Nice parabolas, baby
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I really, really miss wearing head phones and listening to audio books on these long walks. I broke that habit, long held, during COVID and since. The streets got lonely, and since all things evil are born from loneliness, bad things were more likely to occur. Caution became a part of my tools. I need to hear the signaling slap of a sneaker upon the pavement, and can’t intentionally occlude or filter out the auditory environment anymore. Everything got weird during COVID, and it’s stayed that way, even here in Pittsburgh.
Instead, I now philosophize during these intervals. The ‘take pictures’ side of me is actively at work, and quite busy doing stuff, but there’s a whole different layer buzzing away behind the eyes and between the ears while I’m clicking the buttons on the camera. It’s where phraseology like ‘all things evil are born from loneliness’ comes from.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On this particular walk, what I was engaging in was mostly ‘background worrying.’ In this case, it was a website design impasse I found myself at, but there you go. I was mentally working out different solutions to a design problem, which I’d attempt upon getting back home again and sitting in front of The Device. I also wondered about the best way to chop onions, and considered the current gas mileage statistics of my Mobile Oppression Platform parked back in the driveway at HQ. It was quite humid out, and I was ‘sweating bullets.’
This was also one of the outings where I was intentionally traveling light – one zoom lens, two primes, one camera. No tripods, filters, nothing. Just me and the camera.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While considering the musical impact of the 1960’s animated children’s cartoon Underdog’s theme song has had on Popular Music, and then entertaining myself along the way with fanciful imaginings about starting a religious cult, realization that the ‘turnaround point’ I’d been walking towards was arrived at.
One last look back at the Eliza Trail, and then over the Monongahela River didst I scuttle.
Back tomorrow.
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The Newtown Pentacle 
Well said, very interesting!
dbarms8878
July 13, 2023 at 9:47 pm
As a suggestion on the audiobooks, I listen to low music with one earbud on my right ear when bicycling. I do that because I have to hear traffic around me. It’s weird at first to only hear sound from one side, but you immediately forget.
Simple Suburban Existence
July 14, 2023 at 8:02 am