Bizarre video

This is the kind of video you take when you've scheduled to have one of your legs amputated at the hip in twenty days to give you a just twenty-five percent chance of living longer than a year or so and you'll be on crutches for the rest of your life and never walk again.

Still walking

A jetliner heads for Philadelphia at dusk.

I'm writing this on January 2, 2018, at 3:45 p.m. Soon I'll take my afternoon walk. I go at dusk, when the sun's dipping to the horizon, which in my suburban neighborhood means trees and houses not far away. 
When I walk in the morning, I walk in Valley Forge Park, which has broader vistas. I've avoided the park the past few days because of the snow—I don't need to risk a fall.
My walks in the afternoon are around a loop formed by two quiet streets. It's about a mile long. There are no traffic lights, few cars, and the best sight I get on those walks is the sky, the moon, and bare trees against the sky. 
I'm not walking for exercise—that's pointless now. I do it to see the outdoors in a way I won't be able to much longer, probably forever, given the likelihood that my sarcoma will kill me in a year or so. At times I make myself stop and just look. I look at the houses, the street and, of course, the sky. This is something I wouldn't normally do because I've always been self conscious and worried that people would see me as an eccentric man, stopping for no reason, looking up at nothing.
Now I stop whenever and wherever I want to, and just look.

Walking more

Walking outside in a landscape makes you appreciate the distance you cover more. It takes little energy and little thought and it seems slow but in just minutes you're far from where you are. In this photograph, which I took earlier today while walking in Valley Forge Park, you can see a man walking of a paved path if you look above the chimney of the cabin in the center. He's only a speck because of the distance, but when I saw it today I realized that I'd be where he was standing in little time and by then he'd be beyond my field of vision and I of his.

Valley Forge National Park cabins.

Children's Letters to The Loser #2

Dear Complete and Total Loser,

I am a twelve-year-old boy. Everybody tells me that I act too young and that I should grow up and act older. I try to sometimes but I don't really know how or even what they mean. Please tell me what to do.

Sincerely,

Farhan

Dear Farhan,

You know what I just did? I was eating some chips and walking at the same time, so I synchronized my footsteps to chewing the crunchy chips and pretended that I was trying to walk silently in the forest but failing miserably. It made me laugh. And, Farhan, I am almost 54 years old! My point is that you shouldn't always listen to others. Sometimes it's good to keep some of the child in you long after it has gone away in others. Sometimes, but not always. What is it that you're doing that makes people say this? If it's things like crying because you don't get your way or not listening to others, maybe you should try to change that and be more like your peers. But if it's because you like to play in certain ways or read books, watch shows or draw things others don't, don't let others determine what's best for you. Do, however, learn to keep some things you like that are deemed childish semi private. Much of life is about compromise, and even I wouldn't tell other adults about what I do when I eat chips. 

Your friend,

The Complete and Total Loser

The Loser, the kid, and walking

The Complete and Total Loser is a gimp, of course, but he tries to keep in some kind of shape. He's 5'9" and keeps his weight around 160, though it has gone up from that at times. He lifts weights, bicycles, does abdominal exercises, eschews sugar and red meat. And, being a loser and unable to get a real job, he works on his feet all day. 

So he's surprised how much faster young people walk than he does. Last week, as the Loser walked from a train station to his elderly parents' house it was a boy, a teenager probably, who was over six feet tall but didn't look like a jock. He was half a football field ahead of the Loser within a minute of leaving the station. 

Today it was a girl. As the Loser headed toward the door of the slowing train he nodded to the girl to cut in front of him as she got out of her seat. Pretty, perfect skin, tight jeans and a U.S. Polo Association jacket. She went in the same direction as the Loser, which most pedestrians don't from this train station. The Loser, technically old enough to be her grandfather, resolved not to follow too closely as her feminine attributes from behind were fetching. 

He needn't have worried. The light, scissoring motions of her legs moved her much faster than the Loser, who tried to at least keep the same polite distance behind her without breaking a sweat on a cold late-winter day. She couldn't have been more than 5'3" and probably weighed around 110 pounds, but somehow she effortlessly kept well ahead of the Loser, who churned furiously behind her. 

He is getting old. And older.

It Snowed on the Loser

The Complete and Total Loser approves of snow for a time. He likes the way it covers ugliness, transforms landscapes, reflects light in new ways, muffles sound.
But as the Loser never reached the level of success most his age reached years ago he lives in his city in humble circumstances, where snow soon becomes a nuisance, making biking or walking through it in both its thawed and slushy states treacherous on his aging, deformed limbs. Clumsy, top heavy and unbalanced, when he slips and falls he falls hard. During an ice storm some years ago, he fractured a joint, requiring a splint and crutches for six long weeks. The soft tissue damage caused such excruciating pain he laughed in disbelief.
At various times during the Loser's life, snow has meant different things. Days free from school, temporary employment, enforced time with family despite his fantasies of enforced time with pretty girls.
Despite the difficulties it causes him now and is bound to cause him in the future, the Loser has no plans to ever move to a warmer climate. Snow will always speak to the boy in him, the boy who would go on long walks in heavy snow across fields into sparse woods toward places he'd never been until his feet were wet and cold. Head down, the white, glittering surface were all he could see, the sound of the crunch under his feet all he could hear. Each step was a newly done thing requiring concentration beyond that needed for other activities. The walks soothed him and are still an important memory.