"the beat and thump of a thousand tires pouring past exit markers and flooding into the countryside. i am become a part of all that is humming that is blooming swelling in the once-quiet scraped meadows once undeeded lots for the casual nourishment of occasional oaks. yes, autumn is sowing the land with gold, all along the length of my street" - james a lewis, a poet of the suburbs there is a beauty here. it echoes something deeper inside me, a longing for order and a thick calm outside the noise and chaos. fighting hard against the struggles of harsh life, real life. makes me pour over a possibility of simpler ways. this is what shines through in the image of the suburbs. the wish to think less, move less, be carried more, cared for, and nursed by life. maybe that hope is enacted in the visions of suburban existence. isnt that the calling? the why everyone moves to these lulling spaces? to live calm and happy? still and tranquil? it's the thought of soft gestures, quiet footfall on linoleum tile. hushed whispers, carry the child up the hardwood stairs with oak railing on eggshell white posts. it's the image of polished stainless steel in the kitchen, no scuffs or mars. the copper pots and pans. it's the hope of contented waiting. sit still in those immaculate rooms and consider the distance between comfort and abundance. wish for it. cradle the moments like tea between your open pressed palms. i'd defend that dream. the clean movements of the windblown swings, the tired benches and the empty playground. the contemplative cool which autumn carries so perfectly through the suburbs, shaping our bodies for a long winter coming. it's an elegant notion, a grace informed by the forms and shape of fluid streets littered by gusts of leaves staining roads and sidewalks. the wet streets in the morning, rising to the beautiful motions of a practiced routine, a ballet in the driveway, over and again, over and again, as you train and strain for some improbable perfection. there is meaning. there is faith and memory. there is hope and confusion and a profound wish, a goal. to live this life, within this place, in the thickness, in the physical form of the moment and the empty space beyond the apartments, the busses, the lawns. those with a connection see within, witness to a sacred glow from the street lights. we see the long sidewalk illuminated and displayed, the reckoning that our lives are lived in the fullness of being. and you from without, learn the eyes to read the thickness, the depth and the soul. see with me on this one. the topography of the suburban experience is made up of many dimensions; of Ins, and Outs, of nostalgic locales where memories line the paths like trees and dandelions and trash. there is a poetry here, in these strange particular unusual usual places, one that pushes us to become more than the quiet living which lies around us. the lucky folks see the suburbs as a "what this could be" rather than succumbing to its silence. there is the possibility of noise and of movement. of cracks in the sidewalk sprouting orchestras and cannon fire. sometimes it echoes across the baseball diamonds and soccer fields. sometimes it hugs the fog and dances in the lights shining down from above. the quiet, the noise. the low lying hope that snakes behind the rows. all turned around into and unto itself in the swirling drain of the cul-de-sac. wash away by night the horror of some awful real life in all its sorrow and wonder.   . sorrow and wonder .