Benched Week 42: the stark park

The little park looked so inviting.  I could see it across the street through the high windows of the ballroom where I was working in downtown Dallas.  In the sunshine, it looked like a small, shady oasis in an urban desert.

When I finally carved out a half hour for bench sitting on the last evening of the event, the sun was still bright and hot.  I peeked into the park.  Under the shade of the trees, there wasn’t much: a small cascade of water surrounded by cement walls.  No grass. The only benches looked stern.  There was a slight mustiness about it -- or was that the scent of loneliness?







Disappointed, I lit out for another park I knew about, a few blocks away.  Recently built, it was an expanse of grass lined with small trees and tables and a few benches.  This was everything the other park was not: sunny, open, filled with people – and loud.  In the middle of the field, a hard-core aerobics class followed the pounding beat and loud commands of the instructor. 



I sat on a bench for a bit, but couldn’t concentrate in the midst of such militant enthusiasm.  If the first park had reminded me of a spinster’s house, this place was like a beach condo on spring break. 

Today, I preferred the spinster’s place.



It took a full ten minutes after returning to the ascetic park before I understood its charms.  The concrete walls, so severe at first, acted as a sound buffer.  The constant splashing of the water covered over what remained of the traffic noise.  And the stones under my feet? They forced me to look up and appreciate the verdant trees above me.  I was wrong.  It wasn’t a spinster’s house.  It was the secret corner of the attic.  The blanket fort.  The crawl space under arching bushes in my neighbor’s yard where I liked to hide as a child.

And, after another day of (literally) drawing conclusions during the conversations of a room full of people, this is exactly what I needed: quiet contemplation.



It seems like much of life is spent either looking for a crowd or escaping from one.  The same holds true for my art.  I enjoy The Show that comes with scribing.  But I need the quieter moments to see if there is a small voice inside with ideas of my own.

So, here’s to those still, austere places – and moments – that force us to be quiet.  And to those stony grounds that, gratefully, make us look up.