Chicanery

You’ve got to love the Americans with Disabilities Act not just because of the protections it provides for people with special needs, but also for the ancillary benefit enjoyable by “able” bodies on bicycles in the form of switch-backed wheelchair ramps affording two-wheeled access up and down a couple of our fair city’s most urban parks; chicanery through concrete chicanes, so to speak.

Brotorff’s right when he says “No plan is the best plan;” instead, you can just have a notion to sort of dead reckon to the next spot, be it a never-before-visited parking garage, a Teletubby parklet overlooking sports stadiums and highways, a neighborhood pea patch beneath an awe-inspiring pink and golden late spring sunset, an unprecedented visitation of home and hearth, a hidden footbridge over that unexpected ravine, a bar, believe-or-not, and what turns out to sort of be some condominium complex’s waterfront barbecue patio; somehow, you end up at each of these for a while and that turns out to have been the unplanned plan all along. 

Sometimes, it’s not about getting somewhere, but rather, about seeing where you get to on the way; a whole evening can be spent heading towards the place you’re heading for, which means, I guess, that the whole time you’re out, you’ve already done arrived.

I admit to squirminess when the clock starts a-tickin’; it’s all too easy to take root with the familiar, so you’ve got to keep some momentum, even if the inclination is towards the unknown.

Hope springs eternal, or at least for a handful of hours, at least with a vague notion of what’s in store next.  I like being surprised by the surprising; I’m similarly amused by the amusing, and all along, what’s thrilling keeps on thrilling me.

They say cultivating gratitude helps keep a person happy; I’ll buy it.  And besides, it’s easy to be grateful for what makes a person grateful: chicanery abounds, no plan planned for at all.