Friday. A good sunny morning after an uneventful night's sleep, to bed just after eleven, up this morning at five-thirty without the alarm. Not a lot of sleep, but it seems to be what I needed as I feel pretty good. For now, at least. Remembering the past. “Now” doesn't always last. To breakfast and back at the usual place, a dental cleaning appointment later at three, the Oakland Art Murmur coming up this first Friday of the month in the very late afternoon, early evening. Enough to keep me busy.

Later. I thought about it as I was writing the above, how many hours of sleep I probably got last night and then went into the bedroom, lay down and got an hour or so's nap. Just like that. OK, it's now after eleven, time for some guitar before heading out to Berkeley to have the teeth cleaned and then head back to the Art Murmur. Guitar, photographs and journal; guitar, photographs and journal. Repeat the sequence. Engrave them in the brain.

Put that way it sounds, well, obsessive.

Certainly not around here. Not in Oakland.

Later still. A drive through traffic to have the teeth cleaned, a drive back through traffic home. For some reason the dentist wasn't in to check whatever he checks as these sessions and I'm to come back on Tuesday. Frustrating.

Evening. A bus to the Art Murmur area to find a street blocked off beside Telegraph and people setting up. I admit I wasn't feeling all that great, the sinus-head thing out of whack, a bit of double vision. Of course I'd driven to the dentist's office with a bit of double vision, nothing new in that.

What to eat? I hadn't eaten since breakfast and not all that large a breakfast at that and I was hungry, but not all that hungry. I'd toyed with the idea of blowing off the Art Murmur altogether and having a nice sushi dinner (with sake, of course) but realized I was looking for comfort food, not to mention comfort alcohol and the way I'd feel after even a modest amount of sake wasn't something I was looking forward to.

Still, two or three pictures total, another bus back to the 7-11 look alike where I bought an ice cream cone and a 150ml bottle of Jack Daniels. Better the Jack Daniels over the course of an evening than the sake, was my thought. If I was thinking. I never quite know.

So here we sit at the computer, a shot of Tennessee whiskey by the keyboard. Three shots in one of those small bottles, half again as much alcohol as in a large sake flask. We'll take it easy over the evening and examine our head tomorrow to see how crazy it was this evening as opposed to how much it might hurt in the morning light. We are not worried about hangovers, not with these three shots over however many hours, but rather the state of our being.

Are we in good shape here, certainly we've been talking lately as if we were, or are we really sledding through a series of ups and downs that won't quit. The young lady cleaning my teeth suggested I have the dentist look at my upper gums on the right side when I return. They seemed overly red. They shouldn't be red. Then again they shouldn't hurt.

I stuck my head in at the tattoo parlour art exhibit down from my apartment on Grand as I was eating the ice cream cone - nicely done stuff in graffiti style - and realized there was indeed an art scene underway here in Oakland, different, but then again very much like the scene I was a small part of in the early seventies in San Francisco. Good for them. Do well. Wear a mask when you're using those spray paints, though. I've donated at least once to help an air brush artist friend find a new liver.

So you've skipped out on photographing the Art Murmur and your dinner has consisted of an ice cream cone and three shots of whiskey?

Well, if you must put it that way.