No nap after breakfast?

Hmm. We'll need to think more about that.

Later. I did edit the above slightly when I got up from the nap, changing it to admit a nap might be in the works, whatever the amount of sleep I may have gotten last night. So nap I did, a full hour of actual sleep, awake and out the door then after ten, to see what was happening in the farmers market and maybe, just maybe, have a cup of coffee and something more at the morning café, not that I've ever done such a thing in the past.

So, what the hell. Along the lake, passing the herds of geese. I believe they travel in gaggles, but they're more like herbivores around here, vacuuming the grass for, well, grass and whatever else they find edible in and among the blades. Herbivores, as said.

They were setting up speakers and what looked like a DJ's outfit as I was passing through the white column pergola, one or two Buddha statues in place with an ecstatic dance sign pasted to a wall that somehow confused the issue. They could easily be one and the same, but I had the feeling they didn't really fit. The ecstatic dance people have been dancing out in front of the pergola on Saturday's now for some time, but they've never had twenty kilowatt generators, speakers and DJ platforms with them but relying instead on their own eclectic (Jamaican?) rhythm section.

On by the farmers market, skipping any pictures, to the morning café for coffee and a dish of mocha chip. I didn't need the ice cream, but couldn't just take up a table for coffee when they were crowded with people having a late breakfast, although I know that's something they would never even hint about if I did. There was a small table like mine behind me that was empty during the time I was eating, so no problem, not that I would have fretted (much) about it otherwise.

That's enough of that.

Indeed. Everyone has one's own little neuroses, tweaked by one's history and one's fate. Sounds better when you state it that way anyway.

A walk back, but through the farmers market this time, taking a desultory picture or two. I was content to just allow an errant photograph to come by on its own and find my eye and did nothing to help, other than to repeat taking one or two pictures I've taken many times in the past. No blame. It's Saturday, the weekend, and we're OK with that.

The ecstatic dance troupe had arrived in the interim, when I reached the lake pergola, taking a picture or two of the goslings as I passed. They were still in their same area, still doing nothing other than eating or dozing in the shade, but I then stopped to sit at a bench and watch the dancers off to the side on their own on the grass, the Buddha folks and their elaborate setup still preparing for whatever was planned.

With the ecstatic dancers displaced off to the side, no longer “performing” as such on the cement in front of the white columns, it seems to have encouraged others to join in, at least there were many more dancers than they've had in the past, although they all seemed to know the routines and were having a good time. One or two or three pictures with a little more care behind them this time, although I was still, well, drifting in my bubble, but now finding some good photographs.

Not tired, but I'd had some of the double vision symptoms walking to the café - fleeting, nothing excessive that didn't clear up by the time I arrived - the sinuses and upper palate still up to no good, but they're always up to no good and behaving better this morning than they've been behaving in recent past, let me tell you, so we'll leave it at that. I'm very good about bringing up stuff that's better left to lie, giving my misjudged juggling with Karma an opening to stir them up. Diddle-dee-dup.

Or something like that.

Or something like that.

Later still. A walk over to the lake, taking a camera with the longer 180mm lens, having heard drums in the distance from the apartment and thinking maybe whatever the main attraction that was planned by the pergola had gotten underway. My, my. I suspect I was wrong about them not being connected with the ecstatic dancers. I've never seen anyone put something quite like this together on a weekend, the two DJ's cranking it out to better than a hundred or more people, dancers and onlookers both. Life in the fast lane by the lake here in Oakland.

Evening. So, some pictures of the ecstatic dancers, returning with the one camera and heading out again with another camera with a mid-range 24-70mm lens. I'd say things were picking up for me, at least - clear headed, interested, close to human - back in plenty of time to work with the photographs and to watch the Scandinavian police procedural at six. Another day, another couple of hundred photographs, some of which turned out.

Maybe we'll get to bed at a decent hour tonight, see how that works.