To The Apartment
Well, there's obviously something going on apropos whatever I was talking about yesterday. I had an appointment at ten this morning with the AAA rep at a local Honda dealer and ended up calling in and cancelling the appointment. Head like cement, tired to stupidity and listening to public radio report on the death of the financial world (they're always reporting on the death of the financial world, the physical world and the moral world - that's what good public radio is about), is no way to prepare for automobile ownership. So I skipped.
I drove downtown later for lunch. This is the last day for many of our people who got the pink slip, the package and their sixty day notice last February at the office, so I figured, what the hell, maybe I'd run into some of them at PCB. With a camera over the shoulder (the head still feeling like lead, the body like lead, the fingers like lead, the arms like lead, my pencil like lead, except I don't carry no stinkin pencils). Twenty of my office compatriots were sitting at a table ordering as I entered. Sometimes your intuition is right. Some days you bring them to you, some days they bring you to them. I started with a Guinness before I realized how heavily they'd all gotten into the wine and decided to switch. The turkey, mashed potatoes and peas (no gravy) were excellent.
Right now, back at the apartment, I'm feeling the effects of the Guinness (one) and the Merlot (three) and I'm feeling, for the moment, much better. I put gas in the car earlier this morning on the way to breakfast, $2.45 a gallon for the less than premium. I looked at my car, a champagne (on a good day, bronze on a bad day) colored 1988 Toyota as the meter clicked. It looked OK. It drives OK. It took the lower grade of gas without complaint. It stops when I push the pedal, it starts when I stomp. Twenty bucks for whatever number of gallons it took to fill the tank. I will refill it again in six weeks. What am I complaining about?
I talked with MSJ over lunch about the head full of cement. She too looked tired. She is young, attractive (engaged, I'm shooting the wedding) and tired. She looked at me like I was an idiot. "Tired, binky? We're all tired. Get a grip!" So maybe I can blame the vertigo on the job. And the prostate. And the state of the whether.
(Three drinks to the wind and tongue in cheek) I suggested - having shot, by then, a dozen photographs of the people at my end of the table (they're used to it) - that one day, when I was gone, the journal would be hailed a work of (folk) art, one of the progenitors of the movement, and her pictures (which have appeared here) would be known throughout the universe. She opined that yes, she'd been expecting a call from Hollywood at any moment now for three years, but somehow, somehow, nothing has happened.
Well, yes, I replied, but fame will come after my demise, thereby relieving me of any need to personally demonstrate the proposition and (to get to the point) it is well worth the hassle of having my camera around. After my death (many years from now in the arms of one of her many ever so sympathetic sisters) good things would undoubtedly come to those who were left behind. She nodded. She'd heard worse. The Merlot. The Guinness. I reached over and rescued one of her nachos, foraging, you understand, with Guinness and camera, here in Oakland.
Later. Wine in the early afternoon. It cures your ills until about three, if you can stop before you lose count, and I stopped, I guess. One nap, two naps later, it's seven in the evening. Emmy wandered out into the living room today as I was writing to check out the cat door insert I'd put into the sliding glass doors to the balcony. She went outside and walked the perimeter. My goodness. Ms. Emmy. Welcome to the apartment.
|
