Repetition brings Reputation

It's funny the things you remember. When I was in school band, I had a  book of music practice drills. It had encouraging slogans on every page. One was: "Repetition brings Reputation." I wasn't much of a musician, talent-wise, and I also didn't have much discipline to practice. But I did remember that slogan and there's a lot of truth to it. Accomplishing something is often just doing something over and over until you get it right or gain some skill. Or, as they say, build up a 'body of work.'

I've participated in the past in blogging exercises where you force yourself to write something every single day for a month. And I'm doing it again this year with the same portal site.It was run in the past by some friends but it has been taken over by some new folks. It can be found here.

The idea is that your writing is a gift for the holidays to your readers. I don't know how much of a gift it will be but I'm going to start the exercise in earnest on Monday, December 1. The portal has already attracted over 40 participants. I'll try to read some of the other blogs as well.

I am really questioning why I do this. Because, after all, who blogs these days? (Still...forty plus people have signed up.) 

I've done online 'journals' since before they were blogs, of course. Sometimes disciplining myself (with no promise to some portal) to write and post pictures every day for months and even years at a time. And while I didn't get much of a reputation I do think it helped me to hone my writing skills a bit and to organize my thoughts.

As to what the picture is doing up there, past readers may know that snapping reflections in shop windows is something I like to do. Especially when they capture a reflection of me. So whenever I blog I do some of that. Artist's statement here. This particular picture was taken at a nearby sporting goods store with big silver Christmas balls in their windows for the holidays.

Techno Muddle

The Visible Woman...swithers.

For those following along...remember how I was thinking of submitting a ten-year-old blog entry to the Guardian project? I thought I had found a suitable one that was ten years old today. But I found a broken link and I wanted to add a period. I tried to update the entry. I still own the blog space but the location is kind of convoluted. Anyway...I went down that rabbit hole for a while. I finally gave up awash in domain names, registrars, redirections, file hierarchies, HTML and mystery. Then I kept going back to it. I finally got a link that worked, marveled at my urge to edit old stuff and looked at the clock to see the time wasted. Argh.

I was going to write about that old entry in detail today here. Maybe. Or write about the urge I had back then to record everything. Now I haven't actually entered it. Oh, did I mention that the other day I was looking at the Guardian thing and had to ask my husband what the A/S/L box meant. (He looked it up on the Internet.) Age/Sex/Location. Really? When did that become a thing?

Anyhow. Swithering. (This is a word that is not a proper English word perhaps but which my friend Mags used, may she rest in peace, and I love it.)

I also swithered over my Christmas cards. I decided to send a few more to people I hadn't received one from . Every day I seem to get a surprise one that I didn't expect and I send one to those peeps. I tried to keep track of who I received one from and who I sent one to. I'm sure I got confused at some point. But it would appear that I've sent 115 or so and received 32 or so. More if you count some electronic missives. So that's that. I have a few left and if I get some more from people who didn't receive one I can write 'Happy Holidays' on one and send them out. I didn't mention Christmas or any other specific thing on the printed card. (I really should just say Here's to 2014 on the card.)

I am also swithering about updating a friend's WEB site. I swore I was going to learn more about Dreamweaver and CSS and this and that and completely revamp his site so it wasn't such a mess. But I won't. I'll try to piece together this latest round of changes and get smarter later.

I'm also swithering about needing to clean the house and straighten up things around here. FFP thinks he got sick from ingesting dust because he vacuumed and dusted last Saturday. I usually do this stuff when he's out of the condo and I'm here. There aren't enough of these times or I get lazy so it does get out of hand.

Anyway...there is lots of time. I just need to use it wisely. Right? Stop typing and get on with it!

Argh...that Nasty Blemish, the Typo!

For Sale at Uncommon Objects

The Visible Woman...writes.

A couple of days ago I noticed that the UK Paper publication "The Guardian" was seeking links to 10-year-old blog entries. I thought, well now, I could submit something. They are pretty certain that we (and they) will find these cringe-worthy. They mention

...embarrassing pits of self-loathing and the home to several Frankenstein HTML projects you’d rather forget.

Well, yeah, that. But I looked at about a half dozen entries from ten years ago and each one had a typo. It wasn't the bad free verse or the whiny self-absorption or even the  poorly-formed HTML or the sad little pictures. Those typos roared off the page and grabbed me by the throat. And I scorned the me of ten years ago who created them.

Is there a Draft? Do I Measure Up?

I can't seem to post here. There are a half dozen or more drafts sitting around unposted. They include pictures, edited and re-edited thoughts, tags. But I do not hit publish.

I tweet. Which is all I can do, it seems with my head full of my reaction to current allergens in Central Texas. (The pollen of the mountain juniper aka 'cedar' and mold.)

Maybe I'll edit some of that junk and publish it. Or maybe I'll just keep tweeting and having the tweets fire off to facebook. It's come to that.

I do like this picture, though. Good old Uncommon Objects.

Where To Begin

After a long pause, I finally got around to writing a blog entry on Monday, November 14. I felt a bit adrift then. We were planning a little celebration (of our first date) with some friends. We had a trip to New York scheduled. (Which we took December 5-12. The above picture is our multiple reflections in one of the Bloomingdale Christmas windows.) I couldn't decide what, if anything to do about Christmas and the holidays. Whether to send cards, buy presents for anyone.

On November 16 my mother-in-law died. (The events of that day are somewhat interesting. See Forrest's description here.) That capped off a year and a half during which Forrest had a cancer scare and two surgeries; my dad died; his dad died; I disposed of my Dad's estate; he handled his dad's; and his mother died, leaving us parent-less. Then we begin disposing of his mother's estate.

