On looking down when walking

Alegria A. Imperial / Peregrine Notes

Some rules when walking in New York or Vancouver don’t apply to me: No sauntering abreast on sidewalks so designed to allow “unimpeded…sufficient space both laterally and longitudinally to avoid conflicts with others.” No crowding on corner inclines—delivery carts and wheeled carriers use these; when warned of an oncoming pram, or roller shopping tote, deflect your path or expect a standoff at best, a fall, followed by summons at its worst.

Where pedestrian traffic thickens, expect encumbrances from baggage, wheelchairs, or an elderly driving either a power scooter or motorized chair—adjust your pace and maneuver around them. But most of all, for visitors, do not bunch up on sidewalks while getting your bearings or staring jaw-dropped at skyscrapers, especially, on Fifth Avenue, or you would aggravate New Yorkers zipping off to work or for home. Note that none of these refer to walking with your head down—I feel this applies only to me.

Prone to stumble from childhood in Bacarra, Ilocos Norte, I look down when walking most of the time. Or else, I would end up in a rut like in my first lesson—I sank into a mud swamp that appeared like dappled ground from a distance, where the ripe macopa I loved, shone. I also fell from the top of our stairs, when I tripped on one of my toys, mindful of the calesa’s arrival by our gate to fetch my mother to school—I had geared up to go with her.

My grandmother had spilled a secret long ago, that even if my guardian angel never sleeps, I must watch my step. I could have slipped into the flooded paddies of a farm in Antique, where then-Gov. Evelio Javier—sadly assassinated a few years later—invited our Philippines Today coverage team to visit if I took my eyes off my ginger steps, and glanced at the welcome party, chanting his name. With eyes on the ground, I also descended unscathed to an underground cave, also in Antique, and escaped tumbling headlong from the bamboo scaffolding I once climbed on the rocky side of Tabon Caves in Palawan.

“But walking with bowed head, you do project a forlorn look,” once commented Jan McRobb, the friend who had taken me mountain-hiking on Hollyburn Mountain in Vancouver one summer, where nary a false step sent me careening down through paths of boulder chips. I know, I rather look dejected or even shy because I walk looking down. Less pain there for me rather than skidding on an unseen crushed peach by the sidewalk and suffer a fracture, don’t you think? Besides, if I walked with my nose up, I would have missed wonder-sparks on the ground like about $2 worth of quarters and pennies mostly heads up that picked up last spring along New York’s Upper West Side streets.

A website on planning for pedestrians underscores the role “vision” plays among the complex skills involved in “human locomotion such as balance and timing (gait, perception, and reaction)…to perceive and react to variances in the walking surface and to avoid conflict with others.” But more than escaping a bruised knee and scraped elbow, for me, focused vision on the ground when walking unmasks gifts of poetry disguised as prosaic moments like in this haiku: petal imprints/pigeons peck at yesterday’s/menu on my shadow.