I Must Write

I really feel like everything is a muddle...but I *MUST* write. Why write? Why not clean the bathrooms? Why not become embroiled in FFP's sudden interest in iPhone apps that has him playing music on his computer? I don't know. Perhaps because I just tweeted this:

Write until the UT game starts! Really. Not to be interrupted by FFP downloading iPhone apps . Random inspiration from stuff on my computer.

And if you tweet it, you must do it. Right? Well, no not really. I think I tweeted that I was going to clean the bathrooms yesterday. And, of course, I didn't.

And really he never bothers me with music or playing tapes of his interview subjects except now it is kind of a pain for some reason when I set out to write with a deadline. I guess I should have waited until the game started to do my writing exercise. Of course, that's when I planned to clean the bathrooms! Really. (It makes me nervous to watch the game. I don't care about the game, but it is bad for everyone in town when UT loses.)

And so my life goes. I've had a little more 'free' time this week than usual. Tennis got rained out twice and my dad was less needy. I spent a bit more time reading and did a little cleaning. (Just not the bathrooms.)

It was a week of worrying a little about my health as I suffered through pain in my hands. I've had it off and on for forty years and no doctor has ever diagnosed it, but this was an especially painful bout. On Thursday I dribbled some hot coffee on my hand and was relieved that the irritated skin (it wasn't really a burn) distracted me from my other hand pain for a few minutes. (Or was it the petit pain au chocolat I had with the coffee?)

Yeah, the week went along, goals cast hither and yon.

I watched a movie I'd always meant to watch to better understand modern cinema: "Bottle Rocket" with the Owen brothers. I didn't find it as charming as some people. I didn't dislike it as much as I did "Napoleon Dynamite." I don't feel a Wes Anderson connection, sadly. I'm out of touch with the young people.

"Bottle Rocket" is (apparently) about rich boys who can't quite find themselves without doing a bit of crime. Actually the boys are men who never grew up. There aren't any adults who did grow up about, either, with only a few criminals to look up to. Anyway. Not much for me to relate to there.

Today I did get to play tennis. It was fun. I almost won three sets, losing the last 7-5 in a tie break. For once, my dad insisted he didn't need me to come out after tennis to do something for him, so I took advantage and stayed at the club and worked out briefly and joined FFP for some food in the pro shop grill. I had some year or two old New Yorker magazines in my car and I was reading about Peter Gelb, the GM of the Metropolitan Opera in one of them while working out and eating. Mr. Gelb has had an interesting life. I read about people like him and am often moved to wonder what my life would have been like if I had been the son of a NY Times managing editor and a writer instead of the daughter of a farmer/hospital attendant and a school teacher.

Now FFP has left his computer and put the bath mats in the laundry. This is always the first thing I do when I'm going to clean the bathroom. Does this mean he is going to scrub the shower, clean the glass and mirrors, scrub the toilet and mop the floor? Sure. Sure, it does. So I can just sit here and write. Now he is emptying trash. He is showing me all right. It's not all on me to clean now that we don't have a maid.

It's not really the interruptions. Nor the thinking about what might have been. Or the lack of inspiration (where on my computer isn't there just that?). No, it's just that I don't really want to write. I don't really want to type even. I want to...clean the bathrooms?

FFP did manage to distract me a little first by looking for the channel which will have the game and then by talking about going down to the store to get something to snack on. But it isn't really about what he's doing, is it? It's just the right time for the mop, the wrong time for the writing.

[Picture is a reflection at the downtown Omni hotel which reflects the depths of my confusion vis-a-vis writing and chores.]

Stuff and Nonsense

There are big things in life: major illnesses, major events, momentous duties. There are things that cost a lot of money and things that, rightfully, take a lot of time. But mostly life is a drifting sea of puny ideas, passing moments, and meaningless flotsam and jetsam. I've always liked the concept of flotsam and jetsam. The former is the stuff left adrift after a shipwreck or, more generally, the stuff left adrift by our lives. Jetsam is stuff tossed at sea to lighten the load, to stay afloat or, generally, the things we eject from our lives. More intentional but just about the same at the end of the day.

Yesterday as I tried to bring a little order and less counter clutter to the kitchen I was sorting through bottles of liquor and liqueur. I decided to leave some whiskey, blended Scotch and vodka out at the ready and to stow away some things like tequila liqueur, some single malt Scotches and such. I wondered when we'd acquired some of this stuff and when, if ever, we or our guests would get around to sipping it. Last night when we got home from seeing an art film, I decided to have a drink or two. (Full disclosure: I had a beer at Roaring Fork before the show) I picked a single Malt that was out on a small bar cabinet we have in the dining area. The truth is that we usually drink outside the house and when we drink at home, my usual is wine (if FFP opens something), beer or a Manhattan (expertly mixed by FFP). Usually the lack of limes stops me from making a vodka tonic or gimlet I might otherwise mix. In any case, this ragged history of serving alcohol and drinking at home has left us with a number of artifacts. Some bottles are unopened and may never be. Yet, there is no beer and there was no chardonnay so FFP bought a bottle at Royal Blue last night.

When I was doing the kitchen puzzle, I found a coffee grinder. Funny, because, when our machine with the built-in grinder went to the shop, we went out and bought one because I swore we had divested of every one we owned in the move. Now the infamous and much-worshiped at this house, Capresso Jura Empressa E8, is back and seems to be functioning, grinding, tamping and brewing one precious cup of la crema coffee at a time. So the drip coffee maker and the new grinder and are tucked away in the cabinet. The old grinder? I put it in our storage cage. Why, I don't know. I suspect I'll never use it again. There was much incentive to toss things last spring and summer when we knew it just wouldn't all fit. Now, if there is a square inch in that storage cage or some cabinet, there is a foolish tendency to hang on to things.

It is all trivial, I understand that. Equally nonsensical is the way we spend our time. Last night I had my doubts about the art film we'd signed up to see: "Rape of the Sabine Women." But I must say, the lyrical choreography, the weird settings and strange score combined to make me happy and curious...that feeling I get when art stirs me. I'd been in a particularly low mood. It did pick me up. It made me want to study the telling of this tale in painting and myth and it made me want to think about the issues raised by the context of Eve Sussman's film (the '60's). (Most unlike her vision would be the Rubens painting I found on the National Gallery web site! Those '60's figures in bright, tight shift dresses looked very different than Rubens', um, rubenesque figures.)

Tonight we will go to an event. It involves a fashion show. Inexplicably I enjoy fashion shows. (Longtime readers know that I'm a living, breathing fashion emergency.) We chose the event over a meeting to plan another event. That event needs ticket sales and hype just now and we find the best way to generate that is to go to other events and find people who are interested in our other cause.

My entire life feels trivial. My regular Tuesday tennis date was rained out. Dad appeared self-sufficient during my morning welfare call. So I read the Science section of the NY Times while riding the recumbent bike for 55 minutes. I intended to lift some weights. But FFP made lunch (salad and tortellini) and I felt like sitting and reading. And so my days go...full of stuff and nonsense. I'm not thinking great thoughts, but rather I'm bothered and irritated then thrilled and enthralled by small things. Euphoria has been in short supply but it has been interesting inside my head anyway. As I type this, I'm listening to a play list on the iPod created from the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" sung by k.d. lang. This is the only thing Apple calls Genius that is genius. It included Elvis, ABBA, Cream, Cheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd. Now there is music trivia in my head.

