zen and the art of hammocks

i was just about to start writing when i got caught up researching hammocks. see, i want one to somehow stuff into my dorm room to sleep in. i've read on hammock sites - hammock propaganda sites? - of how wonderful they are to sleep in. much better than beds. no pressure points. so they say. i was out this afternoon for a little over an hour and a half laying and reading and thinking and enjoying everything. obligatory writing regret: i wish i could have been writing this then because i was so much more in the moment than now. the only similarities being my clothing and the song in my head, which isn't nothing. anyway, i was out there before dinnertime, our old rope hammock, a watery cup of pepsi (replaced the coke i got from hardees earlier), a copy of zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance... and eventually the cat. i've already said how that cat loves to hang around people when we're outside. she's actually lounging in her favorite inside spot right now: at the bottom of my ottoman rubbing up against the front pocket of my bookbag (gum). 'take your momma out' on an eternal loop between my ears. an odd song to meditate on, but it works. it was pretty similar out as to two days ago, clouds in the sky but not obscuring the sun. maybe a little breeze but not much. that kind of country subdivisionish silence which is actually distant airplanes and cars drowning out the birds and footsteps. actually, today, the house clothes dryer exhaust fan was predominant for a while. it, like most other things, faded away sometime while i wasn't paying attention, replaced by a lawnmower i didn't notice start.

the cat lay down almost under the hammock so i scooched over to the edge to scratch her whenever i paused the book. spoke to her a little. it startled me when i actually made a sound so i had to whisper. no reason i should have to whisper in my own backyard but i enjoyed the feeling of not disturbing the scene so i did. stared up at the sky a little bit. same big black aviators under a dark blue bandanna. i have no idea what exactly i looked like. the contrast from the aviators again brought out the life in the leaves. that green against the blue, shadowed and lit by the sun, made them all that much more vibrant. more thick, more real, more invincible. i'm reading zen and trying to imagine the narrator as a real person. i mean i know he's a real person, the author, but i'm getting to know him better through the first five chapters. trying to take time to appreciate being there, like vonnegut said. thinking about how hammocks are supposedly good to sleep in. after a while, i put the book carefully down on top of my old sandals and lay down corner to corner so my back was straighter and the spreader bars flipped up opposite, leaving me in a valley. draped a leg over the side and my other arm behind my head, closed my eyes.

turned into one of those afternoon nap-ish times when i can't remember ever losing conscious thought, just waking up to a new one every time i'd open my eyes. this is when i would have been writing. it was the perfect time. a jet contrail spread out across the sky behind me. i remember thinking how it looked like a mark a toddler would make with a crayon on a white wall just for a second before abe lincoln takes it away. i'm not sure why abe was there. i was still a little medit-a-sleepy. our neighbor had started mowing his grass. a big brown dust cloud followed him wherever he went and i could track his progress even as the lawnmower was lost behind a hill or a tree. i closed my eyes again and pictured the modulation of the engine noise. i could see every turn, every hill even then because the sound is so different depending on how the tractor was spatially oriented. don't often think like that, in sounds... i guess a blind man would know what i'm talking about. listening to a mower a quarter mile away driving in circles.

a door on our deck opened and my mother started bringing things out and setting them on the table out under the veranda. i went ahead and got up, quietly, slipping my sandals on and folding the hammock up before anyone said a word to me. i wasn't in the mood to take instruction at all. better that i just go on and do it beforehand. hung it up in the basement and went back out to gather the rest. i wore the bandanna and aviators to dinner. it felt good.



so now i will go look at some more hammocks. do some exercises while watching the end of the braves game and go sleep. big stuffs in a couple days.


**real quick i want to say god bless blogger's new auto-save doohickey. i just tried to delete something after fooling around a bit and, having clicked outside the text box, navigated back two pages. nothing i've written tonight is world-shifting but it means a lot to me, everything does. thanks blogger.