Marathon Ride to Green Park

[gurdonark]

This morning I slept in a bit. The Barnes & Noble Nook Store kindly sold me a set of P.G. Wodehouse novels for the small sum of four dollars and ninety five cents. I figure that if one has the Holy Bible , a volume of Wallace Stevens poems, and a brace of Wodehouse novels on hand, one is prepared for almost any contingency.

Lately I fret, a bit, that when I make music it is no longer "ambient" music but instead simple, vid-game-like melodic electronica. I have a baseline knowledge of how to make deep resonant drones in long, slow pieces, but I rarely employ that knowledge anymore. Now the songs that come to me most easily are keyboard driven melodic ditties in which I use a software sampler to sequence the sound of, say, an ocarina or a child's water pipe toy or even a human voice.


I spent part of my morning trying to take some samples by Fireproof Babies to create something more ambitious. I found my efforts particularly unavailing. Instead, I just loaded up some of my simple, home-made woodwind samples, and wrote two new songs. Each came out gentle, melodic and quite simple. I found the experience of making them very relaxing. I will do another 3 or 5 and call it an album.

I hopped on my bicycle for a late Sunday morning ride. I try to stay on little-used suburban streets and park sidewalks. Today I went through nearby little Glendover Park, crossed busy Exchange Drive, and got onto Cross Plains Drive in the Twin Creeks neighborhood. I turned left onto Comanche, passing the nobly-named Flossie Ford Green Elementary School. I like the name Flossie, if for no other reason that one of the four Bobbsey Twins in the books I read in childhood bore that name.

I parked my bicycle at adjoining Green Park, a small park between the school and a fire station, with a fair number of trees and a bit of sidewalk. I parked my bicycle using its handy kickstand, and began to explore the trees.

The trees were filled with mockingbirds. I also saw one very active blue jay. I was able to get some photos of one mockingbird, but the jay was less available to my lens.

I also saw a fair number of migrating monarch butterflies, making their slow, lovely way towards Mexico, though in fact a number of them seemed a bit wrong-way in their orientation.

found myself listening to ragtime and cakewalk music on Mog dot com. It all seemed to fit.


I expected my weigh-in at Weight Watchers to go astray, due to a Mexican dinner Friday night, but I was actually down about .2 pounds. I got a sandwich at Firehouse Subs in the late afternoon.

I watched the Dallas Cowboys snatch victory from the jaws of defeat against the 49ers on television.

This evening I walked Ted and Beatrice. Ted is so slow that walking them is a bit like being the fellow pulled between horses in a sword and sandals epic. Next time I must resume my habit of walking them separately. We went in when dark clouds began to gather. As it was, I had to dispel the optical illusion/vague fear I have that I was pulling Ted along, by picking her up and instead carrying her part of the way.



As I write, rain and hail is falling.

Comments

[melegyrn.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten about Flossie, and the Bobsey twins in general. I loved those stories and reread them all the time when I was young--much the same as I do now with books that I like.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I still remember the one in which Bert accidentally breaks a store window flinging ice or snowballs or some such, and
the guilt consumes him until he confessed and made things right. I used to re-read them, too. Bert and Nan and Freddie and Flossie.

[vuzh.livejournal.com]

I think it's important to follow your creative impulse in the direction it takes you, as long as you can recognize culs-de-sac when you come across them, because continually evolving is the most important thing.

Challenging yourself is a good idea. I wonder if fretting about no longer being in the same place is not a dangerous line of thought.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I think you're right that it's good to challenge oneself.
I like that idea about cul-de-sacs.