Metamorphoses

There are foxes in London. They trot through the streets at 5AM,  bottlebrush tails straight out behind them, ears tall. They look like they are out hunting for mice and squirrels, but squirrels are hard to find in London.There is a feeling of almost touching it that I cannot comprehend. It is one street over and I am the only one that sees it. I hear the other person I am walking with talking, but I can only hear him as if I am underwater, stunned, and quiet.

The fox doesn't pause, doesn't look at me. Her red coat is barely bright in the gray morning. Even though I can physically feel my footsteps and that of my walking partner's, she doesn't even care. The vixen's nose is in the air and she's moving so quickly that by the time we're crossing the same street she did, my partner is still talking nonsense and I am stunned she was there and back again without looking back.

It is hard for me not to look back, even though the trail wasn't my own. I look where she crossed and where she went, vanishing into a side street some way off to the left. My path is too crooked, too less-directed. Her path was so clear she never had to look back.

She hunted; I sought after.

Back in America, I can't stop wondering when the streets of London will suddenly just happen in the corner of my eye. I walk home from work and I turn my head to look down alleys in case the London ones accidentally got lost in space and decided to overlay our new, less-trodden streets. It's strange. It's surreal. I wish it would happen.

Wishing doesn't make things happen, my adult self keeps telling me. It's a silly thing. There is nothing that isn't done when you put your mind to it and bend your will and simply create.

So let's build an imaginary London in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Let's turn the vagrants on the streets into half-tamed, unruly creatures of Victorian London. Creatures destined to die. Because they are more human than anything else, they can surrender to the inevitable and quiet their eyes and stay sitting no matter how numb their bottoms get, no matter how sore their backs become. They could also become colorful, limping along in the streets with bright clothes and determined faces. Going nowhere, but going all the same. So brilliantly happy at their own movement that their eyes look watery from simply looking too much. From watching the pavement slip by. Their fingers twiddle at their sides as if in dance.

The runners of the streets in their hundred dollar running shoes and zip-tight bright contrasting clothes are different now. They are riders and walkers, women with delicate parasols or heavy riding cloaks, hats dipping over their foreheads and veils and gloves keeping the street dirt from their skin. You can tell their class by their horses. The middle class girls are hearty, laughing in the streets, but only within the distance of another's hearing. They move briskly despite their dragging skirts; they don't see the creatures. They are bright with ribbons. The nobles ride on side-saddles high above the walkers talking loud to hear one another over the din of street hawkers and trade arguments. When they reach a broad park, they canter in the open space, dust be damned. The dust is everywhere anyways. It coats the teeth of rich and poor alike.

Pittsburgh shares one very unique aspect with Victorian London: rust. Although many factories were considered new, by 1877 most factories had been running for twenty years or so, and although steel was in production, it was balanced with pig-iron. And the trains were rife with iron and steel as they squealed their way through the city on various rails. Without many of the same treatments we have today, the dust would fill the city and the rust would stain its progress.

We could the build the city out of pigeons and rats. We could build it from the fountains, from the trolleys, from the laconic students in the park. All it takes is words. And we can hunt for that.

Best,

H. Lee Jarvis