Diddle-dee-dum
Friday. The nights here next to the coast are generally cool with the wind off the ocean, last night no exception, this morning clear and comfortable. Breakfast went well getting through the papers in just under an hour, returning to take an hour's nap. Why, I don't know. I thought I had plenty of sleep last night but I drifted right off when I got back this morning - no complaints, no excuses, just crawl into bed - plenty of time left in the day, I figure, to get into trouble. I'm heading to Roy's later to pick up tickets for tomorrow's game. I'm not entirely clear how this came to be, but the tickets have evidently been arranged for us with Roy's compliments.
I'll miss the family party in Seattle this weekend, both my sister and I thinking it was the weekend of the 25th, but I'm looking out the window right now thinking I need to go somewhere, anywhere, if only for the air, and none of the local places will cut it. So I'll drive up to Portland next week, take my time (none of this grab the wheel and drive for twelve hours) and see if it makes me feel any better. I've made this trip many times, but it's a long road and “many times” spreads pretty thin over forty years, so the roads and the towns will be new. Pretty new. Mostly new. It has been forty years, hasn't it, forty years this month since I moved to the Bay Area? At least one mistake, by the way, not moving on back in the seventies when I had an opportunity to continue the writing by moving to Austin. But that's another story and I was another person.
Later. A Guinness at Roy's around one, picking up four tickets and a parking pass to tomorrow's game, decent tickets behind the visiting team's dugout, Roy suggesting we get there early, have a beer and watch batting practice. We can do that. Four forty dollar tickets and a free parking pass. I'm feeling better about eating that money I spent on my aborted trip to the Fire Festival.
A walk then (what else?) back to the apartment packing (what else?) a camera. Not sure why I took this picture, something about the shape of the branch. This one was shot as I was walking, figured what the hell, and the cormorants were a no brainer, although I should have framed it differently had I been thinking. Paying attention. Easy enough to blame it on the Guinness.
The BBC news is playing in the background. I may stop listening to the news. The people who run this world are creatures from another planet, run on alien logic, push for outcomes nobody in their right mind would want and hearing about it is very depressing.
Another good reason to get out of town. You whine, you write, you never do! There in Oakland.
Maybe take the train. No, the car. No question, take the car. Pack the cameras, tripods and lights. Three days of driving: four hours in the late morning, early afternoon; check into motels early in clever little towns and sleep in for once; eat a peach, eat a plum. Diddle-dee-dum.
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