Day 7: Erie Canal, Indeed.

Today was a great day. I slept in until 7am, when George vociferously encouraged me to get up and feed him. I just mixed up this new blend of food for them, and apparently the boys like it.

I guess I'm in good with George, and maybe Bodhi, but definitely george. He is not shy about visiting me in bed, as I'm caught here loving him up. I do hope my boys don't see this. Then when I got home tonight after my long walk George was in my bed sleeping on a pair of shorts I left there. He asked for some love and then demanded some food. It is just like I'm at home.

This morning I started on my list of tasks to accomplish while I'm here. There are vines growing all over Gretchen's house. And while they are really pretty they are doing some damage. So I started removing the vines on the area by the kitchen, and I had to stop there because I felt like I was making more work for Gretchen.

So I removed the vines, but I also removed paint and tore up part of the siding, but I've stopped here. If it were my house I'd keep removing the vines because this type of vine is going under the siding and really doing some damage. But to do it I'll need to use a ladder from the mudroom roof. So that means a ladder to get on the roof and then a ladder to reach the roof. I don't want to be alone for that, but I'll do it with Gretchen.

One good thing is that I've destroyed the ant super highway. I'd have to imagine your challenges with the ants should diminish. When I took the vines out from under the house under the kitchen window there was a colony of ants--the black kind that are invading the boys' food.

And I replaced a light switch in the bedroom, but the switch that was given to Gretchen was used and bad. It didn't work. I had to go from the upstairs bedroom to the basement multiple times to finish the job, which really meant I put the original switch back in.

So I feel like I really didn't accomplish much in the way of work today, so I worked on my Zinn Fund Committee work. It was really nice to sit on the porch in the beautiful weather and work.

Then I went for a walk into the city.

There were people everywhere. There is a jazz festival, and every flavor of person is out today--perhaps it is the solstice.

There are so many hot girls up here. In fact, I walked past an art museum that was hosting a wedding, and it was full of hot girls. And then a hot girl jogged past me at the same time. So I had to call Val because I'm married to a hot girl. Thank goodness, though, that she doesn't have that nasaly-twangy thing going on with her voice and the accent that girls do here. I'd not be able to live with that!

I've always like to walk in a place with which I'm not familiar. Walking helps me to ground myself in a place. Plus I get to see things that I'd never see riding in a car or on a bike. Watching people certainly excites me, but sometimes I can find stuff in the city that takes me back to my childhood and helps me to take leaps into my adult life, where I now reside. And that is where the magic of creation is--my adult self engaging in the free play that the childhood me lived and loved. This act is me making is art.

I walked a lot today. I stopped and watched a high school jazz group. And I walked to a museum where the theme is play. I couldn't bring myself to spent he $13 to get in. Maybe next time. And I walked past a skate park where a guy was filming another guy do stunts.
But I have to say that my favorite place that I found  was the aqueduct that was built to take the Erie Canal over the Genesee River.

I found the falls of the  Genesee River, and I must have spent a half an hour just watching the water dance. But eventually I had to move on. And I was so pleasantly surprised to find the aqueduct.

At first I had no idea what the aqueduct was because I spent so much time just looking at the falls of the Genesee River. I probably spent 45 minutes just watching the ducks and the gulls. I was so at peace and enamored with the sights and the sounds of the falls.

There weren't fences high enough to suggest that I couldn't go in to see what was going on, so I did. I had to jump down a 14 foot drop, which I guess keeps most people out. But my knees are mostly good and can take a jump like that. So I then had to choose a way to walk. One way was just darkness, and the other way was a bunch of arches decorated with graffiti art.

So I jumped down the jump and started to walk across the river. It was wonderful and magical to think that I was a river barge going over the Genesee in 1830. Of course the graffiti grounded me in today, but I still had fun imagining that I was back then.

The further I went down the way the creepier it got. But I would not be dissuaded because there was so much great art. So I kept walking and walking and walking. It was eerie because nobody was around, but that also made it wonderful.

The path took me across the river and under the library. And the artwork just kept going. It is clear that artists spend much time here, even if I was alone now. It makes me wonder how museums can charge obscene amounts of money to look at great art, and yet there is free art to be had if I just look for it. I'm glad I kept my $13 dollars and spent time walking this path that only few have gone to see art made by contemporary masters.

The way kept getting creepier, but I would not be dissuaded.

"The Soul travels;  
The body does not travel as much as the soul;
The body has just as great a work as the soul, and parts away at last for the journeys of the soul.  
  
All parts away for the progress of souls;  
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments,—all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of Souls along the grand roads of the universe.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.  
  
Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,  
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,  
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go;  
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great." Song of the Open Road, Walt Whitman.

I'm not sure why, but as I walked through the aqueduct I remembered my time playing football as a child. My mother was on her own at this point, so she got scholarships for me to play because I was so good. My best friend was Brian Kelly Moore, and his father took to me to and from practices. But eventually I became the nemesis to Kelly on the football field, where he was the quarterback and I was the nose tackle. Image me, a tiny fellow as a nose tackle. But I was. I was so fast that the center and the guards could not contain me. I would shoot left or right--or go through the center's legs--and sack the quarterback, my friend Kelly. So Kelly's dad stopped picking me up to get me to practice. I found drugs and alcohol a lot easier to play with than a football. Alcohol haunts me still today.