[A note on the photo: it is the side of a wine box that got stored in the move last year. From the looks of it, this one didn't have anything especially stellar in it. However, the photo with the box decoration and scribbling reflects my stuff and nonsense mood.]

Another Day

FFP actually took this a few days ago. But, yeah, every day the sun comes up and you figure your schedule out and bumble through. It's Sunday and the temperature out is pleasant according to my computer. So it would have been a nice day for a leisurely walk. But my actual plan is to walk to a restaurant on Congress (El Chile) for a press party and ASA fundraiser. It's a short walk (about ten blocks). We'll return to the condo after that. I should probably exercise or do some chores at that point, but, if I feel like the twenty block (round trip) walk hasn't necessitated another shower, I won't do those things but, rather, probably sit around and read the Sunday papers.

We'll dress up a bit and go this afternoon to a graveside service at three. After that we'll come back, change and go take my dad on a outing to a friend's house for a (belated) birthday dinner. We have good news on the Dad front: he felt strong enough to maneuver his walker down his sidewalk to the curb to get his mail and papers. After five weeks and six iron infusions, maybe he is less anemic.

That pretty well shapes our day. Looking at the calendar for next week...I have morning things four days (incl. Saturday) and social things every night except Thursday (when FFP has a board meeting). All the events are fun except for a finance meeting at the country club and I've no complaints about being busy having fun. But I hope to find time to do some cleaning and to reorganize the kitchen. We bought a toaster oven we'd like to keep on the counter and our beloved coffee maker is back from the repair depot and the counter is just too cluttered. I think I need to find a place to put away some liquor bottles and stuff like that. The cabinets have been poorly organized since we moved in. There should be plenty of time during the days for this work. Yes, but...will I do it!? Will I find other more fun things to do? Some of the time, probably. I also need to get serious about some gym work.

Well...I wrote the above before we had our walk and some food at the party. I eschewed the alcohol (of course, it's too early) but I still feel the need for newspapers, another coffee and maybe letting the eyes drift downward.

Is This Blog Dormant?

Maybe this blog is on its last legs. The post below this one is dated two months ago. I couldn't begin to catch you up on the (in)Visible Woman because I barely remember where I've been or what I've done. But maybe I can sort of revive the thing somehow.

I wouldn't like this blogging thing to end up being threatened with extinction. I don't want to be reduced to tweets and facebook comments. So here I am, trying to put together just the kind of recap of life I should avoid and decorating it with (yet another) shop window reflection. [Sur La Table at the Domain with, mirrored, myself and a much larger than life representation of the rare and threatened whooping crane. I wasn't shopping at this store but rather going to, ugh, the Apple Store.]

So...what have I been doing?

Cursing Computers. Yep and all the makers of hardware and software. My vision of sleek systems in my modern apartment has been shattered once and for all. I had outfitted the place with two iMacs, wireless printers and a Time Capsule from Apple, hidden in a cabinet. I was running boot camp on one iMac and FFP was running that with XP. He didn't take to a change to Mac, even for a few moments. We did daily backups wirelessly to the Time Capsule which was also a router. I am running VMWare and XP and Mac OS X. So. Right before we were going on vacation and in the middle of a health crisis for my dad, FFP's iMac started getting errors that looked suspiciously like a hard drive going bad. I made extra backups and tried various things to diagnose it. This computer was purchased eighteen months ago and was initially delivered with a bad hard drive which Apple replaced, taking about ten days to do it. Fortunately we hadn't put it into service at that point but had spent a lot of time configuring it only to get weird errors and finally do a surface scan that showed the hard drive had lots of bad sectors. When I got back from vacation and found a guru to help me deal with this, another problem cropped up before I could get an appointment. The Time Capsule power supply failed. One day it just stopped having a light. I found scores of people on the Web with the same problem with units bought around this time. Desperate to replace the router and backup functions this piece of equipment served to provide, I bought a router and resurrected some ancient USB external drives. Meanwhile I returned the Time Capsule to the Apple Store where they took it in to have their geniuses examine it for life.

My newly-engaged guru came over. Initially I think he thought it was just a matter of a WIN XP installation corruption on the iMac. He put a lot of effort into cleaning things up and we ran a few CHKDSKs which ran forever, finding errors. Finally, on the second visit, it became too sick to boot. At this point I'd put everything on a laptop for FFP to work. This wasn't going to be a great solution for long term not the least because I didn't have good backups in place and the laptop, years and years old, might give up the ghost itself at some point. So we decided, even though the iMac was under warranty, to replace the hard drive ourselves. (That would be the guru doing it. It is at this point that you have to understand that my guru really is an expert and that the Apple Geniuses are so-called to hide the fact that they are pimply-faced nerds with no concept of running a business.)

Apple said they were replacing the Time Capsule. Only they gave me one that was obviously used. Indeed, when I brought it home it also did not work! To receive this non-working product I'd had to sign that they took no responsibility for the loss or breach of my data on the broken one they wouldn't return to me! The 'genius' said breach just meant loss, not that someone might obtain my data. I not so patiently explained that, no, it meant breach and was on a separate line from loss in the lawyerese I was asked to initial. I almost made the kid cry. I didn't feel as bad about that as I should have, probably, him not knowing the meaning of the word breach and all.

So we (my guru actually) swapped the bad Apple (ha!) hard drive with one from Fry's, getting Vista installed (learning curve for moi!) and I bought a new Firewire backup drive for that machine so I could have local backup I trusted more and that would be fast. (I reinstalled my remote backup solutions, got FFP's data on it, etc. after the guru efficiently reinstalled most software.) I finally got a new Time Capsule from Apple but have only put it into service as a LAN drive. Can't trust all backups from all machines to something that the geniuses consider so cavalierly. Indeed, when I was giving them the thing they said "It's OK because you still have the data on your machine!" Well, of course, I had one of their machines failing. And I had generations of backup on it, too, which you don't have on your machine. So, yeah, not impressed.

I ended up getting only one wireless printer to work and the communication among machines isn't working entirely. The guru must come back and give more help. I have more gadgets strewn out where they are visible than I did before. The condo is becoming as messy as my old office. I had to deal with Vista trying to hide things from me about installing external drives and scheduling tasks and endlessly asking me if I started programs, too.

And my love/hate relationship with computers just keeps on. There are more decisions and issues coming. I just can't think about it all now! There's Snow Leopard and how it works with VMWare and whether to upgrade to WIN 7 in October. And then there is replacing software that just barely limps along with XP and will not be tolerated by Vista or WIN 7. I love computers but only when I'm doing something I love. This includes the accounting tasks I do, I love having them automated. It includes writing this blog, surfing for info, using social media. It does not include upgrading, debugging, backing up, diagnosing, buying, returning. Which for the last few weeks was ALL I DID. Or so it seemed. Which may explain why I got surly when I had to change the ink cartridges in the ink jet printer today. I feel like an IT employee who never gets to use computers, only gets abused by them. This long-winded blog entry may stand as evidence to the contrary, of course. Also I tweeted my dissatisfaction with Apple (with a hash tag I made up: #applekoolaid) which caused a lot of strange followers. I must admit that ever time I saw an Apple commercial, it made me mad. And there were a lot of them in the U.S. Open Tennis coverage. (Yeah, I wasted some time watching TV. So sue me!)

