everday feels like the first day of my life

after the long day yesterday (the 4th), i woke up and had a lazy morning. i just sat in my truck and finished the book i was reading, the dharma bums. it was okay. what i like about the fall like weather is that the days are still warm, but they warm up slower. i can sit in my tin box for awhile with the sun on it and it doesnt get unbearable. around 10 i was time to get out. i pushed open my doors and said hello to the day. it is such a great feeling to have the world just a thin way away from you and to be outside but inside at the same time. it is like urban camping.

what happened?

anyway, i got myself together and set off for the library. akron has a nice public library, right in the heart of downtown. there is free parking and then i can walk to everything, i like it. i went in and used the internet for awhile and in the process i finished my lemonade drink from the day before. so i went back to the truck and laid out all of my ingredients and started making new drinks for today.

a couple days ago in a blog post i was talking about all the different little areas of my truck, now i also have an apothecary. i had to gather water, which meant taking all of my bottles into the library, filling them and then repeating. i have a reserve gallon jug in the back and that also got refilled. it must be hilarious to anyone that sees me working out of the back of my truck like that, i do it so normally yet it must be a very odd thing for someone to see.

this diet isnt hard the first couple of days, the last time i did it i wasnt craving and tearing apart inside until like the 6th day. but then i also had a structured life and i was trying to work my diet around that. now my days are the exact opposite of structure and it should be easier. i like to think of myself as addiction breaking right now, food and the way that i consume it (and probably the way most americans consume it) is little more than an addiction to the flavors and the feelings of eating. when i convince myself that i am giving something unnecessary up it gets easier and i feel better about it.

after making my drinks i set off to discover akron. yesterday i spent my exploring hours by the college which is on the other side of town. now i am near the buildings and such. presumably where the people are. except this town is as ghostlike as i have ever seen. it is saturday early afternoon and there are no people about. i walked up and down the main streets about ten blocks in each direction, enjoyed some views and some thoughts about life relating to the things i see. then i went to this place called lock 3.

it is a public park with a stage, tonight is the annual hip hop showcase, with krs-one and big daddy kane, i was doing some recon to see a good way to sneak in or a nice vantage to enjoy it from. it looks very easy to get in without paying, but i found a parking structure next to it that i think i would like better than being in the grass. from the top of the parking structure i could see a pretty good layout of the town. and right on the other side was the minor league baseball diamond.

i dont really understand my obsession with sneaking into sporting arenas, but i see them and just want to be inside. so i found my way in, it was pretty easy. and i was exploring around there, generally i go into the concessions areas and take whatever i want from them, like in kansas city, but usually those places are locked down. not today. they were wide open and stocked. great day to be fasting.

under the bridge park

so i got out of there and went up to the box seats. those places were fancy! i went into a number of them, sat on the couches and looked out the windows, i opened the coolers and the cabinets. a couple of them were stocked with beer but again, not drinking right now. after that i was just looking for a way out. there was someone else up in the boxes area and i didnt want to get caught. so i walked right out the way i came in and found myself near a little park. the park had a stream running down it and i found it a very pleasant place to sit and read my book. it was similar to the esplanade in portland, but had more shade.

i sat reading for an hour or so and then came back to the library to use it before it closed up on me. then i walked on over to lock 3 to see how this concert was shaping up. there were a couple hundred people inside the park area and the concert hadnt even begun yet. i walked up to the top of the parking structure and it turned out to be a great view. i sat up there and read my book until the firsst act came on. they were a local group and pretty good, about halfway through their set my new friend darrell came up there.

darrell is 44 and he wanted to hang out up there because he liked the birds eye view. not for the concert though, he wanted to try to catch his lady friend cheating on him. that didnt make much sense to me, i told him as much, but he insisted that he was going to catch her. and then he was going to be done with her. he had already drank two 40ozs and had two more in the bag. he was drinking out of a little glass tumbler, careful to only pour in a few shots worth at a time. after the first act it was almost 7:pm. i didnt want to sit up here for the next four hours so i walked to a fancy hotel near the college and read my book for awhile.

it was nice to sit inside in a nice chair and just read. i was there for almost a half hour when the security guard came and asked me if i had a room there. i told him yes, that it was room 333. now i was just thinking on my feet trying to shake him, but right after i said it i knew it was a mistake. most fancy hotels, or hotels that are more than six stories will have their kitchens and cleaning and stuff on the second or third floor. if you look at the elevator it usually will have a lobby, a mezzanine, a basement (lower lobby) and a fourth floor. also, i had no idea how many rooms were on each floor, so it wouldve been wiser to say something more like 506. unfortunately he went to the computer and looked up the room, came back and told me there was no such room.

i said okay, that i would just finish my chapter and leave. he said i had to leave right now. i showed him that i only had like two paragraphs to end the chapter but he was cold hearted. i told him that he was a mean man. then i went back towards my truck. i read over there and then walked around some more. i got my jacket and around 9:pm went back over to the concert. darrell was still up there, now he was stoned too, and he just wanted to talk my ear off. i came up in the middle of buckshot set. buckshot, apparently, was part of cypress hill (among other groups from the nineties) and is now solo. he was probably the best i saw that night.

big daddy! at lock 3

after him was big daddy kane, he was pretty good. however, the best part about his set was when he pulled a little kid out from the crowd, christened him lil' daddy d and let him sit backstage for the show. what was great about this was that during the next song this kid just starts going wild dancing in the next song. he is like 8 years old and he had some moves, he was owning the stage and dancing all around kane. one of kanes boys asked him not to dance so close to kane and after the song, a backstage person apparently told him that he couldnt go dance out there any longer. krs-one came on after that and i was getting tired, but i had to at least see most of his set.

it wasnt a great one. it was just a medley of his songs where he would say a few words, let the beat go and the crowd would do the rest of the work. it was probably awesome for him, but i wanted a bit more. i started leaving halfway through the set, but walked slow and around the park so i could see most of it while still moving. i went back to my truck, it was almost 11 now, and drove away to find a place to sleep. i went pretty much back to the place i was at the last night, and it was a good spot.

oh, there is something else about the show that i noticed during kanes set. i was sitting six stories above everyone and looking down, i didnt realize what i was seeing at first but then it hit me. it was little cell phone screens. up on the dance area, in the seating area, like every fourth person was a little screen in front of them. it was crazy to just look down, people are out enjoying their weekend at a concert of old school hip hop and they are engrossed in screens. it had a 1984 feel to it, always followed by the screen that watched and listened to everything you did. it was eerie. and i use plenty of screen time myself, but i felt removed from it watching from above. hypocrite, i guess.