I did open the paparazzi figure set and arrange them on a table. The idea is they're looking at you walking down the red carpet behind the velvet rope and you're the object of their attention. Which makes more sense as to why a youngster might like it, focusing on their own fantasies of fame rather than identifying with the paparazzi themselves. Couldn't quite see how a broad enough range of potential buyers might relate positively to paparazzi with the exception of a few vampires.

You're fumbling attempt to say you're not a paparazzi?

I occasionally skate along the bitter edges of paparazzi-like behavior. Running into a minor celebrity now and again at a parade I'm tempted to go after a picture and thereby risk damaging my self image as a pure more principled amateur. Hard to do the thing sometimes if it challenges your self image, wanting to not be considered rude when you haven't quite come to terms with what it may mean to be a proper street photographer.

But it's OK to get into someone else's face if they're not famous?

As I said, it can be complicated.

Still (back to the subject at hand), the idea for a diorama remains. Thoughts of cutting out pictures of the rich and famous, mounting them on cardboard perhaps, to give the plastic photographers people to shoot. This could be done well, this could be done badly. Diorama failure! Could become embarrassing are my thoughts on this overcast morning, sitting here wondering what I might do inside on this cloudy day, the beginnings of a picture arranged on a table, plastic figures of photographers staring at me through cameras. Makes me think my mind may be going.

Recurrent theme.

Indeed.

You don't care?

I do, but I don't.

Later. A bus ride downtown not quite dressed for this cooler morning, so a cup of coffee at Peet's on Broadway, but inside, no desire to freeze my ass out on the patio. A walk then to a bus stop and a ride home. A photograph of my reflection in a window along the way, but that was it. Nothing much else struck my fancy although I was looking. Sometimes, well, more than sometimes, just looking is more than enough to keep me content.

It's noon and the first rays of sun are beginning to poke through. Still grey, but the sun is on its way. Hey. I've eaten more than enough for a morning, my waitress at the breakfast place bringing me a box of cookies. They're very good cookies. The three I've eaten this morning, anyway. I wonder what they are, what that flavor is and where she bought them. I don't think she made them herself as she's given me cookies in the past and they've always come from a bakery. Maybe best not to know the bakery or its location.

Because you'd go buy some?

In an earlier life, maybe. No longer. The weight remains the same, no signs of any gains. A pound less now than last month. Just when I think I'm going up, I see I'm going down. Still odd to experience, still odd to feel the difference in how I feel now over how I felt then, so I keep on talking about it.

Maybe the longer hair will gain back some ounces.

You're not supposed to encourage me with this crap. The appetite's gone, I suspect it's not coming back.

Later still. I've had a hot bath to greet the afternoon, the sky now a mix of cloud and a little bit of sun. There's probably a name for that, but who cares, the day is obviously going to finish on an up enough beat. I'd been thinking of going to see Harry Brown playing in Berkeley, but don't have the energy. A walk down the way to sit outside at my café could work, but there's nothing I'd be able to eat or drink at the moment including coffee. Hard to sit at a crowded restaurant without ordering something and they'd freak if I ordered and then didn't eat it. There are disadvantages to being known at your local eatery I guess, but minor disadvantages that only a loner would think to list.

A hot bath, yes, maybe the heat just wore me out, the energy returning as I cool down. Could be. Take the afternoon meds, maybe, the pain killer sounds nice. The photograph was taken an hour after finishing the bath, I figure I'll post another one tomorrow when the hair is completely dry and unmanageable.

You're writing about unmanageable hair?

Too exciting, do you think? For a Sunday? In Oakland?