vacant lot art

Here’s what happened to me today. After the praying and the meditation and the Starbucks and the Morning Pages and the timed writing and the tai chi, I went out for a walk. It was 7:19.

I turned east up B, my street, up a block to 30th, north a block to A (my fave), and west until A abruptly ends at 24th. I turned right and the street stops there at a chain link fence. There’s an opening, I walked through out into this vacant lot and was immersed in San Diego. Downtown, highways, a ravine just off to the right, a golf course, all sorts of architecture and, unusually, an entire city perking up from yesterday’s rainstorm. I ask you to think here of the house plant you’ve forgotten to water for a week and you glance and it’s all droopy and peeked and you go “Yikes” and give it a drink of water, then come back an hour later and it’s up and strutting it’s natural stuff and ever-so grateful. That’s how the city and my neighborhood and this vacant lot looked this morning – grateful. Its desert-ambiance perked up by a Great Spirit’s watery gift.

I’m sort of perked up like that over and over again, so often through the gifts of kindness from someone like you reading this right here and now – so generous with me – and lots more folks not here, kids showing up for me seemingly unendingly through this pretty turbulent last half year with “I got you, Bro” and “You’re good”, however those sentiments materialized. Feeding me with life. Nurturing me. Watering me. Over and over.

When I walked through the gate and out into the empty lot, twirling in a slow 360, this thought came to me. It’s art. All this. And right here, art splattered everywhere and visible via a vacant lot. This viewpoint. This point of view.

That’s it, couch surfers. There’s not much here today, in this post. I’m grateful I got to wake up again and go for a walk again and look around some more, at all of the “it” with eyes which still work pretty good.

(The photo here doesn’t do the view justice. I’m going to post on my FB page, in case you travel there sometimes too. Thanks for showing up here today.)