Staying Busy

I was eating lunch at West Lake Park the other day. My son’s taco truck was there. A guy who’s a regular chess player started talking to me. He’s one of the guys who plays chess all day. He talked about a game that was going on and about some game strategy.

I told him there’s really no strategy to my game. I set up a basic defense and wait for opportunity. Since he’s there a lot, he plays as many games in a day as I do in a week.

He asked me if I wanted to play a game. So I finished my lunch and broke out my chess board. He beat me in three games. He doesn’t leave much for opportunity

 Still, it’s good that someone on a different level wanted to play chess with me. Since I wasn’t a bad sport when I lost, maybe I’ll play some more guys at his level.

I also went to an art school called Pratt. Classes are starting soon so I picked up some of the paperwork. The class I wanted to take at Cornish filled up for the year. I’ll re-apply next year but for now there are some interesting classes at Pratt I want to take.

It was  Sunday morning yesterday  and I was at the waterfront. I usually go to a one of the Starbucks downtown to read and do some drawing while I’m at a table drinking my coffee. It seems like when I’m relaxing I still stay busy.

Maybe it’s just what I do.

I got so used to being up on my feet and moving around all day I think staying busy is normal for me now. Today I woke up at a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep so I rested until 5:30 and got up.

I walked down the hill to China Town to catch my bus. For years it was called the International District. People started calling it that when someone wanted to open a McDonald's franchise there. The locals made a push to stop it from going through and won. That was around the same time the King Dome was demolished. Now the area is spit up. There’s Little Saigon and China Town. I think there’s a place in there called Japan Town too.

I saw the tramp who almost broke the glass door at the place I stay. He said something to me and acted like I knew him. I told him to take a shower because he smelled like horse shit and he called me out to a fight.

The man is practically skin and bones and I must outweigh him by 100 pounds. Even though I could have squashed him like a bug, I don’t want to get whatever is making him smell like death in my system so I ignored him and just kept walking.

I heard someone say some peoples lives are there own punishment.