Day It Was
Sunday. Things seem fine. I wasn't sure how they'd be when I went to bed last night - you may have noted - but the batteries seem to have recharged; the coughing still here (cough! cough!), but halfway under control now that I'm not lying down and, well, we're home from breakfast thinking in terms of going to the Chinatown Streefest again this afternoon. Full circle. Up in the morning coughing, overdoing it a bit during the day, crashing in the evening thinking “oh my!”, up again the next morning feeling “fine”. What we now call “fine”, anyway, dueling as we are with whatever is making this low level attack on our lungs. Naughty, naughty! So no complaints: I slipped on my shoes this morning under my own power, I've had breakfast and I've read the papers, here on a Sunday at the end of the rainbow in Oakland.
The end of the rainbow?
If you're not living at the end of the rainbow by now, my son, then when?
Naturally, this being a Sunday morning, I've turned my attention to earth shaking things, decisions of import and individual acts that move planets so I've decided to bring just the one camera with a 50mm lens to the the festival today (if I really do make it to the festival today). There are lots of ways to explain this decision, but let's let it all out, go for broke: just as Musashi opted at the end for a wooden sword (a training sword) in his famous fights, I'm opting for the bog standard 50. You can get there with a 50, you can not only get there, you can prevail, all with the basics, all using the standard, all using just the eye and what's out there without magnification or alteration. Unless you're shooting ospreys in their nests on Mt. Penatubo, of course. But we are talking street photography here, the ancient art of the photo hunter, Cartier-Bresson territory before he went over to the other side and became a painter. As did Man Ray, come to think of it.
Are we comparing ourself to Man Ray and Cartier-Bresson?
Better than Pinocchio and Charlie Brown, don't you think? A form of reverance, of course, with a bit of the old tongue in cheek. Here in Oakland.
Later. Standing at the bus stop, the bus late, one other person waiting, a man older by ten years than I, thinking, do I really want to go downtown and shoot pictures at a street festival this afternoon? Do I even want to leave the apartment? Do I? Well, do I? I was getting close to an answer when the bus came and I got on board carrying the one camera with the one 50mm lens and proceeded to ride downtown and photograph the Chinatown Streetfest much as I had yesterday. Lots of walking, a fair amount of shooting, although nothing like the volume I'd produce at the forming up of a parade. Still. Happy enough now, having returned, the photographs about to transfer from their CF card to the computer. Whoop.
OK, one or two decent pictures, not as many as yesterday, although I took more today and thought for a minute out there maybe I'd done better. Still, no complaints. Some turned out I thought I'd missed, many failed I thought I'd gotten. Hoped I'd gotten. Now that I've had a chance to settle in the cough is moderating, the day is turning into evening and I'm thinking nap. Nap, nap. Maybe a little radio to lull me to sleep, not that there's anything on the radio one could use to lull oneself to sleep.
I think we're drifting here.
I think we need to get another week going, get on with these projects I've started, engage the brain, get more breakfasts under my belt. And maybe see that neurologist my doctor recommended. This head could be better, this mind could be clearer, this day was too long for the kind of day it was.
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