Category: walking

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.

 

0

Thursday’s Theme Music

Walking through the town that’s my home, the many vacant faces I encountered coaxed “1979” by the Smashing Pumpkins (1996) into my stream.

So many people use vacant, unwilling or unable to look at others. Their faces are often empty and sad. Wealthy, poor, homeless, students, male and female, I wonder what’s going on with them? Does life have them distracted, or are they hollow people?

Always something to think about when you’re walking, you know? Distractions from the dreams, they often end up as additions to the writing in progress.

Cheers

0

Interruption

He came across a disaster. Dead ants were spread everywhere. Most were smashed into small, curled bodies. Some were obliterated. Ant parts were everywhere.

He couldn’t imagine what’d happened. Down on his hands and knees, he ignored the traffic in the street beside him and mourned their losses, watching as the bodies were collected and carried away. After the final body was gone, he went to rise when he saw the ants come out and face him. All were still for several moments. When he felt an appropriate amount of time had passed, he bowed his head and said, “I’m sorry.”

The ants retreated to resume their lives, and he went on his way.

0

Saturday’s Theme Music

Watching the travelers and tourists around Ashland, I often wonder about back stories. I want to know what’s going on in their minds.

For example, a group of three girls and a boy were encountered as I was walking. They appeared to be sixteen, seventeen years old. All were white and brunette. The guy was dressed in white pants, white activity shoes, and a tee shirt with an unbuttoned green, blue, and yellow plaid shirt. One hand in his pocket, sunglasses on, the other hand held a Starbucks Grande cup with a straw sticking up. He sucked on that straw the entire time that I saw him.

One of the girls wore denim shorts with a white and green athletic shirt tucked into the waist with white knee-high socks and running shoes. The second was in jeans with a red shirt tucked into the waist and brown shoes. The third wore a sleeveless black chiffon dress with black spike heeled shoes, the kind of dress you’d expect to see at a cocktail party, or on Fox News. All the females wore heavy make-up.

This was eleven in the morning. I wanted to know what was going on with this group. The girl in the shorts, who was shortest, had a map that she was following, and talking about where they were and what street they were supposed to take, but the others – except the guy – chattered like birds.

I encountered them at a street corner. After assessing them and having my curiosity rise, Everlast’s song, “What It’s Like” (1998) began streaming.

 

0

Wednesday’s Theme Music

This one came from yesterday’s walk. The song, “Iris”, by the Goo Goo Dolls came out in 1998. I was walking past a bed of gorgeous bearded irises. My brain said, irises, and the stream, like some weird Siri/Alexa, said, “Playing “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls.” I finished the walk with that last bit thrashing through my head.

And I don’t want the world to see me.
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand.
When everything’s made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.

0

Floofdude

Floofdude (floofinition) – animal lover.

In use: “The floofdude kept food and treats in his bag so that he could feed any cats and dogs that he met, and carried nuts and seeds for crows and squirrels. They all started looking for him. It was like Mr. Doolittle was walking down the street on some days.”

0

Don’t Anger the Muses

I love it when I get in here to write, and I seem to know exactly where to begin and what to type. Little thinking is demanded; it’s just go, go, go. 

I know it’s not from ‘nowhere’ or some mysterious regions of my brain, or a gift from the muses. Truthfully, I’m agnostic. I’m not going to be categorical and say that it isn’t the muses. Maybe it is. Don’t want to outrage them by denigrating their contribution, you know. If it is due to the muses and they cut me off, I’d be bereft.

In my defense, I know that I stopped in the middle of a scene yesterday. I was following a trend. Once I’d shut down and was walking, thoughts arrived about what to do. Walking frequently acts as a laxative on my thinking, out there, going somewhere that only requires me to think, left, right, left, right — which out for the bus — permits to me to think.

I’d not been planning my thoughts and wasn’t actively thinking about the novel in specific ways. It was more a part of multi-streaming that I often do, especially while walking, surfing a little of one before jumping to another. This idea popped up, found its roots, and grew. More grew, developing new angles, as I showered and shaved this morning.

I guess it’s probable that I was thinking, but the muses were directing the streams and deciding what came to what. How’s that for a compromise?

Got my hot coffee. I’m in my chair. Time to write again, at least one more time.

 

3

It’s A Good Day

to –

write a book

work in the yard

try something new

nap with a cat on your lap

walk and exercise

breathe in the air and enjoy the sunshine

read a book.

When it’s a good day, it feels like everything is possible, and it’s all enjoyable.

 

 

0

Saturday’s Theme Music

I was out walking. Spring and winter have been doing a back and forth. It looked like spring had seized momentum. Yellow daffs, Oregon grapes, clumps of orange, red, and yellow tulips, and blossoming trees gave our town colorful highlights that it usually lacks. Passing some houses that looked tired and neglected, I wondered about the people living behind the dirty windows and high weeds. Evidence of projects begun and never finished rests in piles of stones, dirt, and half-completed dirt. Some reason, then, I started streaming “Take Me Out”, Franz Ferdinand (2004).

Well, I knew it wasn’t some reason that I began streaming the song. It’s because these facades hid people who could be living the quietest and most desperate lives, dealing with pains, diseases, and medicines, aging and dying beyond the grasp of their dreams. I wondered about their quality of life. I wondered what they would say if they had the chance, and if any would ask, take me out of here.

Hence, take me out.

2

Thursday’s Theme Music

I greatly admire the late Prince (Rogers). Talented and creative, the world is better for his music.

I’d been reading about the 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies. I didn’t watch anything but I recalled Prince’s performance one year. After watching the video of that again, I reminisced about his music. From that, this morning, I found myself streaming “Raspberry Beret” (1985). A song about teenage sex and a chance encounter that changed a boy, the imagery is evocative throughout the lyrics. It’s a story to music.

Its jaunty beat makes it an ideal walking song on a warming spring day.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