You're reaching a bit with that, don't you think?

Writing has similar hazards, just as hard to see if you're not watchful.

Anyway, up late last night working on the pictures, up later this morning after eight to walk to breakfast and read the papers, home now well after ten with the day and the week and the life ahead. As are they always, here on a Monday morning. (Until they're not, but we'll let that slumber for one hopes is a good long while.) A walk later, I think, the head reasonably solid, no sign of the vertigo or the low blood pressure since Saturday, the blood pressure now normal to slightly over. The complexities of twenty-first century living with over hyped meds and their issues. Side effects: run-on mouth, bemoaning and groaning. Still, a walk later sounds good for a start.

The road construction on Grand Avenue, at least at my end of it, seems to be finished. Odd to see the way clear of parked trucks and milling workers, many trucks and many workers stalling traffic for months now on end at an end. You hope burying that electrical transmission cable, if that's what it was, will bring sweetness and light to the neighborhood and all the work that was done was worth the interruption, but it's something we will never know, I guess. Chalk it up to experience. If the Internet is faster for their efforts, that would be fine; if I'm getting more and better electricity for their efforts, that would be fine too, but how would you tell? Trucks and bulldozers and clam shell devices all in a row, now doing their same thing somewhere else, one assumes, here in Oakland.

You're spinning your wheels.

I took a couple of pictures walking back and I need something about the road construction to hang a link on. Those and one photograph I took of what I assume is a homeless man “taking in the lake”, another man, also homeless you assume, walking in the distance beyond him. And that's the sum total of my reaction this morning? A picture taken on the fly, my attention on the road now clear of construction? That seems to be what it was. Talking about it here doesn't seem to make a difference. The difference in my own life seems to be I'll now drive, when I drive, down to Grand now instead of going back up over the hill to dodge the tied up traffic. Pretty exciting stuff for a minute or so, here on a Monday.

Later. Not a bad walk around the downtown and back after sitting out on the patio in front of Peet's drinking a cup of coffee. What's with sitting out in front of Peet's? Well, I like outside tables and coffee and the occasional gooey pastry is my idea of an excuse to sit out at a table with a camera on my lap and watch the street-sidewalk-bus stop universe rotate on its axis. Harmless enough, is my thought. I don't get in people's faces with the camera, usually, unless I think I can get away with it.

Still, walking all the way back is a good sign, the head reasonably clear and my step more brisk than I've seen in these last few weeks. Bringing up Robert is an ongoing project. You'd think there'd be a pause, after a certain number of years, a breathing space where he finally gets what he's about and, well, relaxes. Takes it as it comes. Worries less about his photographs and takes more pictures of anything that strikes, including his kitty cat.

You seem to slip in and out of referring to yourself in the third person.

I believe they have theories about why people do that, none of which, I'm seem to recall, I really want to know about.

I did take the odd picture of two, as I was walking, no great urge to find the definitive image, but I've been aware of my surroundings and looking forward to see what I've gotten when I get home. Maybe I'm becoming less selective, less judicious in what I'm shooting; maybe I'm letting the eye and the subconscious explore new territory; maybe I'm using that as an excuse to let my standards down. The problem with standards is, if they're too tight, too strict, too anal, you end up never taking a picture. Cartier-Bresson's already done everything you'll ever do in the world of photography, why even mess around? I don't believe any of that, I'm sitting here pretty relaxed and enjoying myself, I just need to put a cork in this sort of run on writing and get serious. You're here for serious, right? Sober thoughts and incisive political commentary? Look at the picture: the rock solid look of a serious and trustworthy person. Right?

This is tiring.

This is the Internet and this is a journal. With photographs.