Six cents

   I was a bit nervous today as I began my morning walk around Stow Lake, having had a nasty verbal altercation with a man there yesterday. The man is new to the park, at least at the time when I am there, and he has a dog that he keeps off the lead, despite the reminders in multiple locations that they must be leashed.
   For a few days, I have seen this man doing what seems to be training of the animal, at times pointing to squirrels in the park to show them to the dog so it can run after them, which it does. On a couple of occasions, including yesterday, it got very close to catching one, which upsets me, so I confronted him about it.
   Probably needless to say, my words fell on deaf ears, and I became angry, cursing at him in the process. It unsettles me greatly when I lose my composure like this, all the more so that it should happen where it did, as I cherish the area as a place I can go to quiet my mind early in the day.
   Following the incident, and talking about it with several people, I decided that I would not let it go any further. Instead, I would focus on my own feelings about the man's behavior. I figured that my mental health and spirit were more important than anything else.
   So, as I began my walk this morning, I felt comfortable with my decision, though still with trepidation.
   As I turned to finish my first one mile lap, I saw him, and even though his dog ran over to me, which I found frightening, I kept my mouth shut, and a remarkable thing happened.
   A rush of fear suddenly welled up inside me, and I realized that the intensity of these feelings were similar to those I experienced when I had confronted him yesterday. It became clear to me at that moment that the anger that can feel so explosive to to me at times is almost certainly an expression of fear. I had felt unsafe around this man's behavior.
   There was anger, too, over my perception of his lack of care and consideration for others, but the intensity seemed to have more to do with how his behavior made me feel about myself.
   I think that I had known this before, but it had never been so obvious as it was then. It felt very empowering to know that I could see myself more clearly by containing myself better.
   As I continued my walk, I decided to take the road below the pedestrian path, as I often do, and found a nickel on the ground. I almost always pick up money when I see it, believing it be a kind of sign of good luck. I often hold coins in my hand after retrieving them, as if it gives me a feeling of security.
   This particular time, it felt like a reward for the control I had exerted over my reaction, and an added plus to the insight I had received from it.
   When I found another coin ten minutes or so later, this time a penny, the term "sixth sense" came to my mind as I looked at the two of them in my hand. Although this term alludes to the supernatural, there was something that felt quite out of the ordinary in this experience.

Moth on my window

   A couple of days ago, after finishing my morning walk in the park, I got into my car to go to work.
   I connected my phone to the auxiliary input so I could hear some music that I liked, and noticed something on my windshield. It appeared to me to be a moth, at least according to my poor knowledge of insects.
   Although I am not terribly fond of insects when they are in my apartment, I don't mind them much when I am outside, as San Francisco does not seem to have as many of, nor the types that would irritate me so growing up in New York City. Also, I recognize them as living things that are trying to make their way in the world, like me.
   So instead of using my car's windshield wiper or washer fluid to try to make the animal leave, I started off, figuring it would depart on its' own, peacefully.
   I starting driving, quite slowly as I was in the park, but it didn't move. Even as I sped up and exited onto the surrounding city streets, it didn't fly away, but instead moved to a different place, perhaps six inches away.
   At one point, while stopped at a red light, I thought that maybe it was dead and was somehow stuck there, having moved before not by its' own life, but by the wind and force of the car's movement. I then considered that perhaps it was injured and unable to move more than it had.
   I wondered whether it had decided to spend this time on my windshield, which now seems like a ridiculous thought to have about an animal that must have a tiny brain, but it's place there seemed intentional to me at the time.
   I arrived at my job, parked my car in the lot, and took the picture below from inside of the vehicle.

   I sat looking at it, feeling that this thing trusted me, as if it sensed that it would be safe there. Perhaps it knew that I had respect for its' life. Interestingly, I had come to see it in a way that I did not previously precisely because it had stayed there on the windshield for all of that time.
   Although doubtful, it seems that it had intentionally set out to broaden my vision of it.
   This small creature had helped me to focus on something other than the sometimes difficult feelings I experience when I transition from the wonderful, calming feelings of my morning walk to the often times emotionally trying circumstances that can occur at the workplace.

   As I exited my car and headed into work, I looked at it again, and took the picture above, from the outside.

   When I left work, nearly nine hours later, I had forgotten about what had happened earlier, and got into my car to drive home. 

   It wasn't until I looked at the photos that I had taken that I  remembered what had happened, and realized that the insect had left my windshield at some point during the day.

Seeing crocodiles

   I have been thinking a lot about darkness recently as the days are getting steadily shorter. 

   Each day when I arrive in Golden Gate Park, it takes a little longer for the pre-sunrise light to fall on my part of the world, so I have a longer time to both be a bit frightened, but also to appreciate the opportunities that it affords me to see the world in more creative ways.

   As long as I feel reasonably safe, near-darkness has become my favorite kind of light.

   Two days ago, as I began my early day walk, I saw something off in the distance in the road, but had a difficult time determining what it was. At first, I thought it was a raccoon, but then decided that it was too small. I walked a few feet more towards it, and it crossed my mind that it could be a crocodile. 

   Of course, it doesn't make any sense that I had thought that. The conditions for the animal don't exist in that particular park (nor have they ever been reported at the location, as far as I know), and , as I further neared the object, it became clear that the shape was quite wrong. Still, crocodile was what had come to my mind.  

   I guess that the reason that this poor job of visual identification was so meaningful for me was that I was able to be so wildly off in this case. It isn't too difficult, in my opinion, to imagine things in a nonsensical way; believing them to be that way, not quite so simple.
   I hope and believe that this points to a loosening in the parameters for how I determine the world I maneuver through.
   In the past, I have tended to think of darkness negatively, as calling a person "dark" seems to connote. More recently, I tend to think of it more as that which can hide or disguise wonders.

Do you see a crocodile here?