A Purposeful Walk

Rubob and Tine took their very small and very petulant child, Whiny, along on their walk today. No sooner had they left their house than Whiny announced that she didn’t want to go because it was raining.

“That’s not rain, Whiny. That’s just water dripping from the trees,” Rubob said. Whiny was skeptical but she tagged along, continuing down the driveway.

It was to be a purposeful walk today, to the camera shop in town, but that didn’t stop Tine – and Whiny – from dawdling, as usual. With doors still on her mind from yesterday's walk, Tine stopped to admire -- well, a door, of course:



"That's a nice door. I hadn't even noticed that door before," Rubob said, but Whiny wasn't the least bit interested. She took an interest in a dog that was yapping at her, and Whiny yapped back.

"Stop that, Whiny," Rubob said.

Tine thought Whiny might get eaten, and Rubob might have been inclined to think that would be a good thing. It would certainly be a lasting lesson for Whiny.



Whiny's stern father turned down Hatter's Lane, where Tine got wrapped up in another door.



"Why don't we have a basket for our letters, Rubob?" Tine asked.

"Because we don't," Whiny thought. "Can we please get a move-on? Does the camera store sell candy?"

A walk with Whiny is pleasant in its own way, Tine finds, because she adds a new perspective.

"Does the shopping center have a hotdog stand?" Whiny asked.

"No, it doesn't, unfortunately, Tine said. It has its amenities, but it sadly lacks a hotdog stand.

"We're back on the beaten path of commerce," Rubob said, reaching Main Street. "That's what the purpose-driven walk is all about: the beaten path of commerce." Huge vehicles rushed by Rubob, Tine and Whiny, entirely oblivious to their presence. But then vehicles are oblivious, aren't they?

Tine busied herself with yet another door, and Whiny was heard to say, "Another door?"



Rubob traipsed through the snow by the side of the road and forded the stream of traffic at one of its swiftest, most dangerous points, but Tine and Whiny made their way back to a crosswalk. Not that it did them much good, because vehicles are oblivious to crosswalks, too.

"Ooh, look, a crooked house," Whiny said in an unguarded moment, revealing a rare enthusiasm.

"It looks like a toy house, doesn't it?" Rubob said. But it was, in fact, just a beautiful old Colonial house that had settled nicely into itself over the years, as Rubob is inclined to do on a cozy winter evening in front of the fire.



Tine, who didn't recall seeing the owner of the house at the Hysterical Society gathering the previous afternoon, asked Rubob whether he'd seen him.

"No, but I wouldn't have recognized him anyway," Rubob said. "I never do for some reason."

"That's because he always looks different," Tine said. The reason is that he's always dressed differently, appearing in another guise, as it were. Sometimes he's dressed casually, for a walk in the woods or a bike ride, sometimes more dressy, for his professional obligations, and sometimes he's very studious looking immersed, as Rubob often is, in his studies of history. He can be gregarious at times, reserved at other times. That's the case with a lot of people, Tine thought.

Rubob expanded on the theme, as he often does when presented with a theme. "Yesterday at the Hysterical Society gathering, everyone looked different," he said.

"Maybe it's because it was winter," Tine volunteered.

"It was like at the end of Proust's novel," Rubob said, "when he sticks his foot in the door, and ruminates on the floor or some such thing for a while, as he's in the habit of doing, and when he looks up he suddenly notices how transformed everyone is. Everyone looks so much older. And everyone did look so much older last night."

"Including us, because it's winter," Tine said.

"What does winter have to do with it?" Rubob asked.

"Well, it's all white and gray," Tine repliled.

One friend at the gathering had a new hairstyle, and Rubob related how he said, "It's very flattering." The friend replied, "I stuck my finger in an electrical socket."

If the theme had been hotdogs, for example, and not how people appeared at a party Whiny hadn't been invited to, she might have offered her own opinion on the matter, but instead she wandered off, perilously close to the road. That was a good thing, in a way, because it was a purposeful walk, and Tine and Rubob needed to get moving. They turned their attention back to the road and retrieved Whiny from a pile of snow at the curb.

The next view on the walk illustrates little but the uniformity of the world of commerce, and Tine took it all in while Whiny searched in vain for a hotdog sign.



The three crossed the tarmac, with Rubob speculating on the origin of the word.

"Tar and macadam," Tine said.

"That's probably it," Rubob said.

Tine has a smattering of knowledge, but most of it is entirely useless knowledge. Her fields of knowledge, though, are left free of Tarmac, so they're always growing. With some Tarmac applied, they might have some commercial applications, but as things stand, they have no commercial worth -- none whatsoever. For Whiny, who was looking at the drugstore and thinking of demanding some spending money, this was lamentable. She was busy speculating on whether the shopping center might have a Dunkin' Donuts.

Rubob, Tine and Whiny entered the camera store and made a purchase. Purposeful walks are made all the more purposeful if they involve at least one commercial transaction. Rubob bought a Tamrac camera case, and Tine wondered whether the company might have inadvertently transposed "Tarmac." Or, she surmised, the case is for cameras that take pictures of tamarack trees. (That would be a larch tree for all you Americans reading this blog. Tine happens to know the English word because she encountered more than a few tamarack trees in England, when she was venturing off the beaten path, or off the Tarmac.)

