Back now from breakfast, my waitress asking me why, in the mornings, I take a detour across the street and down to the gas station before returning to where I'd started in front of the café before getting into my car. I explained I shoot a picture of the station across the street for my web site where, in a small corner, I was tracking changes in gas prices, nothing special, just something I'd started a few months ago. I'm sure they have me down as an old early morning whacko, but then I'm the guy who comes in with a camera over his shoulder, they've already put me down in the reliable, orders pretty much the same breakfast every morning, but off the wall customer category, what difference a few pictures of a gas station? Doesn't everyone carrying a camera take pictures of gas stations just after breakfast? In Oakland?

Why'd you even touch that?

In explaining somewhat minor but obsessive behavior to others, maybe I can explain it to myself. Obsessive, yes, but mildly obsessive, nothing I'd worry about missing if I were to, say, go on vacation for a week in, well, Arizona, for example. Besides, not much else on my plate so early in a morning, the sky overcast, the temperature cool, the head under control as long as I'm sitting leaning back to the practically horizontal here at the computer. Lower blood pressure, maybe. No violence being done to my inner ear. My inner eye. My oh so objective outlook.

Later. A proper trip to the grocery store with a list in hand deciding I finally needed to get some essentials in the kitchen, simple things like cereal, soups, apples, Idaho potatoes, mustard and Ibuprofen. I'm now sitting here after popping a couple with no idea if it works, but I think I've heard people talk positively about the stuff and who knows, maybe something will happen.

Later still. So, the aching is OK, OK in the sense it's hunkered down now in the background, popping a second pair of tablets a couple of hours after the first, the wobbly/disorienting character of the thing now in the forefront, no urge to set forth from the apartment and conquer Oakland. Going to the grocery store was enough. Interesting to watch, less interesting to experience.

I've talked about looking at condos here in the downtown, thought about renting a live work space if I could find one at a price I could afford, the whole idea being to reinvent my living space, replace what I can assure you is crap with more decent crap. Get a more habitable work area together (so I can more comfortably hide inside?). A couch or two. A chair or two. I don't need a swell view of the city or many of the other things you look for in a “nice” place, but enough space to spread out a bit more, a large wall needing a whole lot of framed portraits and a bathroom with a decent tub.

And this is coming from?

It's interesting, one of the more comfortable places I've ever lived was easily the funkiest and least expensive. It had a great view of San Francisco off its rickety unpainted back porch and stairs, the absentee landlord (whom I never met) amenable to the pounding of nails, the painting of walls and the building of book shelves. In fact, it's probably one of the few places I've ever “lived” in the sense I spread out everything I owned, put each funky stick of whatever in some proper place, got rid of left over packing boxes and occasionally swept and vacuumed the rugs (except I don't think it had any rugs). How do you explain that?

And?

Well, that time at that place was always a transitory time at a transitory place. This, by the way, has always been my experience. I've always been passing through. I'm passing through the place I'm living in right now, although more comfortably (inside my head) than many of the places in my past. Still, I'm passing through. I wonder if that's common to most people? Kids who grew up in a military family that moved with each new assignment? Kids who grew up during a time when it was common to change cities and therefor houses when their parents changed jobs or moved to another assignment in another city within the company that employed them? Does that put your head in a place where you're always passing through?

And?

Well, maybe all this “getting out of my rut” is a process of settling into a place rather than getting out of one. Of course, that's trading one rut for another, but what does “change” really mean? Hopping from one rut to another, keep the comfort level low, take on new adventures as if you were still twenty-five (and crazy)?