There were three services, burials and such to arrange during what seemed like such a short time. There were fiduciary duties. There were (mercifully short) trips to MD Anderson, times in hospitals here. Three ambulance rides at the end for parents. Through it all we were very 'lucky.' Lucky FFP's cancer has apparently not spread. Lucky our parents didn't suffer too long. (My mother died in 2002 and, sadly, she did suffer a lot longer than I would have liked. My dad, of course, had his share of problems in the last few years.). But still. We were lucky. We had the money to handle things, for me to retire and take care of things for Dad after mother died. For Forrest to retire. We had time to see my dad through some trouble, to look after some things for his parents. We have the money now to not worry about money but just do what needs to be done with houses and stuff and all that.

Lucky or not, things are different. I realized after my dad died that I'd stayed young (in my own mind) and exuded confidence that I could take care of things trying to help him through his old age. Forrest did most of the things for his mom but her presence made me feel younger. Because she needed us, didn't she? Because we were young and strong and capable, right?

Now we can arrange to travel and not worry about what parental difficulties may arise at home. But, of course, we may find ourselves in difficulties. Can't really escape that.

We have kind of sleep-walked through the last six weeks. We went on with our schedule after a few days of handling my mother-in-law's services. We cleaned the valuables and mementos out of the house. We drifted through Christmas. I finally printed a few cards and sent them post-Christmas. We had a fancy dinner with friends on Christmas Eve and we were invited to a family gathering with someone else's family for Christmas Day. I didn't buy any presents except hostess gifts. FFP and I bought whatever we wanted and I sent money to my nieces and sister.

Now I wake up and it is 2012 and I'm vacillating between wanting to make some changes (blog, write my novel, exercise more, socialize with people, travel here, travel there, get rid of stuff, get new stuff) and wanting to roll down the shutters and be a recluse, changing as little as possible and buying nothing.

Where will I go with it? Will the blog record the journey or will I go back inside my head? Too early to tell. Going through old blog entries for the links in this entry make me realize that sometimes it does help just to write it down.

Missing

I made that commitment to Holidailies and then, after the 15th I could not bring myself to write a word. I felt bad that I couldn't write some drivel every day. How hard could it be? I have produced reams (if pixels can be considered in paper terms) of daily stuff. In fact, I went looking around and I could show you an entry for every single day in 2005. Well, almost anyway. But it would "bore [you and] me terrifically, too." (Points for knowing that reference.) I got mired in 2005 for about fifteen minutes when I thought about it and had to go get coffee and make up the bed to escape.

The fact is writing, and keeping a promise to get pixels to screen every day, used to help me get through.

Here's why: I used to find the humor in it. Even if I seemed down last year (when I got through Holidailies in fine style while dealing with quite a rough patch for Dad's health) I was on the lookout for a bon mot, a bit of humor, to make writing a little easier. A funny hook for a serious discussion maybe. Maybe my dad was the one that helped me find that. Maybe without him writing blog entries will seem empty and silly. It's sure looking that way. Sigh.

Lost Me

Normally I have a real good idea who I am and how I am feeding my own selfish desires. The last three months have been trying in this regard however.

My dad died. My husband needed medical care. My dad's affairs needed to be concluded. I began to worry about my in-laws more because, after all, they are 90 and 100.

So lately I keep asking myself: Where am I? What am I supposed to be doing? Why didn't I get to do the things I dreamed about when I managed to retire early and not completely broke?

I am selfish. I know I am very, very lucky. I have resources both physical and monetary against the onslaught. My husband is going to be fine. For now. One day we will all not be fine. The problem is that that day seems all too imminent of late.

And so....while others are shopping, decorating and celebrating...I'll be helping FFP through a surgery and recuperation and perhaps reading and blogging and pondering the rest of my life. I have made one or two momentous decisions: I won't do a holiday card for the first time in a very long time and I will blog in this space every day until the new year. I will write complete sentences. I will punctuate as well as I know how. I will complete thoughts and write my demons off in pixels.

Finally All Will Be Revealed

My dad had some news about his health issues today. But it wasn't the first, or even the second, thing that he talked about when I called. The news seemed a portent for the future to me. But he's begun to look at the future as a series of moments, I think. Maybe not. Maybe he's really striving to reach his 95th or even 100th birthday. (As he claims in jest now and then.) Maybe it's me that is living moment to moment. Not accomplishing things while waiting for a sucker punch. And it isn't even his situation, per se, that makes me feel this way. It's knowing that my own decline has become inevitable as well. Really, honestly, we expect those things with those older than us. But situations blindside us and finally we just linger in this fog of anticipation for the next changes.

We partied last night. But in a calm way. I had a few drinks. Ate some food. Listened to music. Chatted to friends. We didn't bother with the fireworks, instead listening to some bonus tunes. Fireworks seem sort of out of place to me right now. Festive in an over the top way that doesn't seem fitting somehow. Not that the amounts of my drinking and going out befits a solemn period of some kind. Things have happened to people at the periphery of my circle (accidents, death, serious illness) in the last few weeks that served to reinforce the unknowns. Dad's situation has been a roller coaster. When I get some time, I think "I need a drink." In a way that sometimes scares me. (No interventions needed. It's just that the idea of the drink is the idea of just idling away in a bar or restaurant and pretending you don't have to figure out the rest of your life.)

The year 2010 since the birth of the Baby Jesus will hold surprises and stunners along with the things we've come to expect and the things we should have come to expect but somehow never do (terrorism, economic cycles, celebrities acting badly, the good dying young, the good dying old and on and on). So what? Big deal. That's the future rushing at us like it always does.

