Probably just this

I'm back on the other (work) computer where most of my images are. How I allowed such a thing to happen is still a bit beyond me. But that is how things have unfolded. This is my life. 

That's the boy jumping a little creek on a hiking trip. It makes me happy.

I am eager to get out of the house and go somewhere, though every time I have an opportunity to do so I can't think of anywhere that I'd like to go. 

I am spending another $2500 on a car repair very soon. Money that could go towards my own happiness - a new bike, some camera gear, a vacation. Those are the remaining things that seem to bring me temporary pleasure. 

The people here at the house now are all soon taking off for Southern California. A road trip/mini vacation. The new dog, the pup, is to be put in a kennel. I have opted to stay home and experience some peace and quiet. The house is always crowded with adults and children and dogs, all great things when you want them, but together and collectively they create a lot of noise and nearly constant needs. Not actual needs, but always there is the expectation of a response, which is a need of sorts. I am eager to have some time alone, though I have no idea at all what I would do with it.

Probably just this, what I'm doing right now.

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Polaroid Portraits

All of my other pictures are always on my other computer. I thought the cloud was going to sync all of the fragments of my life together into one gloriously unified whole. What must have happened in the cloud? 

I took lots of pics at my 8 yr old buddy's birthday party, most of which I gave to the host, my old friend, the 8 yr old's mother. A few I had to take out of the stack I gave her. They captured the occasional inadvertent youthful indiscretion or a minor unfolding drama with an accidentally uninvited guest.

Well, what happened was this: a birthday invite email went out and it had a girl on there that was not supposed to be. There had been a falling out of the friendship. I can't quite tell what is wrong with this girl, but whatever it is there's lots of it in her. I'm sure she's a fine child and someone's absolute miracle but she is odd to interact with, and mildly unpleasant.  These are but a few of the pics of her.

Well, I shouldn't say all of this. Some of these are proxy opinions for those of others. I don't really know the she-demon. But my little buddy, indiscrete 8 yr old that he is, kept telling her that she wasn't supposed to be at this party and that she should leave. She had been dropped off by her dad, I think, and the text had already been sent to come pick her up. I encouraged my buddy to go easy on her, to not be hurtful, and to focus on all of his friends that showed up for his birthday party. But you know how kids can be - vicious and remorseless. 

I tried to ignore the unfolding drama and only paid attention to it insomuch as to make sure that no one was being really ugly or provoking anyone emotionally or physically. Again, kids are little tyrants and shoplifters. They say that racism is taught, but exploiting any perceived weakness of others isn't, after a certain age. Decency is molded and not necessarily innate. 

When I was looking through the various candid shots that I had taken I found her sulking quite often, with most of the other kids just ignoring her, though not for any lack of trying on her part. 

But not my little buddy. He was driving it home like a two-ton semi-tractor that she was unwanted. Every chance he had he ran by her laughing. This went on to the point where I had to remind him that Santa sends out covert elf agents on kid's birthdays because he knows that's always the best time to see what kind of kid you really are.

That didn't work. He looked at me skeptically, as if my lie was too obvious. 

Here she is enjoying the little pool with the other kids.

Though upon her departure she did give me my favorite polaroid portrait of the day.

The Fuji instant film stock sucks as much in daylight as it does in low light. 

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The Great 8

Went to a little buddy's birthday party yesterday. He turned 8 right in front of our eyes. It was really something. 

Kids have it made now. Of course they lack the frame of reference to understand their complete and total victory over family life. They are attuned to the messaging that things could always be better for them. I asked a kid at the party what could possibly make it better and he had a very specific answer: water balloons. 

Never challenge a child to the game of "what could be"... few things will give you a clearer idea of the great and silent distance between yourself and childhood. That's what I've learned. I like to think of myself as childlike and imaginative, but these little fuckers never tire in dreaming up new paths to happiness. They do it in their sleep.

We didn't have it so well in the 70s, in Florida, as they do now. Though I remember seeing news' reports of school closings for snow days, somewhere way up in the distant north of us, and I would dream of that for all of us, too - the free days. Dreaming of snow falling over Florida, the swamps and the alligators and Mickey Mouse and me.

