my desk is a mess...

I like to walk in the city. I look at the architecture, the plantings, the steps (shoveled, or unshovelled with footprints). I am shameless too: I gaze into windows at dusk when lights are on and no one has pulled the blinds. If it's a condo or apartment building a red-walled room might be stacked on top of a teal-colored room. Maybe there's a splash of yellow in a print hanging on the wall. I like seeing big houses next to little ones. On snowy days, flowers in the windows of flower shops make me particularly. I stop to read the menus of restaurants (especially the ones that change frequently). I secretly name other people's dogs.

I can walk in a city for hours and not feel it. 

It seems a lot of writers walk as part of their writing process. (Or ride bikes. See this article about a Toronto writer.) Some writers unsnarl plots, or find their characters, or hear city-rhythms that they replicate in language, all while walking. I wish I could say that had happened for me. It hasn't. (Maybe I've tried to hard to make it happen.) But even without these advantages to my writing, walking does clear my head. It reconnects me with the wind against my cheek; the world pressing on, pressing forward, just outside my doorstep; and surprisingly, the beauty found in the most unlikely places. There? Really? Yes.  Back inside, I write from a much more peaceful place.