My Monday evening contemplation of work presents the following thought for your consideration: The importance of silence.
The more you talk at work the more likely it is that something you say will be held against you somewhere down the line.
So I am attempting to refocus my energies on keeping my mouth shut. This does not mean being unpleasant or icy. I converse when addressed, and I engage people when I feel like I have something that needs to be said. But I am trying not to babble and interject and fill the bullpen area where I work with monkey-mind chatter. I have even placed a post-it note that I can see on my way out the front door of my apartment in the morning. The note reads, "Silence."
The musical immersion from this past weekend was The Best Best of Fela Kuti, a double disk released in 2000. Tremendous. It can be listened to repeatedly. You'll find yourself floating in a placental fluid. Here's "Coffin for Head of State":
Since yesterday I can't get enough of The Underground Spiritual Game, the 2004 Fela compilation put together by Chief Xcel of Blackalicious. I listened to it basically non-stop on Sunday. And then tonight I went out on an hour-plus run around Lake Union and it powered me along the way. This is the last track, "Africa Center of the World." It says it all: "You have to be strongest/To occupy/Center of the World."
I had to blow out the cobwebs this morning on the Lake Union Loop. My work commute is longer but the amount of walking I do each day is about a half-hour less. I am now a corporeal husk sitting on a train car. I've got the Top Pot Doughnut Dash 5K coming up at the end of the month. I have to be disciplined about my training this week. Then scale back next week in the lead up to the race. The Top Pot Doughnut Dash 5K is indeed a dash; it's pretty much a flat-out sprint around the oval of Green Lake.
As I was climbing Capitol Hill at the end of this morning's run listening to Fela's superjam from 1975, "Confusion, Pts. 1 & 2," I was hailed by a muscular young man wearing a tight Green Bay Packers jersey. He asked if I lived nearby. He smelled of alcohol, and he had dried pizza sauce or burrito juice smeared all over his face. I told him, yes, I lived on Capitol Hill. He asked if I had a cell phone charger; he said he was trying to call his friend who he expected was asleep in the Ben Lomond apartment building, the parking lot of which we were standing in. I told him I didn't have a cell phone charger but someone at Top Pot Doughnuts would. I asked if he wanted to walk with me. He said we could run. So I started to jog. He asked how far it was to Top Pot. I said two blocks over and one block up. As we jogged we talked about yesterday's hail storm, evidence of which was still visible on the streets, and Aaron Rodgers' Packers. I asked him if he liked the Seahawks. He said he didn't. I dropped him off at Top Pot. It was open but dark inside. There was one man with is little boy sitting at the front and someone working the cash register. I expected there to be more people. There usually are. The muscular young man wearing a tight Green Bay Packers jersey looked frightened as he approached the woman working the register. I hope she helped him.