Editing Cogent (?) Blog Entries and Stuff that Will Never Be Published. Ideas, nicely expressed and crafted. Written and rewritten. Publish button never pushed. Oh, I haven't done that much of it, but still. I did have some ideas and start blog entries I couldn't wrap up while you've been missing me. (Haven't you?) I have published Austin, Texas Daily Photo daily. Even left a stack to be published while I was on vacation. But this quotidian task is hardly writing or publishing. It is surprisingly hard to find a picture every day, though. And I do try for a paragraph of accurate drivel. Not enough writing has been done in any case although I've started a few things. It would take dedicated time and I'm all interruption these days. Still, the starting to write has taken time.

Paying Too Much Attention to Social Media. Facebook, twitter, news on the WEB, other people's blogs. It's random like a collage. I like collages and I like scanning that stuff. But. Too. Much. Time. And sometimes I respond when someone says something I find stupid or sanctimonious. And that is really a mistake. I craft a comment no one wants to hear. Stupid.

Taking an Idyllic Trip. Portland, OR. August. It's a perfect idea. We've done this several years and the weather has been pretty wonderful. Especially the comparison with Austin and especially this year. When we were gearing up to go, however, Dad started fainting or threatening to faint. So the whole idea and actuality of going was fraught because of Dad's problem which turned out to be critical anemia. Finally, I got him started on iron infusions, lined up a variety of help and support and we went anyway. We did check e-mail but mostly we read books and papers, talked and ate and drank with our friends. We walked among straight fragrant trees and on the beach. And actually saw two movies. Loved them both: "Whatever Works" and "Julie & Julia." It was nice weather and lots of low-key fun.

Buying Gadgets (and not). For months I thought I might get a Smart Phone. My carrier is Sprint. I have a nine-year-old phone. I'm not kidding. It works, though. I thought of getting it replaced with a Blackberry or something. Then, around my birthday I had the idea of trying an iPhone. This wasn't as hard as it could have been since FFP has an AT&T contract. So we got an extra number on his account and got one. Took it on our trip and used it to look at e-mail and such. It was pretty cool really although the battery doesn't last long. FFP liked it enough that he got one for his AT&T phone. I'm still carrying around my Sprint phone, though, because it holds juice longer for just phoning. I've liked the iPhone though, truthfully, although I'd have burned it in longer before getting FFP one, but he wanted one and there you go.

For the longest, I wanted to buy a vacuum and a toaster oven. We'd given up some old ones and promised ourselves new ones in the condo. I kept borrowing a vacuum from a friend who is a condo neighbor and we got by with just the pop-up toaster and the microwave. Today, though, I bought these things. You know what? I hate having to unpack and figure out this stuff. But I did.

Still glad I never bought a GPS gadget or a Netbook. The iPhone serves pretty well for these needs. I guess I should have waited for the vacuum and toaster oven apps! And I wish I hadn't had to go buy a new router and backup drive thanks to Apple's gadget failure.

Being a Child. No really the child of the parent who has no one else. And assisting occasionally with FFP's, too. It's never enough.

No matter how much time I spend with my dad or working on his affairs I feel like it's not enough or I feel incompetent at it. I feel guilty about not helping FFP's parents more, too.

The whole situation of being their support system also gives us pause vis-a-vis our desire to travel more, too. In the last year and a half, my dad has had a crisis before or during our three trips. Fortunately we were here for the latest crisis at my in-laws when a tree limb took out their electric meter and left them without electricity for over two days while electricians worked and the city took their sweet time to inspect the results. It was interesting how deftly they lived without electricity (they refused to leave). It was maddening that the city took them to task on other improvement paperwork that was incomplete...from decades ago! Would that the city did their own work so carefully.

Reading. Read Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs. Mostly on the trip. Excellent book spanning generations, continents and characters and yet seeming intimate at every moment. I was reading, when I last reported to Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. In an amusing cosmic twist I lost track of this book and spent a couple of days puzzling over where it was until I remembered putting it in a briefcase to take when I took Dad to an appointment. Probably should read that soon. I am hopelessly behind on my newspapers. Still I spend lots of time reading them.

Cleaning. It's never enough. Himself does certain things. I feel guilty about when and how I clean. By the time I've made it through what would be the 'last' task (say cleaning the kitchen) the 'first' task (say cleaning the master bath) needs doing again. Will it help that I no longer have to go borrow a vacuum?

Puzzling Over life and, well, crosswords and Ken-Ken. I find crosswords irresistible. I tackle the NY Times on Sunday through Wednesday and sometimes Thursday. I'll do the one in the local rag most any day. Their difficulty doesn't vary by day. The Times has started running Ken-Ken and I find myself drawn to these as well. I know I waste time on these. I can't help myself, though. Maybe there is a Twelve (Across/Down) Step program for it.

Tennis. It's one constant. Well, when I'm not traveling. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I get out there in the morning with one stalwart 75-plus-year-old woman and various otherladies to play round robin doubles. It isn't exercise really (which I desperately need more of) but it's fun. And a constant. For the last few weeks the added morning activity of taking my dad for iron infusions on Fridays has meant getting up and at it four days a week. Almost like a real person with a job.

Fretting over what I'm not Doing. I need to get rid of more stuff. I need to organize stuff at my dad's. It was good to see my nieces leave with a few things. I need to get control of everything. I don't work and how hard can it be? Well, it takes time to fret about that, it does.

Socializing. We had the first black tie event of the year. The Ballet Austin Fete was held in the still-under-construction Austonian. We are always going to other little events, eating out. We celebrated my birthday with a nice gathering with music. It's the rare evening that is empty on our calendar and then we seem to find a bar or restaurant to spend it in. This was what we envisioned, I think, for retirement and downtown. But sometimes I think I should stay home more. And, you know, write, create, clean, organize.

Watching People Work and Play. This is an easy thing to fall into from a tenth-floor perch. I find myself out on the balcony or in my chair, watching earth movers (at the court house site), cranes moving (at Austonian and the W) and destruction (at the decommissioned Green Water treatment plant). Also sometimes just watch people coming and going from the nearby venues, out on the town, gong to dance class at the Butler Dance Ed. Center, just wandering in my neighborhood. Like Chance in "Being There": I like to watch. It almost seems like I'm getting work done or going out myself. Only I'm not watching it on TV.

Yeah, that's been me...and I hope you were doing something momentous yourself whilst I was gone!

Attention

Are you listening to me? We all crave attention, I think, of one sort or another. If no one ever commented, would I still blog? Well, yes. I'm writing (and posting pictures) for my future self. My current self pays an inordinate amount of attention to old blog entries and their predecessors, online journals created by my former self. I pay so much attention to myself that I don't need much from others! My tweets would drift off if no one ever responded, though. (I send them to facebook where I have enough 'friends' to get a rise out of a few people there.) But they might still go on even if the silence was deafening. After all the twitter-dom keeps them. Apparently for a long time.

