I'm Shira Erlichman and this is The Slowdown.

When I'm out for a walk, I experience an almost involuntary obsession with uncurated beauty.

The bloom of rust across an old building, a trembling shadow, the hover of cranes mid-construction,

I like beauty that is unrequited.

I am also a visual artist in one summer, I rented a studio by the Brooklyn Navy Yards.

My favorite part of my excursions to my studio was often not within the studio itself, but

in the time between bus and studio, where I would have to criss-cross under a loud overpass

humming with cars.

On that brief, loud and stinky walk, I was surrounded by trash, stray cats, and the

whore of the underpasses traffic.

Amidst this visual and sonic cacophony, I would be my most alert self.

I didn't want to get hit by a car, but I also didn't want to miss out on secret treasure.

It is easy to miss.

For example, if you looked up on the grimy underbelly of the overpass, a dark splash of rust

whipped in strange staccato, or in a patch of sunlight streaming in through a gap between

beams, three little ferns were beginning to lift their heads out of garbage and live.

Or if I was truly lucky, I'd spot silver, a soda can crushed by traffic into a thin slab,

a page of metal.

I began collecting these crushed phanta coca-cola and beer cans.

Inside my quiet studio, I baptized them in soap and hot water, knowing full well that any

witness might cringe at the potential for dog urine or who knows what.

But they were irrevocably beautiful to me.

...