A Long Way from There to Here

I'm leaning on a Holidailies writing prompt today. Three loaded questions (two in the second sentence) stare at me from the Holidailies portal today.

Do you still live in the place where you grew up? How far away are you now, and why?

I was born in Texas. I live in Texas. I'm a few hundred miles from the farm where I spent the first ten years of my life. I'm so, so far away. And whoa! That pesky "Why?"

My parents spent a couple of years in a house near my grandparents (his parents) on a different farm. The war came. My sister came. My dad had a brief stint in the army. Somehow my parents ended up on a little black land farm north of Dallas that her parents owned in a little house built, I think, by my maternal grandfather. I remember the house; my makeshift bedroom in a tiny enclosed screen porch when I got older; the livestock (milk cows, pigs, sheep and lambs, the occasional goat or horse); my dad milking and my mother making butter while I drank warm cow's milk from a half pint bottle; crops of cotton and corn. My dad had a job besides the farm as a hospital attendant at the Veteran's Hospital. There were a few other farms with houses on the dirt road to our farm. One belonged to a family with one daughter, between my sister and I. One belonged to that little girl's grandmother.

The picture is from 1954. I had begged for the toy tractor you see, but I remember that it wasn't as satisfying to ride on the gravel (there was no pavement anywhere on that farm save a tiny porch) as it was in the appliance store where it was sold. (I don't know why the appliance store had ride-on toys, but they did. It was a place where we bought refrigerators and washing machines and the owner was a friend of my parents.) The older girl near me is my sister. Yeah, matching dresses. The other child is, I think, a cousin of mine. The auto was one of several Oldsmobiles that my parents owned at various times. (My dad was friends with everyone at the Olds dealership, too.) We are in the driveway of the farmhouse. I remember the toy pith helmet. Don't know where we got it, but it was one of my playthings for a long time. One of not too many. There was a BB gun. An Erector Set. They would come when I was a little older. We had a dollhouse built by the granddad who built the house and some dime store furnishings for it. We imagined toothpaste caps were glasses and made toys out of other detritus. I'm not sure if we'd gotten a TV at this point. We had a few books, not many. Soon, my mother would go back to school to get her college degree and teaching certificate. In about four years, we'd leave the farm for a small town where she would teach.

The house of my childhood is gone (burned down) and the land is disected by a major highway.

I don't feel like the child who lived there really. I'm in a high rise condo where I could barely discern the storm last night (although we raced through the rain and sleet to get home from the restaurant). On that farm, in my tiny room with windows on three sides and a huge pecan tree swaying ten yards or so from it, the weather was immediate even when you were inside.

I don't feel like the child who longed for that ride on toy tractor or treasured the few toys. I don't feel like the child who drank that warm from the cow milk on the basement steps, watching my mother make butter. I don't feel like the child who invented worlds from sticks and stones or made a fence with a broad top and a discarded key into a motorcycle taking her on dream adventures.

I don't feel like the child who would dream of owning books and toys and all sorts of things that she would one day find she could afford. I don't feel like the child who made dream rocket gadgets from a cardboard box and discarded lids and such and then would one day find that amazing things that she could barely dream of (computers, cell phones, music players) were real and easy to obtain.

I don't feel like the child who believed in Santa and also shook every gift under the tree she'd help decorate with foil icicles and a collection of long-held decorations.

On the other hand, I don't relate so well to the adult who dined on steak tartare and other gourmet dishes and shared expensive wines with friends last night.

I am miles and miles from the farm. The why is tangled with the desires of the modern world, first of my parents then my own. I am nowhere near the farm. But am I home? The path from there to here feels pre-ordained. But surely many choices were made. I even vaguely remember making some of them, fueled by lists of 'pros' and 'cons' that were soon discarded and replaced with a gut decision.