I'd like to keep better track of my year this year. Maybe that is a resolution of sorts. And I'd like to keep track of the stuff that maybe isn't effectively conveyed in a public forum or should never be aired there. I won't do that, keep a daily journal offline whether typed or hand-written. But I should. Because I think 2010 will be one to look back on. Although I might not be proud of my performance in many areas and so it might be a year better forgotten, better misted over with the vagaries of memory with the convenience of not having a solid record, even one written by a party with bias toward herself.

[Another shop window reflection from Let's Dish. Even the mannequin has a mask although little clothing. To convey the theme of today: future as past, revealing what has happened but leaving much in the fog.]

It's That Piggy Time of the Year

Today's Holidailies Writing Prompt is "Tell us why/how you started the website where you're participating for Holidailies." I haven't done much writing from prompts this Holidailies season, rather I have been making up my own little topics for discussion and diatribe.

Why did I start this Blogger home for drivel or its predecessor, a blog I coded up myself with the help of an HTML editor, available still (with occasional missing pictures and broken links) at www.viswoman.com?

It was a spot to capture my unique walk through the world, to reach out across miles to friends and strangers and across time to myself. I bet no one refers to my old blog entries as much as I do. Trying to find a certain image or confirm when or how something happened. Sometimes I regret not keeping records even more meticulously. For a while I recorded everything I ate, all the exercise I did and a fairly thorough chronology of how the day went. This is all quite useful in retrospect for, ahem, research but entirely too tedious for me in my current mindset. Just posting something every day here for Holidailies and an image every day for Austin, Texas Daily Photo feels like a big responsibility. Ha.

In tribute to selfishness, the overeating time of the year and food diaries, today's picture is a shop window reflection I took yesterday in downtown Austin that I call 'Piggy Time of the Year.'

What Would You Pay For?

If you are reading this (all three or four of you), I know that you will give your mouse or tracking device a nudge or two and sit still long enough to look at the picture and read a sentence. Much has been made about the fate of paper and ink journalism of late and how, as they migrate content online, we are mostly not willing to do more than get access to the Internet and click. Apparently this is a result of many things, one of which may be that your fellow denizens of cyberspace are willing to slave away on blogs that are pretty good journalism in some cases...and let you in with not so much as a plea for donations.

Today's SundayStyles in The New York Times has an article about fallow blogs. It pretty concisely chronicles what happens to these vehicles...people start a different blog, move to other social media, feel misunderstood by readers who are friends, get tired of publicity or are disappointed that blogging for free doesn't lead to wealth and fame and an ink and paper contract.

Says here that the joke is that these blogs "have an audience of one." That amused me because I often feel that way but...it doesn't bother me a bit. Creating these things makes a nice record of this and that and I can refer to it later to bolster my terrible memory. (We saw Norman Lear on TV today and FFP was asking about when we saw him in person and I asked him a question. In three seconds a Google search directed at an old blog yielded an entry with a quote from the man's answer to my question that I'd forgotten.)

Anyway, back to paying for it. I never expect to make money with writing based on these blog entries (or based on anything really). (Yes, I know you are nodding. Or at least I'm nodding if me, myself, my audience is reading this later.) I never expect to sell my reflection photo series either. [Thanks to a Second Street shop called Miss Behave for this one.]

But, for myself, I would pay to read stuff. I do, in fact, pay an annual fee for a ad-less, enhanced online dictionary. I would pay to read some of the blogs I like. I'm not much of an ad-clicker, but I'd pay a small fee to view some blogs. The problem with this model is figuring out when to charge and how to take the stress out and make people realize what they are getting. I think you'd need to give people unlimited re-views for a period of time (just like I can get in my newspaper or on my dictionary site) and, of course, the sites would have to have predictable, quality content like The Times but not like this blog (or maybe yours).

Meanwhile, I'll write my blogs and hope to remember my life. I regret not doing the exhaustive 'journal' of olden days either in public or in private. To think I once publicly announced all my meals and snacks. Wait. I'd pay for someone else to follow me around and create that! Or. Maybe not.

Getting a Handle on It

There is something I want to do. A goal is lurking out there. Do I want to write? Do I want to make collages? Do I want to research something? Maybe study some obscure historical or technical subject. Throw myself into raising money for a good cause? I think there is something. But I'm not sure what it is.

There is still plenty of 'need to do' activity lurking, of course. Wednesday I attended a couple of meetings at the club. (And got righteously frustrated listening to two issues I have really, really heard quite enough about. Settle them already and move on.) I had to pick up a prescription for my dad and also take him to a doctor yesterday. That and a workout pretty well shot the day. I spent a bit of time on financial shenanigans (not in the Madoff sense, just in the balance checkbooks, pay bills, calculate cash flow sense). There wasn't time for much else especially since we decided to go out for a Happy Hour drink and snacks. There is always some dalliance to displace from any serious endeavor whether it's the must do cleaning and errands or writing a novel or whatever creative and questionably constructive thing that might 'fulfill' me. We really dallied at Ruth's Chris on Wednesday because all the owners were there, they had Guy Forsyth behind the bar, friends wandered by. (One said she moved to Austin on my 50th birthday and was invited to the blow-out party I had by a friend. I had no idea she'd been there.)

