Yeah, no...

The first day off is never easy.  Made notable by feeling poorly, tired, wrung out, on top of being out of synch with everyone.  Don't feel up for an hour trip up to the Rockville Metro to meet an attractive 65 year old Iranian woman...  dealing with my own issues, worrying about mom, who it turns out just went for a benevolent walk with her neighbor from the townhouses, who has just retired from the nuclear power plant....  I'm sorry, I have the spider bite wound to tend to, Domeboro will help, and I need some food in the pantry, as every night this week was crazy busy enough to prevent me from going to the Safeway after work...  I need wine too, after my long first day off nap--I suppose I could have rallied, bus to metro, metro stations many, to be there at seven, as I thought was possible in the throes of the last hours of Wednesday night jazz, yeah, sure...  And now it's another woman on this planet who despises me and I'm the biggest loser creep, etc...  But that night, rather than going out for glory and a date, I do make it to the Wisconsin Avenue Safeway, around midnight, and I needed to.  A hundred bucks worth of cold cuts, meatballs, grass-fed beef, rice pasta...  It ain't easy, this moon shot, this barman trying to be an astronaut, a shepherd, a listener of conversations, attempting to be a writer of literature up there far away in the deep sky...  And I've already begun the damage, just having a glass of wine, in order to have the energy, even, to get on the bus back toward the Georgetown Safeway...  Calling Mom again, around eleven at night...


So, the next day...  Again, the body trying to find some semblance of a regular schedule, sleep--post shower, wound treatment--around four in the morning, then awakened by the construction noise at eight in the morning, the Bobcat, BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP, then the back hoe digger engine..

Two PM I wake, Jesus, what have I missed, look at my phone, see if mom's called...  Yup, unfriended by new Bumble friend... bye bye.   Women I wish to like always end up hating me, without exception.  And then slowly gathering energy to get out of the building and over to the playground with my back pack, yoga mat, bottle of water, phone, wallet, hat, etc., looking for a level spot to do all the yoga I have not done in a long time.  And each pose is hard, and my heart beats strangely to tell the tales of abuse and heaviness.  But I manage.  Sun salutations, down dogs, spine stretchers, shoulder-stand, head-stand, warrior poses, out in the sun, feeling toxic still.   I'm in my own corner of the playground, not in the way, and there is a stand of beautiful old Elm trees to provide shade here above the tennis courts of Q Street and the playgrounds of The Lab School building and the rec center.  But, as nearly always, I'm feeling like I'm a big creep, somehow, I don't quite know why, just for not fitting in, not having bought into the plan, not having a plan, etc., however you might want to put it.



Yeah, none of this life here in DC has been much of a lasting fun, just more like a service, to I don't know who or what, really.

But with a text to mom's helper, and a phone call with mom, it looks like I can get back to the apartment, change, and get out for a bike ride, a long one, on the mountain bike, down along the canal on the smooth towpath, packed dirt, the hum of tires, the sounds of nature, Six PM, dusk.

And then I'm free for a time.  The canal is low by the boat house, an odor of dead fish, but up along further there is water.  The turtles paddle, holding themselves steady, and then there are more turtles, and more, and some like huge mastodons, the huge snappers with their great shielding leather backs.   Out past Chain Bridge, passing over the towpath, the water has come all the way up the paved path in the rock cut...   No sense heading down the paved path now, not when it's under four inches of water to begin with.  I get back on the yellow mountain bike.  And the river is high all the way...  I stop to look at it when it appears again the towpath traveler.

I find the river where it is close by the towpath, visible through the underbrush and the trees, the grasses rising softly on muddy banks, I dismount the yellow mountain bike to go watch the river up close, and I pull out my iPhone to take videos of the current, the trees out in the river current, standing still, leaves, trunks, birds coming by.   Something like Kurosawa, or his dreams, his cinema, I see in all this, how the river now has widened, and running high, so that the trees out there, slender poplars still holding a few upper leaves, have their feet in the water, so to speak.

Further up, the air changes, the rocks come out, the locks and the lock keepers houses change, the river then is suddenly below you on the left side going out, down, coming round in a great chasm, and further up, finally, the sign, the overlook of the Great Falls of the Potomac...  It's near dusk getting here finally, and the torrents are roaring, filling every channel here, as you pass over the boardwalk.  Not many here now, so I walk my bike over the bridge boardwalk over the natural sluices, then wooden with railings to protect the ecosystem...  Few are here now, there's not a lot of foot traffic.  I walk my bike onward after taking cell phone video...

After I make it out to the platform overlooking the great river and its falls, I turn back.  The moon has risen, I see.  I get back on the bike and swing out onto the path, just a little further, to the park, maybe there's a hamburger left...  the old tavern.


And now it is dark out.  I press the top of the headlamp attached to my helmet to turn it on.  There are peepers, tiny, and small frogs, out here on the path, and I do not want to run over them.  And then a small snake before me, to dodge.  A small copperhead, about a foot long, and just up further, a baby one, more slender than a pencil, maybe four inches long.

My headlamp flashes, telling me about its battery life, and now with the orgy of peeping in the dark canal below me, I cannot go fast...  Frogs and little toads, I exclaim out loud and swerve every time I nearly hit one, as they are small, motionless, and come up suddenly in my the head beam.  The moon, almost full, seems to shift position with regard to the path and places along the river where the moonlight shines over the glass flat surface, and my brain has a hard time figuring out how that might be, one moment to the right, and then just on a little later to the left.

And now as darkness falls, it suddenly, or it dawns on me soon enough, does not seem like a good idea to be out now on this path in the darkness, the snake prowling in my mind still, swerving to miss another little amphibian too close to mountain bike tires, and who knows what else is out there.  Is there a bridge to a road that is well-lit, the disorienting noises from the canal bed, peepers and bull frogs all the way.

Finally, up ahead, a couple of strange lights, which turn out to be walkers, or joggers...  Finally I am closer back toward Fletcher's Boathouse.  Some wear blue light bands across their front, some with headlamps, first just a few, and then a steady stream of them.  "Is this a full moon thing," I ask.  No, it's an event.  Okay.  Fifty miles in twenty hours, they're headed out to a canal lock with a proper name. They are talkative, most of them, as they pass, but it is too dark to engage as we pass going opposite ways.

I come out of C & O park, crossing the road, walking the bike up the sidewalk where the road is narrow.  After the long flat ride, I take MacArthur just up a ways west to Chain Bridge Road, which is one of the steeper paved climbs one can find, passing first an old cemetery on the left up past the first curve, and then up, up, past Battery Kemble Park, and it's ten o'clock at night by the time I get to the top of the climb with all its fancy houses along the way.



The yoga, the exercise, the hydration, the nature along the river, all has helped.  The curing detoxing powers of nature, good for the mind to return to the noises of nature and birds and the river and the bullfrogs.  This is what I need.  Very much.

Women I like in the wrong way will always hate me.  They are too difficult for my poor drained body and soul, I who must put his energy into quiet meditation, yoga, and being a nature boy.  And who am I anyway, with all my bad career choices, my rebellions, my years and years of being an idiot, often enough an idiot seeking his own soothing in wine, too much wine.  It's all I can do to take care of myself, and this makes for a stupid and lonesome life.

A cautionary tale, and a message of hope...