It's hard to do vibrato when you breathe through gills.

I'm a pacer.

I know this. Anybody who's dealt with me long enough in casual company knows this. Any appreciable amount of time I have to stand around invariably ends with me going back and forth and around again, shooting off in random directions. Like a shark, it doesn't matter so much where I'm going as long as I'm moving. To not pace is unthinkable. It would be like talking without my hands or not chewing on my pens.

Honey, it's just not *in* me.

Regardless, I usually have some spare time now, in between finishing my work day and my ride showing up (on my hopefully soon to be done forever carpooling situation). And now that the weather has gone from Ninth-Circle-Gee-Count-Uglio-Want-Some-Katsup-With-That-Enemy to merely hrm-kinda-cool I stand and wait and read. There's a very nice, open cement area. Not quite a courtyard, more than a sidewalk.

And I stand. And read. And pace.

Back and forth and up and down and katy corner (both ways!) and around in kind of lazy circles and squares and sometimes even triangles. With the wind in my hair and the sun on my face (even that weak anemic sun that hasn't quite made it to spring yet but is really trying to update its wardrobe as soon as it can afford to, you know how the economy is) I can't help but move around. Words and steps, movement and thought. It's the closest I've ever come to walking meditation, and that's impressive because I'm about as comfortable meditating as white surpremacists are at the apollo.

Wow, that simile came out of no where. Talk about your elephants in the room.

Anywho, there's something special about moving and reading. A kind of connective synchronization between the physical and the mental. I adore it. I wish I could do it more.

So, when/if I ever have my own house, I need to have a space for this. Maybe a flat, manicured lawn. Maybe a zen garden full of stones neatly raked into patterns I'll immediately destroy as I tromp my merry way over the oceans I created. Maybe just a large and empty patio.

And I'll pace. Probably for an hour or two at a time, burning through my books. Maybe I'll, miracle of all miracles, get a tan. Lord knows I wouldn't otherwise be bothered. And then the neighbors will look over and see this crazy fellow wandering around in mad circles and patterns for long stretches of time as he flips through books and talks to himself at times about what he's reading and what he's thinking.

Maybe even singing. I do that from time to time, too, while I'm reading or pacing. Can't help it.

Like the sharks, if I don't sing, I die.