Park Bench Review: 40° 44' 7.8792", -73° 59' 27.2904"

This is an official dirtgod park bench review. I did this a few years back, but only did one park bench in Charlottesville (which was pretty loungin’). I realized a man shouldn’t have LOUNGIN’ tattooed on his belly if he’s not dedicating his life at least partially to cultivating the pursuit of lounge So we’re going back to this. Above in title are the latitude/longitude coordinates. I choose to use the stars for navigation though.

IMMEDIATE LOUNGE-ABILITY: Spent a few days in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, NYC, last week, with my ol’ lady, and we are the types who do a lot of walking, a lot of vibing, and very little Official Sight Seeing. We both tend to prefer the randomized sights of chance wandering to Must See Destinations. Though we did purposefully begin our wander this one day (can’t even remember which day) going over to Freeman Alley. From there we ended up going roughly northwest up Bowery eventually getting on Broadway, for further escapades higher. I think my girlfriend went to get a fancy cup of coffee or something, I can’t really remember why we separated this particular time, but I lounged in Union Square Park, behind the George Washington Statue, with my back to all the damn dogs in the dog run. As we walked into the park, a dude in bright orange outfit was shadowboxing with pigeons, and moving with the smooth erratic style of a guy with mystical musics inside his mind at all times. The tinges of oppression of city dog-havers behind my back was slight affect on this one, but mystical pigeon shadowboxing plus standard city park people chillin’ while getting casually blunted held the score up. Immediate Lounge-ability was a 18 (out of 23 possible).

RIPPLES OF AMBIANCE: I’m just a simple country boy from Schuyler, Virginia, so all the bustle and hustle and grind and nevermind of the city, seemingly, is a lot. But in actuality, a lot of city types who lounge in public are pretty much the same cut of cloth as country loungers sitting in their yard. Don’t get me wrong; there are hella worried ass city dwellers nosey about who that stranger might be walking past too slowly, just as there are country folks peeking through the curtains worried about them brown people that moved down the road a half mile away. There was plenty of chill going on. Plus the Farmer’s Market was happening, and the stuff there was remarkably good looking and affordable. Like, lolol, how the fuck is a farmer’s market in the middle of New York City cheaper than the shit in Charlottesville? I didn’t see all that until my ol’ lady came back to me and we left the park heading further upwards, but the ripples of ambiance don’t follow chronological linear thought. I guess at one point my oldest kid had dreamed about doing grad school at The New School, and I saw a building for it right there. There was honking, and reggaeton sneaking out of bluetooths, and general beautiful chaos. But also there was still snow on the ground. Ripples of Ambiance was a 16 (out of 23 possible).

CULTURE OF BENCH: One could not possibly quantify the culture of bench in a place like this. I would imagine the actual physical bench I sat upon hadn’t been there forever, but surely, it’d been in that spot for years. But beyond that, people had sat in this park for over a century, through waves of economic revitalization and decline, nearby mansions converted to tenements then back to expensive townhouses. Lords of industry chilled in this park, as did broke ass immigrants who never once had an English thought. So many people skipping out of work on a pretty day, or meeting a romantic interest for a cheap date. One thing I really love is old spaces that are not redone entirely, but slowly absorb the sediments of time, so that the human energy that has been expended there soaks into the environment as well. In America, we are way too apt to tear shit down and rebuilt something new, which is disrespectful to all that came before us. Sitting in a place in the middle of Manhattan like that, your mind can really wander with the depths and varieties of humanity that had scattered thoughts in that same spot. Culture of Bench was a 23 (out of 23 possible).

IMMEDIATE LOUNGE-ABILITY: 18

RIPPLES OF AMBIANCE: 16

CULTURE OF BENCH: 23

TOTAL SCORE: 57 (out of possible 69). Well, this is technically only the second time I’ve gone through a full official park bench review write-up, so that’s the new high watermark. I hope to go sit there again someday.

TH3 P4TH W3 C0LL3CT1V3LY...

the path we collectively 
walk never ends with one; we 
build a future together 

0VR PR1M0RD14L D3S1R3...

our primordial desire 
to walk our way to better 
tomorrows cannot be damned 

M1CR0SC0P1C V1S10NS F41L...

microscopic visions fail 
to capture feral science 
of accidental "oh shit"s 

HVM4N L4NGV4G3 BV1LT W1TH ST1CKS...

human language built with sticks 
to give meaning to all of 
the unspeakable truths known 

SONG OF THE DAY: Keep It Moving

At some point this was something I wrote on this very blog. And then Boogie Brown used text to voice to make it into words that he dropped behind this Southern Gothicc Futurism Appalachian Boom Bap beat he made. And that came out on a Blue Globe Beats release, which I played this track a lot in the car, so it reappears on the blog as a song of the day. On one hand, it could be called “meta” if you think of it in digital terms. But it’s also just regeneration of thought seeds, with some pieces dominant and others recessive, and a re-creation of creative genetics. Nothing is original, and you can’t own art, even if it comes from your own mind. You can’t own anything. I mean, we tell ourselves otherwise, but we’re lying like a mufucka most of the time. Yes, to ourselves. But you already know that most likely.

