Yesterday was scattered, more conversation than prolonged work period. Here are two threads that stuck with me.

Donnie #1

On the way to the train, I stopped to talk to a friend of mine—one of the panhandlers who works the station a few days a week. He hadn’t been around in a while and was looking rough.

Turned out he’d been in the hospital. He told me they want to cut his leg off but he wasn’t going to let them. “I can still walk,” he said, “Not well but I can. They call me a real OG, know I’m country through and through and wont take no shit. I want to be able to stand up in front of those young guns after all I’ve been through. Can’t loose that.”

He asked me if I would let them take my leg. I like to answer with absolute honesty when I get asked questions like that—ones that feel pivotal. But in that moment I wasn’t really thinking of my leg, I was thinking of his. I was wondering if my friend was going to die for his pride, whether the operation would bankrupt him, how much harder his life as a panhandler would be with only one foot left.

The answer I gave him was “it would depend on what I thought would come after they took it”. He asked, “even if keeping it would kill you?”. I told him I’d loose a leg to live, but probably not just because it hurt. I was non-committal, trying to balance truth and my worry for him on the head of a pin.

I've sat with his question since then. The more I think about it the more I think I wouldn’t let them take mine either. I've had near constant pain in my right ankle since 2021 but I still love my body. I know it is doing it’s best for me. Walking under my own power makes me feel freer than most anything. I know that no matter what I can always walk away. It would take a lot to give that up, a pretty big carrot and a pretty big stick.

I wish I had said that to him, acknowledged how much the question of his leg was about his own power. But he seemed satisfied with my answer anyway. He laughed at me and told me a story about getting stabbed in the Chicago gang wars a lifetime ago. Then he shooed me off so I didn't keep other people from giving him money he clearly needed.

Man in a Car, Me on Playground

I occasionally stop at a local playground on late night walks. I like to use the swing set when there are no kids to displace or families to worry. Last night though, I choose to climb around the playset instead. I don’t know why.

I never really enjoyed this kind of equipment as a kid. I think I didn’t like to be crowded. I got bored easily with purely physical play, and anyways I was sensitive about how little strength I had compared to the other kids. I mostly spent my time on less central equipment when I used it at all.

But last night, I felt the enjoyed the pull of my muscles as I climbed up the vine-like uneven bars. I crawled through it’s small spiral staircase—something that would have given me claustrophobia as a kid but which now seems like only a doorway. I took pleasure in feeling the differences between now and then, in moving with ease.

I was standing on the platform, just sniffing the wind, when a man in a low car drove past and began honking. I looked just to see who was honking at 11pm, but when I looked he seemed to be staring directly at me. He slowed as he turned, still looking into the playground. I remained ready but completely still. After a minute or two he drove away.

I thought that was it, but about 10 minutes later he drove by again, honked again, went even slower as he looked my direction. He slowed down so much another car nearly hit him as he turned into the intersection, but his eyes were glued on the playground. Between him reaching the intersection and his car coming parallel I took action—slid down the slide and crouched in its dark shadow. He seemed confused, kept looking between the playground and the road. I’m sure at that point he couldn’t see me no matter how light wash my jeans.

It was starting to feel it was about time to not be there anymore, but I wanted to know if it was me he was honking at. This the ongoing work of calibrating my paranoia to the current crises. In this day and age I can’t dispense with it, but neither can I be ruled by it.

I walked to where he had first stopped his car, and examined his probably sightlines, then carefully a spot to wait. It was out in the open but so high his car roof would block his vision, and it had a steep embankment between me and him if he did get out of his car to cause trouble. I didn’t think a man who honked at people in parks was likely to know the secret way up the side.

I stayed for a while. He never came back. Perhaps it wasn’t me he was honking about, or perhaps my quick disappearance resolved the situation. I’m proud of my self for moving so quickly. I’m proud of my self for staying. As soon as I acted it stopped feeling dangerous and became instead part of my ongoing game of learning to observe with out being seen.

And anyway, I enjoyed sniffing the wind as even more from my stump. It smelled like summer storms coming in off the mountains. I’m so familiar with the smell of invasive tree of heaven that I found, when high up, I could smell it as part of the ecosystem. I wonder what it might mean to think of ecosystem balance aromatically.

Whenever I’m sitting someplace specifically to be unseen, which is more often than you might think, I hear Martin Sheen speaking a line from the beginning of Apocalypse Now saying “and charlie crouched in the bush”. It repeats like a lyric stuck in ones head, but its more “hearing” than thinking—but still lands somewhere less than sound. I haven’t yet figured out what it means.

I think I’ll make sitting on that stump. It has a beautiful view, perfect for meditation.

Misc. Notes:

• Finished Gibson’s The Peripheral last night. Its the first book I’ve read that takes place mid slow anthropocentric apocalypse AND frames it as such. If you’re looking for something that feels in conversation with the big picture of now, and our own slow moving anthropocentric apocalypse this book is for you. Probably more to come.

• Really enjoyed writing this. Its longer than I meant, but its the first time in ages I’ve just let my self write for two hours straight. Feels like getting grit out of my joints.

• I listened to an intro to eastern bloc jazz while I wrote this.

• Spotted Lantern Fly Report: Got 6 Tree of Heaven Sprouts today and probably about 30 lantern flies—all second instar. There we’re the amount I was seeing earlier this spring, I wonder if the variable weather is hurting them.

• Thank you to everyone who’s written back. It means everything

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