Not sure really, but that's normal. The solution is to try something as if it were something you really wanted and then remain flexible enough to follow where it may or may not lead. And then there's a million follow on pieces of advice, all of them nice, all of them useful if they work, none of them useful if they don't. So I'm sitting here in a reflective mood, the head in pretty good shape, the lungs could be better, thinking of this and that.

I've things going on I push along every now and then, projects that are progressing slowly, projects that one day may catch fire. Little things that if I put more effort into them, brought them off, would indicate to me a direction had been started. We'll leave it at that, a couple of silly things I'm thinking of getting done today leading to, well, who knows? I'm not young anymore, but I'm far from dead and many things are possible. Taking a decent portrait using a studio flash, for example, something I worked on yesterday to no avail. Why to no avail? Why stuck on such diddly stuff? It's not rocket science. Maybe another step forward today, not that it will lead to anything larger, but it's a start. A start is a start. Perhaps I'm good at starts, just not that great with middles and endings.

I would have thought you're good at dragging out endings forever. When's the last time you started something?

I start stuff all the time, but my preoccupation with dragging out lives past seems to abort them much too quickly, so I'm focusing on simpler things: washing my hands when returning to the apartment, varying my breakfast fare to avoid cholesterol, buying shoes that don't have laces. Stuff like that can lead to excellent starts with confirmable middles. Probably shouldn't end those cholesterol lowering breakfasts, though. From what I've read.

Later. Back now that it's just after noon from a walk down to the nearest BART station on 19th Street, thinking maybe a bus of some kind to somewhere, then thinking maybe a BART ride to see the new exhibit at the Asian Art Museum and, indeed, getting on the train, but getting off at the Embarcadero station instead to walk around the Ferry Building area and through one or two of the Embarcadero buildings. I was working in what is called the Westinghouse (was called, anyway) when they were building the Embarcadero Center, tall structures with a cement or cement-like exteriors, now looking darker and perhaps dirtier as cement or cement-like surfaces do look after a certain number of years. A certain number of years. Ouch.

Nothing in the way of pictures. A photograph of the Villaincourt Fountain this morning in San Francisco, the area pretty much empty in the late morning, a picture of the Mendocino ferry, not something to go down in the image history books, I'm afraid, a photograph of a seagull and then another photograph of a seagull, even less remarkable, although I kind of like them for all my carping.

So a day started with an upbeat attitude, a walk that was a good walk, but leading nowhere I haven't been before and pictures that didn't really have my heart in them. A call from Mr. E suggesting the group of us get together at either Harrington's in the city later or nearby at Roy's, he (and I) preferring Roy's, but we'll need to get hold of Mr. S to be sure Mr. S agrees. Complicated, our schedules.