My Stupid Little Walk

The bike path is nice, and it's nice that it exists. Parks are kind of like libraries, where they're so clearly good but they're outside the dominant worldview that fetishizes ownership. I feel like if no one had thought to invent them it would be a real uphill battle trying to convince anyone it would work. Thinking about it this way I feel lucky, I mean but for a roll of the dice we could be in the no parks and no libraries timeline, instead of the no healthcare time line, and the timeline without other stuff I can only barely imagine (the timeline that isn't the even distribution of industrial gains / 98% leisure / space sofa floating 2" above the floor timeline).

Anyway the walk is nice but a little melancholy-- at one point the path abuts a golf course and it reminds me of being a kid walking around aimlessly in unused settings. The other day I went down and grabbed some golf balls from the sides of the driving range for no reason, just bouncing them on the asphalt. On the other side of the golf course, where we have to walk along the road for a stretch, there's a spooky illegal dump site with a shredded hammock and a mangled papasan chair. We also pass a workout area with gymnastics bars and sometimes these 2 roommates (of each other, not us) are there doing push-ups. Whenever we pass someone I try to say hi because right now I'm extremely thirsty for saying hi and for being said hi back to. Providence RI is not a very "we say hi" locale, never has been.

The path is next to water for a while, which is a blessing, just a little stream. The water is right there next to you, flowing or whatever, and it would be so easy to push someone in but I guess that just doesn't happen, which is refreshing. Sometimes there's ducks. Other birds we sometimes see include the geese in the water feature at the golf course, and some lightly irridescent black birds that fuck around in the brambles of an overhang. I'm not sure if they are "black birds" or not but they were definitely birds and certainly black, not semigloss finish like a crow but real shiny with notes of blue, like a cheap black wig. I also saw a small brown bird, and something that I thought was a bird but was actually just something stuck on the power line. We were talking about birds and I got to thinking about how if you showed a dinosaur a picture of a bird and said this is you in like 200 million years, well I don't know what they'd think but if it was me I'd be like hell yeah, what do I eat, bugs? berries? trash?

For plant life we see all sorts of the kinds of things that grow along a threshhold, fissure, or recently disrupted area-- dandelions, sumac, other weird bushes and cool weeds. A few days ago a bunch of purple shit was ready to pop, and today it had indeed popped. Last week we found some weird healthy looking lettucey guys in a swampy zone, today it was still there, with little if any change. I think these lettuces just try to grow as big as they can before the leaves on the trees horn in on the sunlight, but they don't have the juice for a long distance race. They blow up in early spring and then they just scrape by on scraps of light and swamp nutriment for the rest of the year.

We tend to take our stupid little walk in the afternoon so we can come back home and have coffee II, which is a very nice way to do it. Because going outside is stressful but good for the spirit, I added a rewards stamp to my little calendar book that signifies "I went outside today". I don't really fuck around with other outside activities, just the walk on the bike path which is a very low density human interaction activity. No one call the pigs on me for my stupid little walk.

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links / misc

• When I was writing for a website a few years ago I did a good one on this week - Bicycle Day / Earth Day / Weed Day. You can read that here: [link] and see all the articles I wrote here: [link]
• I messed up the link to the library section last week, it's here: [link]. Hopefully everyone that clicked the wrong link last week enjoyed a perfect and natural view of my perfect 404 page. If you missed it just try to go to a part of this website that doesn't exist, like http://www.fujichia.com/flsgddgdsfgsdfg
• for the best of "bouncing a golfball" I recommend this 30 second youtube of a bird doing just that: [link]
• I set up a new room in the castle, it's a small temple, of the sort I loved to visit in Japan. I went to a lot of temples and shrines when I was there, and sometimes they were very ornate, sometimes it was just a big weird rock with a roof over it. Every time I threw some money in the box and rang the bell. To be clear, this is a donations page, but the bell really rings, and I truly believe it's good luck. I've always tried to produce things free or cheap, it's just my way. If you can afford to pay a little bit, that would help me out! For the time being I'm offering bonuses for different donation levels, but soon it might just be "you get to ring this bell", which is the traditional way. [link]
• For reasons of internal bookkeeping, I set up an area where I can keep notes on changes to the website. But since this is a castle, I decided this area should be thought of as the Utility Shed. In addition to posting the Groundskeeper's Log there, I hung up some wiring diagrams and some pictures of the Groundskeeper's weird friends. [link]
• Arthur Katrina has been making youtube playlists that I've really been enjoying, check it out if you dig music- [link]. Mindy made a cool mix too, that's right here: [link]. I'm having a hard time with the current video chat world, but I'm enjoying the current "I don't know, here's some tunes" world.