I saw this when I was wondering if I had chosen the right profession, and if it could keep me properly challenged. It reminded me that inviting creativity isn’t the role of my profession. I’m responsible to remain creative. I remembered working in factories and having my head full of ideas all day and writing all night.

My professional choices don’t give me creative opportunities; Every moment does, if I’m creative enough.

I got caught on a funny loop on a walk the other day. Being wholly atheistic makes me love people more. People are mostly theistic. I become more tolerant of religions thereby. But wait, if I care about people I should care that they believe in the truth. That last step is escaping me no matter how many frothy, militant atheists I listen to, but it is a conclusion I take, but not to heart.

Confused, I look down and saw this. It’s hardly dropped from heaven, or satori, or whatever, as there’s a temple across the street that has been the source of fantastic litter in the past. Nonetheless, my own absurd religion caused me to contemplate its possible meaning for an hour or so.

I remember the exact locations where I was when I had thoughts important to me decades ago. I’m sure we all do. I remember hearing that Homeric storytellers would hold a path, or a mansion, in their minds as they told the Iliad. Each door and corner unfolded the verses and held the plot. Our thoughts lay a map upon the ground we’ve traveled and our past best follows a familiar path.

Lately I’ve been bringing everything back to some lost commentator’s thoughts on hunting and tracking. We became storytellers and scientists in order to make sense of the evidence on the ground. We ate by how well we could create a good story, tell it to those who could help, and follow it through to the prey. We speak hungry steps.

The years in this town has created a topography of memory for me. That corner holds a stack of dream interpretations. That alley is where I find confidence. I’m humble near the tracks and happy near that vacant lot. There’s a block downtown that is more sacred to me than any church.

I’ve been doing a lot of looking into geolocation and augmented reality lately, not as a technology I’ll bring into my career, nor as a scientific curiosity, but as a mode of expression my mind has always had, and poetry we’ve always sung. Could be fun.

I see a lot of old shoes. I see a lot of old shoes with their laces tied together. They are usually hanging on power/phone lines. There were a lof of power lines here, as can be seen in the background. But the shoes were on the ground.

I started thinking about laces tied together, and how that could limit reach and pace and balance. I thought about how someone probably flung these up, attempting a high step, and failed even here where there were so many power lines. Then they gave up, or were chased off. The old shoes were left in failure. Among too many goals even a simple achievement fails.

A lot of homeless/car campers hang out around here, and the shoes weren’t that bad. I imagined someone who could use them finding them and putting a few more miles on them. The attempted vandalism takes part of a new path.

There’s also the alleged meaning that shoes-on-a-wire may take on that has become meaningless by the frequency of the phenomenon. Tired steps become a tired semaphore.

This substation, or whatever it is, became an alternate context for the symbol. Trying to step high near the transfer of power failed.

Walking by the failure to step over the wire, I had dozens of new approaches to my contemplation. It was the best oracle I’ve found in years and it changed my life by changing my thinking.

I’ve made the decision with a confidence I don’t think I would have had otherwise. I did so not because I’d seen the future, or peered into an arcane perspective, but because my thinking was so suddenly and rapidly expanded past the troubled perplexity I had had a moment before.

This is why I look down.

The reflex to cling to fear and apprehension outlasts not just the injuries, but the fear as well. I gave the barrier a nudge with my foot and kept walking.

Please make up a meaning.

Normally I look for signs to provoke new thought and to think differently. The most striking things I see now are those that stop thought. A light pole on a freeway bridge next to a bus stop has a twisted, half-painted ground wire. It’s home enough for a cluster of moss. It’s home enough to say ’shhhhh’.

The space others leave behind by others can welcome us in ways solitude can’t. Knowing that the coyote had been there seconds before made the phone ring clearer and my greeting stronger.

It’s a Stanley planer, made in England. I’d guess it’s about 50 years old. Though the blade seems relatively new and sharp the rest is rusty. It appears that the front handle fell off a long time ago.

I’ll take any suggestion. All I’m imagining is “making things flat” and that is uninspiring.

I saw this toy sword on the cramped landscaping of some business or another (a car lot, I think). The blade in the sun and the handle in the shade. Which to choose.