The Way My Brain Works

From: Walker Sculpture Garden
September 25, 2012

My phone had gone dead and I forgot my camera, so I couldn't take pictures.
I was going to leave. I had even gotten into my car and shifted it into drive.
Then I thought, "No. Stay. Take your notebook. Write. Sit in the sunlight. Be slow."
So, I did.

What if I just wrote what I thought?

Yes, I want to take pictures of my tennis shoes in the sunlight because all things look beautiful in the sunlight. No, not all. It's most. I bet death doesn't look good in the sunlight.

Hmmmm. Waiting for things to speak to me.

Look at the small kids in the distance choosing to dance around while surrounded by benches. They're rebels and they don't know it. I want to sit on those benches! Each one of them. And see how the world looks different from each one.

I live the combination of industrial and nature. The combination of them pitted against each other. I wonder if it's the same reason why I like when people force organization and patterns into nature, like rows of trees. Something about the duality. Maybe there's something about the collaboration of order and freedom. Tamed chaos. I don't know. Structure combined with freedom to create beauty?

I see a question box on a post. I wonder if it has pencils in it or if they expect people just to have a writing utensil with them. I want to put a question box in my front yard. I wonder what questions I would get. Would it be filled with foul teenage comments. Maybe I'll put my own questions in it and answer them. Would I feel more obligated to come up with answers if I had to go through that process? If I put up a question box, I should put up one of those micro-libraries on a post too. I love that idea. I wonder if anyone would use it.

There is a couple walking by me. The woman is very pregnant. They're about to be three, three of them. It's strange that they don't know what that will be like. Forever changed. Lives. Bodies. Moments. Love. Freedom. Risk.

I only see one other person. Strange for such a beautiful day and beautiful place. I'm mentally claiming the gardens as mine. It IS.....ALL MINE. Ta da. Now, there is no one here. Haha. It's me and the spoon and the cherry.

I decided to check out those benches. Ohhhh. They're engraved! There  are 28, 7 on each side of the square. I'm going to read each one of them.

#2 "It takes a while before you can step over inert bodies and go ahead with what you were trying to do."..............especially if the inert body is you! I'm sitting on this bench for a while. Is that Freudian?

#6 "There is a period when it is clear that you have gone wrong but you continue. Sometimes there is a luxurious amount of time before anything bad happens." Hmmmmm. Wonder how many people are waiting for something bad to happen. Probably should sit on this one too.

Uhhhh. Who invited you? Didn't you hear the declaration that the gardens were mine? And you're reading the benches very slowly. You're really going to slow me down!

#12 "You should limit the number of times you act against your nature like sleeping with people you hate. It's interesting to test your capabilities for a while but too much will cause damage." Ok, love the first part but that was a surprising twist. Wait, I bet there are more people sleeping with people they hate than I originally thought. Think about all those deteriorating marriages and relationships. Yep, that's not uncommon.

#28 "Some days you wake and immediately start to worry. Nothing in particular is wrong. It's just the suspicion that forces are aligning quietly and there will be trouble." Yeah, everyone needs to stop doing this right now. Make up the opposite.

I wonder why no one reads all of the benches. They come, read a few, leave. What if I laid down on a bench and then people couldn't read it. They'd have to go their whole life wondering what was on it.

That is one fat chipmunk. There's another chipmunk. Are there anymore. Wow. They're fast.

We all teach the world about us even just as we walk by them. I'm going to watch people.

• Your shirt around your waist, flowing in the wind, taking care not to spill your Starbuck, sunglasses on your head. Relaxed, catching up with you mom.
• Khaki pressed shorts, baby blue cardigan, determined focused walk
• Tripod on your shoulder...............  he's stopped in front of me.........here's that story