the park is closed.

It's almost as if the insects wait for you. You wonder what they do while you aren't around. What they were doing before you had the idea of strolling through dimly lit paths en route to one of the 12 benches abandoned the second the sun went down. Grass parks are sort of a anomaly to me. The smells of nature and sounds of crickets engulf you. Transport you without train conductors. Closed eyes act like bus passes that is until you hear that siren. Your self-made illusion is dehydrated by the salt saturated voices of young kids being "urban". The city never smells sweet. The country is too far away to imagine making it back by the morning bell. So we make phone calls and choose travel partners to relate problems to because we might actually want to stay dangerously long on that bench. Someone has to remind you that you aren't allowed to embrace that sweetness and buzzing tranquility for too long. You might not deserve to embrace it at all. You have to sacrifice precious minutes maybe hours of productivity to sit and listen and think. Because in embracing your surroundings, in taking in that silence. You discover answers. Who am I? What do I do? How do I do it?

Here is where that partner comes in. That loser who was lucky enough to pick up the phone when you called. She might be tired. He might having similar bad luck. She might have been sitting by the phone praying that someone would call, suggesting a "walk in the park". In listening to others, people the true value and importance of their own issues. People speak of wives and husbands, partners and brothers, enemies and accomplices but they shrewdly compare to the specialness of who you might choose to share a bench with....

Or I could just be full of shit.

-Db