With the overcast and the temperature and the sun going down earlier in the evenings it's beginning to impinge on me that winter's coming. Could that get me out the door to somewhere warmer later this year? Winter? What's that about? Where did summer go? Where did the year go? I know where they went. They went to breakfast. They went to lunch. They went to reading the paper, reading blogs, taking the occasional photograph and spending some small effort on the journal and artandlife, all of which were accomplished in a kind of blur: a head full of fog and stunted ambition.

Later. So, I took the bus downtown around two in the afternoon, had a nice salad (with a piece of chicken) at a table in the City Center thinking this was pretty nice. The head, well, it seemed OK so I was sitting there with a camera in my lap wondering if I couldn't find a picture to replace the one today up top. No, obviously, but it was interesting to sit for something like an hour watching the people walk by. Two or three younger folks with some part of their hair dyed a bright orange or a dark blue. You see more and more of this, reminds me of what was happening in London during the seventies: streaks of red and white and blue á la Brian Ferry and Roxy Music. Nothing approaching the number of elaborate tattoos you see, but obviously a still minor fashion statement that's saying, well, I personally have no idea. The hair color has the advantage we had with long hair: a haircut, a quick dye job and you're ready for whatever's next.

Sitting there, I was wondering what I myself might look like? I was, after all, another member of the crowd. Did I look as down as some of these folks? Did I look as harried as some of these folks? Did I look wound up like a clock (got to get there, got to get there!) as some of these folks? I suspect I looked rather splendid sitting there behind my shades nursing a diet Coke lording over the area in my white Panama hat. Well, OK. That's not true. Neither was I thinking “look at all these poor folks working their asses off while I, worldly I, am sitting here well rested and retired”. There was a middle ground I was mulling over, a middle ground that described an old guy not quite sure yet what he was about now that he was able to sit out in the sun with a diet Coke in hand, no longer a slave to an office.

Later still. A bit of sake tonight, I think. The aching head reacts favorably to sake, it fills in the cracks and smooths out the evening, the music more important, the emotions more accessible in a world where the future is clouded and obscure. Maybe I'll play a little Snow Patrol.