I sped it up. It took 1 minute and 45 seconds for the moon to touch the trees on the horizon before it disappeared entirely.
Category Archives: Personal
I Won
I started the walk trying to protect myself against the cold, rain, and blustery wind. I gave up and let it try to win the war of wills. There was magic out there early this morning, because I had a little bit of it trapped in my head before I went out there.
Don’t get me wrong, I would have preferred the weather that allowed me to walk hundreds of miles in the dark during the summer. But that’s the kind of stupid thinking that convinces us we need to wait until everything’s perfect before we do anything.
By the time I entered the inconvenience store and got another delicious cup of hot coffee, I’ll admit the walk had me chilled to the bone. That’s why I call these stolen moments. I stole this cold beautiful walk from all the excuses I could have easily given to skip today.
The prose of it comes from the exercise.
But the poetry of it is a private thing.
.
Sometimes
It ain’t always peaches and cream.
Yesterday morning, I got angry and couldn’t shake it. Rationalizing it, my attempts to set it aside failed. It was disrespect, coiled inside repetition.
When I finished work, I walked out into the cold breeze and stood in the middle of the trees, watching the crows berate each other.
Paradoxically, what gave me peace is that someone sent me a funny video. At its heart, it was a nihilistic reminder of the stupidity of how important everything seems. The cause of my anger hadn’t dissipated but I did succeed in punting it into the future.
X
.
Odd
There are a couple of streets that sometimes inspire me to get spooked, despite not being superstitious. One of them is Oakland. Not the Oakland y’all know when the sun is up. It’s a different place at 2:00 in the morning. It has some beautiful houses on it, even the older ones interspersed among the modern narrow profile ones that are becoming common.
This morning I zigzagged to wander the dark streets for long stretches in the dark, I could hear booming music. As I drew closer, I watched the completely dark house. Although it was my imagination, I could almost feel the old boards vibrate from the inside.
I walked a long way south and decided to walk back. I wasn’t even thinking about cutting East and ending up on Oakland again. This time, I was hearing a thunderous muffled voice emanating from the house with the loud music. The house was still dark.
The video doesn’t do it justice because my camera brought light that wasn’t visible to my eyes.
Also on Oakland, there was a vehicle running with its lights on when I first passed it. Way over an hour later when I looped back, it was still there, its headlights beaming into the growing fog and mist. Sometimes I check on the vehicle to make sure someone hasn’t passed out in there, or worse. Other times, I will shut off the lights or turn off the ignition. If I had not been on Oakland, I might have done that today.
The mist was thick this morning, coating everything, including me. The lights of course were more beautiful because of the diffusion.
It was astonishingly quiet. In places, my footsteps sounded like cans of biscuits being opened and dropped. I kept forgetting how hard the mist was, but each time I pulled my glasses on my face, I was greeted with droplets of accumulated water.
.
Saturday A.M.
It ain’t much, because it’s missing the element of presence. If you’re not standing here, you can’t hear the song of the robin that’s ignoring the night. You can’t smell the sausage and bacon cooking nearby. The way the mist of the clouds hangs on the ground. The colors that selfrender and beguile. You would be wrong to think that the parking lots aren’t worth a second look. Our lives are much more comprised of such places than they are of landscapes and bright moments.
It’s an impossibly early Saturday morning. Quiet and unformed. Most of the trees are leafless and cast silhouettes suited for metaphorical thoughts or Tim Burton movies.
I see Xmas lights beginning to multiply in anticipation of the upcoming holidays, the ones overshadowed by a perplexing lack of charity in a lot of people’s hearts. All the lights are pretty, regardless of their complexity or colors. I can only guess whether they are put out from obligation or glee.
I often think about the fact that my days are a meal in reverse sometimes. The quiet hours of wandering your streets are the entree, while the remainder seems anticlimactic.
The Great Santini chased me down. I always look for him if I circle the dark block across from the railroad tracks. He likes to tease me by running around me in circles with his tail up. Only Pat Conroy fans will understand why I named this beautiful playful orange cat The Great Santini. He walks with pride and I only see him in the early pre-dawn hours.
Beginnings and endings are always the same at 3:00 a.m. Some are barreling toward our own 3:00 a.m. while others are just out of the gate.
Rainbow Apartment
People don’t believe me when I say that I have hundreds of rainbows at a time inside my apartment. Especially when the wind is blowing. The 8 beautiful prisms I have on the landing are sometimes blinding. Yesterday, when the sunlight hit the perfect fall angle, everything in the living room looked like a mosaic. It’s psychedelic at times.
