrying
Speaker 1: a unique yet overlapping map. At home that evening, I
Speaker 1: looked again at my shortcut diary, the annotateds schedules, and
Speaker 1: Missess Porter's odd comments about missing post bookses. I called
Speaker 1: Ken cracked a joke about giving up the shortcut wars,
Speaker 1: and found myself laughing when he argued for the fiftieth
Speaker 1: time that the only shortcut is the bus, provided they
Speaker 1: have vallet drivers design the routes. I hung up light
Speaker 1: hut for the first time in weeks, but still the
Speaker 1: curiosity sharpened. I wondered, if the short cut adapts to me,
Speaker 1: am I adapting to the short cut? Is this some
Speaker 1: bargain struck muscle memory in return for a little urban magic.
Speaker 1: What happens as new patterns settle in, as memory softens
Speaker 1: and routine slip The test the edges of this understanding.
Speaker 1: I tried sharing the rhythm, not just the path. I
Speaker 1: invited a small group MSSS Porter Kenn Ferres herself to
Speaker 1: repeat my entire morning routine as closely as possible. Grocer's visit,
Speaker 1: Coffee with Ken brought through Woodmere Alley entrance at precisely
Speaker 1: the same time. This time I watched carefully, not for
Speaker 1: time save, but for how the city revealed itself to each.
Speaker 1: We moved together, the four of us, a gently jostling parade,
Speaker 1: A banter gentle missess Porter juggling her purse, Ken muttering
Speaker 1: about old bus drivers with too much free time. Ferris
Speaker 1: excitedly recounting the liminal lane stories of Philadelphia and Lisbon.
Speaker 1: At the owl's mouth, the mule glowed to day bread
Speaker 1: wreaths twined with blue ribbon, perhaps in honor of four visitors.
Speaker 1: The passage felt slightly wider, as if making room scent
Speaker 1: was still bakery, but with an ovalet of black tea
Speaker 1: and a tinge of pepper. Echoes multiplied to dog barking,
Speaker 1: the clink of glass bottles from no visible sauce. We
Speaker 1: passed through, emerging on to Timberlan. Minutes later, each person
Speaker 1: checked their watch, some confusion flickering. That was faster than
Speaker 1: I expected, Missess Porter said, surprise, I'm certain that alley
Speaker 1: wasn't open when I last came this way. Penn frowned.
Speaker 1: Feels like we detour, but in the time it take
Speaker 1: to go straight. Ferris chuckled, that's the liminal signature. Everyone
Speaker 1: gets their prior experience layer at Hopp. Everyone else's the
Speaker 1: city's logic oval apps. We just walked for routes at once,
Speaker 1: each in our memory, each in the physical street. The
Speaker 1: moment was neither proof nor to sproove, just a tangle
Speaker 1: of possibilities. But in that instant, I felt the city
Speaker 1: breathing around me, its boundaries not just set by asphalt
Speaker 1: and brick, but by our own needs and stories into pwining,
Speaker 1: sometimes slipping out of time, sometimes aligning for a brief,
Speaker 1: miraculous run. After our walk, missus Porter insisted on tea,
Speaker 1: passing her ginger candies around the living room. Ken, skeptical
Speaker 1: but not thoughtful, admitted his own peculiar deters from boyhood
Speaker 1: shortcuts that no one else had found. Ferris recounted at
Speaker 1: in centennial cities the most beloved secrets of those whose
Speaker 1: rules refused to stay fixed. We map what we cherish
Speaker 1: with our feet as much as our words, she said,
Speaker 1: Cities respect to walkers, the repeaters, the people whose lives
Speaker 1: were written into the sidewalk. I began writing in my
Speaker 1: shortcut diary, not just the times and changes, but the conversations,
Speaker 1: the memories, the stories each companion brought to the walk.
