I'd brought my digital recorder and turned it on when an interesting conversation rolled at high volume across the City Center from Top Dog to my table opposite, the recorder starting and then immediately dying with the battery dead, so it's charging now on the bedroom desk. I have this urge to get my act together with the batteries and the cameras and their peripherals so that I can, at the drop of a hat, grab a bag or two and hit the street. That's a sign the energy is coming back. Who cares if I ever grab the cameras as I'm running out the door, but having the interest, energy and anal retentiveness to put it together is good. No, really. We operate in incremental steps around here. Cleaning the bathroom is like the sun rising after an interminable night, charging the batteries is like an ice cream cone on a summer day.

You've completely fucking flipped.

Gather ye moods while ye may. If you limit your good moods to the times Ms. Universe knocks at your door with a smile on her face and a bottle of Mouton in her hand you're not going to rack up a long list of good times in your life. If you can celebrate the important things - getting up in the morning and being able to tie your own shoes, for example - you'll wander through life with a self satisfied grin like a man on a perennial high. This will not necessarily make you any new friends, perennial highs sometimes a sign of, well, trouble and instability, but your life will slide along like the hero in a wide screen technicolor movie. A fantasy, of course, but who's life isn't anymore, here or there in Oakland?

Later. I would say this day is another day I can chalk up to “feeling better”, the head different every day, but overall - and it's hard to tell - moving toward better living through (fill in the blank). Perhaps it's through “chemistry”, as the doctor has prescribed medicines, but perhaps through, well, who cares? I'm ready to break out of this funky headed feeling.

I didn't go to the Fire Arts Festival (a precursor event building up to Burning Man) here in Oakland, but I came close. Yes, there's a forty-five dollar ticket involved and I'm not sure what they really do at this thing - I assume there would be some good pictures that would come out of it - but I'm going with a flask of this here cheap sake I like so much this evening and watch my Japanese soaps as my camera-recorder-phone batteries charge in the bedroom. Pretty exciting Saturday night, don't you think? Are you jealous? Did I mention I cleaned (some small portion) of my bathroom this afternoon? I didn't?