I started writing this entry yesterday (Thursday) and decided to displace from it to clean the main bathroom and the bedroom. Then when I got back to it I decided to pick up the fragments of the novel scattered in blog entries and assemble them in a document and work on it a bit. So I did that. It doesn't feel like a particularly profound or necessary piece of work, but I'm thinking that I'll work on it nonetheless. Until some other idea comes along. I've also been working with a children's programming language called Scratch. Ostensibly I'm doing it so I can show it to my nieces for my great nephews and great niece. Really it's sort of fun and I'm interested in the formal logic behind the point and click object-oriented language. Invented at MIT, it is the modern equivalent of the 'turtle graphics' in the old LOGO language. I'm not thinking of getting into programming again. But I am thinking of studying the higher concepts of languages. It is infinitely fascinating to me even though the curtain has been pulled back for me for years and I understand conceptually how it all works. We all think what we are doing on the computer (or a phone or other gadget for that matter) is the interaction. But some levels away the chips follow instructions that are 'hard-wired' into them. And typing a sentence does a plethora of things starting with sending a key from a USB gadget (in this case). I understand this, but I still fall into the 'interface is the message' mode. Programming anything, even coding HTML, removes one from this false world into the inner workings a little, backing up a level.

But I digress. So, yes, I've been fooling with a programming language for kids, making 'sprites' move across a 'stage' sometimes leaving tracks or reacting to other sprites or the edges of the stage.

But I did pull the novel fragments out of this blog and edit and add to them a bit. I have about 3500 words. In that version. There are other versions lying about with completely different character names, events and time lines.

Anyway, I can't seem to finish a blog post. (Let alone a novel.) So I'm going to sign off on this rambling bit and hope that, having this drivel out of the way will help me move on. Yeah. Good luck with that, as the kids say. And move on to...where?

[Photo taken at Mercury Design Studio last weekend. They really come up with some weird goods!]

Why Haven't You Written?

Remember when there was no on-line chat, no e-mail, no blog, no IMs, no text messages, no social media, no unlimited long distance calling plans even? Yeah, people wrote letters and mailed them. It cost less than forty-four cents to post one, but still what an effort! And people would write you wondering why you hadn't written. And famous peoples' letters were/are preserved in books and carefully archived and edited.

I don't write any more. It's the middle of May and this blog has no entries for May. The Journal of Unintended Consequences is fallow. I'm not writing a novel. Sadly I have been transcribing old journals into the computer. In some cases old 'to do' lists as if this typing was somehow writing. I twitter (and my terse pronouncements are echoed on facebook). People comment. There are e-mails and responses. Today FFP and I actually talked, in person, to an old friend. My time doesn't go to writing. It is swallowed by eating and drinking and watching stuff I shouldn't watch on TV and cleaning. FFP has an excuse...he has writing jobs, he has follow-ups for his non-profits. I'm playing tennis or goofing off. I embrace distractions, I think.

I also am pretty sure that I no longer have anything to say. I started an entry with this title a week or so ago, accidentally lost it. When you become cavilier about your words...yeah, you are probably right about what they are worth.

I have kept up with Austin Daily Photo, which seems like a distraction in and of itself. I updated a friend's WEB page. There is always something else to do besides my own allegedly creative stuff. I need to finish reading the paper, I need to go brush my teeth, I need to pay some bills, I need to tidy my desk.

Life will hand you whatever distractions you need, I think. I'm off to type in years-old paper journals or extract the bits of my novel from this forum and fret over it or, oh, I don't know. But I wanted to stop by and say that I hate that my mantra ("Pretending to write but really just blogging") has now become "Pretending to write but really just tweeting." Heck...I haven't even taken that many shop window reflections lately. (The one here is from weeks ago.)

Take a Step Back

We've spoken here before, I feel sure, about how I like shop window reflections because of the layers and the distance of portrait subject from the portrait. If we haven't, we should have.

I'm all about distance these last few days, feeling like I need to step back from certain situations and some people. Feeling like I need to let some situations play out without my input. Some things I'm just tired of thinking about. I also have been considering taking my bits and pieces of novel out of blog posts and putting them in a document on my computer and working on that. I feel like the book needs to be written. I don't feel like it needs to published (even as squibs on a blog). Just written and that's that and don't think about that again. But we all know that even the effort to cut and paste the fragments into a document will probably elude me.

Much ink and pixels have been spilled arguing about twitter, facebook, blogs, newspapers, books, magazines and their relevance/quality/future. Uh-huh. I say that you can blog brilliantly or inanely, tweet nonsense or a profound 140 characters, build a facebook world of friends who alert you to the best of life and information or one that panders to the lowest drivel. You can write and publish bad books, natter on and still get published by legitimate newspapers or magazines or...contribute something true to the bone. Oh, there are less barriers and fewer copy editors in cyberspace. Nevertheless profundity, truth, emotion, timelessness of words can be achieved anywhere. Even the back of an envelope.

Which reminds me, speaking of stepping back and the back of an envelope, I need to make a 'To Do' list I think. Maybe.

My list might look like this:

• pay xxxx (a certain credit card)
• record deposit
• call yyyy (a friend who should be called)
• RSVP in the negative to a wedding
• record receipts
• watch movies and write reviews
• capture phone numbers from old phone in preparation for...
• buy a Smart Phone
• clean out physical inbox
  
• clean our e-mail inbox
• reservations for NY trip
  
• etc.

Is this (the above) writing? Hmmm....should I add a 'to do' list of writing I need to do?

Yep, the above is the blog equivalent of tweeting about what you eat or that you are about to take a shower. Ho. Hum. I think I'll take a step back and think about what I really should do.

I'm easily entertained...

...but also easily bored.

In the presence of words (almost any book, magazine or newspaper will do but spare me the Sports section with no news of tennis and Romance novels) I am almost always be entertained. I may be distracted by something else and lose track of the reading, but I won't be bored. I read the program at concerts and events before they begin (assuming I haven't taken a magazine). I read ads. Pictures are nice, too.

