DAY 177
09.28.07
TREE 94
I got up early and headed to Will’s to help him paint the 3rd floor apartment. It’s empty now and I would love to live there but I don’t have a job yet. Nor do I have much money which is why I’m painting. Then after we did that, I went to Chuck’s, my print reproduction guy, to pick up my prints for the Arcade Fire show this Wednesday. Another check I paid with no certainty I’ll make it back. The art life is a difficult one. Hopefully the sacrafices pay off. At least I’m doing what I love… which I did next. I drove to Tom Sawyer Park. I walked up to my big, droopy tree, but cautiously. A cop and park worker were hanging out nearby. As usual, I hate confrontation so I acted as if I walked around the trees. But just as my body was out of sight behind the trunk I walked under the tree. Then, quietly, I hoisted myself in. I had to be careful with my left hand because last night I went to the skate park to meet some break dancers and show them parkour. Only, as I rested against a metal rail and dropped my arm my hand got sliced open by a metal shard that was sticking up. My flesh opened and closed as blood gushed out. So climbing became difficult. I tried to just use my fingers and the top of my palm, but in dire situations instinct caused me to grab branches with my entire hand. This happened once in the tree when I was loosing my balance high up. It reopened the cut a little but didn’t bleed too much. It is actually healing quickly. So as I climbed up the tree with many limbs to maneuver around I glanced up to look for the ribbon.
Damn light green! It was a stupid choice for ribbon color. I had a feeling I knew where it was but really couldn’t remember. So I just decided to climb higher. And the path I chose was right.
It reaffirmed to me that my vague, instinctual memories serve me well. I got up on a thin limb and took some pictures.
It really swayed under my weight and a couple times I thought the limb was just going to continue bending but I got over that quickly. It always came back.
What a beautiful day, again. Never have I remembered so many sunny, blue skies. 2007 is definitely one to remember. I climbed back down, constantly thinking about left hand placement and thankfully I had no problems.
9-29-08: I still have a scar on my palm from that cut. It’s cool, it looks like a subcutaneous white line. Hey! I actually retained some information from helping Rachel study med stuff. I ended up not showing the break dancers parkour because I sliced my hand before they showed up. I did watch them dance which was cool. And a couple of them came to Flip City Gymnastics later and we showed each other our respective desciplines. Good times.
So on Saturday I helped MaryLiz move into her new apartment at Glass Works. She has an awesome place and with a great view of the city. Once we finished lugging the washer and dryer into her place I had to bike back to Drew’s shower, dress, and race over to his parent’s to get the Suburban and then drive to the Brown Hotel to start shuttling people to the wedding at the Speed Art Museum. I knew I was going to have to climb a tree during some break that night since I was scheduled to work to midnight. I had my camera in the right pocket of my nice dress pants and luckily the Speed is located on the U of L campus whose trees I know very well. After 5 or 6 trips back and forth the ceremony was about to start. I parked the Suburban in the garage and walked over by the school of business. We were there last Wednesday night for parkour and I remembered seeing some good trees. I was all dressed up and didn’t want a challenge. Around the back side of the building a spotted a decent sized tree with nice low limbs. I walked up to the trunk and checked for any people. No one was around so I pulled myself into the tree. I was careful as I began to move up through the branches not to let my nice clothes rub too much against the limbs. I also tucked my tie into my shirt so that it wouldn’t be flapping all over the place. I got up pretty high in the tree and my dress shoes did well for climbing.
I secured my feet and freed my hands up for taking pictures. I thought it would be funny to take some pictures of me in my nice clothes in the tree.
The leaves were so thick I didn’t have much of a view out from the tree.
Then I climbed back down carefully. All that got dirty were my hands. I walked back to the Speed and washed then off. The ceremony had ended by this point and people had moved to the reception area. The night was very nice and I enjoyed the job. Congrats to Beth and Garret.