SONG OF THE DAY: Right Down the Line (kudzu'd)

Keeping it moving, slowly but surely, even as the world wants you to congeal into fear. I been trying to keep it moving literally, one foot in front of the other, couple miles down the tracks as often as possible, scattering the negative impulses by grounding my soles onto the metal tracks when ain’t nothing coming. This world we got is one built with ego as a cornerstone, so it’s easy to get lost looking at what others might seem to have got, but that just poisons your outlook with hating. People get hung up on thinking about what other folks “deserve” way too much, without ever thinking about who’s gonna serve it all. The work’s always got to be done, and there’s always someone doing it without calling attention to themselves, because that just slows down getting the work done. I been trying to remove “deserve” from my vocabulary completely, and just keep it moving. If I’m meant to get somewhere, I’ll eventually meander my way there. And if I ain’t, I won’t. I trust the Universe to know what the fuck it’s doing.

SONG OF THE DAY: Overflowing

Saw these guys play earlier this year, and had come out that show promising myself to practice love in my daily life. But then life got hectic and busy and unrelenting and I became exhausted. Struggled for a bit but getting back to my self now (thankfully), and trying to remember that despite all the negativity our poison culture feeds us, the world itself is usually pretty decent. I mean, it’s a lot of assholes out here, only motivated by their own wants, and they hide that narcissistic greed behind perversions of individual liberty, but fuck it man, I can’t fix them. And if I get to arguing with them, it’s like punching mud, and I just get stuck in that mud and life sucks and everything is horrible. Actually, I kinda noticed now that I’ve returned to fucking around on Twitter how negatively that affects my stream of consciousness. Like, I end up thinking about shit I never would’ve thought about if I just opened the window and sat there or chilled on the porch or walked down the road for an hour. Purposefully pushed into negative thinking by technological progress. People out here getting hung up on wild ass conspiracies that got zero chance of any truth to them, when the real conspiracy is right there in our hands.

SONG OF THE DAY: Rump Shaker (kudzu'd)

Was walking down the road yesterday, and saw a whole ass frying pan in the ditch. The back roads of this area are well known for their historical litter, and in fact I’m always watching the sides of the road for newly appeared glass bottles of yesteryear that may have resurfaced by whatever random magic the universe uses in such matters. So that’s how I even saw the frying pan buried in a ditch, not a cast iron joint but not a small one either. Made me wonder, how the fuck do you end up being a frying pan thrown out the window of a moving vehicle? Like, what’s that whole story? It was dirty with grease so it had been used for cooking prior to getting tossed, I’m guessing. What got made? Was it horrible? Is that why it got tossed into a ditch? Or did the non-stick not non-stick no more? But even then, why did somebody drive down the road and throw it out the window? Maybe it started further in the woods and sort of meandered its way down to the ditch. They just cleared some brush along the power lines late last summer, and been doing a lot of weird infrastructure work, hauling red clay dirt from somewhere down the road to elsewhere far away. Could’ve gotten turned up in all that for all I know. But I found the frying pan in the ditch wildly interesting. Not enough to pick it up though, just left it there, so I can keep passing it and keep wondering. Wonder is important in our lives, far more important than imposed order to be honest.

SONG OF THE DAY: Double Trouble

Got some boom bap era dancehall mix downloaded from some random ass blog because I’m an old fool from the old school who still manually downloads mp3s and refuses to stream. Anyways, the whole thing slams so wonderfully, but especially shit like Mad Lion coming on just makes me want to put on unworked in work boots with the laces untied and walk to the country store 4 miles away and buy 3 blunts, a tall can of something, and think about the chicken thighs they got there. Then when you have all the everything you ended up getting, you gotta sit at the picnic table sort of by the store but also not exactly part of it, just there under a tree, half warped but all the way perfect, and drink your tall can and watch the world pretend to matter for a few minutes.

SONG OF THE DAY: yamships, flaxseed

It’s winter but today was warm, except I didn’t know that entirely when I walked out the house with the dog to go down the road until we get to the crook in the gravel where some other dog gets all loud and obnoxious up at that dude’s compound, so we turn around. But this meant I got to rock one of the greatest styles known to man – the stocking hat barely on your head. Started with it over my years, but it was way too hot for all that, yet still enough chill to the day (“airish” as they say) that wasn’t no need to tuck it into my back pocket just yet. So I pulled the hat up so it was off my ears, higher on my head, barely holding on, like a condom receptacle. Such a lovely style, and one you can tinker with constantly, slightly tilted to one side (a classic), or even all the way up on your head so it’s not even like you’re still wearing the hat – it’s just floating along with you like an aura of a hat. That’s a top quality style, and I can actually think of a number of dudes I remember rocking an exceptionally floating stocking hat at one time or another throughout my life. A good stocking hat float really sticks in your mind, because it defies physics, and mainstream sensibilities perhaps. With my hat like this, found a bottle stash I’d made a while back, before the snow, which finally melted, and there was a pack of four bottles I must’ve dug out from further into the edge by the river. I walked over just in the off chance there were more, and found a raccoon skull, with a strip of pelt still decaying, so I stuck it in a tree to come back to later, just like the bottles. No rush on anything. You rush too much and you’re fuckin’ hat might fall off. It just ain’t worth it.

