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Here In Oakland

Art & Life


   



October 9, 2013

Most Of It
Wednesday. To bed last night in fits and starts. Tried the first time just after eight, but couldn't sleep and so up then at nine to watch the first half hour or so of the PBS Frontline episode on football injuries to the head and brain. I'd think hard about this if I had kids in school. But I don't, so I won't.

I'm guessing not the greatest night's sleep, but up with the alarm to drive to breakfast and back, starting out on what looks to be a sunny day that gets up well into the seventies. Maybe go downtown later now that I haven't been there in a while. Some sinus stuff going on in the background, but nothing to worry about. Hup!

Later. Lie down for a while to see if there was a nap in the making, decided (after an hour) there wasn't, so up to take another look at the morning again as it was now after ten.

A walk over to the lake to find some gulls, coots, geese and a cormorant or two leaving little in the way of pictures. A shot of a coot (they were actively diving and eating, the gulls, geese and cormorants were either floating out on the lake, clustered under a tree on the grass or drying their wings). Had to take at least one picture to prove I'd been out.

Back to the apartment to turn around and catch the next bus downtown, getting off at the City Center to have a cup of coffee and a ginger something out at a table while listening to the young violinists practice before their noon concert was due to start at noon. They sounded good, but I was antsy and headed back home before they started, walking through Latham Square (not many people for a quarter to twelve) and snapping a picture of a new flier to look more closely at it later to see if they'd used one of my photographs (they had).

Boarded a bus finally along Grand to the morning café for a BLT and a lemonade. The waitress added fries, apologizing as she knew I wasn't someone who ordered fries. A little guilty leaving them on the plate, but this not hungry for other than certain things and not all that hungry even for them is real. No fries and no pizza except rarely and then only with effort.

You want some kind of gold star or something? You keep bringing this up.

I'm still in shock.

A walk back to the apartment to take a proper nap that eventually totaled some two hours, some of it asleep, with the radio playing down low in the background. The way I can tell I've gotten some actual sleep is by awakening to find the program has changed and the clock is showing another hour. Good. But why so tired today, the sinuses and head feeling less than good?

How many times do you have to ask that question?

No control, I'm afraid, the question keeps coming.

Later still. Head clearer. I can tell by comparing it to how I was getting along earlier: big difference. A less than happy observation. Still, clear in the evening, clear enough to look at last week's Wednesday entry and make needed corrections to the Evening section. Clearly I was not so clear back then.

Evening. The series that started last week (that I found myself avoiding) played two new episodes starting at six and I watched both. They were different, a little weird and quite good, although I had little sympathy for the main characters. I'm getting soft in my old age. The fact you're put off by or don't like something doesn't mean it isn't good, maybe even great, it's just it doesn't sit well in your stomach.

It was David Lynch's Eraserhead that drove that home for the first time. I saw it in 1977 when it was released in the theater and realized, as I was leaving, I'd seen a great piece of work that I truly wouldn't want to see again. Disturbing in ways perhaps I was more sensitive to than others. Hard to say. Lynch has done others since that I've liked a lot, have copies of Lost Highway and Mullholland Drive sitting up on the shelf, but not a copy of Eraserhead.

So these episodes this evening were really good as well as really bad?

They were different. In German. Maybe this is my introduction to mainstream German stuff as opposed to mainstream American/British/Swedish/Korean/French stuff, although I'm not sure I know what mainstream American stuff is anymore. For all this digital access we have there's a whole lot I've missed, most of it on purpose.

The photo up top was taken yesterday along Lakeshore with a Nikon D4 mounted with an 24-120mm f/4.0 VR Nikkor lens.


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