daylight spending time
We've been saving up daylight and spent it all this week walking and partying. In these recessionary times the cost of a good time is literally astronomical. That's OK for now because we could afford it, but we risk a deficit this time next year.
Last month I joined a guided hike through several parks I hadn't been to before. Last week I returned with the dogs so they could finally visit, too. We made back to back trips on Tuesday and Wednesday then walked down the Wissahickon Thursday morning.
Thursday evening I hosted a party. All 20 guests arrived on time at the same time then we metabolized what time we did have faster than I could catch up with everybody, a welcome deficit I took to signify a good time overall. We watched the Phillies until my phone died late in the game then I fell asleep on the couch with the dogs until the robot vacuum woke me up late in the night.
Friday evening I biked over to a zombie walk, which I caught just as I rolled into town. I watched them Thriller dance then walked over to the beer garden for First Friday fun. I brought a jacket but the weather was so warm I didn't need it, even on the ride home.
A friend and I joined a park clean up with some neighbors Saturday afternoon then stopped for lunch. He had chicken curry and I had vegetable biryani, his treat. I made it home in time to make a garbage bag full of popcorn that I brought to Corn Fest at another neighbors' where we watched Children of the Corn under the nearly full moon. We joked about a queer rereading of the movie then I reflected on the topic on the walk home, concluding that the children themselves may be interpreted as queer coded and in a struggle to mitose from their presumably unsupportive parents. In this framing the outlanders represent the domineering powers of the status quo that for no clear reason other than conservatism crush the children's liberation. Orestes was put on trial for his matricide but the children are granted no such grace, condemned as Clearly Evil by interlopers with bigger guns. An argument is made that the children are blindly dogmatic and cultish in their religious fervor, which reeks of contemporary fascistic propaganda that aims to portray trans people and gay men as cults of pedophiles and groomers. The radio preacher then is not the voice of the children per se but the voice of hysteria that echoes from media into the imaginations of parents seeking to blame anything but their own actions for their collective failure to provide for the children. And the white, heteronormative saviors who kidnap the children under the guise of rescue share a voice with those who'd storm a pizza shop in pursuit of an imaginary basement. So conflict is spurred on by an external force that fuels an Oedipal fear in the parent and an internal force that tempts the child with a violent cutting of the umbilical corn.
After all my gallivanting I still had an hour of change leftover this morning, which I spent on the couch reading the newspaper before heading to church. I grieved the loss of the excuse of sleeping in at the spring forward and missing early appointments, although that has been tenuous at best as clocks have mostly become Internet enabled. Afterwards I walked with the dogs around the neighborhood then met up with our Sunday dog walk group for a walk around a park.
