Saturday, Saturday.

I went on a 3 mile walk this morning along the dike. The water is overflowing from the river. Muddy caramel colors swirling, stumps drifting. It was overcast and cold and nothing like it is right now. Right now it is sunny and wonderful and lilac-filled and lawn mower filled and motorcycle filled.

C was showing me the W-B hot spots. Like the ‘fag forest’ where men wait in their cars at 8 am. Where are their wives, boyfriends, children? The ducks paddled in circles in the new lakes, the new tides of river.

Fia was riding her bike. A blue and white bike with squeaky training wheels that she’s outgrown. I rode the bike for a while toward the end, after breakfast. I looked like a clown. I wondered if I was really riding normally or relying on the training wheels. I was going so slow at certain points, I wondered if I might topple over without them.

An old man on a road bike was passing us on the other side. “UP FRONT, UP FRONT” or “RIGHT UP, RIGHT UP” whatever he was saying he was much too intense about it. We were hanging back behind Fia while she rode up ahead, she was more in the middle than the edge, but he had space. He acted like he didn’t have any space. Dude, she’s 7. You’re fine.

I was reading about colors in Mental Floss magazine. The royal purple comes from sea snails. It takes 8,000 snails to make one gram of dye. I also read that pink used to be the color for baby boys in the early 1900s. Pink for boys because it was a stronger color and blue for girls because it was more delicate. But because Hitler made homosexuals wear pink badges, in the concentration camps, the color was tainted for men. Ever heard of Scheele’s green? Full of arsenic. And used in wallpaper. When it got humid, the dampness would cause an odor. Fungus excreting a lethal gas feeding off the arsenic in the wallpaper.

And colors, all the colors we see are just reflected light. Absorbed and discarded, reflected light. Makes you wonder if pink is really pink? What if the colors we see are not the actual colors? How would anyone ever know? A world without light would be infinitely gray.