The church bell rings. 15 minutes have passed. The sun light is warming my face gently now. But soon it will burn and destroy and evaporate liquids, like it did the day before and the week before and the month before that. It’s been a hot summer.
Thanks, progress.
The last €9 ticket is in my pocket. Right now it is one of my most prized possessions. And it is a magical piece of paper to protect me from the control:ers. My ticket is a funny one. It has my name written on it with a hand that is more used to thumbing words into a glass screen than to bleed ink into paper in the shape of words, line after line until there is some sense of it all. Maybe there is never.
But the sun is here and I just rode the bike to a small park by a fancy castle that used to be a sad looking ruin not so long ago. It’s condos now. Very desirable location.
Interesting people. So I was told.
A couple in their early 60s just tried to find a hidden spot in the vegetation to do something human I guess. Whatever that might be this morning. The bearded man and the woman who looked as if she were to step into the water at low tide and not give a dam:n. I can still hear their voices. Can’t see them. Perhaps that’s a sign of success?
It’s fairly quiet otherwise.
The ferry is not in service yet. Perhaps I should stay on this side of the Main (river) anyway. Perhaps I should go back to sleep. Too few hours in bed make for a painful everything. I am completely aware that the tiny needle pricks all over my skin are of my own making.
More runners are passing by now.
I think I can hear the couple. But it could also be animals awaking.
Perhaps I missed the window of solitude.
Perhaps that couple had the right kind of idea. Maybe I should crawl into the bushes myself; and wait. A bit like that old cat I once saw in Brooklyn. Two very eager looking women had found it and dragged it out into the brightly lit path on the edge of Prospect Park. They were so excited. They were saving a life. The highest of virtues. All the old feline guy wanted was probably to die. Shed one of his lives. Once he was pulled out, possibly even two. It’s more than ten years ago. I have the feeling the cat is no longer among us.
I do not want to die yet. I am curious how much weirder everything can possibly get. On one hand some things are the worst they have ever been. But in many ways they are the very best.
I feel more connected to the dust of this path, the green and yellow grass, the tree ahead and the surely sick one next to it. I feel more connected than ever to the water, and that water, and the many healing waters I can get at the REWE drinks market.
(But mostly do not.)
I might need to ride back to the rubbish bin at the other side of the park. Someone had left an empty magnum champagne bottle where the average person would leave some cigarettes. It’s that kind of park.
A woman with two exotic dogs just passed. I wanted to take a picture of the sun greeting a flower next to me, but it looks like that poor flower was just taken into the pink plastic bag the woman pulled out once the dog had to do his morning in the park thing.
I brought the camera with me. Maybe there is a different flower nearby?
This might be the time for a completely banal picture.
The other dog had to do his morning in the park thing too, not very far from here.
Another pink plastic bag has met its one use.
Hello nature. Here are our gifts for you. You can regift them for thousands of years.
The bell rings again.
Another 15 minutes in which I avoided having a death scroll through the most fascinating moments in the lives of strangers.
The next lady with a dog is the type who will shout at me if I make any eye contact.
Oh no, she just said “Moshee” (it means “morning” in this area of Hesse). Her sunglasses might have made all the difference. Perhaps she made eye contact before I even knew what to think.
It might be time for me to leave. Cars are waking up despite it being Saturday. The wind might have turned and so the airplanes remind me of all kinds of things.
I should pedal back.
The sun will be in my back. Will its gravity pull me, or will its radiation push me? Ever so gently. I think I have grown too physically large to notice. Mother Earth will pull me dowm the most.
I should really just close my eyes; wait for the pictures of red carpets under my eyelids to stop flashing. Be replaced by true dreams, assembled from the sales bin of my mind.
I will remember this moment as what it never was.
It’s all made up somehow.
Another lady with another dog.
This one seems to be sad he could not mark a specific spot in the gras.
“Platz für Vielfalt” (Room for diversity) it took me this long to notice the sticker on the rubbish bin next to me. And this is a park where they scratch stickers off. They also put plastic bags into the bins, so the other plastic bags are well contained and easy to handle, by those who deal with all of that.
The sticker could not be on a worse object anywhere near here.
Diversity rubbish bin. Plastic bags within plastic bags. Filled with excrement.
That’s what it is mostly, I assume. So many dogs.
The bags and their content will be here long after we are all gone.
Perhaps some new version of some species will discover the stuff and make assumptions about dog worship, or the love affair with oil and its products.
They will be right.
The sun is warmer now.
Time to set the sails.
I do like this bench in this park.
And I wonder if I will hear the bell ring again as I will be on my way.
Ha! It just rang again.
Three times.
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