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Snapshots
   

Berkeley 2001 Solano Stroll

January 6th, 2002

Chow Fun at the ET
I've been listening to the Cowboy Junkies lately, at least in the sense I listen to much of anything these days. I'd heard one of the cuts off their latest album, heard a review on the radio - old late sixties guitars - thought about it and tagged the album onto an order from Amazon. Since then I've purchased two more of their CD's, one of which came Friday, and I'm beginning to understand why they might call themselves Cowboy Junkies. Nice stuff, but nice opium in the veins stuff, ethereal fog on the road, midnight wind in the trees stuff, junkie dreams and junkie rhythm stuff, old sixties, early seventies hippie stuff. That, or the band is seriously depressed. Nice rendition of Blue Moon though.

Which is OK. They're good, but what does that say about me and my own state of mind, sitting here, as it happens, with a copy of Polaroids of The Dead on the desk, a book I found today in a used bookstore? Short essays written in the mid nineties set at a series of Grateful Dead concerts, the caliber of which - I just bought it - yet to be determined. The title is indicative. Should I be examining my motivations here? Am I missing a message?

Nah. Watch a movie. Something uplifting, like..., well, Eraserhead or Missy Monday Meets the Raiders (Missy is naughty with the football team at a local stadium.). Which would you recommend? Not too spaced out. Fun. With an uplifting message.

My day has not been exciting. Breakfast at the usual place, a trip downtown for lunch at a brewery pub:Berkeley 2001 Solano Stroll sausage, cheese and a baguette with English mustard. Half an apple, sliced. Actually, it was nice. The food was good, the surroundings comfortable, high ceilings with lots of glass, brick and wood. Drank a Guinness. Took my time, talked with the waitress who'd brought me the Guinness without asking.

That was Saturday, this is Sunday. Writing this weekend has been like passing Portland cement. (No, I've never passed Portland cement either, but I don't have the energy or the imagination to invent something different.) You may ask why write, if there's nothing inside. I think the answer to that question is complicated and best addressed with a clearer head, which may well mean in another life, in another reality, on another world, although I'm listening to a radio program at the moment that suggests (they went through a whole rational for this that we'll skip for the moment) eating air popped popcorn right now might turn things around.

I need more photographs. (I know this is wandering, but it seems to read OK. Well, I think it reads OK.) The day has been nice, but I've got a cold and my thought of going over to San Francisco to take in a photographic exhibition and shoot pictures of the tourists around Union Square never got off the ground. I got as far as the cash machine down the street and some chicken Chow Fun at the ET cafe. (No, I don't know what it stands for either, but the Chow Fun was good and under $5, which probably means the child labor they use to do the cooking all sleep on the kitchen floor.) Anyway, bottom line, still no pictures.

For some reason I have this feeling I've run the banner photograph before. I checked, I checked. Still....

 
The photographs were taken at the Berkeley September 2001 Solano Stroll.


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