Sidewalks in Winter

Something's always bothered me about the sidewalk in the winter. Up north, in cities, large enough for strangers to regard strangers only as warmly as "impersonal" could get, where garbage collection is both too expensive, and not extensive enough, where streets are always clogged by people sheltering from everything that isn't themselves. Leaves are frozen solid to the ground, both harder and more pliable than leaves are supposed to be, left behind from the fall where they neither belong, nor where they would ostensibly want to be, if they wanted to be useful. I avoid stepping on it. It wouldn't make much of a difference, if I'm honest. On any given morning, countless people will have put their entire weight on those leaves before I even get out of the door, and they haven't slipped and injured themselves, nor has the ensemble of left-behind remnants of friendlier weather expressed any discontent about being stepped on. Or perhaps they're just waiting for somebody to slip on them after all, so they can laugh at them, in a strange, cosmic sense. Anyway, I try not to step on them regardless. The sidewalk shares the impartiality of the average city dwellers, perhaps because all it knows are the people passing it by. Obviously it's just as much a question of the weather, but I sometimes wonder how much it picks up from everybody else. It's always a little cold, and there's a tendency to hit hard when you fall.

I knew a young couple who lived across the street when I was younger, before I moved further into the belly of the beast that is downtown. I didn't really grasp the details of their circumstances when it happened, but I thought back on it often and long enough that I feel like I can speak on it. I didn't know them well, but one of them had a high position in a factory. I think it produced erasers or something? Either way, they made good money. The street they lived across separated those who earned good money from those who earned them that money. One side had a garage below the building, large enough to keep several cars per apartment, the other side of the street littered the sidewalk with cars that were occasionally shared by several households. When there was a power outage in the city, the lights usually stayed out across the street. We always hoped theirs would go out as well, not just because of spite, but because we owned an old power generator. We could go an evening without power, and lending it out for money meant there was going to be a family trip sometime in the following weeks. The couple were always nice about it though. Shortly before we moved away, they moved into the apartment opposite ours. Apparently the factory had closed down several months prior. Moving from a house to an apartment meant less room, so they had to get rid of things they didn't manage to sell on time. There was a pile of boxes and partially disassembled furniture on the sidewalk the week they moved in. Parts of their life shattered on the sidewalk, while the rain began claiming it for itself. Not sure what happened after we moved away, but by the time we left, neither of them had found employment.

There's probably more stories like these around. I've managed to go the opposite direction most of the time, while watching people plummet the opposite direction and shatter on the concrete, leaving piles of their pasts on the way. I step outside my apartment building, once again. It feels like the ground meets my feet harder when it's cold. I try not to think too much about it. I wear comfortable shoes, with ample padding, sponsored by the company that employs me. Mine makes too much money, by eliminating the option for others to do the same. Of course that's not what anybody claims that we do, and if we're perfectly honest, everybody knows anyway, except for a very particular sort of managerial staff, whom I suspect have not read anything other than quarterly finance reports for several years now. I wonder what needs to happen to people to become like that, even though I vaguely remember the times in which I wonder what would need to happen to people to practice the job that I do. It's been years since I've started avoiding it, too.

The person behind the welcome desk knows who I am, and where I need to go. She knows I might hand her employer a paper, which might extend her work hours, but put a break on pay-raises until the end of this quarter. It might include more termination clauses, which starts a subtle race to which of the people sharing her job title will have to vacate her position, until the coverage with the longer hours is at about the same level as it is now. Then again, what is she supposed to do. Her job is on the line either way.

I leave the building at the end of the day. It's just as cold outside as it was when I arrived. A different person says goodbye at the welcome desk. They probably know, too. The sidewalk outside the company building is clean. It might as well be polished, considering where it's located. It's the cleanest of sidewalks that people are prohibited from using as a place to stay. Just a little outside the financial center of the city is where I walk past battered tents and loose sleeping bags, shopping trolleys not unlike that pile of stuff on the sidewalk. There's really no telling what these lives looked like, before they were put out into the rain. It makes me conscious of the dirt and the grime that they sit in, all in service to avoid the cold that characterizes the only places that won't chase them away. It's this dirt and grime that chases people up the ladders in hierarchical companies, trying to escape its influence, avoid it from consuming it their lives, starting with their padded shoes. Even if it means pushing others off the ladder to buy a few years of time. Like every other person making their way through the evening rush-hour, I pretend not to notice them. Us and them exist in different worlds, on different sides of the street, different sidewalks.