The Challenge
Today, I had planned to think about my Super Sekret Project while I went for my walk. Unfortunately, I didn’t think about the SSP. I did, however, come up with a challenge, mainly for myself. That challenge is to blog about all that I experience from my walks. This is the first of such posts. Because I felt the need to also write about my ordeal one year ago, I will get many of my original thoughts for this post wrong or misplace them.
First, let’s start with music. I relied upon Apple’s Genius feature and was pleasantly surprised with the on-the-fly generated playlist. The first song I chose was “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman. The Genius machine followed that up with The Verve Pipe, then Alanis Morissette, Jewel, Matchbox 20 and on and on until “Lightning Crashes” by Live. Edgy, but not so like a knife and very rhythmic. I may not change things for my next outing.
As I walked, listening to the rad music and thinking not about my SSP but this post, I encountered a bit more people walking, or jogging, than I did last week. Another personal challenge I created was to say hi to all the ones I passed or passed me. On my side of the street, of course. I’m still too introverted to yell across the street. Plus, it would seem weird.
Creepy even.
Along the walk, I noticed broken glass, shards mostly, but a chunk in a curved shape, littering a portion of the sidewalk near the ramp lip (lacking of the actual term, I made this up). What paper left stuck to the bigger chunk was indecipherable but the glass shards clearly had once been a bottle. One that held an alcoholic liquid. I gave the shards a wide berth while contemplating what could possibly have caused the bottle’s fate. Was it used as a makeshift weapon, thrown at someone? Or perhaps, in a bit of self-realization, it knew its top would be popped off and its insides would be consumed. Rather than suffering that demise, it launched itself to the concrete ground. Better to splatter oneself than be sucked to death. Or, for lack of much evidence of liquid, it had already been consumed and in such depressed anguish, threw itself to end its torment and re-categorization of being obsolete.
Well, after that bit of nonsense, I carried on. As I headed back home, I noticed the clouds, many had the rosy blush of the setting sun’s light glinting off of them. I played with the idea that it was the same color as my own cheeks as I worked up quite a sweat. Eventually, twilight sucked me in and my walk came to a close. 45 minutes for a total of three miles. It may not seem like much, but that’s how big things begin.