Speaker 1: Hattens emerged. A shortcut never belonged entirely to the city
Speaker 1: or to the walker, each which was a collaboration, a
Speaker 1: temporary treaty between past routine and present desire. Late that week,
Speaker 1: alone again, I started my walk, just as the city's
Speaker 1: morning light stayed down between the buildings. Stepping into the alley,
Speaker 1: I found the mural softened by miss the air laced
Speaker 1: with both bread and the scent of laundry, perhaps echoing
Speaker 1: the laundry mat long gone. My feet near a rhythm,
Speaker 1: step step pause at the half way light brushed the
Speaker 1: chip brick, listen for the elusive bell only to day.
Speaker 1: Instead of hurrying, I slowed. I tried not to beat
Speaker 1: the map, but to be present, letting every shifting detail register.
Speaker 1: I passed a cat stripped in stately, pausing by the mural,
Speaker 1: then slipping quickly ahead of me, till flicking in a
Speaker 1: rhythm that matched my own. I recognized it from another
Speaker 1: block of cities. Animals, like its short cuts, leaped between
Speaker 1: the obvious and the overlooked. Just before I reached Timberlaine,
Speaker 1: I stopped and closed my eyes For a moment. It
Speaker 1: felt as if the alley was listening, anticipating whether I
Speaker 1: choose to finish the short cut or tarry and let
Speaker 1: the city catch up. I smiled, stepped out, and emerged
Speaker 1: in perfect time for the market to open. The flower
Speaker 1: shops terrarians misted and waiting. The city knew an ancient
Speaker 1: all at once. I no longer came a soft alley
Speaker 1: to Pinato Survey's grit. The short cut was a living
Speaker 1: relationship the city, recognizing the routine I'd given it, offering
Speaker 1: in return a little bending of space, a shimmer of
Speaker 1: crase in the ordinary. I thought of every child who'd
Speaker 1: run a secret route, every tired worker who'd found ten
Speaker 1: minutes to spend elsewhere, every neighborhood sensed without ever confirming
Speaker 1: that the city gave back in small, miraculous ways. Days passed.
Speaker 1: I walked as usual, keeping my senses open. The short cut,
Speaker 1: reliable in its unreliability, now meant more asseymble than his puzzle.
Speaker 1: My conversations with others shifted, asked about their impossible walks,
Speaker 1: listened for places where their descriptions wandered from the official map.
Speaker 1: Each story was a line, a half remembered gait, a
Speaker 1: path that might have existed once, or might reappear for
Speaker 1: someone else willing to walk with care and curiosity. One
Speaker 1: quiet evening, as thus gleeched a color from the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: I realized I no longer rushed toward Timberline. I strolled
Speaker 1: a humming busker aired out in Old Jaz's tune, each
Speaker 1: note reminding me of a route I hadn't driven in decades.
Speaker 1: The mural by then had faded, the bread painted over
Speaker 1: with pears and ivy. The Alla's magic no longer needed Campofoge.
Speaker 1: It was in the way the city tilted toward us,
Speaker 1: willing to see it, to try to trust their own
Speaker 1: memories enough to let a routine become something more. On
Speaker 1: what may or may not have been a Thursday, I
Speaker 1: paused at the Allah's entrance, palms open as if greeting
Speaker 1: an old friend. I wondered how many other shock could
Speaker 1: quietly persist, For widowers with grocery carts, for students running late,
Speaker 1: for a weary night shift, workers on ice streets, each
Speaker 1: finding time bending generously, just once when they need it most,
Speaker 1: and walk precisely as they've always walked. The alley waited
Speaker 1: ordinary and extraordinary at once. I took a step in,
Speaker 1: comforted by the knowledge that in every great city, maps
Speaker 1: are only the beginning. Some routs appear only for the faithful,
Speaker 1: for those whose feet know their own way home. And
Speaker 1: for as long as I carry the city's stories in
Speaker 1: my steps, I suspect I'll always quietly arrive ahead of time,
Speaker 1: and that is the end. Thank you for listening, and
Speaker 1: I will see you in the next one,