With their transaction complete, and their purpose accomplished, Rubob started home. "Not so fast!" Whiny declared. She demanded a brief trip to the drugstore, but no foray of Whiny's is brief. Whiny raids for spoils; she plunders, she pillages. Nothing will be written about what she bought, however, because Rubob, who likes to keep a tight rein on finances, wouldn't want to know -- or more accurately, he would want to know, but there are those, including Whiny, who'd rather that he didn't know.

Whiny clutched a big bag as they left the shopping center, and she engaged primarily in chewing during the rest of the walk. That's as Rubob liked it, because she couldn't whine. There was a distinctly sweet smell emanating from Whiny, and she seemed almost satisfied. "A walk can be pleasant even for Whiny," Tiny thought, "especially a purposeful walk involving more than a few commercial transactions."

The three were walking, and because of that, they probably risked being arrested for vagrancy when they were on the Tarmac and not off the beaten path. But the law-enforcement authorities were evidently engaged in more pressing matters on the official New Year's holiday. It didn't happen to fall on New Year's Day this year, curiously enough, but Tine couldn't begin to unravel the mysteries of that. Maybe the authorities were all in the office working on that matter, Tine thought.

"At least we avoided arrest," she said to Rubob.

"We can rest at home," Rubob said. "There's nothing so beneficial as a nice brisk walk," he said.

"I'd like a brisk cup of tea," Tine said.

Whiny sucked on a Gobby Wobbler or some such thing. The scent of artificial grape wafted in the breeze. Whiny often smelled like an artificial grape, or perhaps a raspberry or strawberry. She and her school friend Sticky Sydney -- they liked their sweets.

Tine took an interest in the things, whatever they were, over the doorway on the nicely settled house (Whiny's "crooked" house):



Tine couldn't remember what they were called. Rubob said the name for them was something like "pendulum."

Tine said, "pintle?"

"No, that's not it," Rubob replied.

Tine busied herself later in the day finding out what they're called: pendants.

"Yes, that's what they are," Rubob said. "I wonder whether the one on the nicely settled house knows what it is," Tine thought.

But back to their walk, Tine and Rubob discussed the relative merits of a certain rundown wooden fence versus a stately old wall. Rubob pronounced the fence hideous, but Tine disagreed, as they always do when they come to that particular fence. They both agreed that the wall was lovely, however.



The shot is a little out of focus because the camera, which evidently is a little more practical-minded than Tine, chose to focus on a car (since cropped) rather than the wall. The camera might be tired of being lugged around on walks; it might dream of riding around in a vehicle, like a regular camera in this fast-paced world. "That's why we bought a secure case for it, so it won't hit the road," Tine thought, chuckling to herself.

Rubob also declared that a seasonal decoration that Tine had noticed was "hideous," and she once again begged to differ. (Well, she didn't actually beg, because Rubob sometimes permits disagreement with his views, especially on walks, when he's often in a pleasant frame of mind.) Pleasant frame of mind or not, Whiny was heard to mutter something about Scrooge, and Rubob gave her a stern look. Even Whiny was favorably disposed to the ornaments of the season, filled as her stomach and mouth were with pacifying sweets.



The three passed the hatter's cottages, scene of last night's festivities (or one cottage, at least), and Rubob remarked on a singular discovery, or rather a dual discovery: "The Hysterical Society cottage has two chimneys, Tine. I'd never noticed that before."



You can see from the photo that the afternoon was wearing on at this point -- certainly wearing on Whiny, who was running out of candy and eager to get home. Tine, too, was eager to get home to search through her bookshelf and find out what pendants were called.

"I said it was something like pendulums, Tine," Rubob said.

"Yes, but what? Not pintles, but what?" Tine asked impatiently.

Things were never entirely placid with Whiny around, were they? But Tine and Rubob were perfectly capable of having disagreements on their own, even without Whiny.

Would you permit Tiny another door (or two) in this blog? No doubt you will. A door would certainly take the subject off Whiny, who liked to believe she could look after herself. Tine was taken with these doors:



Rubob was all doored-out, as it were. He didn't stop to look at them. He was talking about something, but Tine and Whiny had no idea what it was because they weren't listening. Maybe he'd found something else that he thought was hideous but was really quite nice.

As they approached home, he did point out something that he thought was quite nice, though: the curving ridgeline in the woods. "Isn't that something? You can only really see it in the winter."



Tine stopped for one more sight, a tree that Whiny dismissed thusly: "I have a paint-by-number set, too. Anyone can do that."



Whiny is at times inscrutable, but she had a point, Tine thought -- not that anyone could do it, but it was apparent that the tree had been worked on with a very large paint-by-number set. This led Tine to wonder precisely how many raindrops it might have taken. "Rubob likes numbers. Maybe he knows," she thought. And we know when Tine is overly tired and overly chilled, because her mind tends to wander down dead ends like this.

But in fact Tine, Rubob and Whiny weren't wandering down a dead end at the moment, but up the road toward home.

And all in all, it was a very pleasant walk.