Dear Santa

Dear Santa,

I could use some new clothes. Even FFP says so. (He got a fifty dollar gift certificate from his favorite clothing store. He said wondered if they would be upset if he used it for some cologne he likes, knowing they were hoping he'd buy something expensive, fifty bucks off. I offered that he should buy some clothes, but he said "You need clothes. I don't have a place to put them.") Really I probably do need clothes. I did buy one new fancy tank top, jacket and belt a couple of months back. Last night I was relieved that the invite said 'cocktail attire.' If it is less than black tie, I wear a custom pants suit and a fancy blouse (don't have enough of those either) and hope it is acceptable. But those custom suits were made, when? The last ones maybe a decade ago? That's probably generous. The off-the-rack red blazer I wear every Christmas? I think FFP claimed it was three decades old the other day. Yikes. I haven't had a new pair of shoes in a couple of years except for tennis shoes. Although I have had some complete overhauls at the shoe hospital of some of my Cole Haans and Ballys.

But, Santa, see the outfit in that window. Yeah, no way. I want simple clothes, pants about 99 percent. I have a long velvet black skirt which, topped with something dressy fulfilled the 'ball gown' requirement of the one white tie event we ever got invited to. Yeah, I know. White Tie. FFP looked like a diplomat, though. But he had to order the white tie.

I want pockets, too, Santa. My custom blazers have two inside pockets and outside flap pockets. My custom pants have slash pockets. The only off-the-rack blazers I'll tolerate at least have an inside pocket.

I hate shopping for clothes, Santa, is the only reason I'm asking. I did buy a gray Polartec hoodie the other day at the pro shop at my club. I had a gray fleece hoodie that I tossed when we moved. The zipper didn't work well and it made me mad. It was cold and I'd forgotten the cheap black sweatshirt (pullover) I usually wear. Most of the ladies wear is too small (even in XL) in those fancy-pants pro shop brands, but this was a Men's Medium. Fits pretty good except for the sleeves are a tad too long.

But I digress. The trouble, Santa, is that I want new custom pants and blazers. I want some after five custom-made, too. Maybe a tuxedo-look with sparkle. A fashion that keeps coming and going. I have a Men's tuxedo I had tailored that I accesorize but it isn't the same. I want new Cole Haans and Ballys to appear without scouring the outlet malls. Heck, I might be satisfied if the full-tilt stores didn't show so many three-inch heels. Flats, forever, my friend. I paid full-tilt for the 'tuxedo pumps,' little part patent flats I wear for after five. We walk to these events and stand up once we're there! And what's with Cole Haan getting in bed with Nike and making a lot of casual shoes on Nike lasts which hurt my feet instantly though? I hate that. They used to make casual shoes I could wear.

I like good clothes that last forever. Guess that's what I have in the closet, mostly, except the end of forever is coming. Forgetting fashion (and that's easy around me), there are signs of wear I'm afraid.

Fortunately, Santa, I'm fixed for casual. I have a stack of men's size 34x30 Style 560 and 550 jeans that fit great. I have T-Shirts, polos (a few venerable give-a-ways from my old job and some ancient worn ones that look as if they were intentionally distressed), knit work-out shorts, sport socks, hiking socks, denim shirts, a couple of pairs of nice tennis shorts. I'll be needing a new pair of hiking boots in a year or two.

Really, Santa, if you do custom dressy stuff...come by and measure some time. Otherwise, you know, keep turning out Wiis and iPods. I'll buy my own electronics.

Love, LB

P.S. We sent the card below this year. We do hope you find us even if we don't really want any gifts. Just stop by for some nog. Or, you know, wine. We have lactose-intolerance at this house.



[By the way, a letter to Santa was the Holidailies writing prompt. Thanks. I enjoyed that.]

Decorating....NOT

I'm not decorating for Christmas, nor shopping for presents nor planning a great feed. (Unless you count planning to go out to eat with people.)

Today on Holidailies the writing prompt is "Describe your holiday decorating techniques." I don't need writing prompts, really. If I take the time, I can sit down and write. No problem. I use blogging as a way to avoid: (1) cleaning; (2) exercise; (3) dealing with financial stuff.

But. FFP started the laundry so some cleaning chores are going forward. I may take a walk in a bit and even get in the gym. (Yeah, right.) And I dealt with a financial thing that required a phone call this morning. (I'm consolidating my much-depleted retirement funds into a single account for more organized mis-management.)

