Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Slava Groshev I'm finally getting mature.
Yesterday I was walking to an appointment. I came across a large patch of recently poured hot tar.
I walked around it instead of tromping through it. I did it out of respect for my shoes.
Then there was a stretch of freshly laid cement. I didn't sign my name to it or put in my hand and foot prints.
I resisted. That's maturity, that is. That's being an adult. That's being dull.
Of course I still walked the entire 3.4 miles and never once stepped on a crack. Stepping on cracks is my most meaningless fervent superstition. I wouldn't get excited yet about my entering into adulthood. It might be premature. Premature maturity.

I don't much care for "Social Networking" sites. They seem too flip, too competitive about things I don't feel should be a competition. I had to sign up for a few of them so that I could log in and post messages asking people to stop hot linking the images on this site. (About 117,000 images hot linked last time I looked). Then I promptly forgot about them.
Last week I got an email telling me I'd gotten a message from one of them. It was arduous logging in. I don't know why I bothered. It was worth the effort. It was from a friend I hadn't heard from in a few years. That was pleasing.
He asked if this was indeed me by explaining that "following Kantian logic, and your black hole vortex since this can't possibly be you it must be you." Kantian logic?
I wrote back to him and finally figured out how to turn off the social site's email notifications. All of his news wasn't good but he's well and still struggling onward. What could be better news then that?
I thought about that yesterday while I walked. I had to go meet my friend's parents for her mother's birthday dinner.
I walked the 3.4 miles in about 40 minutes. Hardly burning speed but a steady 12 minutes a mile which is acceptable.
I walked plugged into my iPod, dark glasses on and eyes fixated with my usual butterfly concentration. I like walking to music. It sounds like crazed hippy stuff and nonsense but walking
Click images for desktop size: "This Old House" by Tim Melideo and listening to music really does take my mind to places it normally wouldn't go. When I was younger I used to imagine something like iPod's and Walkman's. Something better than transistor radios and boom boxes and car stereoes. When I was surfing or rock climbing and looking out at the endless vistas of the sets humpbacked in the ocean or a world where people didn't appear to exist and there was only sky and ground, I always thought that it would be great to have music blasting my ears out. How world changing such a thing would be.
I got the first Walkman, the Sony WM1 (I think). It was a great machine, I know a fellow who used it to record the rain and sound effects for a Sissy Spacek, Mel Gibson flic, "The River". His recordings sounded just fine on the big screen. He didn't get any awards but no one complained about the sound quality. The WM1 was a great sounding music player. I enjoyed putting together metal tape mixes. (The tape type - only some of the music was metal.) Having that Walkman with Stax earphones and a portable power supply that out weighted the whole rig showed me I was right, having your own private music was world changing. It added drama, depth and an innocent grimy beauty to anything.
Yesterday I'm walking down the street locked into my own tiny world listening to Big Daddy doing "Bacon Fat" when a little tan puppy rips around a corner and plows right into my legs. He sits panting for a moment then puts his paws on me, looks up and laughs. A little Asian girl, about 11, comes tearing around the same corner, in hot pursuit, shouting, "Taffy, Taffy!"
I held onto the leash Taffy was trailing. The puppy looked at me as if I were a cop who had just ruined his great game. I guess he was right.
The little girl scooped him up and I guess she thanked me. At least she smiled at me while she held her puppy. I kept listening to the song and thought how nice it was having a soundtrack to life.
I kept walking and Johnny Kannis' cover of The Trashmen's "King Of The Surf" was just ending and during the fade out I realized a woman with a back back was walking besides me and chattering away.
I don't know how long she'd been there. I was absorbed in the song and a sign advertising an extra large pizza for $8.99, and thinking my puppy would be interested in that.
Since it didn't seem my participation was required or at least that the participation I was giving was sufficient I just let the next song come round.
Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Edmund DuLac (The Sunnyboys doing "Alone With You" which seemed appropriate somehow.) By the time the song ended she'd gone.
I was getting tired so I was only vaguely interested in what she might have been saying to me. I hope she wasn't cursing me out for ignoring her. The first time I went to Paris some cute French girl was walking behind me chattering away (in French). It wasn't until she called me a "Stupid American" that I realized she'd been chattering at me. Being suave I asked her how she knew I was American . . .
I finally reached my destination, where I had to wait for a lift. I listened to more music and watched a broken down car get towed away. I wondered for a bit about why I had to come here for a lift when the restaurant was only another 15 minutes down the road. If it doesn't bother someone having me walk 3.4 miles what's the thing about me going another 1.2 miles?
Dinner was okay. I didn't much like the food and they messed up my friend's order. To my shame I was so hungry I ate mine instead of waiting the 10 minutes for her order to show up. I didn't even apologize, which seemed overtly hostile on my part. I wasn't feeling hostile, just remarkably disoriented. The walk, for some reason, left my right arm numb and tingling and in pain at the shoulder. That bothered me as to why. My hands were cramping badly, but that's the norm now. The pain was only a minor distraction.
The conversation would have been interesting but was too filled with jokes. My friend's step father is diabetic and had just gotten a glowing report that claimed his numbers didn't even show any trace of diabetes!
He'd already lost a toe to the disease so this was better than good news. But he's still on insulin. I couldn't find out why. When I asked questions they got ignored. So I just got quiet and thought about things, like how my friend interacted with her parents and puppies.
The conversation was disorienting. It was like being the new kid in school. There's a whole subtext I'm not privy to and there's a whole world of personal knowledge its presumed I'm aware of.
It was okay. I'm content with just listening. Except when asked about the election. Politics, the danger topic. I gave a long bitter discourse about all the candidates . . .
When we left they gave me a small gift. That's cool. I like gifts.
My friend was dead quiet on the way home. Hardly a word said until we stopped to drop off four big bags of books for a donation to the Salvation Army. Then I got yelled at for dumping the books in the chute inside a bag. Seems she wanted to keep the bags. They were like those plasticky woven stripy bags you always see at the Markets in London.
That was the end of the quiet though and the night ended calmly and nicely. I probably owe apologies to people but I'll wait until they're asked for.
Best to wait for the demand before acknowledging a debt. That's business, American business.