W4LK1NG D0WN TH3 GR4V3L R04D...

walking down the gravel road, 
and cutting through the woods to 
gawk at the forgotten graves 

1 F1ND MYS3LF F33L1NG M0ST...

I find myself feeling most 
fulfilled when on long wanders… 
pilgrimages to nowhere 

N0TH1NG BR1NGS M3 P34C3 QV1T3 L1K3...

nothing brings me peace quite like 
simple steps through strange places, 
absorbing environments 

W41T1NG F0R PVRP0S3 T0 B3...

waiting for purpose to be 
delivered, like a mark; at 
least I’m enjoying the walk 

0VR M0D3RN 4M3R1C4N...

our modern American 
culture feels hollow, lacking 
benefits of pilgrimage 

4N0TH3R 0FF-D4Y 3SC4P3...

another off-day escape 
a couple hours away, to 
meander unknown sidewalks 

SONG OF THE DAY: Drums of War

Forgot to write something really clever earlier for this, and could do it now, but I like to post these with the sunset, and I need to feed the cats and then go on a walk. And I know how my walks go - I might end up being gone for 20 minutes but sit on the block in the yard for three hours, staring at the sky; or I might end up walking to Gladstone 30 miles away. I might follow a logging path and discover a portal to another realm (again). Walks have a lot of possibilities, especially when you are descended from chaos monkeys. So instead of writing something clever, I wrote this. That's why I'll never be a verified bluecheck. Then again, verified bluechecks is digital eugenics, and they don't allow the descendants of chaos monkeys anyways. Algorithms were one of Hitler's favorite scientist's favorite creations.

SONG OF THE DAY: Time Is Never On Our Side

When I got a house last summer through fall, there were only like three I could afford that had enough room for my kids to make sense. The only one I liked luckily ended up being the one I got – a big old ass house beside a quarry whose best years were a century ago. Supervising people used to live up in this house. Anyways, most folks don’t seem to want old shit, because the American Empire has promised an endless parade of newness, which of course is unsustainable and expensive, both short term and longer in terms of human survival. Nonetheless, that made it so I ended up being the dude that fell into this house, and it’s been happy with me ever since I got here. Very little problems, until this last week, but still minor all things considered.
Being my first year here, just moving in back in September, I have to get the feel for the seasons. My water line was frozen this morning, even though I’ve got public water, and the house was relatively warm. Discovered the weak link in the line, got it thawed without incident by pointed a space heater into the closet. Ran up to the hardware store to get some pipe wrap and hopefully some insulation, but they were out of the insulation. One of the drawbacks of being new to a house is it’s not a true southern gothic futurist compound yet, and full of all sorts of hoarded and collected odds and ends that you need. Luckily, this place had a good bit of left as is in the rough basement and sheds, so I started poking around to find something to work like insulation around the pipe wrap around the two feet of water line in a wooden box outside the house relatively exposed to the cold air. No insulation but I did find a scrap roll of foam carpet matting, that shit you put under carpets, and I sliced it up with a buck knife and tucked it all around the pipe, and it looked cozy as fuck. I was ready to climb down in there and sleep too. Ready for winter, for now. But while digging around for insulation, in one of the metal sheds, I found a whole box of mason jars, including two wide mouth quarter jars. I only had one, because wide mouth jars are a commodity, and my ex-wife is a herbalist so made sure to keep most all of them in the separation. I had one, which I used for my drinking glass. But now I got three, all because I live in a country ass house with a bunch of shit laying around. Pipes froze, but they thawed nicedly, and I found some wide mouth jars. Country blessings, baby, country blessings. I celebrated with a long walk nowhere. Nowhere is always the best place to walk.

SONG OF THE DAY: Mentou

Lately I've been practicing walking a lot more with my phone a lot less, sometimes for an hour or two down the same meandering back roads where I live. Being just after Christmas, there's a few fresh old televisions dumped off in ditches where normally just Bud Light cans live. I find myself less distracted by thinking about my walk as an experience to share or consume without the phone. And when I get home later in the day, and pick up the phone, and click it to life, it's like YOU HAVEN'T GOTTEN CLOSE TO YOUR STEPS GOAL FOR THE DAY. I just laugh to myself, thinking, "You don't know all you think you do, fuckin' smart phone." It's also great because it helps me remember to take everything the phone says with a grain of salt, because it doesn't really know shit like it acts like it does.