Sopping.
I used to forget how wet it gets here. You take on this “Oh it’s not so bad” mentality to make you think you are better than Californians, to make you feel like it was a good choice choosing here. I don’t want to be anywhere else, but let’s be realisitic. It is wet. It is windy, and being on a scooter in those conditions is less fun then it might be the rest of the year. Compound that with a suicidal squirrel that somehow manages to find itself under both of my tires, and you have what is definitely a startling experience: you have two tires to your name and both of them are dealing with the reality of a squealing, wet little rodent providing a bump bump. Add to that a fogged helmet, wet leaves and puddles of water popping up in the ten feet to apply the breaks and you are looking at where you just came from, a neat 180 of squirrel behind you.
I have run over animals in a car before, but doing so on a scooter makes you rethink the same like visiting a slaughter house makes you rethink having a butcher. It also makes me want to calculate the odds that that little guy was absolutely meant to die at some point during the day. I say a prayer, take off my headphones and realize there is water in the gas tank as I try to throttle away. Putt-stutter-putt. Don’t squirrels hibernate this time of year?
Exercises to relax:
Looking up images of Folled bales of hay and trying to figure the math.
Reading a piece written by a current Reedie on the audience for Family Circus.
Drinking Chateauneuf du Pape and watching Star Wars.
Imagining falling at something less than 9.8 m/s squared.
Imaging that this, or any city, can eradicate homelessness.
Looking at a puddle of fetid water to smell what washed down the hill.
In closing: I always think of Cobb when I remember this Koan, or story, or whatever it turns out it might be:
Two monks live on a mountain, one a distance below the other. Downstream monk is feeling cocksure and all meditative. She sees a leaf of lettuce in the stream as she embraces being divine.
“Sign of a wasteful being” she thinks to the rhythm of the pounding steps of upstream monk coming to dive face-first, save-your-head-from-fire, i-miss-my-lettuce-leaf into the water. I imagine, in my hope, that upstream monk caught a salmon, or a rainbow trout in his teeth, the leaf secured in some other clutch. These are all trappings. I Feel like a drowned monk.
I have run over animals in a car before, but doing so on a scooter makes you rethink the same like visiting a slaughter house makes you rethink having a butcher. It also makes me want to calculate the odds that that little guy was absolutely meant to die at some point during the day. I say a prayer, take off my headphones and realize there is water in the gas tank as I try to throttle away. Putt-stutter-putt. Don’t squirrels hibernate this time of year?
Exercises to relax:
Looking up images of Folled bales of hay and trying to figure the math.
Reading a piece written by a current Reedie on the audience for Family Circus.
Drinking Chateauneuf du Pape and watching Star Wars.
Imagining falling at something less than 9.8 m/s squared.
Imaging that this, or any city, can eradicate homelessness.
Looking at a puddle of fetid water to smell what washed down the hill.
In closing: I always think of Cobb when I remember this Koan, or story, or whatever it turns out it might be:
Two monks live on a mountain, one a distance below the other. Downstream monk is feeling cocksure and all meditative. She sees a leaf of lettuce in the stream as she embraces being divine.
“Sign of a wasteful being” she thinks to the rhythm of the pounding steps of upstream monk coming to dive face-first, save-your-head-from-fire, i-miss-my-lettuce-leaf into the water. I imagine, in my hope, that upstream monk caught a salmon, or a rainbow trout in his teeth, the leaf secured in some other clutch. These are all trappings. I Feel like a drowned monk.
posted by Jassmond at 4:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home