Give me a keyboard and the right mood and I can type until the cows come home. My dad used to whistle for them to do that on the old 60-odd acre home place at about dusk. But I could type on until midnight. I may not say a thing but I will produce a stream of letters formed into English words but the sentences may make sense, alone or together. I will even invent initialisms like HQWF (How Quickly We Forget). Even though I hate them. Laugh out loud! Not going to abbreviate it.

I can people watch endlessly, browse the WEB and, even, read old online and handwritten journals by yours truly for hours on end.

Unless I get distracted.

I am easily bored in some ways. Playing tennis the other day with someone who never runs after an errant ball and who strolls into position to receive, back turned, holding up her hand and saying 'wait a minute' strains me. So I start observing things and entertaining myself. Noticing how the uniforms (all red outfits, all white visors) on some players down the way look, wondering what weeds have opportunistically poked through the cracks in the awful court we are using, considering the resemblance of the Lacrosse player practicing on the half court behind us to a send-up painting of a kid with a backwards cap on the cover of The New Yorker a few years back on the anniversary issue. (Supposed to be a Gen X version of Eustace Tilly he was.) And so it goes until I get a chance to touch ball to strings. Or to serve. I like serving because I get to hit more balls. Two aces Tuesday. I don't hit hard but I move it around. I've been writing a poem in my head about math, tennis and boredom. I work on it sometimes while I'm bored at tennis.

Fractal branches cast fractal shadows against the order of the lines.
Perpendicular lines and partial lines carving the court into rectangles.
Spaces of in and out and fault and ace. Rules about touching and missing.
Why twenty-seven feet? Or twenty-one? A three-foot net at the middle.
I see a pattern and yet not. Only one prime in sight. But I digress, interrupted
By caroms in three space, arcs predictable except for spin and striking
Nails in the tape to hold the lines to the clay surface. How far apart?
How distracted and yet focused the math makes the tennis and the ennui.

No, that isn't the poem. It's just random lines I constructed just now to illustrate.

I have been writing a short story in my head (although it might be a novel or a novella or a part of a novel) for a long while about a guy hitting tennis balls on the very court where I played Tuesday so I thought about that when things were going. too. slowly. I like how some online writers invented the technique of adding extra periods to slow you down as you read. The story has a bicycle rider and an SUV and so when I see a bike go by and then an SUV I visualize what the protagonist (a guy from Odessa, Texas, I'm not sure why) sees through the fence and wind screen.

Yeah, I'm easily bored and yet, sometimes, when I flip from running my iMac as an Apple to the window running XP under VMware and it has gone into a screen saver mode and is showing my own picture collection to me I just sit there, watching pictures I've already seen over and over for a few minutes. But in front of the TV with the satellite hookup and a DVR with captured episodes of this and that I can be so completely bored and unable to be engaged that I have to get up and get something to read.

I watch a lot of TV and movies at home. And sometimes they are pretty exciting and encompassing. But I get bored if I JUST watch them. And not just because of commercials which we usually skip anyway. I almost always read as well. Newspapers usually. So I'll be reading about Somalian pirates, Taliban areas of Pakistan, Obama's dog, Broadway revivals of "Hair" and "West Side Story", whatever, and sort of watching with one eye and listening. Makes sub-titled movies (which I love especially if they are French although German is sort of amusing, too) hard to follow. I also like to work puzzles while watching TV. I will learn a new word in a crossword (e.g.: marten; toque meaning a woman's hat instead of a chef's tall one) and not be able to contain myself until I look the word up in a real or online dictionary.

There is infinite entertainment in this apartment and yet I get stir-crazy to leave it now and then. Then when I'm out I get eager to come back and settle down with my computer, newspapers, books.

I stay engaged with movies, in a dark theater, although I like to have some food and I hate the food except for the Alamo where drinking beer and eating fried things and actually watching the movie keeps me there. Unless my mind wanders.

This restlessness, dare I say bordering on attention-deficit, makes me anxious. So, I guess I go from being entertained by many things to boredom to anxiety, all in the space of minutes.

When I was in school or at work in meetings with presentations by others, I had to write something to stay focused. It might be about what was being presented. It might be a 'to do' list or a grocery list or a doodle. It might be an idea only peripherally about the content the lecturer was presenting. One such segue produced an idea which is one of the few ideas that both received a patent for some of us at the company and actually made a bit of money in the marketplace.

I see people who are really focused on something. Maybe it is a very BIG thing like running a company or non-profit or a tiny thing like a very focused hobby or sport. Nothing gets my attention like that. I'm used to starting on things and never following up. Blogging and posting pictures online is something I've been pretty faithful doing (if that's the proper word) but, let's be honest, the form is constantly changing. And it isn't a thing you finish. It's the equivalent of notebooks full of non sequitur musings created during lectures and other entertainments that did not fully engage my dilettante mind.

Lately I've been watching people who focus closely on something, shutting out distraction. They are creating businesses, fighting for causes, writing books and plays. That will never be me, I guess. And my accomplishments will always be brief breakthroughs: an idea, a sentence, a paragraph, the short essay, the clever bon mot. The other day on twitter I said:

viswoman found blogging reduced her writing to a few paragraphs. Twitter to 140 characters. New service: Heartbeat. Nine letters or less.

I thought I was so clever. Heartbeat. In some techie worlds it is a notice that some process or service is there, working, alive if you will. And the word has nine letters. And yet when I tried to label this post, selecting from labels used on some of the prior 638 posts, I ended up with more than two hundred characters which, apparently, is the blogger limit.

Use Your Head

Lots of hats and heads in this photo from Let's Dish on South Lamar. (Including a shadow me head with spiky hair, a sort of signature in these photos as you know.)

Lots of thoughts lately all jumbled and unblogged. Some unbloggable, crossing lines I don't cross. (Spell check doesn't like unblogged or unbloggable for the record.)

