Day Thirteen - In the Park With Love…

All right, I'm going to give this a whirl.

Of course, I'm doing something different, because I need to keep trying different things!

It is just after my set here in the park, and I like this spot. I'm pretty happy with this spot because it's the spot where I play, although I am behind this stand of trees and bushes that I usually play in front of.

There's several reasons why I wanted to do this video now.

I want to start doing the video earlier in the morning, because I don't really always want it to be about the “not enough things that I have been able to get done”.

I don't want it to be about my frustration with the incredibly tedious process of continuing to live every day with aspirations that are greater than what one can reasonably accomplish.

I want it to be a little bit more about just being here.

So I'm just being here right now,

There may be people who decide to come up and talk to me. If that happens, I may just talk to them, even though it will obviously be an unplanned interlude in the video, And whether I decide to edit that out is another question, because I am attempting to basically not do any editing to these videos. I just have to get the whole process down as simply as possible.

So far, the topic of this video has been doing this video!

I want to include some of my experience here today, because it is always very interesting what takes place here. And perhaps the best way to begin is to color my world in the color that it has been over the last few days.

Because the color of my world has been blue, some different shades of blue.

I have been, I would say, in an almost continuous way, perhaps since yesterday morning, feeling heartbroken over the world, over the whole world, heart broken by my own humanity, heart broken by the little entry points I have into other people's lives.

I mentioned yesterday that I had just finished doing a memorial service. What was poignant to me about this memorial service is that these, oh, about seven people, maybe seven or eight people, mostly women who were friends of this women - there was one man who was a friend of hers and wanted to come and speak about her - they were all eager to speak of her as an absolutely exemplary woman, a woman who had an incredible life. There I was at the end with these seven people who were so happy to tell stories about her. They loved her so much.

But it really sounded like this was a woman who should have had 100 or 150 or 200 people at her memorial service because she had touched many, many lives.

And that was that was really sad to me. The funeral home there at the south end of town is a place where I have now played for a cremation there and another memorial service that was only attended by four people. Quite amazing, these endings.

I was thinking of words to a song that I was making up in my mind about waiting in a station for a train going to the promised land, and the only thing that's promised is the endings of things. That really seems to be the only thing that's promised.

I was engaged by a woman recently who appears to be very secretive. May not even live here, may live somewhere else - a woman who had made a generous contribution to the crowd funding of my bike Apollo.

I was engaged to help create a little concert for her mother, who lives here, and after some back and forth, I ended up talking to her mother's husband, I assume the stepfather, and I realized that this is a woman who has been coming for some time with her husband, but now has dementia. And I think one of the only things she knows is how much she loves my music, because every time they still come, she really comes and focuses on me and says how much she loves the music, but then apparently, pretty much forgets all of it.

We were going to have a little concert for her outside on her birthday, which is Monday, but we're gonna wait until the weather is a little cooler so it's more comfortable for her.

But again, this is very poignant, these ways that we're unraveling, basically.

Then here in the park today, I see a young man who is not able to control his body exactly. I can't remember his name. He has a caregiver. I would imagine he's maybe 18. His mother comes through quite often. She's a very beautiful woman who comes through every day, either running or walking to do some kind of workout. I know that her life must be a challenge to take care of her son, and he is - what looks like to me! - to be valiant, just going after it in this way of walking that appears as if he'll hardly be able to stay on the path, and yet he does, and this is going on in the middle of the parade of humanity walking along today.

Also there was my dear friend, Richard in the motorized scooter that he comes in every day, who is sitting there, and some mother and a little girl of four or five, decides to just get up in his scooter there with him.

I don't think he knew her or she knew him. I think she just wanted to be there, and that's where she landed. And of course, he was happy about that.

All of these things occurring simultaneously.

Going on about my life seems mundane in comparison to the magnitude of everything that is happening at once right now. If you follow the news, no matter who you are, no matter what you think about the news, you must be able to draw yourself back in and not think that every part of this is your life, because I don't think we can withstand it as humans.

We need some sort of comfort, some kind of gravity, to hold us down.

To say that I have plans, to say that there are things that I will unveil further in the future is just to pound on the ground at this point.

Of course, I have plans, and there will be things that I will reveal in the future.

Today, I'm facing the creek behind me, apparently a guitar is strumming, and I am with you again on the 13th day of my 10 years of creation. On the 19th of July 2025.