And, yes, that is another mannequin inside my front window standing guard. He has on a Elvis wig and a Trump T-shirt. Between the small mannequin and the one outside my front door, there is never a shortage of opportunities to make someone have a WTF moment if they come near my apartment.
PS my cat Güino approves of the incredible natural light I get, as well as the colors that wash over him a lot of afternoons.
.
Be Careful
I want to be the kind of person I’ve always been. On the other hand, it’s a good time of year to remind everyone to avoid letting your better nature get you into situations where you think you’re helping someone. Scammers and people with ill intentions have practiced on countless people.
X
.
Pranks And History
I walked four miles out of my way just to prank a coworker by doing jumping jacks in his driveway in the dead dark of the morning. I covered my face as I walked along the street without sidewalks and barely any street lights. And then did jumping jacks backward, hoping his security cameras would catch the idiot performing in his driveway.
Tonight was also another chance to see the Leonid meteor showers. I walked backward for a while so that I could stare up in the correct direction. Even though it took me a long time to get there, there’s a stretch near the interstate where the sky stretches beautifully above.
I won’t bore you with how beautiful the meteor streaks were. I took slow motion video of the huge trucks thundering by two feet away, across the concrete divider that supposedly separates the interstate from the grass.
I was astonished to see the behemouth unfinished skeletons of apartments rising on Mount Comfort Road. Because I had already walked too far, I walked through Mount Comfort cemetery, thinking about the expanse of time and the number of people who’ve been in the area. Trying to imagine what it might have been like in 1862 to camp there, waiting to march Prairie Grove. 163 years ago. That sounds ancient until I realized I have been alive more than 1/3 of those years.
X
.
Shenanigans
Making my way back in a huge loop, I cut through a field to avoid the two miles of walking required to get around by road. The wind was blowing 10 to 15 mph, rolling over me as I stood in the grass and watched the sky. It felt like a delicious summer moment. Off in the distance I heard a dog bark a couple of times. A couple of minutes later, I heard a soft rustle to my left. Looking over, I saw a light-colored Mastiff mix of some kind sitting on its back legs and looking at me.
Because I’m eloquent, I put my phone in my pocket and squatted. “Who wants some pets?” The dog wagged its butt and came right up to me, nuzzling against my hand. I wasn’t worried because if it had wanted to, it could have launched like a missile and took me to the grass. It followed me to the fence along the highway. I gave it one more pet through the boards.
I wanted to walk one more time around the park opposite the equine center. It’s deeply dark and the wind howls through there. It’s also a great place to watch the sky. Heading toward it, a GMC Yukon veered off of Garland and slowly drove down the length of the park and then followed the dark road around until about the halfway point. Whoever was driving left the headlights on. It’s an unusual time of the morning for anyone to be out there.
Shenanigans came to mind. I walked down the side road and then cut to the left through the grass into the park. You have to keep in mind that it’s deeply dark there and the only light is a dim one generated from the pavilion lights that are left on overnight. Standing next to a tall oak tree, I could see the silhouette of someone standing near the front of the Yukon.
Without trying to control it, I screeched one of my infamous pterodactyl screams. I let out a second one. It took no time at all for the person standing next to the vehicle to open the door, hop in, and drive to the end of the road next to Garland. They stopped. I’m pretty sure their eyes were scanning the park, trying to see the origin of the pterodactyl scream. I let out another one. The vehicle immediately swung right and drove away on Garland.
I’m infinitely amused that whoever was driving might go home and tell people that they heard a monster in the dark. How are they going to know it was a middle-aged man walking around in the dark, trying to find lemon moments and shenanigans?
I’m not accustomed to my long walks meeting the sunrise, or the tendrils of color immediately prior to it. The birds have awakened on their new fall schedule. “I don’t get the appeal,” people will sometimes honestly tell me, hearing about me wandering around when we’re supposed to be sleeping. It’s not something to get. It has to be experienced. It’s exactly like pretty much every other human experience.
It’s for the same reason I climbed up on top of the 10 foot high mound of dirt next to the railroad tracks, not caring that I might fall down. The decibels of the air horn and the thunder of the tracks made the inside of my spine tickle as I stood on top of the mound and watched the train pass. The sunrise behind it. Try explaining that sort of thing to other adults who would never in a million years do it, even if I enthusiastically explained to them that it is as a memorable experience as watching the sunrise shine across a mountain in the middle of the wilderness.
X
.
Outro
I needed a deviation this morning. So instead of the short drive to work, I went to one of the dark places where I can see the sky. I put on M83’s “Outro” and let it rip. If you’ve never heard the song, put in some earbuds or put on headphones and turn the volume up. If you don’t get goosebumps, I’m not sure you’re human.
X
.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 