Walking Experiment #1

Brad asked me what my New Years resolution was going to be. I paused, considered it. "Drink less," I said. "Exercise every day."
"I hate that," he exclaimed. "Why don't people do more of something they like in the new year? Or stop doing something they hate? Like say 'this year I'm not going to wait in any lines.'"

The Instant Gratification Walk can sometimes be the Rigorous Self-Denial Walk. For a day (or more...a year??), avoid waiting in lines, no matter what. This may translate to shopping at "off hours"...odd hours, to patronizing otherwise unappealing or second string establishments. It may require hastily exiting buildings, or dropping out of ongoing activities.

Have you heard "Nights in White Satin" at 2AM at your local grocery store? As you navigated your shopping cart down the empty aisles, stocking up on cans of coconut milk and baby corn? It feels enormous, like an otherworldy opera, and you're the tragic star.

I can not recommend this experiment if your imminent plans require airline travel or voter registration. If your plans involve bus travel, you will likely be doing yourself a favor by avoiding the experience altogether. It may preclude interactions with any and all forms of bureaucracy. But those can probably wait till next year.
And bear in mind, there are always alternatives and there are always loop holes.

(Thanks to an unknown prop maker at Artist Image Resource in Pittsburgh for the photo op)

Anxiety Cut-Up (with Anna Kavan)

I'm in residence in Pittsburgh at the Cyber Punk Apocalypse, indulging my whims. Today I attempted a Burroughs-style cut-up with an existential excerpt from my journal and a selection from "Ice," by Anna Kavan, a bleak surrealist novel I'm currently reading. I took the liberty of changing some tenses and inserting punctuation.

***

Knowing that there's just no good reason, the wearer's head was uncovered: her bright hair shimmered though thoughts all march toward the same destination. She had come too far and must hurry back. By night in the dark forest, fear was the climate she lived in, and metaphysical matters- psychic energy and the 9000 days she'd been alive--hurried on as fast as she could.

If she has ever known kindness to fall down, evolutionarily unwriting once became really frightened, terrified of being overtaken like silver fire, chain breaking prevented menace. The crowding trees unnerved her, of non-control in the universe. She said eleven Hail Mary's a day--glimmering in the forest. She feels better.

For your occupation of Planet Earth, for the fjord, failed to see it, lost her bearings and self. I shouldn't be alive. It's a dangerous hole, shutting her in. It was late, after sun, or it's an experiment. It would have been different.

After completing this task, nothing will happen, which always seemed full of obsession, anxiety, and "vibes." Something else from thought patterns. I think I try to prevent myselves into black walls, set. She said if she was nervous the conjecture is that in the deepening dusk every horror could be expected.