I had a kind of a surreal pleasant experience with a construction site at CannonPark in West Central in Spokane,Wa. . The city is building a new pool. Not quite sure when it’s expected to be completed. In complete mental exhaustion, making my way slowly through the hood to the grocery store to get stuff I didn’t want to get… I passed the same storefront cemeteries of this neighborhood as I like to call them. The homes where one doesn’t want to know what’s going on behind the doors. The one porch that’s been restored, while the rest of the place is in decay. Passed a few nondescript hobos in the park. Another strange fog of a morning in the Can. A couple lost souls did there best to conjure up a good morning. And then in this strange push and pull between the semi manic nirvana of the past few days, I had a nice brain tonic…. The actual work being done on the pool. The coordination between working class heroes, the process of building, and the materials and equipment being used. Why this particular construction site in this neighborhood that I dislike on this one morning? Perhaps an ongoing fascination for engineers and schematics that I never really pursued? Maybe it was just nice to see a crew work with slow precision, a departure from my memories of working construction in my early twenties where everyone, and I mean everyone was gacked out on some variety of uppers and booze. The dangerous kinds of construction sites. At CannonPark, these fellows were working with no cell phones, no shouting…. I could see a sort of nonchalant focus in there movements. The manner in which they communicated was subtle and precise. The old one word will do better than two sort of thing. And there was a certain thoughfulness that went into there work that gave me an odd sense of calm. A zen moment? A manufactured zen moment? A hipnogic state induced by too much staring at this screen and being a sieve for abberent info through my cell? I don’t know. But it was nice. I don’t know much about construction anymore, but I know about an actual work ethic. Even as I multi-task myself into the ground from time to time, there’s still something inside me that remembers the time where working with purpose and achieving an end was an excellent salve for all kinds of ailments. I’m hoping the construction of this pool goes well, and isn’t hampered by city funding and so forth. During my last couple months in this hood, I may make some sort of routine of being “aware” of the progress of the pool, cuz I’m certainly not getting much comfort by the breeze of information floating through the windows, dripping off the trees, and all the nervous wrecks going down. When being with the family, or occasionally traipsing to another show downtown, and the bouncing through movies, the “news,” bike riding, surfing the interweb for the “one or two” sites that will “bring it all together ;), books and so forth don’t do the job as far as feeling some verve and/or calm….The construction site may be a salve. In the right now, I think it’s better than pursuing meditation. At least for me. Etc. Without being too “heady” I think watching the progress can be a piecemeal type of meditation…. But an “awareness medition, a method of focusing one’s mind on one thing… a process.