The Daily (W)Rite January 2o15 WK 3

The Daily (W)Rite

wk o3

Saturday, January 17, 2o15
I think it was Thursday that David and me took a short stroll around the Duck Pond. It was a favorite place for me during my undergrad and graduate student days. And it's changed a lot since then, but the feel is about the same. I don't know how to describe it. A sense of calm? The Duck Pond is probably as close to "enjoying" nature that I have ever gotten.

As soon as we walked onto the yellow, dead grass, the geese and ducks started towards us quacking their tiny heads off. But as soon as they realized we didn't have food to give them . . . they stopped their squawking, turned their fat, feathered butts around and headed back towards the water. Bastards!

BUT I would not be denied. I crept up behind this rather large goose, pointed my camera at him, yelled something like, "HEY! GOOSE!" and snapped my pic and ran away from what you can see was one pissed off water fowl! Yeah, that's right, I ran away . . . just like a little baby man.

Back in my healthier days I ran the Duck Pond. Yeah, there was a time when I ran . . . a lot. I'm thinking that the running path around and through the Pond was about a mile . . . maybe a little less. They had a few exercising apparatuses. You could stop for a second during your jog to do a rope climb, climb up a set of stairs made from round pieces of cut log, do a few set-ups . . . I never understood people who jog in place on a indoor jogging machine. Jogging needs to be done outside with the sun shining on your back, your head torso gleaming with sweat. The feel of the ground beneath your shoes, or for you hardcore runners beneath your bare feet! Yeah, that's the way to run.

Though the OU powers that are (hee!) are basically eliminating the Duck Pond on square foot at a time and replacing it with a "lovely"  parking lot, they haven't, as of yet, touched the stone bridge. The stone Bridge! Kissed a girl or two (not at the same time) on that bridge. Back when I was with "The Love Of My Life," we spent a lot of late afternoons on the bridge watching the ducks, the rather elusive turtles that stuck their heads out of the water just long enough to gulp down some air and then disappear back into the murky depths of the Duck Pond as if they never surfaced at all. Best time of day to watch the ducks and geese? Right at sunset. They all start going nutty, flying around and around pond squawking their heads off as the sun goes down.

Sunday, January 18, 2o15

Anyway, it was a little bit cold out and David and I both were getting a bit tired. Yeah, I know, them old guys {sigh}. But on the way to the car, we stopped to watch this two cute little squirrels chasing each other around while they searched for acorns. They were so CUTE I had to get a picture. So, pulled the old camera out and got shot of this one

sitting on a log. Then all of a sudden this rat turned and RAN straight at me! He was fast. I was laughing and backing up as I continued to take shot of this little guy just booking it towards me. ""Don't let him bit you!" David yelled, "They got rabies!" Holy shit rabies! That freaked me out.  I dropped the camera to my side and stared at the little bushy shit, saying something like, " Hey there little fella!" I was always told never to show fear in front of a wild animal! 

 Well, turns out he REALLY wasn't lunging at me but at a bit of food that was directly in front of me. Yeah, I knew that. So did David. What? You think we were really afraid of  Chip n Dale! Come on! I'm war harden Vietnam VET! I ain't 'fraid of no fluffy rat no matter how cute he is, and David is a tough old activist from the 60's! "Hell NO! We won't GO!" That's what David should've said to that squirrel! I'm sure he meant to {smile}.

Monday, January 19, 2o15
So, I was wanting to go to the Regal this morning and watch the movie Selma. You know, it being MLK Day it seemed like cool thing to do . . . AND . . . I riding there on my bike to start the exercise program my doctor suggested was also a part of the plan. The Regal's about 4 miles away from home. That distance would be a good start to my New Year's resolution to get MORE exercise. So, got up at eight o'clock this morning-well, I did wake up at eight . . . but didn't crawl off the couch (yes, I sleep on a small couch) until ten o'clock or so. It's hard for me to get up in the morning these days. But I did get up and was ready to pack-up everything I would need for my trip to the Regal. Let's see: 1. Book to read if I stop off at a coffee shop. 2. Reading glasses. 3. Winter gloves JUST in case it got cold all of a sudden. 4. I checked my camera to make sure it had a fresh battery then popped it into the backpack. What else? Oh, yeah: Helmet on . . . check. Riding gloves on  . . . check. Keys around my neck and hoodie on . . . oh, lots of nicotine gum in my pockets AND my "rescue" inhaler . . . AND out the door I went!

It was a beautiful day, a light breeze in the air, my bike recently tuned up . . . wonderful day for a ride! Five minutes into it? I'm out of breath, I can't breathe, I stop to sit on a pedestrian's bench near Main St. I grab the "rescue" inhaler . . . two big puffs. Damn. I didn't get farther than maybe a quarter mile. Sadly, I smiled as I thought of that old exercise slogan: "Use it or lose it!" Yeah, I guess I waited too long . . . I lost it. {frown}

Tuesday, January 20, 2o15
I've been reading a couple of books about the 5th dimension. It's making my head explode!

Well, at least it's giving me a bit of a headache. I like the idea of other dimensions, that some dimensional creature is watching us, that it, every now and then, enters our world and we see it, but we don't REALLY see it in it's entirety because we can't see beyond our three dimensional space. I have often thought that what we perceive as ghosts may well be dimensional travelers! Of course science would scoff at me, but it would be a way to explain things like ghosts and (I hear the scoffing starting up again!) the existence of God . . . and the devil. Yes, they could well be extra dimensional beings, and since we can't see them as a whole being we might think that they're supernatural.

Personally, I've always considered the individual, human imagination to be the 5th dimension. Think about it. We can create worlds or see our own world in a far different way than most of  experience it. Time travel? Hell, the memory can transport a person to an already lived moment in time. What is PTSD but a very powerful time traveling disorder? There's a book titled Hyperspace by Michio Kaku that tells an interesting story about the idea of the existence of a 5th (I call it the 5th dimension because scientists pretty much agree that the 4th dimension is time.) dimension:

My own fascination with higher dimensions began early in childhood. One of my happiest childhood memories was crouching next to the pond at the famed Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco, mesmerized by the brilliantly colored carp swimming slowly beneath the water lilies. In these quiet moments, I would ask myself a silly question that a only child might ask: how would the carp in that pond view the world around them? Spending their entire lives at the bottom of the pond, the carp would believe that their “universe” consisted of the water and the lilies; they would only be dimly aware that an alien world could exist just above the surface. My world was beyond their comprehension. I was intrigued that I could sit only a few inches from the carp, yet we were separated by an immense chasm. I concluded that if there were any “scientists” among the carp, they would scoff at any fish who proposed that a parallel world could exist just above the lilies. An unseen world beyond the pond made no scientific sense. Once I imagined what would happen if I reached down and suddenly grabbed one of the carp “scientists” out of the pond. I wondered, how would this appear to the carp? The startled carp “scientist” would tell a truly amazing story, being somehow lifted out of the universe (the pond) and hurled into a mysterious nether world, another dimension with blinding lights and strange-shaped objects that no carp had ever seen before. The strangest of all was the massive creature responsible for this outrage, who did not resemble a fish in the slightest. Shockingly, it had no fins whatsoever, but nevertheless could move without them. Obviously, the familiar laws of physics no longer applied in this nether world!

I think artists have the ability to explore extra dimensional realms. Yeah, the imagination is a powerful tool to help us see this world in more than just three dimensions, too see life any way we wish to see it.