Nightwalking

I woke up in the new studio, and fiddled with the radio. It wasn't easy. It seemed best when I performed for it. It's output corresponded to my chi exercises.

I wasn't sure it might have been the batteries. I had an extra pair of AAs which I threw in the freezer.

I built up the antenna by using scrap metal I had found along the sidewalk. They were an assortment of washers and coiled metal. I placed these on the antenna, and experimented with standing in various positions in relation to the antenna. It was a small portable transistor radio, a Sony ICF-P26, which I had picked up at Wal-Mart. It was the last one on the rack. Oddly, when I bought it, the cashier rang it up on my receipt as a $2000.00 purchase. “Don't worry about it,” he told me. I shrugged my shoulders and walked off. I think I actually paid him the price listed in the aisles, about 30 dollars.

So I picked up some batteries with it when I made the purchase. The radio only got a few stations. Depending on where I placed it in my room, sometimes it would pick up more.

So one night I am listening to a local NPR station. They are featuring the BBC world service at 3 a.m. The story is about some cosmonauts returning from space and their landing somewhere in Kazakhstan.

It's worth mentioning partly because once I got to my apartment, I had little to do at first, during those first few weeks after living in the shelter, where I stayed inside with a hundred other men.

Well, anyway, so I started to take these long walks around Columbus. As I was already fairly comfortable with sidewalk journeys, I began to experiment. One innovation I discovered was to walk so that I only focused on the shadow of my head. It amused me that I could actually travel for miles simply looking at the round shape bopping alongside me. I developed this further after I got to the new apartment.

 Well, on the night I heard the cosmonauts had landed in Kazakhstan (I learned of various destinations they had, some by car, after they landed, such as Moscow), I took a night walk focusing as I took to the streets only on the shadow of my head.

I went down Mound Street, took High for awhile, then picked up Front Street and walked the court house area. Not only the Supreme Court of Ohio, but also the federal courthouse.

The federal district court looks out over a bend in the Scioto River, just past where the Olentangy River flows into it. It's a marvelous spot with bridges lit with blue lights and a long stretch of pasture and museums on the other bank.

The federal court has these ridiculous statues on the lawn going down to the bank of the Scioto.

Things that look like gryphons and similarly marvelous and even stranger mythological creatures. I walked by this building and came up to Front Street again. I thought about picking up a cup of coffee at the United Dairy Farmer's outlet on high. I decided in favor.