I'm reading a book called "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life." [Ed. Funny. LB: Shut Up.] Anyway, one point this book might be making for me as I read a few pages here and there is that "we are what we pay attention to." I'm a believer in a true reality...facts and truth are there, just too complicated for us to interpret sanely sometimes. But I also think that our own 'objective' reality is based on what we are exposed to and focus on.

I'm often amazed at comments about pop culture that not only do not resonate with me but indeed leave me as confused as if they were in another language entirely. I went decades without paying attention to popular music, have put up a firm resistance to lots of TV, books and movie offerings (although I'll often read reviews of these things, perhaps to keep up some culture cred for crosswords or just to understand why I don't want to start paying attention to the actual things).

In my world, my husband gets my close attention. My father gets a lot of attention although probably not all he needs. My condo and its objects fall under my gaze and penetrate although it is easy to lock things away, look until you don't see, etc. And a book cover observed is not a book read.

I read news, in actual papers and online. I read about some events multiple times. I read certain bloggers religiously and others casually. Thus, these inputs inform my reality. That and the voices in my head. Reading about stuff, however, isn't living it. I can try to imagine living in a mud hut with a charcoal fire or wearing a burka or risking violence toward me if I didn't. But this is largely unsuccessful. I attend more to the shorts, jeans, T-Shirts, slacks, blazers etc. that I actually wear and to the reality of a tenth floor apartment in a high rise with AC and a microwave and a plasma TV.

I read a study once that followed children from the crib to school age. Kids that were very sensitive to environmental changes in the crib (such as the amount of light) tended to exhibit shyness as young kids. Maybe shyness is simply too much response to things. New people and environments are overwhelming to certain people who pay attention.

Today I took a walk. I noticed people. I noticed an argyle sock in the gutter. I saw a feather, two small rubber heels from shoes (a block apart) and a sandwich container from a convenience store on the sidewalks. Things like this penetrate and get my focus. To no one's surprise I don't focus on great deeds! It's taken me days to do this blog entry for heaven's sake.

[Today's photo is courtesy of the shop window at Haven Gallery on W. Sixth. I still think my photos are art. The ones where I take a more central role, though, maybe not so much.]

What Do You Want?

Right after what was apparently the most significant event of the summer (Michael Jackson's death), I noticed a homemade sign on Austin City Lofts. "Wow," I thought. "Does someone really care that much?"

I have long said that the key to being happy, to 'getting what you want,' is to know what you want. I think I've failed miserably at that.

My horoscope today (the Creators Syndicate one in the Austin American-Statesman) says "If your environment isn't well-organized, you will feel distracted if not distraught. Make it a priority to get things in order." Well, that might have been true in the old house. No, it definitely was true. But I think my work area is just about perfect now. The whole house, really. I always have some cleaning task queued up that needs to be done and I do need to go through some boxes and files and organize the storage space and better organize the kitchen but, really, I can pretty much find things and, well, that isn't the problem. [I don't put much faith in horoscopes or fortune cookies or seer advisers. However, if I'm reading a paper and it isn't today's paper then I want bother to read the horoscope!]

We had dinner and and outing with a creative young friend on Saturday and she said she needed to focus her interests a little bit. (She is into photography, has a film she's editing, does fashion designs and sells 'reclaimed' fashions made from thrift store finds, etc.) She's only twenty-five, though, and she's managed to get a college degree, do some travel and live overseas a while and make a move here and get and hold a job to support herself with only a bike someone gave her for transportation. I'd say there is plenty of time to focus for her. Of course, she is thirty-five years younger than I am!

When I retired (how many times over the last six plus years have I used that phrase?), I thought I would learn and accomplish things.

The learning? It's a slippery slope as illustrated here. I would want to know more about world events and that would stick me with learning, for example, where the countries in Africa even are and then I'd have to take the time to actually read articles in my stacks of papers that I used to skip over. I'd want to learn more about movies. I considered learning to make one, decided it was too hard and gave away some equipment that could have made it possible. I read scripts and bought, and left unread, books about screenwriting. I started going to festivals, became involved in screening movies for a festival, read some books about movies, took the time to watch some classics. The result is that I still can't tell you who's who in the film world or really recognize many style things except for maybe some Woody Allen motifs.

The accomplishments? I wanted to find some volunteer work to do, but since I don't much like interacting with people that has been limited. I wanted to be healthier (exercise, diet, lose weight, ho hum) and maybe I am, maybe not. Not like I envisioned. I wanted to write, get organized, cook more.

I think it all boiled down to wanting to become an expert at something enough to help myself or others. I think maybe that's what missing from my life. It would probably take focus, though, and I think I'm destined to dabble. And to feel a little bad about it. Some people are thrust into situations where they have to focus and form strong opinions and do something about them. That hasn't really happened to me. In my career, there was some specialization forced from the outside and, I have to say, it allowed me to occasionally seem to accomplish something. (Although not as often as you might think.) Truthfully, accomplishment of anything needs to be forced on me. And I'm very resistant to intrusions in my retirement so it's hard for those situations to develop. I guess if I can force myself to write about the dilemma, though (fulfilling the 'pretending to write but really just blogging' destiny that's been my mantra of late) then I can maybe exert a little influence on myself to force myself to figure out what I want and accomplish it. You think? Honestly, I doubt it.

Schadenfreude

Does it make you feel better if some smirking (once) rich guy gets 150 years in prison? Does it make you feel better if someone who has made you feel small, called you names or dismissed you has some grief? Does it make you feel better to see oppressors jailed or killed?

The word schadenfreude is from the German. It means damage joy. If you are flying high and people you think are a??holes are underwater, can that bring you joy? Even if you are just rocking along just the same does a bit of trouble coming the way of a perceived tormentor do your heart good?

I'm pretty sure I'm hiding and watching a number of people to see if they 'get what they deserve.' Or what I think they deserve. Sort of in the manner of those town folk in "The Magnificent Ambersons" waiting around to see if the obnoxious Georgy gets his 'comeuppance.'

But you know what? It doesn't give me joy to see the descent. It's more that instead of feeling bad for them I'm just not cheering them on. Mostly I get my pleasure from a casual indifference to their success or failure. A few less people on the planet I have to feel bad for if things don't go their way.

I just wish people wouldn't have given me a reason to not wish them well. That things had been different, that they had been honest and generous. That they had not placed themselves above me and others. That they had not set themselves up for the fall. I'd just rather folks all made me want to see them do well. But it would be exhausting, too.

Everyone will reach a nadir even if it is just the final extinguishing of life, that moment when we can no longer cling to this realm. (If you are going to some heaven, well, yeah that's the last revenge from my unkind thoughts I suppose if you've offended me.) How horrible to have people smiling at our inevitable defeat. I think there are probably a few people who will feel my ultimate demise will be a victory and who will take joy in dips in my life. Certainly there are people out there wishing me ill or, at least, not hoping for the best for me. But I don't think there are many. Most of us are indifferent to most of the rest of us. The Madoffs managed to alienate a lot of people in a big way but, yeah, they had to really work at it.

