Sunday. Nice day, sun shining, a walk down to the cafe for breakfast, another walk in the afternoon down by the lake to sit for a while on a bench and watch the birds. Lake Merritt is a designated bird sanctuary - I overhead what appeared to be the leader of a group of some kind saying it was the first and only one of its kind - and there are geese and pelicans and gulls (and more gulls) and more bird shit fertilizing the grass than you can imagine. Kinda nice, actually.

The same routine. A couple of hours where I feel OK followed by another hour when I need to crash, the heart chugging a little louder, me thinking this isn't good, maybe I should, you know, call someone. Any original thoughts I'd had about going out and shooting pictures during these six weeks have long since evaporated. Nothing horrible about it, a little sore, no real pain, just a lesson in what happens when you lose a piece of your person.

Monday. One more week. They say the rain isn't due until later tomorrow, so it should be a good day for the head if not the body. We've passed the solstice so the days are getting longer. January, February, long months as I recall, more so somehow than November and December. Don't you think? Longer? Here in Oakland?

So cut the crap, what's happening?

Well, nothing, other than my obsession with this recuperation process. I watched a couple of movies today, a second or third viewing of David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. and a Japanese film, Visitor Q, both on DVD. Mulholland Dr. is not unlike Lynch's Lost Highway, only with more attractive naked women, and director Takashi Mike's Visitor Q bumps movies like Lost Highway, Fight Club and Inside John Malkovich to another level. Visitor Q is a hard watch, you don't want to put it in your kid's Christmas stocking. Hi, ho, no. I'm not sure how it got in mine. I'm going to rent something with a reindeer character tomorrow, but pulling a sleigh instead of browning on a spit, a red nose rather than a red whanger. Bad enough this recuperation business, I don't need to add drama to the drama.