The Notebook, or How My Mind Shut Down While Traveling Between 177th and 145th Street

On Washington Ave I could hear birds chirping sweetly because the loud sirens and street cleaners were absent. The hills and winding of the road in Inwood kept shifting the vanishing points of all the buildings that surrounded me. Snow flakes, like confetti fluttering down long after a party has come to a close, fell upon mothers and fathers walking their children to school. 280 Washington Ave marked a building further from the sidewalk than all the surrounding structures causing it to coyly cower in shadows. A baby’s feet peep out from under a blanket as the mother loosely holds her child close to her chest. A bike rack with only red bikes stands outside the Columbia University Medical center where a giant banner, hanging across three overhead walkways, reads “Amazing Things Happen Here.” The building looks more like a hotel than a hospital: valet parking in front of revolving doors, huge glass windows showing off a café on the second floor, a small grassy entrance off to the side of the building. A run down YAGER PLASTIC SURGERY lies only a block away.

When I let Washington take me to Broadway I am assaulted by sound, no more birds chirping, just the city as I notice a man wearing a Raccoon hat. As I make my way into Harlem, Boricua College looks like a small oasis from run down deli’s, convenience stores, and dollar shops with its imitation of Louis XIV French and Ancient Roman architecture. I see my third black and white cop car right before seeing a man whose face looks like it is a sewn together patchwork of Caucasian and African skin tones it makes me think of both Leather-face and a multi colored dog.

Rebecca Solnit says in her essay Las Vegas, The Longest Distance Between Two Points that the thing that wandering and gambling have in common is anticipation. My walk though was without anticipation, my mind blank simply making observations and listing them in my notebook. When I got on the 145th street train at the end of my journey I stared at my notebook and felt like crying when I realized I had not had a single original thought my entire walk; I had for the first time in my recollection not sung or spoken to myself in order to better comprehend my thoughts and feelings, and that I had not once smiled or made a silly face at a passing child. In order to experience the anticipation of wandering one must let his mind diverge and wander, which I obviously had not let myself do.

I had a chain for my mind forged by my mind. This metaphorical chain is manifest in my notebook. I seem to be unable to write, walk, and think clearly at the same time. My mind seems to want to think straightforward and make simple observations without any depth when I am writing in a notebook while walking. Usually my mind is like a Plinko board able to spread out and see all the possibilities that could come from the drop of a single idea, but with a notebook in hand my imagination becomes dull, as dull as the colors of the world were this morning when I got off at 177th street and Washington Ave. from the A train.

When in class I cannot concentrate on what a teacher is saying unless I am doodling in between notes or fidgeting. I find it hard to even pay attention in a conversation if my hand is not doing something simple. Multi-tasking focuses me. Writing and walking in a straight line are two very straightforward tasks forcing my mind to zero in on them both in order to achieve the most out of each of them.

Within the first 10 blocks of my walk I discovered the Track and Field National Hall of fame I wandered in and put my notebook in my back pack. All of a sudden ideas were floating into my head: remembering conversations with friends that ran track, colorful images of Nike commercials, watching the Olympics, some things, any things. “Can I just wander around?” I asked the woman at the front desk.
“I’m sorry, we’re closed today.” As I tried to exit trying the two entrance doors by accident first before finally the exit gave way I thought about a potential future adventure returning, but as I left my thoughts went dead again as I clicked my pen and jotted down, “Track Hall of Fame” in my note book.