Anyway, much as I like the word, I don't think I have much use for damage joy. Like those that awaited George Amberson's comeuppance, it's all too easy to simply forget all about it. And find what joy we can make of our own existence.

[Photo today is a shop window reflection from New York City.]

Art Critic

One of my joys in traveling is to visit museums. I enjoy the art, of course, but also the other people enjoying the art (or by turns being puzzled or even repulsed by it). When we were in NYC, FFP and I handed the camera back and forth and shot pictures while at MOMA. One thing I like about that museum is that except for some special exhibits you can take photos there. Here I think this viewer has unintentionally become part of the exhibiting of this Pollock.

Yesterday was my walkie/talkie (and lunch) with a dear friend. Given the searing temps in Austin we didn't go too far for lunch (Chez Nous on Neches) although that ten blocks or so was enough to feel a bit hot and sweaty. Afterward we decided to go to AMOA where an exhibit about memory has been mounted. FFP and I went to the opening but, honestly, it's hard to enjoy a show at the opening. After that we stopped at Arthouse at Jones Center where the New American Talent is up. My friend is a playwright and he is working on a play that involves the art world. We had a rambling discussion of what is and is not art, what is 'good' or 'bad' and so forth. That's a discussion that never ends, of course. One of the best things about museums and galleries and movies and plays and performances and reading and writing is the way we don't just consume it...we are all critics. Sure, we listen to the 'real' critics and, in the visual art world, are very influenced by them. My friends says that putting something in a gallery, putting a seven figure price on it attracts some people.

Personally I love learning what I like, what I love, what merely puzzles me. Given our discussion we pronounced on the art we saw yesterday. It was interesting how our opinions differed and how quickly they were formed.

Here's a photo I edited that FFP took at MOMA of a girl knelling before the art with a tattoo.

Growing Old

My current age finally seems old to me. In the past I've been startled at my age but never thought it was that old. Perhaps my current age would seem young and frisky, too, if I felt more young and frisky.

It's not that my health isn't good. Oh, I have aches and pains. I get little injuries and illnesses which I nurse along certain that time will cure them and it does. That's sweet. I can still walk a pretty long way and climb some stairs. Theoretically I still have some percentage of my mental capacity.

What I finally have lost is that sense of endless possibility for things I'll achieve, the places I'll go, the things I'll see happen and the better, stronger, smarter (and yes, thinner) person I'll become.

I feel boxed in. Trapped by how old I am and what will and won't happen.

Of course, I know how it ends. But not when. And there's the rub. Or, one of the rubs.

I once dreamed I would learn many things that I have not mastered. I once dreamed of traveling to many corners of the globe. Now my dreams are circumscribed by the certainty of dangers and lack of bathrooms in many locales.

Ah, bathrooms. Old enough to be out from under the proverbial 'curse' of womankind, the bladder and bowels are aged and not what they once were. Sadly, even the spouse needs to carefully regard bathroom locations these days.

We sometimes imply that it is the three elderly parents which keep us close to home. And this is, perhaps somewhat true. However, they show great independence and we have found others to fill in for needed duties. Maybe the truth is that as we see their worlds shrink it is hard to escape our own feelings of being boxed in. None of the old folks can drive now and none would sign up for a trip further than about ten miles, I don't think, even being driven. My in-laws have never flown and my dad doesn't think he's up to it any longer. I'm definitely up to road trips, long plane rides, etc. But somehow find the idea of going far a bit tiresome myself. Still I enjoyed the last trip and must just plan another.

It all seems a bit futile sometimes. I know life is ephemeral, but this has never stopped me from wanting to improve, learn, grow and go. And it isn't now. It just feels different. Less open-ended, more final.

This feeling is reflected in my acquisition and desire for things. I remember when I was a kid, late teens, early twenties. I was just stopping growing and so had started to actually wear clothes out. I clung to disastrously worn old tennis shoes and jeans, proud to have actually owned them long enough to make them well-used with a few holes and some character. Then I went through a long period of acquiring clothes. Now I find myself loath to buy anything new even though my wardrobe is ancient and starting to wear a bit thin and shiny in places. I remember wanting to expand my living space, buy more real estate, own more gadgets, books, CDs, movies. I wanted to acquire art and build new space to have walls to display it. Now I want to have just what I need, no more, less complicated please! (Although I still get a bit of pleasure from looking at the books we saved last year and those added in since then on the shelves we built into this condo.)

I have also reached a point where I realize that I have already been here a while. I reflect on places and people. On the dead and the living. Heck, as I look through my contacts data base or even my facebook friends I often think "who is that anyway?" I've known people and forgotten them, left them to meteroic success or maybe dismal failure. There are stacks of events poorly remembered, distorted images, hoarsely-pronounced lines from the dull yet surreal play that is my life. I have known people, tried things, read books, seen art and it's all stuffed deep inside me and hard to find.

I have reached an age, I guess, where I realize that one day, possibly not far off, I won't walk in this realm. I don't just know it, as I feel I have for most of my life, but realize it in my bones. Which the young cannot do, nor could I when young. And that, that feeling more than the knowing, makes me old.

I think, though, in my old age, that I should release myself frequently from duty (from financial head-scratching, domestic duty, volunteer work, exercise, worrying about the parents and socializing) and just read and write and think freely, with no guilt about what has or hasn't been done. Thus today I will leave dust and the need for exercise and the call to pay attention to other exigencies of my little life and do a small amount of reading and thinking. You can never really get those duties truly done anyway. And I won't worry that what I pour into my brain from reading or my own creations will merely disappear with me when I am, inevitably, gone.

[Today's photo is a NYC shop window reflection. The title of the piece is "I Have a Book in Me." Ha.]

You Go, Girl!

Men are fine. No, really. But don't you love this? It is a shop window in NYC. Saks Fifth Avenue, I think. They posed the wedding dresses on bald models with little plastic cake top grooms. I think big weddings are stupid, of course We went to a wedding celebration, post-wedding, at a barbecue joint last week. That was nice.

Sometimes men are so pompous, though. Not many of them here in the U.S. of A. Some, though. Do I really care who the governor of S.C. thinks is his 'soul mate?' I do not.This pomposity is rampant in Iran, and in all those countries where religions have told the males that they are the chosen sex, chosen by God. I, for one, vote no on 'reaching out' to a country where women are chattel. Unclench your fist AND free your women!

Don't know where that came from except that all the celebrity death nonsense makes me wonder if we understand what is happening around the world and then, of course, I chose this picture for this post. And it's just frivolous and fun. So am I serious or not. You decide. Other people have trouble telling sometimes.

I haven't written anything longer than a tweet in a while. One post from our NYC tour. A vacation, catching up on parent duty when we returned, catching up on errands and such and, I must admit, all that tennis on TV...I've felt really busy.

I really did enjoy New York. We did a lot of eating and activities, but there was a lot more that I wanted to do. Highlights? OK, here goes.