I'm not decorating, though. IF I did, I'd be posing little bendable Santas here and there. Oh, I have a few other things (ornaments, stockings). And I like to scatter the cards people send me around, too. I had my techniques down in the old abode, like putting the decorations in and around the glassware collection. Or just clearing off a shelf and filling it with bendie Santas. Some friends who also moved into this building said that they weren't decorating, that they had just gotten their basic decoration the way they wanted it and didn't feel like transforming it into Christmas. Still, I'm not sure that I won't decorate. But if I DID, it would involve lots of bendable, posable, collectible, festive, holiday figures posed among the books and knickknacks that are already a part of the basic decoration.

And maybe I will decorate. Maybe I'll shop for a few gifts, too. For the parental units at least. But I'll do it at Book People or some local spot. And I will eat too much even if I don't cook it. So who's to say I'm not 'celebrating.' But I might not think about any of these things any more today. It's not even the 10th of December yet. Why do we push these things so?

Un-Festive

Do I have something to say today? Yes and no. It's a beautiful day. I don't feel festive. Picture is a shop window reflection on Lamar between Fifth and Sixth. I took a walk while FFP was off doing something for the ballet. I even went into a shop. I thought I might buy something new and festive to wear to a party tonight. I didn't see anything, though, and now I have to riffle through my closet and find something to wear. I don't feel festive.

I want to knock out an entry and say something and catch up, Holidailies-wise. And really, yeah, I just know I have something to say. Something to get off my chest.

Today's writing prompt, though, is about changing the past. I won't go there. Don't believe in it. Could you make things better by changing the past? I wouldn't try it. Nope.

I think the thing about not feeling festive is maybe what I wanted to say. I don't think there's a cure for it. I will say that I'm looking forward to the holidays for this reason: as our social calendar hurtles toward Christmas and New Year's there is a bit of time when there are actually some blanks. I know it supposed to be a family time and I hope that FFP and I have some nice walks and meals out during this spell. I know we are going to have a little outing. We are actually going to leave the Austin Metroplex for a short time. For the first time in a while.

Well, off to find some festive clothes for my non-festive self. Maybe the party and the clothes and a little alcohol will do the trick.

Memory Fault

In the computer biz you can get a memory fault when some bad memory has an incorrect check digit which means some other bits that are on should be off or vice versa. I think anyway. I worked with computers (rather than using one as now) years ago. Well six years. And when I retired I'd gotten too far from things such as memory faults. Except for my own, of course.

Anyway, Jette gave us a Holidailies writing prompt for today and it is "Your most vivid memory from last year's holiday season." I remembered next to nothing about Christmas last year. So...I resorted to my blog to reset some check bits. I was being daily with the Holidailies last year so there were some of my memories there, forgotten by me. Actually it is more like getting an archive that was pushed off to tape than correcting memory, but that is old school. Disk space is SO cheap now. Whatever.

Last year I wasn't in a festive mood, I don't guess. I'm not one to decorate for Christmas anyway, and I hadn't done a thing. A friend of mine who has been going through an extreme health crisis since early spring 2006 wanted to come over and have a short visit and drink coffee and 'put together a jigsaw puzzle.' (Something my mom used to like to do and she'd join in on when she came over.) So...I cleaned out a storage area under the (one) staircase in our old house and pulled out Christmas stuff. Mostly I have bendable posable Christmas theme figures. (See above for my favorites, Jack Skellington from "Nightmare Before Christmas.") I scrambled around, decorating the big meda room in our old house. For the last time as it turns out. I found a pretty simple 500-piece jigsaw with a Christmas theme and made a place to work on it. My friend came over and we put together a lot of it, sipped coffee and talked about old times until she was tired.

If I could remember things, this would be my most vivid holiday memory from last season. My friend is doing some better these days. She had a checkup over the week of Thanksgiving and I have to find out about that. This year, the condo is devoid of decoration, save a small pile of holiday cards we've already received. But there is still time. Also, if I could remember things, I would have finished this post and got it recorded on Holidailies yesterday when I started it. Visiting with three elderly relatives and my dad made me forgetful. So I guess my perfect holiday attendance is already spoiled although I know there are some rules rattling around the venerable Holidailies allowing 'catch ups' as long as they are some hours apart.

