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Here In Oakland

Art & Life


   



March 29, 2014

Believe Me
Saturday. To bed at ten, to sleep not long after, no urges to read or look at the tablet, up with the alarm to head out to breakfast on an intermittently raining morning feeling good. As I almost always feel good heading out to and during breakfast. Not sure why the ocular things, when they visit, come later in the mornings or in the mid-afternoons. They say to watch the diet, but who really knows?

A swing by the supermarket on the way home. They'd sent me an email yesterday with a list of discounted food items that I often buy: click on as many as you like and they'd add the discount to your store card when you check out. First time I'd seen this. I bought the things I'd added from the list this morning and their check out computer gave me the promised discount. An increasingly weird but amusing world.

No idea what to do today other than continue with the guitar. A good guitar day yesterday, one hopes a good day today. I seem to be getting my head (and fingers) around the current lesson, a Jimi Hendricks song. Which is good. Any increased enthusiasm is good. He, with the earnest face proclaimed just after breakfast.

Later. Rain, rain, rain. At least the attitude and the head are holding up, the sinus/upper palate behaving and no signs (yet) of any ocular visitations. No thought of taking a nap either, no thought of walking down to the farmers market to look around (I'm terrible about taking pictures at these farmers markets, one or two maybe on an outing).

Some guitar, some hopeless never ending discussion of reserve currencies droning on in the background, a little Jimi Hendrix on the stereo turned down low in order to not disturb the neighbors. I remember the old Rip Off Ranch on Potrero Hill in San Francisco where I could usually let it rip wide open, blowing the head off and damaging the walls. Might like to do that just one more time to remember, otherwise I'm fine with turned down low anymore (for the neighbors). I am. Really.

Later still. A walk out into the rain with the camera wrapped in an old plastic bag, out the door and down the hill by the construction site and then to the lake. There were still people about, but very few people about. A lone runner circling the lake; two young women walking by with their umbrellas, one or two people hunching along the sidewalk. Not much in the way of pictures.

Back to the apartment, still raining, a look through a new photography magazine that arrived today with the mail, another pass through the usual news sites on the web. Some cereal and then some more cereal with a side of cottage cheese for lunch, we'll save the sake (yes, we added sake to the grocery basket) for the evening later along with spaghetti. When we shop, we shop the basics.

Coming up now toward evening, nothing I can see I might want to watch on television, we may have to get creative. When's the last time I've watched some of the old movies? Something like the old 1950's War of the Worlds? I doubt it, but the thought did just now occur. What other movies are up on the shelf?

Evening. We did indeed buy three of the single serving bottles of sake earlier at the supermarket and we did consume the three bottles of single serving sake this evening and we are feeling mellow. We are. All things considered.

I did not watch War of the Worlds, but I did watch Invaders From Mars, another B minus grade science fiction movie of the fifties that I first saw as a youngster in the theater and remember to this day. War of the Worlds, Invanders From Mars and Invasion of the Body Snatchers are the three I still remember.

I suspect it's best if you'd seen them when they were released and you were young and your head was just another head floating in the 50's culture as my reaction reminds me of the Korean soaps. A clash of expectations, cultures, ideas of what makes sense in the depiction of a story line. Or something like that.

Wooden characters, a uniquely fifties cold war psychology, really awkward special effects, people from another time and another dimension, yet I don't remember reacting in any way close to that when I saw first saw them as a pre-teen. I find the A movies from the fifties difficult to watch too, let alone the B movies of the period, although I suspect they still talk directly to the subconscious in various ways where they've lost their communication with the rational/acclimated to the current culture brain.

You're rambling.

Indeed. We'll look at this again tomorrow, see if we can't turn it into something intelligible.

Anyway, watched the movie, won't watch it again, won't even think of watching either of the other two of the three mentioned. Life is too short. Believe me.

The photo up top was taken yesterday at the apartment house construction site with a Nikon D4s mounted with an 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR Nikkor lens.


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