Category: walking

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today’s song comes from encountering a friend as I was doing my post-writing walkabout. As we parted, he said, “Got to keep walking?” I replied, “Yes, I’m a roadrunner, baby, got to keep on moving on.”

That’s a line straight out of Humble Pie’s cover of “Road Runner” (1972). It’s a bluesy rock song that appealed to me when I was first heard it when I was fifteen. It still does, and I frequently stream it in my head when I’m on a long walk, especially when going up into the higher levels of the southern part of town. The walk up will strain your legs and lungs. There are houses up there (along with bears and cougars), but not many people are seen outside of infrequent motorists or dog-walkers. The air is clear and sharp, and the view across the valley is gorgeous in all seasons. It’ll clear your head.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Today’s choice arrived in the stream because of a chance encounter with a friend.

I’m retired military, 1974 – 1995. He was in the Army for almost five years. Most of that time was in Vietnam. May, 1969, was his one year anniversary of being in country. It was a bloody year for him. He lost many friends. He was also nineteen.

We guessed that it was just a juxtaposition of insights that brought about the darkness dragging him down this weekend. This is twenty nineteen, which kicked off the memory of being nineteen, when he was in Vietnam fifty years ago. It’s probably because of Memorial Day, and the many men walking around with Vietnam Vet hats on their heads, and the television shows talking about different military campaigns. It could be his sense of mortality. He’s getting older, as he reminded me.

He never cried when he spoke but he did a lot of sniffing, some quick eye wipes, and sometimes coped with a trembling voice with some deep breaths. Vietnam offered some hairy days, and he was grateful to have survived without too much damage, get home, go to college under the GI Bill, marry, and have a family.

After we shook hands and went our separate ways, and I was walking under the lush green trees, past beautiful beds of colorful flowers as cars rolled by and people pursued their celebrations of Memorial Day, I started streaming an old favorite song.

Here, from nineteen seventy-four, is William DeVaughn with “Be Thankful for What You Got”.

 

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The Path Dream

Just did a walk-about writing break, and thought about one of last night’s dreams.

I was helping a man build a path. We each had a length of nylon rope. What I thought of as his rope was yellow and mine was white. The white rope was in my left hand, and the yellow rope was in my right. It was reversed for him. We were using the ropes to lay out the path. It was a long path, and were squatting down to do this.

So, weird, the path already existed in my mind, because he was laying the rope on a long and straight stretch of black cement. On either end was a platform that people were to use to arrive and depart.

Others were watching from grassy areas on either side of me. The man would shift the ropes one way and then the other as I followed his lead. I didn’t understand why he was doing this. “How’s it going?” an onlooker asked me.

“Slow,” I said. “I don’t understand what he’s doing. One, the path already exists. Why does he need another one? Two, why was he trying different paths? I don’t see what the difference he makes? Why doesn’t he make a decision? As part of that, I don’t understand why the path that’s already there doesn’t satisfy him. Three, shouldn’t the path, if you were going to make it, connect the platforms that people were expected to use?”

The onlooker said, “I don’t know.”

That dream ended.

Of course, thinking about it during my walk, I realized that I’m the other man. I have the path establish but doubt keeps me looking for another path. Why, I keep asking myself, just as I do in the dream? Clearly, it’s because I doubt the path, even though it’s already established.

 

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Hot

The heat wasn’t that bad. He thought that people were exaggerating, the way they gasped, shrieked, and ran, sweat running down their faces, eyes bulging and mouth gaping like they were imitating fish out of the water, as their clothes ignited.

A Volvo, BMW, and Jeep exploded as they passed him. Street lights drooped like limp noodles. Flames sprang from nothing to consume trees as the grass turned into black ash and a yellow fire hydrant lost its shape, issuing arcing geysers of water that turned into steam and blew away. Buildings began melting and crumbling.

Smiling, he shook his head and looked at the black-smoke inferno spreading behind him. If they thought this was bad, they should experience what he’d just been there.

Now that had been hot.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s choice is a walking song. Rain hammered everything as I strode along. Into this streamed George Ezra’s song, “Shotgun” (2018). “Shotgun”‘s beat is conducive to keeping a good energetic song, and I enjoy his voice, especially in the chorus when he sings, “I’ll be riding shotgun underneath the hot sun feeling like a someone.” As always, I feel a need to mention that I’m always surprised when I see Ezra because his voice makes me imagine he looks differently.

Good song to help you feel amused, and feel like someone. Hope you enjoy it.

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Waiting for my wife the other day in Trader Joe’s, I started streaming “Sex and Candy”.

Hanging around, downtown by myself
And I had so much time to sit and think about myself
Then there she was, like double cherry pie
Yeah, there she was, like disco super-fly

h/t to Genius.com

Marcy Playground’s 1997 song has so little to do with waiting for my wife that I laughed. It’s a song I enjoy the song’s lyrics and John Wozniak’s delivery. I used to stream it often while walking around. It might have returned to the infinite organic playlist.

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I was streaming this song this morning as I walked through the damp early day. Weather, like many things in life, is on a spectrum of several sliding scales. Weak sunshine was trying to warm us up but had a long way to go, and the wind was being coy about which way it’d blow.

Love and relationships are other spectrums of existence. When you meet someone who attracts you sexually or stimulates you mentally, where will it go? It’s not usually a steady movement. Sometimes it all works, and it comes together, and then…their spectrum shifts. Suddenly, you find that they’re no longer in love with you. They’re having an affair. Although they haven’t told you, they’re moving on.

And you find it out in an unplanned way that sears your heart and numbs your senses.

This song tells a story of one such slide along the spectrum, the part of the spectrum after discovering the betrayal, the part where you’re trying to find a way to go on.

Dean Lewis, “Be Alright”, 2018.

 

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