SXSW is over and a visit from two aunts (one with husband) and two cousins (one with wife) to my Dad is absorbed and recorded. I have once again realized that there is not a winning strategy to a game called 'Spinner' played with double nine dominoes with a wild 'spinner' thrown in and certain family rules. And that these family gatherings will always be familiar in certain fundamental ways.

I'm enjoying my morning, thinking about the movies and music and SXSW and reading some things in The New York Times. Using my head to think about issues and the arts. Interesting essay about a C.P. Snow essay in yesterday's Book Review and a review of a play we might see when we go to New York. I can entertain myself thoroughly by watching movies, reading and then writing and thinking about them. (I also took a quiz on Facebook about 'what writer are you' and it came out Jack Kerouac. That's food for thought. Or impetus for a road trip.)

I didn't get to watch as many movies at the end of SXSW (or as we call it here 'South By') as I would have liked because of the relative invasion. I had to make a trip to the airport on Friday which I dreaded but which turned out to work very smoothly.

On Thursday, we saw "Soul Power" which is made from footage of a 1974 three-day soul music festival in Zaire when Ali and Foreman had the 'rumble in the jungle'. Amazing footage of the musicians and music and some great Ali monologues, too. Made me want to see "When We Were Kings." I thought I was going to have to take my aunt and uncle to dinner, but they went out with Dad and so I got to go with FFP to see "The Way We Get By" which is a doc about troop greeters in Bangor, Maine. Sort of ironic since the aunt and uncle I was ignoring are not that different than the movie people: they are both ex-military and live in Maine. Excellent doc. One of the people profiled was the director's mother. This wasn't clear until the Q&A which, I think, is a good thing. Does that mean that the personal is fine as long as you can take a step back? Maybe the personal is the only thing that works, in some ways. I was giddy to get to see this extra movie when I thought I'd be engaged with the relatives. I'm glad it was a worthwhile effort. I shudder to think what the movies cost me on a per movie basis since we bought badges and pretty late at that, not getting much of a discount. After that movie we went to Taste and had delicious fried chicken and champagne.

Before I had to go to the airport we got time to see "Breaking Upwards." We get wrapped up in docs and the fest is a great time to see them, but it's fun to find an indie narrative that you really like and this was one. The stars were co-writers with another writer, the male lead directed and the stars played people with their own first names. In other words, the film was very personal. It felt 'real' with funny lines and situations tossed away for free like in real life. Sometimes you thought you'd probably missed two or three things because it was going along like life in messy, sometimes irrational directions like life itself. It was very satisfying I think and ended ambiguously without trying in romantic comedy fashion to tie up loose ends. The parents of the leads were beautifully drawn as well as some minor characters.

I had to do further excavation in my car before I went to the airport to find room for relatives' luggage. Uncovered a stack of unread Harper's and The New Yorker magazines I still couldn't recycle. Never will there be enough time for the life of the mind I'd like to pursue. But I did take one inside the airport to wait and had a satisfying few minutes reading. I was early because I was afraid of traffic and finding a short term parking place around the 4:30 arrival of the plane, but it was actually early and so it was good that I didn't cut it close and leave the relatives in the lurch. The rest of the evening consisted for finding a suitable restaurant for dinner for eight, eating homemade pie and playing the aforementioned game about which one can hardly muster a shred of strategic thinking.

Saturday I devoted pretty much the entire day to family. Picked up a couple of things for my dad at the grocery, got his shirts from the laundry and visited with the assembled family and a friend who dropped by. Got through lunch (take-out barbecue brisket and sausage and sides from Rudy's...I had to pick up but not pay...it was a cheap weekend that way), more games, leftovers, several pots of coffee, discussion of family matters and excused myself at nine or so as everyone was winding down. I also excused myself from the next day's activities and departures. There was a time when I wouldn't have done that. That time is passed and I have become more selfish. So be it. Thus I was able to watch the SXSW fireworks from my balcony, make a brief appearance at a party in the building and go to hear a set of music at 1AM on Sunday morning (Partice Pike at Momo's). (Yeah, we never do that, but we did it Sunday and then slept and goofed off the morning.) We ended up catching a set of music from the Jeff Lofton quarter at Belmont in the afternoon and then attended possibly the best anniversary party ever.

Speaking of selfish: I have used my pea brain to decide that I will do my duty but also be a bit selfish. I have been accused of "selfish bordering on narcissistic" in the comments of another blogger. I was misunderstood, I would claim, but that made me realize that commenting in other people's corners is unwise if the topic is serious to anyone. (And lots of things are serious to people.) I decided to save myself from the unsettling arguments by not commenting in such space nor even reading the comments of others or any further messages directed at me there. It is much better to write in your own space and moderate your own comments. I know I'm a selfish person...but I don't need that taken out of context! You must be accurate in your assessment of why I'm an ass or it makes me mad.

So, yeah, I'm enjoying my morning, thinking and reading and doing as I please and going over in mind the things that I want to think about. It's great to have activities. But it's also great to have a day when you can exercise, do chores and think when you feel like it. We are back to a more normal schedule now and that's a good thing.

You can't disappear even for a moment...

That's what it's come to really. If you blog and you miss a day (or a week or whatever) people wonder. On facebook? Your friends follow. Tweeting? They follow more. Have e-mail? Your friends, too? Why aren't you keeping up? Smart phones let you follow and be followed everywhere. You never have to out of touch with buddies or family.

I still don't have a smart phone. (I am starting to pass my phone around at parties and meetings to show what a relic it is.) But I have opened a Twitter account. (Not to Tweet but just to follow one person. No it's nothing like that. Just a blogger I like.) I am kind of a facebook addict and I try to make my silly life interesting in short, frequent sentences. I blog, of course. And I have been thinking about this blog entry for a few days. (It was better in my head, really it was.)

