Part 1

      It's not really a great morning for a walk. It's not even a good morning for one, it's gray and chilly and bleak. Not even the nice kind of gray, where there's mist and atmosphere and “scope for the imagination”. It's just depressing.
      But yesterday was such a perfect shining morning, and I just slept through it. I caught the tail end of it, the light just turning from the purity of early morning, whose air hasn't been breathed by a single soul, into the comfortable warmth of noon, when I finally dragged myself out of bed. And then couldn't catch any more than that glimpse, in my hurry to get ready for work, in the bleariness that bogged down my eyeballs. I can't ever really get away on my lunch/dinner break, someone always needs me for something, so I hate to leave the building. By the time I'm home, it's getting dark, and while the summer gives me a little bit of daylight, I'm always so tired, and need to get something to eat, and then it's gone, any little glimpse of beauty I might have found gone forever...
      Pathetic fallacy. This many years out of high school, and that term still pops into my head. Nature sympathizing with the plot, or the emotions of the character. I think I have the reverse problem, I fall into whatever mood the weather is in... I really should not have come out this morning, I'm going to be miserable all day.
      But I feel so awful about having missed yesterday... and so many of the other bright mornings lately. I don't pay attention to little bits of beauty like I used to. In college, walking to classes every day, I amused myself on the countless walks by looking around, by noticing the flowers on the ornamental trees by the main buildings, by taking in the hundred gradations of color in the water stains at the ends of pipes, by studying the way the shadows fell all through the day, by trying to name the colors of the campus at night, the navy velvet of the evening sky, charcoal of the buildings in shadow, rose-gold of the aging lights...
      I was drawing every day then, constantly sketching things I saw around me, settings from my dreams, grabbing at every idea that my imagination glimpsed – I had to, in order to churn out so many assignments. Some of it was crap, but most of it somehow wasn't. Mine weren't the best in the class, not by a long shot, but I (almost) always liked them, there was some hint of what I was trying to get across always there, even if the hand was positioned a little awkwardly or whatever. There was something there. It wasn't ever perfect, I always found faults afterward, but... there was something there.
      And as draining as it was, and as much as the whole idea of rules for art angered me, and everything else... I miss the art I made. I still keep a sketchbook on me all the time, there's always something in my purse and beside my bed. But days at a time will go by without me adding a thing to them... I have to fight to think of something to sketch, or make a note of. And drawing... it's been months. Sketches here and there, even a basic pencil drawing once in awhile, maybe a light watercolor wash or bit of colored pencil, but it's rare. A full-blown thing that I've totally lost myself in, spending hours and days on getting the face just right, adding the details of wood grain, deciding where the light should fall... I haven't done something like that in at least a year, maybe more. I just don't feel like I have a good enough idea, or the time to execute it the way it should be done, I don't have the drive to get sucked in and just draw, forgetting about food and sleep and everything else... There's always something else to snare my attention, tv and the internet and silly games and phone calls, cooking and washing dishes and cleaning the bathroom, work and work again the next day...
      And for as many all-nighters as I had back then, rubbing charcoal into paper until – literally – my fingers bled, I don't think I was half so tired as I am now. My life is quiet, work really isn't all that bad, I work at a small store with a lot of great people, but... I don't have the energy I used to. My thoughts just feel so empty.

      This was not a good morning for a walk, this weather is making me completely ridiculous. Look at things! That is why I came out, to look at things, to see the world around me again. I have a few hours before work, my lunch is already packed, I am going to walk for awhile. Fumbling in my pocket, I find my iPod, and flip through the playlists until I find “dad stuff”. Dad is addicted to his stash, which is a stash of pretty much everything except drugs. Growing up, he accumulated stacks of records, and eight-tracks, and when tapes came in he had those, and then cds, and then hard drives got big enough to actually hold enough, at a high enough quality, to make him happy. I had no idea growing up, but he's a major audiophile. One of those guys who was upset to lose the “warmth” of vinyl. Mp3s are like blasphemy. He started out ripping everything into those massive old .wav files, and was like a three year-old on Christmas morning when .flac and .ogg and whatever else came out. And of course, none of that stuff is normal, and all I wanted in college was an iPod. I really think it almost made him cry, but I begged him to make me some mp3s. So it's all encoded at insanely high bit rates and whatever else, most mp3s are a megabyte in size for every minute of sound, but Dad's... it's a little scary. But, I have my comfort music in a form that's actually usable away from his mountains of equipment, so it's all good.
      It's still depressing out here. I'm following this vague path leading along and around a brush row next to the apartments, which looks like it will eventually meet up with some woods... but it's really damp, it must have rained a little overnight, and it's too cloudy for anything to have dried yet. R.E.M.'s good for days like this... I skim down through the playlist, looking for one of their earlier ones. “Talk About the Passion”, that works, mellow but not weak, a little yearning and melancholy but with a good walking beat, to keep moving on to... “not everyone can carry the weight of the world”... I still have no idea what half of the lyrics are on these early albums, I've been listening to them pretty much since birth, thanks to my parents, but I'm pretty sure Michael Stipe makes up a lot of words. “Come-duh-dee-en, come-duh-dee-en, deh-taun” almost sounds French at the end, but God knows. Doesn't matter, I still love the nebulous nature of these albums, and the atmosphere... it just feels cozy to me, “Murmur” and “Reckoning” and “Life's Rich Pageant” are like snuggly sweaters on a fall day. Even in spring, like today, when the snow's gone and everything is just sloppy and soggy, and the little spurts of bright green are so jarring and garish against the drab landscape.
      Spring is supposed to be inspiring. It's really not. It was great when I was a kid, splashing through all the giant puddles everywhere. Now it's just soggy and drab. The light is almost always weak and chilly, and when the sun is actually out it's so deceptive, it looks so nice but then you step outside and it's still cold, and you need your winter coat, and it's miserable.
      The silhouettes of the trees around me are blurred by buds and small leaves, the greens all a painful chartreuse, just that awful awkward yellowed-green, and set against the cool tones of slate and tan and umber. But I suppose there's something still in the bark of the trees, the contrast in their details made more dramatic by the dampness, which makes the dark areas all so much darker. Though damp and somewhat heavy, there's a faint hint of freshness in the air, the clear scent of water lacing its way through the mustiness.
      The bottoms of my jeans are drenched. I always hated raingear, even as a kid, but damned if it wasn't effective stuff. The remains of last year's leaves, once so bright and vivid, are a muddy decaying mess underfoot... but I stop a moment to pull out my sketchbook, and make a note of the colors – they're subtle, but would make a really nice backdrop for something. I should have dug out my camera, but I haven't even looked for it since... January? Sometime when the snow was fresh and the shadows on it crisp and sharp. Mouse-brown, a tanned ash, rusty chocolate, scraps of terracotta, the almost-black shade of brown of Paul (the high school boyfriend)'s hair... he went into some branch of the military not long ago, I haven't heard from him since. I worry about him, but it's a distant worry... so many of my connections seem distant now...
      I put the sketchbook back in the small bag slung over my shoulders, and look ponderously at the wall of brush in front of me, blocking the way under the trees that mark the edge of the woods. It looks like there's a break in the vaguely greenish bushes over to the right... it's faint, but enough of a path for me to squeak by, getting thwapped by branches and poked by twigs for a good ten feet before I'm far enough under the canopy that the stuff doesn't grow as high. I stop to take a breath, looking around and trying to be less angry at nature for scratching my arms all over.