Remembrance of Things Prompted

I started walking again recently. That's a bigger deal than it seems.

After I got Felix, I was stuck in The Indoors for the first 3 months. Because that's how long it takes to fully inoculate a puppy against The Outdoors.

It's not that I would have felt bad leaving him in the house, it's just that he's the Tasmanian Devil on crack in the form of a corgi. It is not believable the amount of damage this ten-pound creature can inflict when left unattended. Like, I was seriously worried there wouldn't even be a house to come back to.

Plus there's the fact he's clingy like a mofo. He does not want you to leave his presence without him. Every time you attempt this, what follows is his incessantly loud, piercing bark that will rape your inner head, and you also better not let him anywhere close to your eardrums because you'll be like that character in that scene in the movie who slowly rises from the rubble after miraculously surviving the grenade that detonated right next to him.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE.

The tone with which he shrieks to rip your guts out every time is as if you're leaving him to DIE, when you only need to use the bathroom that is literally five feet away from the kitchen in which you have–no kidding–BARRICADED him because he apparently also has the soul of a Chinese acrobat (God is so funny HAHA JOKE'S ON ME).

I TAKE HIM EVERYWHERE–because remember, he will DIE if I leave him alone–and when I go out to pick up food it culminates in having to drive with him in my lap because I can't put him in the backseat where the dog beds are because remember he is INSANE and my wife and I tried that one time and now there's one and a half beds remaining instead of two.

Anyways, I probably could have found a workaround. I really should have. Maybe I could have taken my strolls when my wife was home, which is not impossible but extremely difficult since she seemingly only manifests–like a loud ninja–in order to eat, defecate, binge-watch terrible k-dramas, shower, and sleep.

But I really should have tried harder considering that walking is my only form of exercise on most weekdays and if you apparently stop the only exercise you engage in this will cause real health problems to accumulate rather quickly. And I'm not the only one, I notice most people just wait until a problem gets so out of control that they have no choice but to do something about it (why are we collectively so stupid? i think it's because we don't stop to think about how stupid we are, which would actually make us less stupid if you thought about it).

So after his last shot, I got my ass out of the house. And oh yeah, I remembered the most important thing you can do for your body is to move it.

But even if walking is the most natural thing a human being can do, besides [insert clever example of your choice], not having done it for so long makes it hella awkward. I had to treat it like building a new habit for Christ's sake, and with any new habit you've gotta start small while being consistent (not that you don't already know this but you're welcome for the reminder).

When I finally got to those 30 minutes, I realized it wasn't cutting it.

With most things you gotta stretch past the limit to get the greatest benefits from them (gains, bruh). And that all happened once I managed to take it to the full hour.

But then I noticed something weird every time I passed by a specific location during my walk. In hindsight, you wonder how the hell did you even miss something so obvious. It's like what happens when there are multiple "no peeing or pooping allowed, SHOW SOME RESPECT" signs and maybe it's subconscious but you accidentally let your dogs public toilet on their lawns anyway because you're like, those signs imply that I am not a respectful person so I guess that means I have to prove you right (as an aside I want to tell you that i have never actually done this thing, it's happened like ONE time and that was seriously not on purpose).

UPDATE: I walked down my neighborhood today and passed by a house where these multiple signs exist and I kid you not there was a MASSIVE pile of DOO-DOO in the middle of the lawn. I don't know if it's hilarious or sad or ironic, but I laughed anyways (does this make me a bad person? don't answer that).

So anyway, after a few days–okay, probably a week–I noticed the flowers I kept seeing on the sidewalk were, indeed, not fake.

They were not only freshly cut, but of a different kind each time I looked.

I concluded something bad must have happened here, which wasn't hard to do–as if the flowers weren't obvious enough there was a cross etched into the concrete right underneath.

And you wonder, how long has this flower fairy been keeping this up?

For that matter, why go to such lengths?

Let's illustrate this with the following hypothetical scenario.

You're in your bedroom folding your laundry and suddenly a thought is unwillingly deposited into your brain. So you walk downstairs right away to do whatever your mind has directed you to do.

You reach the kitchen and say to yourself, why am I here?

Memory. It's a fleeting thing, it decays.

Look up Ebbinghaus Curve if you don't believe me (also, how is it that you don't know about this? am i the only one who thinks this is common knowledge? don't answer that). This explains why you keep repeating words or lines to yourself like some kind of mantra-zombie because you're afraid of forgetting because you know you will if you don't.

That's hard enough to do on its own, but way more challenging is when there's too much stuff in your head.

Journaling is a great solution–you write it all down to forget about most of it, which then creates space for what's truly important. It's like being in a so-called minimalist's (these people are absolute lunatics by the way, i would run-run-run in the opposite direction if i ever met one) house, where the environment is so lacking in possessions that your attention is automatically drawn to said possessions because of all the surrounding NOTHING. Contrast this to my place where you have no idea what you're supposed to be looking at (FYI, i am a messy but clean).

The flip side to writing stuff down is it helps you remember.

That's why we use checklists, to-do apps, and calendars (one annoying thing my wife does is use ME as her memo, which i could give a camel's hair about. but she'll complain that i don't respond to her texts & i'm like it's because i don't know if it's important or not. for example, i'll suddenly get a message from her, while i'm trying to write damnit, that says something like copy print sheet music for "so-and-so." but she complains further i text you because you don't pick up my calls since your phone's on do not disturb all the time & i'm like that's because i told you to only call in an emergency & after i explained this to you, literally the VERY NEXT CALL you were like, "i'm hungry." she then goes WHATEVER, which renders ALL my EXPLANATIONS utterly POINTLESS. i still love her very much and at least she is not boring), especially moreso since the world has added so much digital convolution to the equation.

In other words, you need a cue.

This can happen accidentally, like when the protagonist of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past eats a madeleine dipped in tea–this becomes the catalyst that then truly begins the entire 7-volume arc (one of the reasons why i want more money is so i can take time off from making money in order to binge-read this epic series). In a similar vein, it's like how I swallow my throw-up each time the disgusting smell of Jose Cuervo reaches my nostrils because it was the first alcohol I ever got hung over on (tequila's good in general, Cuervo is just gross like Budweiser. how can people drink this crap?).

But if it's something you want to consciously remember, you can't rely on something as arbitrary as rigging a contraption that will spray a certain smell (probably splashing it into your face is more accurate, like that stupid air freshener a friend once installed right above his toilet & made you wonder if he was one of those man freaks that sat down to pee. yes I've met ONE dude that did this & trust me the females found it even weirder than the males did) at exactly the right moment and right time GOOD LUCK.

Nah, you need a visual reminder that you can see as easily as possible. Even if you think it's important enough you won't forget it, it's okay–and damn right honorable–to put that fresh bouquet at that precise spot on the sidewalk every day.

It becomes the highlight of your walk, the anticipation building each time you get closer to that scene and you hope the day will never come when you don't see those flowers any more.