• We got to eat at some favorite places but there just wasn't time or appetite for all the eating we would have liked! Old favorites Artisanal, DB Bistro Moderne, Orsay were visited. Greek fish restaurant Avra was right next door to the place where we stayed. Ate there twice, once entertaining six diverse friends for lunch (playwright, construction expert, computer expert, financial expert, assistant on the Letterman show and technology teacher). Discovered a new place, Commerce, in a precious part of the Village (on Commerce near the intersection of Bleeker/Seventh). They do well with parts (offal) and fish and have a great vibe in a historic little space near the Cherry Lane theater. Our last night there we ate a Giambelli's, a very traditional NY Italian joint we found in the neighborhood for a meal after an afternoon matinee and some packing. We had a nightcap at the Waldorf bar that night, too. Expensive, buy hey.... We ate a pub lunch on the day we celebrated Bloomsday.
  
• We really got to see a lot of cabaret this trip which was fine with me because I love sipping a cocktail and listening to classic old tunes. Marilyn Maye did a Johnny Mercer tribute at the Metropolitan Room. We went to Cherry Lane Theater to see Jim Caruso, Billy Stritch, Klea Blackhurst, Christine Ebersole and an up and coming jazz guitarist, Aaron Weinstein, do another tribute to Mercer. The book is big and two nights of Mercer was fine. At the Metropolitan Room we drank cocktails, but the second show was a theater setting and so we discovered the aforementioned Commerce almost next door after for apps and drinks after. (We returned for another meal, so impressed were we.) We also went to the Blue Note (first time I'd been there) and heard Jane Monheit. Enjoyed the people we met at these places, too.
  
• We went to the Metropolitan Museum and saw the Francis Bacon exhibit and the fashion exhibit and another special exhibit of pictures and painting from the '70's I think. Also went to the International Center for Photography for a show of Avedon fashion photography. We wandered the MOMA, too. That's just an obligatory stop for us on most of our trips.
  
• We saw "Hair" on Broadway. It was entertaining enough but the relevance seemed to be gone from it as it was sung and acted by youngsters who would have to volunteer to get sent to war.
• We really enjoyed visiting with our friend Barbara Hammond. She joined us for the lunch at Avra (she is the playwright mentioned above), we caught up with her at the Ulysses reading (see below) and we had a theater evening with her. Dinner at Joe Allen and a play, "August: Osage County," that left all three of us nonplussed. I was expecting a serious play with some humor from the down home circumstances in the 'provinces' of Oklahoma. There was more farce than I expected and little subtlety in using dramatic devices like family conflicts, unexpected parentage, etc. It was great having a New York theater evening with a NY playwright. We hope to be able to go back some time and see one of her plays produced.
• Our original impetus for going to NYC at this time was for Bloomsday. The event at the downtown pub Ulysses' Folk House was so much fun. We got there early, ate the carvery lunch, drank a bit. Weather was rainy and blustery but the reading in the outdoor part of the pub on Stone Street went well with the weather holding off. Guinness had a big ice sculpture and they were giving away oysters on the half shell and oyster 'shooters' that careered through the sculpture to land in a cup with sauce (giving them an extra chill and some drama). The pub gave away little plates of gorgonzola and glasses of red wine, too. (Leopold Bloom's pub lunch at Davy Bryne's in the novel was a glass of burgundy and a gorgonzloa sandwich.) We met two Chrises there and they decided on the spot to join in the reading and did a bang-up job. We stayed so long downtown that we were a little late to the more formal reading at Symphony Space. But it was only about a half hour in when we arrived at that Upper West Side theater. We stayed until the end which was a complete reading of Molly Bloom's soliloquy. (You go girl, indeed. Yes.) A lot of the segments were devoted to the parts of the novel referencing food in this performance which was cool given our affinity for food.
  
• We had lunch one day with some kids we met in Austin at the (sadly now closed) Taste Select Wines. They hope to move to Austin. They are young and smart and have been battered by the economy.
• If I could transport one thing from NYC to Austin it would be Artisanal Fromagerie/Bistro/Wine Bar. Just a place to get a basket of those gougeres would be thrilling. Cheese puff doesn't begin to describe it.
  

So yeah we had good luck with the trip to NYC and good luck coming and going on Jet Blue. (Except the TVs at our seats didn't work on the way home, but they sent us a $15 credit each so if we fly them again within the year, there is that.) I wish we could go somewhere in July especially since the temps promise to melt us here, but I'm also a little glad we are staying put and getting some things organized. We are, aren't we? Still I want to travel more. That was the idea of retiring and of downsizing. Wasn't it? There had to be some point.

LB and Barbara Hammond at Ulysses' Folk House.

Yeah, so here I am blogging. I'm sure not many are reading and this rambling doesn't induce me to put a link to this on facebook or twitter. No, better to natter away in this lonely corner.

Depressed? Happy?

I realized earlier in the month as I was doing some movie screening that movies can depress me in a lot of ways. Depressing content. Bad movies make me feel queasy at the (to me) wasted money and the time I'm wasting watching them.

Gadgets depress me. Ones I have even when they work, but mostly when they start to fail. It wears me out upgrading programs on computers. Gadgets I've thought of getting but haven't depress me because of the confusion of thinking about them: smart phones, GPS devices, a new laptop, a new digital camera. Do I even need the last ones if I get a smart enough first one? When gadgets start to have glitches in behavior or their batteries quit holding a charge? That's depressing.

Cleaning depresses me because you have to do it over and over. Ditto cooking. (You have to cook then you made a mess you have to clean, then you get hungry again.)

The newspapers depress me with news of violence and hate and economic distress. They depress me when I pay for them and they pile up, unread.

And yet. I love newspapers. I like sitting down, folding one over and reading entire articles. Newspapers make me happy in a way nothing else does. Reading news and blogs online? I like it but it makes me nervous in a way and may depress me more and it is so hard to fall asleep at the keyboard. But in your chair with a newspaper? Yeah! Yep, a newspaper, a cup of coffee. Heaven. Add a notebook and pen and some interesting surroundings. Very cool.

I like walking around and taking pictures. I get depressed about organizing all my photos or finding something fresh for Austin, Texas Daily Photo after almost 800 posts. Plus tomorrow is a theme day. The theme? Empty? I'm kind of empty of ideas for it, too. I love my shop window pictures. They make me happy in a way that isn't even sensible.

It makes me happy to watch Wimbledon on my big plasma TV in an air-conditioned room. But a little depressed that I didn't get to play myself today (rain). But I'm happy it rained. We are in a long, long drought. That's a little depressing. When temps soar over a hundred? That depressing, too. Today the high was supposed to be 93. Depressing to think that it "doesn't sound too bad." And it actually, um, felt kind of cool when we walked to a restaurant to meet friends.

It makes me happy that we made a trip to NYC. It was so fun. More on that later. It depresses me that due to some watchful waiting on a parent's health and other duties we can't get away for another trip next month. It makes me happy that we might find time to do some of our volunteer work and maybe some Central Texas getaways.

Crossword puzzle and the new Ken-Ken make me happy. The time wasted on them? A little depressed.

I'm happy I'm retired. Depressed that I haven't done more with the time. My motto "Pretending to Write but Really Just Blogging" was funnier when I actually did blog and not just tweet. My tweets don't seem to excite much interest unless I misuse grammar. Typos, grammar errors, misspelled words all depress me. A well-turned sentence makes me happy. Learning a new word or usage makes me happy. The other morning a friend directed me to an NPR deal where you can submit "Three-Minute Fiction." I quickly wrote a story of about the right number of words. I didn't submit it. It was about writer's block and the things we do to displace the writing. I was happy to write it and not submit it. I was depressed to think about all the writing projects I'm not writing.