Anyway, I was thinking about how, now that we are so connected in so many ways, that it is a radical act not to communicate or to build communication walls with a particular person. Wasn't always so.

Around Labor Day 1972 I left for a tramp around Europe. I had an open-ended return ticket (to New York anyway) and a three month Eurailpass, a bit of money and a vision of adventure. It wasn't exactly what I imagined but it was pretty glorious. I came home around the first week of December. Letters went home, taking many days if not weeks. Letters came to Post Restantes or American Express Offices and finally to the home of friends of friends. Long lapses of communication. I phoned home maybe once or twice. Expensive proposition of going into an office, waiting in line, getting a booth and having the call placed. With no Internet and a limited knowledge of the languages around me, I craved words in English. Precious English language novels and magazines were passes around and after I made friends with someone who worked on an army base we got some magazines that way.

I was out of touch with people back home. They had to follow along with those much-delayed letters and postcards. The lag did us some good, I think. Put a bit of reflection on all relationships. Dulled the edges of things. I still have some of the postcards I sent home. And letters on thin paper designed for Air Mail with every bit of the space carefully filled. It allowed me to grow in a new place and way.

Makes me wonder if our very connectedness today doesn't tie us to our current selves. Not that much personal growth or change will come about at my age. Although...what do you think of my radically short haircut? And what do you think about the fact that everyone on the Internet can see it this way? No going away now to lose a few pounds, change your hairstyle or get a tan and surprise everyone next time they see you. You have to upload mobile pictures all along the way.

It's not really true, though. Actually we can't mentally keep up with any more things than we can physcially really. When millions are out there, you can still just keep up with so many. But maybe you can do it at home, while being a recluse and communicating only one way and keeping your haircut to yourself.

The Virtual Line

As my three (or is it five?) loyal readers know, I'll say pretty much anything here in my blogs and publish pretty much any self-indulgent picture. Above, me reflected in Turquoise Door shop window, SoCo, with Oaxacan animals and a shadow of...what?

I figure it's a blog. You don't have to come. You can stay away entirely. I rarely (have I ever?) post a link pointing to my blog except on other blogs (and in my info on facebook). I'm not pimping the thing, trying to go viral, whatever. Think of me as off in a corner at the party, talking to myself unless you come over and draw me out.

That facebook thing and message boards present some unique virtual lines, though. Once someone is in your network you have to opt out of seeing what they are up to. And you have a choice really, to just lurk, or post status, notes, etc. there. Today one of the people in my network posted this status: " X shares unrequested advice, third hand: Make every update count." I'm guilty of posting inane things. Or boring ones. But you know what? I don't mind anyone's little status updates. "Going to bed." "Up too late." "Working on a contract." I like it. Some people just hit 'post' on status and it comes out as something like "Joe is." Like a heartbeat. Cool in a way. Showed up and pushed a button. Sort of like those lifelines for old people that go beyond the button and sense whether they are there or make them intentionally check in. I see people I like doing ordinary things. It's cool. The links I don't like so much? People are trying to pimp something and you don't always even know what and you follow the link and it's a video (did I mention I don't much like watching videos online?) or a political diatribe. I don't care about people who are playing games or giving virtual crap to one another. It's not real. Go out and have a real beer and put it in your status.

Yeah, everyone has some virtual line he won't cross in these sort of unreal worlds of social media (what does that phrase mean anyway?). On facebook one thing I don't like to do is ask people to be my friend if I am not sure they would have any idea who I was. Also, even if I know some one perfectly well and would be civil to them and confirm them as a friend, if they are someone that I would not invite to my home then I won't initiate the friend connection. If they initiate, though, then fine. Does that make sense? Sometimes people suggest I be friends with someone and I'm just not sure who they are, sadly.

It's la-la land out there, almost as surreal as the real world where we bump up against strangers, acquaintances and friends in odd ways. We all have our odd rules and boundaries there. So it's no surprise that the cyberworld has people with lots of differing opinions sliding around against each other. And it's no surprise to me, given my propensity to occasionally sit in a corner at parties, that I sometimes feel like leaving message boards, other people's comment threads and facebook behind to slide into the cul-de-sac of a blog. And one with moderated comments at that.

Things are just layered and nuanced out there. No one straightforward path. And, oh, that shadow. I think I know what made it.

The Trees Are Always There

One minute you are floating free, tethered only by a little string. The next you are caught on one of life's waiting limbs. So it goes.

Yeah, trying to wring metaphor out of this kite festival picture. The only surprise was that there were so few kites in trees given all the ones aloft and the ones being launched.

I'm sitting here displacing from doing one or all of the following: exercise, cleaning the kitchen, doing some personal and business accounting, reviewing information for tomorrow's board meeting of my club, taking a walk. I'd rather blog and edit pictures. And drink coffee. Oh...and I also should be processing some updates to my Apple and to my VMware XP image on it. But then I couldn't sit here using the machine to blog and look at Facebook and watch the Dow plunge, could I?

My life is either absolutely and totally the best or a mess. I'm voting for the former, really, but sometimes I don't know.

I am really pleased by the relative simplicity of living downtown in a 1200 square foot apartment. I'm doing my own cleaning and not using a service. And while this is a pain on days when I actually do cleaning, it means that strangers aren't poking about at inconvenient times and I'm not having to supervise them. There isn't a lot of area to cover. When I vacuum I don't even have to plug and unplug the old Electrolux I borrow from upstairs too many times. (I do have to go get it and return it and that's a pain. I'd get my own vacuum but I haven't figured out where to store it.) I do have a storage cage which needs to be thoroughly cleaned out since during move-in we kind of tossed things in there. Ditto the spare closet. Anyway, basically living here is charmed. I haven't started my car since Saturday. (Tennis was cancelled today. If I could walk to my country club, I would indeed have a charmed life. But it's too far.)

