I've been wrestling with some old black and white negatives from the early seventies, some half dozen I took at a Doug Sahm concert at the Great American Music Hall who was on tour promoting his newly released Doug Sahm and Band album with a Gilbert Shelton cover and Bob Dylan performing with the band on a number of the songs.

They'd fairly crappy negatives (I wish I'd know the fellow I'd used to process the negatives ran such a sloppy operation: it's hard to see on the contact sheets, easy to see and less easy to fix on a 50 Meg scan), but yesterday and today seem to be the time I've picked to straighten them out. Try to straighten them out, they really do look like snow in the middle of summer.

So, the scanner has been operating in the background, I've been finishing up yesterday's entry and looking forward to the Temescal Street Fair later this afternoon. I've shot it in the past, it's not all that hard to get to and the signs are good. So I'll go. I will. Three's a charm: two weekend flake-outs followed by success with the third. Right?

We'll know soon enough, probably by the next paragraph.

Later. Out the door: good. On the bus: good. On to the connecting bus: good. Arrived at the Temescal Street Fair half an hour after it had (officially) opened and started shooting, running around for an hour a half, up and down the blocked off section of Telegraph feeling upbeat, the head and eyes behaving. It was larger than last year's fair, it looked as if they'd almost doubled the number of fenced off blocks, so at least something is doing well in Dingle-Dell Oakland.

A good day's shooting, ending by sitting down at a table in front of Bakesale Betty's, thinking I'd walk over and find a stop where I could catch the rerouted bus home. Then, looking up, there was a 12 bus waiting for a light not twenty five feet in front of my nose. The 12? The 12 is my downtown bus, it goes by my apartment. So this is the other end of its route. Where have I been all this time?

How many years have you been taking this bus, how many years taking it to connect to a second bus when you want to go up Telegraph to the University?

Too many years, too many times. But I was hungry and so I walked to its stop (at the corner, not more than thirty feet from my table) and decided to get off at my morning café to have a well timed lunch: a grilled cheese sandwich, ice cream and lemonade. The next bus arrived as scheduled some thirty minutes later and I caught it back home, as I was just leaving the café to download the photographs to the computer and prepare another section for the web sites. Except it turns out I've never had a Temescal section on ArtAndLife or HereInOakland. Where did the idea I had one come from?

There will be a section up by the end of the day. Maybe two if I can track down the old photographs. I've shot the fair at least two or three times in the past, I must have enough for a second section of some kind. I must.

Is this a sign of further deterioration or a sign the brain and the senses are returning, albeit perhaps slowly?

I guess we'll find out.

Evening. I did go back and look for older Temescal pictures and found fifteen of them scattered throughout the Oakland Miscellaneous section. I suspect if I go to the original group of photographs I find enough to make up a full twenty-one, but not tonight. We're done for the evening. Also not good to go through the older posted photographs for too long. They remind me of, um, where I started in this ongoing photographic experiment.

And not that you're pretty hot stuff?

Going through the photographs I took today, putting together the current section, I was wondering if any progress has been made. One or two are good enough, none of them particularly original (hard to be original with twenty billion squintillion photographers wandering around out there) and almost all of them today were taken of the performers, fewer pictures of people in the crowd. Not sure why. Not sure why I didn't linger at one or two places and catch the picture I was after rather than settling for the picture I shot. No hups or pats on the back in doing that.

So when's the last time I didn't have a period of introspection after a photo session? Life is short, I get out there and shoot pictures for reasons essentially unknown, we'll relax for the rest of the evening and play the guitar.