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Pythia'd In My Yoga Pants

Okay, back again. I am going to try to get back in the habit of posting every day, no matter how short on words or ideas I might be. It is images that I run out of most often. 

I did my ride yesterday, many miles, though just short of 50. Nowhere near a mile in vertical climbing, probably only about 1700 feet. I used an app on the phone designed to gather this info, but on the second half of the ride I got a network error message so I turned wifi off, forgetting that it is required for the app to work. I know the ride well, the distances and the elevation differentials, from having ridden up and down the valley to these exact spots in the past. I am happy with having done something close to what I set out to do. I have been feeling sedentary lately, even as I have been more active. I was going to start telling people I was anemic, to explain my perpetual lethargy. 

I am desperately trying to cycle to a faraway place in my mind where I won't feel guilty for buying a new bike. I currently have three of them but would be willing to give up one right away if I get a new one (swapping out those whitewall tires), and possibly another if the new one satisfies my conceptual and physical wants. I struggle with getting rid of things, always telling myself that past use will one day mean future use. I am constantly trying to restore the republic of my memories. If the future is anything like my memories of the past then it is no wonder why I am filled with such tidal anxieties. 

Okay, I am going to the gym soon. The gym is a strange place where memories of what once was collide with the knowledge of what will become, while the struggles of the present moment are all that one can see in the mirror's reflection. My gym is called The Oracle of Deltoids.

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... then nothing is cool

Let's play Twister, let's play Risk .... yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah 

See you in heaven if you make the list .... yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

I've been swapping out old cds in the car again. 

Okay, I have decided to go for a nice long bike ride today - ~50 miles and a mile of vertical climbing. I should get out on the road before the sun climbs to 100 degrees today.

I'm not an old guy, my behavior insists. 

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Everybody loses

Well, one of the bikes I was looking at - a real contender - has a security recall. We can't have any of that noise harshin' my sweet west coast mellow.

Well, fuck. I just sat down to write a post, but then an invitation to dinner came flying in on the airwaves. Everybody loses.

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Abhorring Vacuums

In need of a new adventure, have become something that is not quite sedentary, not complete. What energy there is, spent riding a bike in the heat, neither wasted nor saved. If you squander the kinetic it dampens the potential. I hardly have a vestige of vigor remaining with which to grumble. 

Don't worry about me. I am still looking online at young naked women and exotic bikes to buy. The accretion of mass potential energy rolling up in adipose rings around me, giving my arms a soft bumper when they collapse into me with exhaustion or surrender. I currently need to lose more weight than that bike weighs - 16.3 pounds. There are some who might force themselves to lose the weight before buying the bike - poor spirits. 

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One bargain - no passengers

I rode by the hospital where the boy was born. The doors and windows were all shuttered years ago. I remember them pushing Rachel and Rhys out that door to the right in a wheelchair. I went and pulled the car around and we drove home. Two years later we were divorced.

Test riding the black bike. It is a beauty. I will not buy it though, I do not think. It is excessive and surpasses my needs. I'll test ride another one within the week. They are both absurdly expensive for basically being exercise bikes, though once you have refined your tastes there is hardly any going back. There remains only longing and hell.

Love's a tussle, it gets at all of us.

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Three Day Weekend

More pics of flowers. They are all that I have. Well, not all, but close. 

I am preparing for a ride. It is overcast again. Unfortunate, as we are camping tonight and it had been clear for a few weeks straight, almost the thing you come to expect from California summers. The weather always only turns when you need it to least, as the saying goes. Can I use always only? The negation of opposing hyperboles. 

I'll give it some thought as I go. 

I took the day off from work, for no reason, and let work know that I would be doing this every other Friday for the foreseeable future. They were fine with it, though I didn't present it quite in those terms. I'll be having alternating three-day weekends for a while. I bet that I'll begin to detest the two-day ones, eventually. Sooner than latté. 