My parental units (my dad, FFP's parents) seem to be rocking along, doing pretty darn well in their houses in spite of their age (average=93) and our responsibilities for them are more anticipatory than any real hardship at the moment. Oh, we complain when running errands and such but it could be so much more.

Having made the move last year, we are trying to plan some trips for this year. We have plane tickets for NYC booked. We are looking longingly at France. It is good to be able to consider doing trips even in the current economic climate. (Although watching the market, who knows how long that will last? Makes one glad some of the portfolio is in Muni bonds.)

I'm not writing, only blogging. But whose fault is that. There's time enough and more. Obviously I'm doing what I want with it and I'd rather mess with finances, blog, edit pictures for a picture blog, read newspapers, read books.

Speaking of books: did I mention that I finished Joyce's Ulysses.? Yes, I laid eyes on every word, understood or not. I pulled out a book of essays on it we purchased in Paris in 2004 (the centenary of Bloomsday) and started it. My bookmark is a boarding pass stub from that trip. Woo-hoo. Cheers me somehow. In New York in June we plan to go to a reading of Ulysses at Symphony Space.

I'm not exercising enough but I'm walking a lot so if I travel I'll be up to the sort of flânerie I'd expect to do on trips. I could be exercising now but I'm blogging.

Financially, things could be better. We could have saved more and given the results lately on stocks and bonds, we could have invested more wisely. (See above about muni bonds, though.) However, we seem to still be living within our means while still reserving profligate amounts for eating and drinking, charity and, to a lesser degree, travel. So, yeah, things could be much, much worse. We don't have jobs to lose unless you could FFP's 'job' doing writing assignments through our wholly-owned Sub S. We probably bought our condo at a bad time (can't imagine it's worth what we have in it) but we also sold our house and if it wasn't the highest price we could have gotten, it was certainly reasonable. I fear that when the entire economy is in collapse it can't help but affect us (and our parents), but one is helpless to change these things. It wasn't our behavior that brought about the bubble or its bursting. So. Whatever.

Life is good, right? Until you tangle with a tree limb.

Is anyone else bored with my whiny blogs? Oh. Well. Off to exercise. Or clean the kitchen. Or, you know, do something useful.

I Love a Monday

When I worked, I dreaded Mondays and yet, once my butt was in my chair at work, I felt that life was full of hope and possibility. Maybe I'd accomplish a lot during the week. Also, as I drove to work, I usually thought of just how I was going to take care of things on the home front. I'd organize things, I'd clean this, discard that, conquer the other.

Today was a clean calendar. No external obligations. A call to Dad revealed that he didn't need anything either. "I have bananas. I'm just like a monkey...I'm happy as long as I have bananas." I will take him to a memorial service for one of his Sunday School friends on Wednesday, but, until then, he doesn't need my assistance.

I had been plugging away at my taxes, gathering info for the CPA, organizing. It was time (even though I was shy a couple of K1 forms) to put it in her hands. Her office is on South Congress, the day was lovely. So I talked FFP into walking down there. Then we came back and had a drink and snack at Jo's on Second. (Note to self: don't get veggie barbecue again. Indigestion and it wasn't as good as the stuff White Mountain makes.)

Anyway...when we got home I decided that I wanted to sit in front of my computer and do finances and blog. That I wanted to work the crossword in the Times. (It's a gimme on Monday but usually still interesting. I love Monday because the crossword goes back to being easy.) But, I decided, before I did any of these things, I was going to clean. I did the main bathroom yesterday. So...I borrowed a vacuum and did major dusting and vacuuming in the main areas. Only when I finished that and felt all accomplished and returned the vacuum did I allow myself to sit at the computer. Then I made myself do some accounting for bond interest and called bonds and stuff. I noted the declining value of, well, everything. Only then did I allow myself to do the puzzle. (I did that damned KenKen, too. How dare they put another puzzle in the Times? It's better than Sudoku but not much.) And now I'm letting myself blog. About Mondays. I love Mondays because sometimes I get things done. The Sunday dread that builds up from goofing off too much is gone.

So, now, I'm going to shower and go out. FFP is off at a meeting. I may find someone else to go out with. But if not? Going out by myself. Hey bartender! It's Monday. I'm not blue. Set 'em up.

[Shop window reflection portrait at Blackmail today on South Congress.]

Why You Need Me

OK, maybe you think you don't need me. But you do, I promise. Otherwise who else would be:

• Not worrying about losing a job since I don't have one.
• Continuing to spend money eating out and drinking like there is no tomorrow. (I thought Obama said to do it, didn't he? Or was that Cheney telling me there was no tomorrow?)
• Taking pictures of reflections on bad hair days and digitally altering them to make them fraught with artistic flair and meaning.
• Not accumulating debt. Still not. No toxic loans. No anything loans.
• Driving an eight-year-old car. See one above.
• Moving downtown at 60 and trying to be an urbanite. (Why is suburbanite OK with Blogger spell check but urbanite not?)
• Questioning spelling.
  
• Blogging when she has nothing to say.
• Providing contrast to the size 0-4 bodies downtown.
• Still subscribing to magazines and newspapers.
• Making everyone else look productive.

Yeah, so, I haven't anything to say but I feel like blogging. I'm feeling celebratory that my computer works so much better after cleaning up the mess VMWare made of the Windows image.