I'm happy I'm as healthy as I am. Depressed about some injuries and things that are failing. I'm happy I can exercise as much as I do. Depressed that I'm not more diligent. I love to eat. Eating makes me happy. I'm depressed that I don't manage to eat more healthy foods. I'm depressed at what I weigh, but happy I don't weigh twenty pounds more like I used to.

I go back and forth between the happy and the depressed. Everyone does unless their life is uniformly miserable. Even then?

Manhattan

This is the view from our friends' apartment they are letting us use this week. Yeah, the Chrysler Building. Cool.

We haven't really hit our stride yet, but we've eaten at two favorite places and gone to Crawford Doyle Booksellers. I love that little store where everything seems curated so you just see so many things you want to buy (or that you have a copy of at home and think you should read or read again).

There was a huge parade on Fifth Avenue for Puerto Rico day. There were police barricades on Madison where cars had not been allowed to park (or been removed) with the barricades out into the street as if to accommodate large numbers of people. People were going by with flags of Puerto Rico, everything was covered with them.
We ask one of policemen (there were one or more on every corner) if there was going to be a parade here, too. "No, this is for the aftermath," he said. Oh. Large crowds. Aftermaths. We don't do that well. So we decided to rest up a bit before the evening.

One of our reasons for being in NYC is the literary-geeky Bloomsday readings of James Joyce's Ulysses. We have just added to our schedule an afternoon reading that will include a friend reading part of the book. Add this to the evening one at Symphony Space on Tuesday and we will be thoroughly ensconced in Joyce Tuesday. (For the uninformed, Joyce's book takes place in one 24 hour period beginning the morning of June 16, 1904.) Yes, I've 'read' it. And maybe I even understood a little.

So far we've had an easy time getting into the two restaurants we tried (where we only called in the hour before to get a table). We saw lots of empty tables for lunch today on Lex. And we received the sad news that our favorite downtown Austin wine bar, Taste, had closed. Yeah, it's officially a recession. Well we'll be spending some money around NYC and then we will come home and keep supporting the other restaurants and venues and charities we love. But will it be enough?

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.

Lost in the Swirl

I am nothing. That's not the utterance of an incredible depression. It's just that I don't identify myself as some one thing to really get rabid about it. Other people perceive that I am incredibly serious about something: tennis, downtown, walking, writing, blogging (a different thing than writing in my book), food (especially odd food), certain performing arts, travel, certain causes. But really I don't feel very focused on any of these things. Perhaps that's just fine. Perhaps, however, I should have a position to flog, a cause to support, a passion (or two). Maybe it would be satisfying.

I see people in the real or virtual world who have become experts on something, out of passion or necessity and focus a lot of their life there. Maybe they are parents addressing a specific problem their kids have. (A friend's daughter has a new blog about cooking a special diet for her autistic son, for example.) Maybe they so love an art form that they dedicate a blog to it and get a book contract and give seminars. Maybe their job is writing about technology or social goings on. (I follow a couple of guys at the local paper who've buried themselves in these activities.) Maybe they are experts at film or a certain area of technology and really spend tons of time on it, get a job in the field, etc. etc.

I don't feel like I've ever done that. I've had ideas about how, if I dedicated the time to just one thing I could do this or that wonderful project like no one else. But I don't ever do it. Now that I'm retired and living on what I made during a long, haphazard career doing what was in front of me, maybe it's OK to be entirely unfocused. Just rocking along and not making a mark. I hope so.

[Photo is a reflection in a botanical gift shop trailer at the complex of trailers on S. First including Torchy's.]

One Year Downtown

Hard as it is to believe, we closed on our condo a year ago. So one year downtown? Wow. It's true that we didn't sell our house until August, but we spent almost every night down here after we closed and (that same day) moved in a few things (a sleeper sofa, two chairs, boxes of CDs, a tiny flat screen TV we got off the Internet, a coffee table whose glass top we kept having to move around as we finished out our place out with built-ins, electronics, some new furniture). We spent a lot of our days at the house, packing, cleaning, tossing, organizing. We left our Capresso at the house and moved in a new coffee pot at first. (I knew we were committed when the Capresso came downtown and we tucked that new drip pot away for the disastrous day when our beloved caffeine machine fails us.)

There are pros and cons to everything, of course, and sure there are things I miss about being in my old neighborhood. I miss the restaurants that were convenient there (Fonda San Miguel, 34th St., Blue Star and Billy's on Burnet), watching nature unfold in the yard (although I don't miss trying to tame it or the poison ivy) and I miss being able to go out to my car if I forget something without riding the elevator.

But being downtown mostly rocks. All in all I might like to live in a more expensive building but it's hard to imagine a better location than this one with three restaurants (two well-established now and one soon to open) and a grocery store downstairs. Then there is Whole Foods only a half mile away and a multitude of other bars, restaurants and coffee shops within a half mile or so. We are right across the street from our beloved Butler Dance Education Center, the home of Ballet Austin, and really positioned for events there. We can easily walk to Long Center, the Paramount and, though it's a bit further afield, we've made our way on foot to the Blanton, Erwin Center, PAC, KLRU studios and Harry Ransom Center at UT. I was talking to one of the neighbors in my old hood the other day and they said it was just an illusion, a mindset, that it was no further from our old house to, say, the Performing Arts than from the new place. Actually, it is a mile and a third further. This is pretty significant, adding over two and a half miles of walking to a round trip. And, of course, walking downtown from the old place would be beyond daunting to me, not to mention time-consuming. Of course, we could bike but I'd be a danger to myself. Bikes, in fact are a dange to me when they don't yield to pedestrians in crosswalks or they ride on the sidewalks. I've become more sanguine about it over the months but it still makes me mad to be crowded or almost sideswiped by someone on a bike, riding where they really don't belong or disobeying traffic rules. I dodge and anticipate now, though. I also think we walk faster and smarter from all the practice. We sense when bikes or cars are going to threaten us. As it gets hot, we seem to find the shady side of the street more easily, too.

We can walk to Old West Austin, Clarksville, SoCo, South First, South Lamar. We claim any place we can easily walk to as our neighborhood. In the picture above, FFP stands on Bouldin Avenue as we were walking home after having Sunday brunch (a taco from Torchys trailer). It isn't hard to find your way home with a beacon like that.

We can go to Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar or Alamo Ritz and see a movie while eating and drinking beer. We can go to the Elephant Room any night of the week and see jazz.

While we don't have a yard with squirrels, birds, geckos (and pests, too), we do have an expansive view of streets and buildings and Lady Bird Lake. We can walk down by the lake and see plenty of plants and turtles and ducks and squirrels. We can walk to several parks. It is really nice to have a view of a vast sweep of sky. We can see east and, from the balcony south and north. A few steps across the hall we have a western view. We've enjoyed watching construction downtown on the Austonian, the W, Spring and, when we walk around, the Four Seasons.