Holidailies is Open For Business

A big shout out for Chip and Jette for creating a portal for the Ninth Year for bloggers and online diarists and journalists and various hangers-on. Holidailies is officiailly Open for Business.

It has already allowed me a big laugh by directing me to a report on YAPPIR (Yet Another Pop Phenomena I Refuse). There are things I read about and marvel at but about which I never catch the fever and climb on the fan train. "Twilight" (books, movie, buzz, possibly merchandise) is the latest of these. Like "Harry Potter," various rappers, several TV shows about paranormal politicians (OK, I made that up) I will marvel from afar at book sales, movie weekend numbers, etc. reported in The New York Times. To further my appreciation, I now have this blog entry. I know nothing about the blogger but I really got a laugh. Permit me to quote:

The movie was exceedingly cheese-ridden. Fromage extraordinaire. Aged cheddar. Blue cheese with extra bleu. Squeezie cheese from a tube. Cheese with a nozzle. Cheetos. Doritos Blue Cheese with Buffalo Wings. Monterey PepperJack.

Yeah, I was drawn by the blurb on the portal or I would never have ended up there. So, Holidailies is open. Let the wonderful accidental stumbling into others' lives begin. It's not unlike City Daily Photo only more emphasis on words. Much as I love pictures I love words more.

In other news: we went to a big charity event at the Monarch last night. It was very well done and I hope they raised a lot of money for Equality Texas. I talked to so many people, made introductions. I also got to see Oliver and Craig's apartment decorated. I think they have six trees, maybe more. Our decoration so far? A handful of Christmas cards people have sent. There is a mild threat I've made to get the Bendable, Posable Christmas figures, mostly Santas, out of the storage cage. Anyway, I need to get another invitation over there when I have my camera in tow to get some pictures.

In still other news, my relatives (two aunts and an uncle) are visiting my dad from Dallas. They went off to Luby's (a cafeteria) to eat last night when they were left to their own devices. The car they were driving refusted to start for their return trip and a circus ensued until they got a new battery for the car, my dad got a ride back to his place and then got his van and went back to guide them home because they didn't think they could find it. They didn't call me for help which is both disturbing and heartening. Most of my day will be spent with them. After some chores and a little exercise. And so the days of our lives as it says in the soap opera. Yeah, Soap Operas. Except for a brief fling with "Dallas" back in the day, soaps are also YAPPIR with me. Even six years of retirement haven't driven me to daytime TV. Although there is a small "Jeopardy" addiction I'm now kicking due to lack of time to consume all the stuff on the DVR.

So, OK Holidailies is open for business and I hope everyone enjoys the spill of words. I know I will.

[Shop window photo is Tesoros Trading on South Congress.]

The Way We Live

I snapped this doggy and his calling card on the East Side Studio Tour a couple of weekends agon. No, his house with the Suburban was not on the tour. He did give a gruff bark or two. It's an interesting area, where things collide, rich and poor, old and new. We live in our enclaves, one way or the other but sometimes there's an invasion.

I'm trying to be 'daily' here and I have a couple of obligations that might keep me from the computer so I thought I'd share this photo first thing this morning.

Point of View

Last Friday, after Thanksgiving, I was thinking about how we all look at the world through a very limited point of view. (Isn't that a series on IFC: POV? Anyway.)

We stayed in most of the day, last Friday, getting out to do our errands and have lunch. I think we ate at home in the evening.

At some point, I was sitting in my chair in the living room. It might have been afternoon. I was watching the cranes at the Austonian and the W work sites. We are in a position to see some of the work and progress on these projects. Not like our friends in the new AMLI, though. Their POV is looking down into the W site from their balcony. The building will creep up past their balcony one day. We couldn't see the Austonian until it was about ten stories and got over the sight line interference of the old, shorter AMLI.