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Sugarloaf

The boy has been over here with me a bit, also. We're going camping tomorrow night, all of us and our visiting guest. I want spots by the river, so I will go early. It is the most pleasant place to awake. To hear the creek's murmurings before it occurs to you to open your eyes. Camping is no longer uncomfortable, the way it was when I was a kid, when we slept on gravel and tree roots. Air mattresses must have improved greatly. I'm certain of it. I usually sleep well when camping, which makes little sense. Need, I guess - there is some internal truce that allows and invites it. I'm certain of it. 

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This is....

House-sitting is going splendidly. It is more enjoyable than I thought it might be. I had guessed that I would just want to be at home, which is only right around the corner and we have a lovely guest, but some quiet time to myself has turned out to be more valuable than I could see from behind the wall of noise and distraction that is being a dad.

I brought some camera stuff with me and have been wanting to set up and play with some pictures here, for the change, but all that I have had time to do so far is play with a soft-focus lens. If you like to do drugs and water flowerbeds the way that I do in the afternoons then maybe you'll find something to like about those two. They each have a charm for me, but that could also be the sudden sense that I am alone in a house with no other living creatures. No needs but my own.  

Perhaps I'll sleep in the garden tonight. There is a flat spot. I am preparing to go camping this weekend and should try the air mattress. There's an idea. Always, it is the ideas that make a person seem old - not following them or the other. 

Everybody needs some alone time. I say it often, to others. It's easy to say, and believe, and easy to believe that is what I have when I am at home working with the dogs. But that is not being alone. This is.

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... how did you get here?

Turns out I was fine. How long, oh great ocean, how long?

Silvia Plath is one of my favorite poets when I only read her work one random line at a time on Twitter. That's my favorite picture of her in a bikini, also. 

O love, how did you get here?

O embryo

"... back where you came from"

Proud days for American politics. 

I enjoyed waking up early and alone. It was novel. Went to Starbucks and drank a coffee and pondered the uncluttered feeling. Went back to the house and then went for a bike ride and to the gym. It has been some time since that was part of my morning. Along the way I shifted to exercising in the afternoon, if I felt like it. It must be something you enjoy doing. 

Reclining here on the couch now writing this, trying to convince myself to get up and go for another ride while it is still mostly golden weekend sunlight. Torn between feelings - It harrows me between fear and wonder. 

Yes, and listlessness and anxiety. For half the day today my chest hurt. 

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To be alone

My friend went to Lisbon. I have his house to myself. I haven't had a night entirely to my own in a year or more. More. It would have been last May when I still had the apartment, before I let my friends stay in it the last month. I'm going to start doing this more. That is my first-night resolution, before the demons come to do me harm. Maybe I'll just go get a hotel for the night, occasionally. To be alone. You lose something when you're never alone. CS will tell me what it is that becomes lost. I can't think clearly now. My mind is fuzzy and distracted. And he is pretty good with the vernacular of solitude. 

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What?

What the fuck. I really don't have any pictures of my own, and it's my own fault. My life is disorganized. I ponder if it will return to the point that it was at just a few short years ago, maybe two. It wasn't perfect - I had time to indulge my interests and passions and other. 

Now, I have a packed box of unscanned negatives - thousands. I must live with the idea that there might be good pictures in there. There must. 

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Simulation

Nothing to report, just wanted to hear the sound of my fingers against the keys. Would it be annoying or possibly pleasant if each letter made a slightly different tone. Probably the former. Too many notes for it to be anything more than chaos. Unless some letters repeated the same notes at different octaves, and you could choose the key, or change the key by striking certain combinations of letters, certain words.  What a dull and unoriginal thought. 

What am I writing about. I am off to a lonely start. It is loneliness that I feel now, most of all. I shouldn't, I know. I am surrounded by people who love and need me, those whom I love, but still there is a nagging loneliness to my life. It is everywhere and what I felt for a time I had escaped in nightclubbing, even though I knew it was as near or nearer there as everywhere else. Few things are as empty as electronic music can be when listened to while isolated and perhaps feeling less than loved or desired. 

We went to the beach on Sunday. We forgot to bring our kite, though we had a pretty good time without it. 

Next time, we said, we'll bring it next time. 

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