We've worn out shoe leather and discovered innumerable things down here even though, in the past, we came downtown often enough. The good news is that Cathy's Cleaners picks up and delivers our cleaning and they do shoe repair.

Having sifted and sorted, we have to be more heartless about getting rid of stuff and not letting it pile up quite as much. Magazines and papers have to go to recycling sooner. The place is too small to tolerate not putting stuff away and picking up after ourselves a bit. In the old house, we sometimes locked the dog (who sadly died before we moved) and piles of junk in a room for a party. No such extra space now.

We still get lots of magazines and papers, though. The three papers are delivered to our door in the morning. No wet papers ever again. And nothing could ever stop us buying books so, one day, another purge will have to happen.

It's been a great year, really, if the first three months were a little tough going getting the house ready and sold and getting this place like we wanted. We've gotten into the rhythm of being downtown and what it means to drive certain places away from downtown during rush hour. (We mostly avoid this.) Our cars sometimes sit for days and if it weren't for our parents and our visits to the club (it's about four miles away...if not too far to walk, too time-consuming). Our life really is simpler in lots of ways and we are trying to find even more ways to make it so. We are banking at banks we can walk to and our main broker has a nearby office, too. We try to make every trip count when we leave the building, too.

We plan to live here until we can't take care of ourselves here or we claim our death. It will be interesting to see how things look in five, ten, fifteen even twenty years if we and the world last here.

We are going on a trip in a couple of weeks. We won't need a house sitter...a friend in the building can stop by and check stuff and retrieve mail if we like. The concierge will hold packages. We could even take a bus to the airport although we would have to walk a half mile to the Airport Flyer stop. Wish there were a closer one. They might want to reconsider that bus route based on all the residents on this end of downtown! (But I doubt they will...Capital Metro is too involved in massive fiascoes to consider something as simple as having a bus go a half mile west to make it convenient to, literally, probably 2000 more people. Not that I can't walk a half mile with my luggage but will I in the Texas heat?)

Yeah, it's a new, simpler lifestyle. It is amazingly, better in a lot of ways than I dreamed with no major disappointments. And if you are reading this and you are someone I see in person, please don't ask any of the following questions: (1) have you moved downtown yet? (2) do you love it? (3) are lots of the condos vacant? (4) how will they ever fill all those condos? (5) which building do you live in? (6) where is that? (7) how do you ever manage to get provisions living downtown so far from a grocery store? This last one is the funniest. While we have to drive a little over two miles to a Randall's, I bet many people who ask this live much further from one or at least as far. And we can literally go downstairs to a convenient store and deli for many things. And the biggest Whole Foods in the world is a half mile away and ridiculously easy to walk to.

It's not Manhattan, but it'll do.

Philanthropy and Other Words I can Spell

Philanthropy is a good thing. I wish I had more to give. Something between what I actually have and the pesky billions that Gates and Buffet have to struggle to organize and give away.

That's FFP with a sign in the front of Arthouse at Jones Center. We were a minor sponsor so they put our names there. Deprived FFP or one of his 'r's though. (Rule of thumb: spell donor's names correctly. Double check.)

Reading List
I haven't been getting much reading done. The other night I told a friend that when we went to New York we planned to go to Symphony Space and hear actors read from James Joyce's Ulysses. The friend looked a little puzzled. I said "It's Bloomsday, June 16, the day the book is about. You've read it?" "Nobody has read it, all the way through," he asserted. "I've read at it." Well, I did. It took a long time, but I did. But lately magazines and newspapers (mostly papers) are all I seem to get around to reading. I have been listening in my rare and short car trips to books on tape and I've been listening to an explicaton of Wagner's Ring Cycle that has the occasional musical fragment. Have decided I need to see the Ring someday, but maybe not someday soon.

Writing
I worked on the novel some. A character I hadn't really anticipated having showed up due to some random detail I wanted to include because I found it amusing. Then this ten-year-old semi-prodigy hijacked the book. The main character (assuming he can hold onto that position) and the boy child are frozen now in a game of Scrabble and a discussion of tennis and life. And the meaning of the word 'craven' which I anticipate the man will make by adding an 'n' and other characters to the boy's word 'crave.' I will, with craven disregard for the folly of it, milk all the metaphor I can from all of this. I am wondering what word the man should make crossing craven. Perhaps 'knight.' I really haven't written all of this...it's mostly in my head. I think they are really eating dinner and haven't fetched the Scrabble set yet. I had to research the letter mix in Scrabble to think about this, however.
A-9 B-2 C-2 D-4 E-12 F-2 G-3 H-2 I-9 J-1 K-1 L-4 M-2 N-6 O-8 P-2 Q-1 R-6 S-4 T-6 U-4 V-2 W-2 X-1 Y-2 Z-1 Blank-2

Where is the Time Going?

Well. Screening movies for Austin Film Festival. Not allowed to say anything except the most general about that. I have decided, however, that use of the following devices to drive the narrative has to be done with care: road trip; time travel; youthful angst; drug use; the play (or film) within the play (or film); mistaken identity; vomiting; your friends' music; multi-generational conflict; fake documentary pose. Also, I believe documentarians will finally get so close to the interview subjects that we will be looking at a single eyeball. Then it will be cool to pull out again until the subjects are speaking from down the street.

I've been planning my New York trip. Seems it will be interesting.

I've been getting out and about. End of social season hasn't really stopped the non-stop scene downtown. Sometimes I don't think I'm up to it.

My tennis doubles continue. I have more wins than losses in these casual games. Am convinced the secret is encouraging your partner and capitalizing on her strengths while looking for weaknesses to exploit when the person becomes an opponent. We change partners after each set. And yeah I've been watching too much tennis. I confine tennis watching to Grand Slams. Still too much.

I'm thinking of trying to improve my exercise and diet (inspired by one friend) and write more (inspired by another).

I've been writing too many tweets (which I have set to migrate to facebook where most of the friends are). I should blog more. Or write my novel. Or read a book. Or go to the movies. I'd like to see Up in 3D. I have three Netflixs I've had forever. Sigh.

And now...off to a museum opening and some jazz.

Pleasing the Public

If you had a store, what would you sell? (Here we have some of the wares recently on display at Mercury Design Studio on Second Street.)

If you wrote, would you blog, twitter, make facebook notes and updates? Would you labor quietly in your corner on the computer or in longhand on legal pads writing short stories, essays, novels? What would you give the public?

If you were a visual artist, would you make photos, collages, oil paintings, acrylics? Would you represent things realistically? Abstractly? Small works? Big? Sculpture? In what?

Would you insist that people pay to read or look? Or would you just be happy to create and give it away?

Art is a series of choices, but a lot of them, I think, seem pre-ordained to the chooser.

I've been working on a novel that I've been kicking around for a long time. Over two years. The main character is clear in my mind. However, the secondary characters are not. And I apparently can't keep up with the main character's given name. I am working on it, though, not for the public but just as a project that keeps me thinking and researching the peripheral ideas.

I am writing this blog entry, however, why? Because some people don't won't to read twitter updates, facebook comments and look at a blog that is largely about straight-up pictures of Austin. And you have to give your audience something even if it's a weak effort and even if there are very few of them. Not producing anything? Yeah, that's a choice, too. But it seems weak to me.

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.)