I wouldn't recognize him if he sat down at my table. I wouldn't recognize half the current crop of female movie stars (except for some of the, um, older ladies who've etched their faces into my brain over earlier years when such things seemed to matter) and even then my brain would say, well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, back to breakfast and the paper. This might be a sign I'm not sufficiently engaged with the world, but I'm not going to worry about it. Not here in Oakland.

And yes, breakfast at the usual place, reading the papers, the New York Times using the term “Schadenfreude” in one of its business story headlines. I took a year of German my first year in high school, changing to Latin when the school I attended in my sophomore year didn't offer German and, although I'm familiar with the word, I'd forgotten its meaning. You can get a sense of it from reading the story, the definition coming from the German Schaden (damage, harm) and Freude (joy), Wikipedia defining it as “largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another which is cognized as trivial and/or appropriate”. (Cognized? Seems a bit precious.) They were talking about Wall Street, of course, the Europeans watching from across the Atlantic, but a nice little digression in the middle of discussing the current market meltdown.

The sky overcast, by the way, it's been overcast now for at least the last week with the temperature cool but projected to reach into the mid seventies later this afternoon when the fog blows away. My sister is saying it's been in the low nineties in Portland. Ouch. When it isn't raining (and it's often raining) the temperatures appear to go through the roof in Portland.

Yes, yes, I know I have no concept of living in the real world (where it rains, where it gets hot, where it gets cold, where tornados tickle the countryside and hurricanes blow homes off their foundations), but again, we put up with all this high cost of living business and the rest to enjoy the weather and political climates here at the end of the rainbow. Across the bay from the end of the rainbow (I know, I know) where all is wonderful until the next big earthquake strikes, one hopes not today or tomorrow.

So otherwise, what to do? The pictures were mailed late (today) to the sister and the cousins, but again, late or not they're in the mail. Why so much anguish over what was a trivial task, at least for a photographer? Who knows? Something they undoubtedly talk about in therapy sessions. “Why didn't you get out of bed this morning? Why do you never leave the apartment? Whats with all the cameras and no pictures?” There is a whole half a month left in September, plenty of time to set forth, stub a toe, see what's out there over the horizon to engage the mind and body. Hello? Hello?