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September 18, 2011

An Existential Question

Sunday. I got ready to head out for sushi last night and decided, at the last minute heading for the door, camera over shoulder, that I really didn't want to go out for sushi and sake, I wasn't all that hungry anymore and sake, well, was less appealing. Surprised myself.

Still, a long evening as I stayed up to watch the ten to eleven o'clock historical Korean soap (I'm starting to recognize the names of some of the ancient Korean states and territories after watching these conceits populated with their mythical rulers and kings), to bed and then up half hour after the alarm. Feel pretty good though for what I'd guess is too little sleep, maybe a nap before heading out for the Lafayette Art & Wine Festival at noon.

I edited yesterday's entry for over an hour this morning before putting it up. It's still not tight, but much better than it was when I started. Odd little typos. I'd say spelling errors, although they're more like strange subconscious transpositions of and within words, things that make little (or perhaps too much) sense, which I blame on, well, an aging brain and sloppy typing. Nothing too serious, as long as it doesn't accelerate and get worse, but again, odd to see. Other errors found too, page addresses I'd entered incorrectly without catching over time, one of which I caught just now, an address in the comments section that's had a typo since the beginning of the month. Interesting at a minimum.

So you're worried?

So I'm watching it with some interest. Nothing to worry about. I guess.

Later. Early evening. The back muscles righteously ache after a long day and a long weekend, home now from the Lafayette Art & Wine Festival after seeing (and hearing) Pladdogh, Mr. S's band (as in member of the band) play on the Premium Wine Pavilion stage. That sounded simple enough when I set out: a bus to the 19th Street BART station, a train to Lafayette, an easy not at all crowded twenty minute ride, the festival itself maybe two hundred yards from the Lafayette station.

The festival was really crowded. I managed to find the three other stages before I found the Premium Wine Stage, starting with the rock and roll stage, the arts stage and the kids stage. Sounds impressive, “stage”, but they're quite small tent covered affairs with tables and many people about. You moved with the crowd, no room to pass people or make any time along the densely packed festival streets.

Impressive really, many of the booths displaying larger pieces of interesting and not inexpensive art, two or three photography studios showing their specialties, one, for example, displaying nothing but underwater photographs, some of these differences with other festivals probably due to Lafayette being an upper middle class town with money about, but I wasn't there for the stuff as such but to find the band and shoot pictures (hup, hup). Which I did.

So, no complaints, the aching muscles will go away by tomorrow, the head is clear and the “tired feeling” I've been complaining about ad nauseam hasn't been in evidence. I had a sandwich and a lemonade at a café across from Sears after missing that bus by less than a minute, thinking I'd take my time and relax at a comfortable café table rather than sitting out waiting on a hard wooden bench for the next bus. Relax, in other words, it's been a long day following after another long day: cool it.

I'd have caught that missed bus had I exited the station at the other end of the station - this bus story goes on and on - but then I realized by missing it and then eating at the Madrid café across the street meant I wouldn't be having sushi/sake later when I got home, so maybe missing that bus was all to the better. Of course there's still time left this evening as they don't close for another hour: I could; well, I could. Not really hungry at the moment, not sure if sake appeals on this warm Oakland evening.

All this wrestling over sushi and sake!!

Better sushi and sake than many another set of less pleasing problems that could be living in my lap. Whether you have dinner here or dinner there is hardly a problem. Could conceivably be called success.

Or sleep. Or irrelevance.

I once read, when I was much younger, a description of what constituted the day to day life of the Beats in their On The Road heyday as long periods of boredom interspersed with frantic short flashes of episodic adventure. I've always remembered that.

And your own frantic episodes of adventure?

Whether or not to have sake on any particular evening. It's called an “Existential Question”.

The photograph was taken at the Albany Solano Stroll Sunday with a Nikon D3s mounted with a 70-200mm f 2.8 Nikkor VR II lens using a 1.4x teleconverter.


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