Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Cutting Corners

The walk in from the bus - I’ve got that pretty much down.  I know the most efficient route, the most efficient speed, and all the shortcuts.  I’m a regular whiz when it comes to getting from the drop-off at Bush and Sansome down to the Rincon District where I work.  From cutting the corner at the third column in front of the Mission-Main Starbucks to minimize deflected energy, to spotting the time bandits and securing a path around them and their tiresome intrusions, I know every trick in the book.  Granted, it’s a short and rather under-developed book, but I know every trick in it regardless and I’ll be damned if I let you make me feel bad about it.  I seem to have gotten a little defensive there.  Sorry.

Anyhoo, my inherent affinity for efficiency is always gratified by a brisk lean walk in from the bus stop in the morning, and nowhere so much as where Pine and Davis meet at Market out across from the PGE building.  PGE’s got a great old business piazza out near the foot of Market at an intersection where one street grid butts up against a second grid, offset below it on a diagonal.  I come in from the west on the north side of Market, and I need to cross east and then south to continue into SOMA.  In a sense, it’s very complex: four lanes southbound cutting at an angle across six northeast-southwest lanes with lots of streetcars and busses and delivery trucks - but that stuff usually works itself out and rarely makes a significant impact if you’ve got your eyes open. 

Then again, you could say it’s easy - just wait at the light, cross, and then cross again - but of course that’s the sucker’s way, ludicrously inefficient when the angles are all calculated.  The crosswalk route across Market follows the wide angle of these non-perpendicular streets, so it’s about three times longer a walk than I need to take, dropping me at the far corner when a direct route would have brought me halfway to my next turn south at the other end of the block. 

If you watch the traffic, the bias is a much cleaner route, and you know I’m all about the being next to the godliness.  With good timing and traffic karma, the cross at the broad conjoined feet of Pine and Davis and then over Market and down to Main is a work of deft balletic artistry.  Done right, it’s a sweet little rush to start my day. 

Thus it was that I was pointedly conscious of my trajectory as I stepped off the eastbound curb at Market and Pine two Tuesdays ago.  The air was cool and the sun was warm on my face and I could see my whole route about to open before me in an essentially straight line across three non-parallel streets.  The music in my ‘buds responded on cue with a fresh anthem to power and grace, and my pace solidified from an easy jaunt to “total value striding.” I moved confidently toward a spot that an oncoming cab was just clearing as I reached it, across to the declining aspect of the opposite curb on the other side of Davis, briefly topping one stride on the furthest reach of that oblique slab and then off again across Market, cutting widely across the painted crosswalk and across the open street, heading toward the inside corner of a little florist’s stand halfway down the block.  Every step was maximally efficient; I felt as if the whole streetscape was just an extension of my own strong-walking self. 

It wasn’t, of course, as I discovered as I came up on the sidewalk on the far side and edged into pedestrian traffic again.  I wove gently between street-trees and newsracks on a maximally efficient route that skirted both the florist and a big subway stairwell.  I was on the enlightened path, ready to brush past that florist’s with minimum clearance.

Then it occurred to me that there may not have been a very good reason to be quite that efficient.  Especially when the efficient path would lead to my possibly kicking over some sort of goddamn floral display right there on the sidewalk, directly in harm’s (and my) way.  For indeed, just ahead of my pounding pedal extremities, I finally discerned:

A white plastic bucket, there at my feet as I finally glanced down at this key node on my nonsense-free power ambulation to work.  I was charging full steam towards my beige fifth-floor cube, where I’d be arriving 20 minutes early to spend the next 8 to 10 hours bereft of fresh air, and as I pared the corner of the little florist stand as close as I possibly could I saw a white bucket at my feet, the early morning sun coursing full against one side of it, filling the interior with a rich, ethereal light.  And in the bucket were roses, white roses in barely unfurled buds, generous bunches bundled together and glowing in the reverberant light inside a bucket that just happened to catch that glorious light just like that at the very moment I came motoring along. 

Those roses, man.  It was like I could hear them singing, they looked so good in the buttery shadowless light inside that bucket that I’d likely have knocked right over had I cut my corner another three inches tighter.  But instead I looked down and saw roses, and paused, and took my time with the next block and a half of my walk before I went indoors for the rest of the day, and I kept on thinking of those roses all day long even after I was at my little work station, stationary and workful.  I think it was a better day, overall, because of it.

Moral: You don’t always have to stop and smell them, but watch out for those goddamn roses.  A little dab’ll do ya if you keep your eyes open.