18 February 2010
In Passing
The walk between my apartment and class takes 25 minutes each way, 30 through snow. It takes me through one of my favorite parts of the city: the upper Plateau. Because my walk consists of equal amounts of North/South and East/West, I try to exploit the huge variety of potential paths that I can create between here and there, working my way around the orderly blocks and occasional alleys.
One of my favorite routes involves walking past the Conservatory. In the evening, the windows are all lit up, and so as you go down the sidewalk you pass by a series of practice rooms like vignettes: someone playing the organ. Someone else practicing the piano. Someone singing with their accompanist. A violin / piano duo. A piano lesson.
It’s immensely peaceful, and one of my favorite parts of the day.
That photograph of “Demers Street”, and your description of the walk past the Conservatory – nicely dreamy! There are just such obscure, pleasant pathways in Santa Cruz, as you know. It is good to look for them…and find them! Monterey, not so much. I’m still looking…
Coincidentally, LRK, sometimes if you go down Demers in the summer — when all of the flowers are out — and you squint, it vaguely resembles someplace in the Bay Area. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.