the view from here

A man decked out in neon nylon pedals down the road at an awkward crawl, trailed by the awful sound of his flat bycicle tire. It bounces clumsily over rocky pavement and makes his body vibrate. It's painful to watch him push his legs to grind the chain. His stubborn refusal to get out and walk a broken machine with his working legs is strange, strangely amusing.

Sarah and I are on another one of these walks with uncertain destinations. We see incredible things together when we are aimless. Hordes of cars, families of students and someone with majestic dredlocks pass us. A castle-like house (but really a house-like castle) looms to the right, and a house with a hundred windows of all shapes and sizes stands on the left. We walk through the arch beside the castle, it turns out there is a hidden basement apartment that backs out onto their deck. We cross streets and find ourselves drawn to a hideously large storage facility of some sort. It feels like another city - suburban quiet emptied streets, one sapling per garage. The grass is neat and trim. A father stands protectively behind his daughter, tricycling in a pink parka. She gets out and decides to fall down, kissing the sunny pavement with her cheek. There is a dead end here.

We walk towards the giant cylinders, offwhite cream-coloured tubes in wonder. It is as high as the highest building in Halifax. We both think of the possible view, looking at the ladder glued from the bottom to the top. We shuffle down a little hill, cross a marshy moat, but are held back by the triple barbwired fence surrounding the big view. I find a shovel, but a sign warning of video surveillance makes me think I'm being watched. I decide to come back another day without her.

We walk to the end of the facility, and discover it is next to a commercial wharf. There are a hundred colourful containers, red blue green. I think of christmas ornaments. We find our way up the grassy knoll, where I find a pair of discarded pants, as we walk to the end of the suburban street, sloping upwards. At the end, below us is the train tracks, and a view of the seaport. There is nowhere left to go. We scale down the stone mixed with broken beer bottles, torn fabric, and everyday junk. Lying on the bottom, twisted, discarded, an old 386 computer, smashed to bits but not unrecognisable. The keyboard is dismantled, propped on its side, compressed in the wreckage. The mouse is nowhere to be found. We walk in the direction of home along the two tracks, separated by the gravel, the sun beating down on our backs. I watch the planks skipping in and out under my feet. We travel through the valley of rail while rocky faces stare us down. The sun reflecting off the skinny metal road that slowly curves in and out and onward into the shrinking perspective. We get out of the valley, delicately scamper up the side, and sit on a giant rock looking out on the tracks. I am happy as we take turns throwing stones into the abyss, trying to catch a rail and make a sound we can hear.