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Here In Oakland

Art & Life


   


Under here.

May 15, 2012

Interest Again
Tuesday. Up with the alarm. A bit late in getting started, but off soon enough to have breakfast and back, the sky grey and overcast, the day ahead. No photographs to process: good. Guitar to catch up on: not good, but not bad. We can do that. A nap in the near future.

You didn't go by the supermarket this morning on the way back from breakfast as you said you would yesterday. Something about more healthy fare.

Well, yes, but it gives us something to shoot for today, something to accomplish. After a nap.

Later. Lying down for over an hour without drifting off to sleep will do, I guess. Up now to figure out where to go on that walk. Jack London Square comes to mind, maybe wander around a little in the area, although saying it just now tells me I won't. The downtown, though, a caramel coffee at the Rotunda building sounds good. And if that won't do, well, something farther afield? Something at least a little different? Around here?

Later still. A bus downtown to the ATM on Broadway and then a walk on to the Rotunda building to find most of the tables out overlooking the open center of the building filled, so a walk on to the City Center to have a cup of coffee at a table out in front of the bagel shop - small, black, just right - to sit and watch the people pass.

A kind of funky double vision thing was going on walking to the City Center, but it cleared up as I was sitting with the coffee, thinking, what sort of pictures might I pry from this hopelessly familiar place? This is not the fault of the City Center, of course, real photographers wouldn't miss a beat. I just wanted you to know I know that. Just.

So what the hell. An amble then through Old Oakland taking a picture or two as the mood struck. I remember taking pictures of the rough brick work of these walls with film when I first started shooting again in the late 90's. The picture is nice, but then a picture of rough stonework is hard to screw up, one reason people use it in, well, like here in this parking lot. Makes for a nice wall facing an empty lot. Hup.

So a walk on to the Asian Cultural Center to sit by the fountain. How many pictures have I taken over the years of this fountain? Whatever number, I now have one or two more. I thought of an ice cream cone and then some of that Japanese candy I like, but wasn't hungry and the scale said a pound and a quarter over one-sixty this morning, maybe best to only eat when we're hungry for a while, even the Japanese candy.

What was that about?

An article in the Times this morning, how it takes one to three years for the body to bring a weight loss into balance before it settles in place. I'm approaching three years now since I lost quite a bit of weight and, although keeping it off hasn't been a problem during that period when it's compared to similar episodes in my youth, we're still sensitive on the subject. Interesting study though by a mathematician. Makes you realize how much we don't know about, well, much of anything, really. Plenty of work out there for those who would search. For all our advancements, we're still at a primitive stage, much more to go unless we blow ourselves up.

Maybe time to take a rest, recharge the batteries, stop the nonsense.

And maybe, now that it's mid-afternoon and I'm hungry again, that ice cream cone wouldn't hurt.

Evening. A walk to the morning restaurant for a grilled cheese sandwich, a scoop of ice cream and a glass of lemonade. No longer hungry, but still obviously on the ice cream jag. Thus is life. But one lone picture on the walk back, home now with the news droning on in the background. Guitar, I think. We need to feel good about the guitar when this day done as a good day today will keep us well up on the wave crashing into Thursday's lesson.

Evening. The six o'clock Scandinavian police procedural was a French Maigret (which I watched while practicing the guitar). Charlie Rose didn't seem worth watching at eight, so I got into another Netflix movie, again on the guitar. Now it's nine-thirty and I'm ready for bed. A good two hours plus on the guitar, the blues riff I've been working on coming together better I think. Maybe it's just been a thin period with the guitar - sometimes it goes well, sometimes it goes less well, all of it does come together if you spend the time - and I'm seeing it catch hold of my interest again. Maybe.

San Francisco How Weird Street Faire taken with a Nikon D4 mounted with a 70-200mm f 2.8 Nikkor VR II lens.


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