"House"

The closest park to my house has a pool and ball fields and too many yelling kids.  There's a tiny pond with an arching bridge and half the geese in NE Ohio, so you know even when the grass isn't green there's enough green goose poop to keep things colorful.  People like to take wedding and prom pictures by the sculpted gardens and fountains.  The police station and city hall are on the property which makes me feel over disciplined even if the only thing I'm doing is walking the dog.  Even the sculpted gardens feels overly disciplined.

The next park is a golf course so I don't think that really counts, but the park after that has actual trees and wildlife.  I like that park, but it's just far enough away to drive, and such a short drive feels wasteful.  My new exercise goal is to not only walk to the park, but to actually walk it too.  I'm either going to get healthier or have a cardiac arrest.

Maybe I should point out I live downhill from everything except Lake Erie.  This means I have to walk up 2 fairly significant hills just to get to the first park.  If I ever achieve my goal of getting to the nature park, there's 2 significant hills within the park.  The last time I walked up that second hill I stood at the top with spots in my eyes.  Uh uh uh ugh.

Yesterday, I decided the weather was crappy enough I could justify only walking the first hill, but all this stupid exercise made me feel energetic enough to walk up the second too.  Then, oh why not, I'll walk a bit more.  The freezing Canadian wind chilled by the frozen lake whipped my face raw but I persevered.  I got to the next stop on my exercise plan and saw the sign for the good park in the distance.  I turned around and walked home with the frozen wind whipping my other cheek.  It took hours to feel warm again.  My shoulders hurt.  Since when does walking make shoulders ache?

Sadly, I think walking some more might help.  Stupid exercise.  There's some sort of built in addictive process involved.  I wasn't even interested in dinner afterwards.  Unlike some of you people, I'm obviously a reluctant exerciser.  I just want miraculous physical ability without wasting my time and effort.

I'm trying to keep things interesting so I don't lose interest and give up.  The word for the week was blue not long ago.  I looked for blue things on my walk.  Now I look for other colors too.  I noticed a house with pink shutters and awnings for sale.  I looked up the price when I got home ($116,000).  I amused myself by imagining a little old lady living there.  Another house looks like it's been split into 4 or more apartments with adjoining decks.  I imagined some excellent deck parties.  The garage for someone else's house looks about the size of my entire house.  I figured out the comparison and it is.

It occurs to me that all this stupid exercise has some benefits beyond my ability to walk up hills and endure weather.  With nothing else to do other than try to avoid a heart attack, my mind is going places it hasn't gone in a long time.  Fantasy, math, and observation are as essential to the creative life as a paintbrush.  We need quiet time to hear things in our minds.  The act of creation is a physical activity.  It can help to actually live in our bodies instead of just our heads.  I'm going to keep looking at houses and making up stories for the people who live in them.

"Temptation"

I've told you before about my odd childhood neighborhood.  It's hidden by cliffs, river, and woods, and summer people gardened in warm weather.  In winter their houses were closed up and a lot of forbidden things were left laying around to tempt a child.  It was like nuclear winter after all the organic beings are vaporized.

In the ways of The Glen, "The Dentist" had half a house.  Lutsch, the bastard next door, disputed the property line even though he already had a lot of land, but the powers that be redrew the property line right through the middle of The Dentist's house.  He quit coming to the Glen and I missed him.  When he still had a whole house he used to come down with his kids and we did fun projects in his workshop in the backyard.

The Dentist left a camper on his property.  It was there so long that the tropical rainforest grew all around it, but the mattresses inside were still good.  I made a nest for myself with all the pillows and opened all the windows so I could read in peace, my little dog curled up beside me.  Nature forgot I was there and I observed my universe in a naturalist's leaf green bubble with birds and grasshoppers chirping incessantly while d'Artagnan swashbuckled his way to England to save the queen's honor.

Living in so much isolation, I didn't get the usual restraints most children get.  Nobody but me knew if I broke into a summer home, and breaking and entering wasn't covered in Sunday school.  I knew I wasn't supposed to steal, but nobody said I couldn't spy on my neighbors' personal lives and property or make myself comfortable in their homes or camper.  It was up to me to decide what was right or wrong.  It wasn't always a smooth path to my moral set of ethics and I gave in to my temptations regularly.

I suppose I should probably also say that I had some terrible examples of moral behavior.  Poaching out of season was a given, as was trespassing.  Adults cheated on their spouses and the older boys operated a major drug ring.  The Glen was interesting in a multitude of ways.

I felt in my heart that Lutsch was a greedy bastard to wreck someone else's house because he didn't want to look at it.  That was clear enough.  If I coveted something in someone's summer house I had to decide for myself if the owner would miss it, or is it just wrong to take someone else's stuff?  I developed empathy by thinking it through.  How would I feel if someone took my things?

Each new ethic I laid into personal law created a platform for nuances in future laws, but in the end I decided the cardinal law was that my rights ended where someone else's began.  I haven't seen any reason to alter that basic tenet.  I wish everybody else followed it, including governments.

When I felt guilt as a child, it was because I broke my own rules.  My guilt could be devastating.  I didn't feel guilty when someone else told me I was supposed to feel guilty because their rules weren't mine.  Over time I grew into my ethics without the pain of struggling to figure out what they are.  They just are.  Now my temptations are simpler, but harder to break.  If this action only hurts me, well then...