Mayday 1

I've sat in my house too much lately. With thunderstorms nearly daily for two weeks, my standard “just start walking” approach to photography and urban exploration becomes a bit hazardous. I've now opted to take the half block walk from my house into the nearby park, which is a curious refuge. I've been writing at the edge of the fish pond, with its quiet waters, plentiful bird calls around, and just enough little bugs crawling to make me question my spot, yet there is the white noise presence of automotive road noise just beyond the forest, there is the glimpse of the University of Cincinnati parking garage, peeking out just above the trees, there are the sporadic emergency sirens reminding me of Doppler and the fraternity boy's subwoofer reminding me of Richter. Is this a refuge? I suppose it could be, but somewhere to clear my mind? I feel sets of miniature appendages walking across my legs and every time I look down, I find a creature that is new to me: A large ant, some small beetle, a psyllid perhaps? I'm concerned less about a bug bite and more about a tiny explorer meandering into my laptop and frying something internal.

What does it mean to clear your mind? Having never been one to practice meditation, I ask myself this question. If it represents the clearing of your thoughts, focusing on nothing but a black void, I've tried that a couple times, but my busy brain always calls me back from that spot: Not necessarily back to reality, though, for my mind spends hours tracing the many paths of what could be.

I don't know where I'll be in four months. I gaze at the reflections on the lake's surface to see a blurred upside-down representation of trees and a small bird fly by and I think, “This world could be anywhere.” The colors are right for what I believe the Southeast Asian jungles to be. The church bells tolling from somewhere behind the parking garage bring the old structures of Europe to mind. I really could go anywhere, and the fear is not what would happen to me there so much as how would I support myself while there or afterward if the travels are not work-related.

Ideas => Options => Choices => Reality

Somewhere between the first two is the necessary “secret ingredient”, which, if I were still working with chemical equations, I would gladly write in a smaller font size over the arrow as a catalyst – ironically, the factor that accelerates the reaction. That ingredient is patience.

Even in this refuge, with all the sounds, smells, and sights of nature abound, my mind races.