It was kind of warm today so I went for a walk.
I wore all black and greys so I could pick up alot of sun-shine and maybe pretend it was spring already and I wouldn't spend any more days feeling damp and cold.
I took along a soda in an aluminum can and I imagined that people going by in cars would see me and think "look at that strange boy walking on the grass and holding a colorful beer. What's he thinking, what could possibly be on his mind?". They'd have one of those movie dialouges, where their voice would be playing, and they'd have a close-up of my face looking pensive and bobbing slightly as I walk.
I walked in the depressions that the bulldozers made a few years ago, the pebbles now bleached and pressed into the mud and the ground now moist from the melting ice.
I ended up on my favourite hill, lying on my back with my colorful faux-beer balanced next to me. I thought about how great this would look in a film, the boy dressed in black holding a blue and green aluminum can and watching the clouds go by, but I couldn't watch the clouds go by because, well, I was thinking about movies and how great I'd look in one. I got up after a few minutes because my legs were getting cold.
I wandered for a while doing not-much, and ended up climbing on the hulking skeleton of an oak tree that fell down several years ago and has since dried out and become brittle. The way it fell, there's two levels to the skeleton linked by a ladder of small branches that you can wedge your feet between if you're feeling brave.
I made my way to the upper-skeleton, the Ribs I guess, and picked my way through the mouse and vole organs that hawks would leave there. They looked like dried apples until you got up close and saw the veins and pipes inside. I sat there for what must have been ten minutes, watching some blue-birds float around and some crows watching enviously from a bush. The blue-birds, they're the young ones and the crows are old and senile. They're just born that way, they can't help it.
When I'd climbed this skeleton, I told myself I wouldn't climb down. I jump from things, it's just a small thing that I do to try and sound interesting. This is fine in the summer when the grass is high and the ground is soft and inviting, saturated with rain and fresh-air that smells like fruit and not like bark. That's summer. This is winter, and all the water and fruit in the ground has turned to ice and the grass has died and if anyone was dumb enough to think this was a good cushion from 20 feet up, they've made their own bed and they're going to fall on it. Hard.
When I jumped, the world sped up and things skipped, like an old fucked-up record, and the ground hit me before I had time to slow down and be graceful. The world skipped and I landed on both feet and then on my hands and then on my back. I landed with a THUMP and then a laugh as I got up and kind-of-danced the pain off, saying "ohman, oh
MAN, what the fuck was THAT?". I felt tingly and alive and I don't believe it because I bruised my heels and tailbone pretty badly. I'm going to limp for a while and relish the pain now, because I like to feel like I'm living. No matter how many pieces of clothing or grades or whatever, this pain in my side is something so obscene that you can't help by say "Hey, yeah, I could die. I could lose my arms and eyes and I could suddenly forget everything. But, I won't, because I jumped from a fucking tree, and hey, I'm alright".