Anyway, I was watching. I knew the W was getting worked on because the cranes were swinging around. The Austonian didn't look active. I take heart every day when I see activitiy on these construction sites. I wonder what the workers are thinking. Some came here from Florida, I know, when work dried up there. Now, these buildings are still going up, but what happens when they are done? When they don't need your trade on your current job. Because not many new things are breaking ground. I have no idea what it feels like to be an itinerant construction worker. I can, in fact, only see the handiwork from one angle, usually, out my windows. When I ride the bike and workout across the hall, I can see a bit of the Spring and Gables construction. One day I happened to see them hauling two porta-potties to the top of the building. They were swinging in the wind. I wondered if they'd use the crane to take them down to service them. I'll never know I don't suppose.

We only observe such a narrow slice of what there is. We expand that knowledge by reading and watching films and television and listening and studying. Yesterday I was trying to picture the location of Nigeria. I didn't have a good picture in my head. I was pretty sure of the area (there's a Niger river there, n'est pas?) but the exact layout of it and other countries around there (Benin, Togo?) I couldn't picture. How can you understand people when you can't picture the boundaries of their country? For that matter, who remembers the geography of Canada and Mexico? I saw an episode of Jeopardy the other day and the contestants totally flopped on a bunch of questions about Canada. (Much to the chagrin of Alex Trebeck who was born in Canada. Isn't that a great phrase, "much to the chagrin of?" Or not. Depends on your point of view.)

Yeah, point of view is everything. We can divorce ourselves successfully from certain things by our choices of where to be and what to read and what to pay attention to. I've noticed that we are so well insulated from cold and wind here that I haven't turned the heat on yet. I check the temperature on my computer. When we lived in a 1950's drafty house on pier and beam, you could feel the cold under the floor and near the windows. I'm sure a prolonged cold will creep in here, but it feels isolated. I used to go outside, too. When we had the dog, I'd take these breaks to let her out and stare at the backyard, meet the weather and wind face to face. One of us (usually FFP honestly) went outside in the elements to get the paper. Heck, when we went to the office upstairs over the garage, we had to pass outside through the cold garage.

My point is? I feel sealed in here and feel a need to get outside every day. Not just on the balcony either. Somehow that point of view is so weird it's not 'being outside.'

So I'm just rambling here, that's for sure. I'm getting toned up for the Holidailies. I'm 'just typing' as a section of my old 'online journal' used to say. Fact is, I've been rereading that old journal, the entries from 2001. So maybe when I'm at a loss for something to write for the daily exercise then I'll just recount what I was doing and thinking seven years ago.

[Today's picture is of windows in the Whit Hanks complex on Sixth showing the wares of an antique shop with some excellent deco furniture I would have coveted before I decided to abandon collecting and abandon a cool deco bar in the process. That's us reflected, of course.]

What Have I Done?

You know how I have committed myself to post every day on Austin Daily Photo? Well, now I've committed Visible Woman to that same regimen of dailyness from Dec. 5-January 6. Why? Because it's the Holidailies challenge and, well, no one seems to know why we sign up for these things. Of course, I could have signed up ADP and it would have been a slam dunk. Why didn't I? Because it isn't really a good one with which to compete for Best Of in Holidailies-land. And, no matter what I say to the contrary, as long as there is a reader panel and as long as something might occur to me that is entertaining or profound in a thirty day period, why not compete?

Today's photo is of the shop window of Vivid. This store plans to change their format, I understand. For now it is Vivid, though.

I haven't decorated for Christmas. The jury is still out on whether I'll do that. But I'll put up pictures of other people's decorations here. Especially if they are in a shop window with nice reflective properties. I did a tiny bit of cleaning. I plan to do some more. My tennis game that usually happens on Tuesday didn't happen. I exercised in our building's gym instead.

Yes, well, I'm glad Chip and Jette are running Holidailies this year once again. It gives me a nice path into a bunch of good reads. And we can all give each other the inexpensive gift or our writing during this bleak economic time.

Unfinished Business

I don't know where my time goes. Yes, blogging. But yesterday, save a brief entry in Austin Daily Photo, I didn't blog. (You missed me, right?) I also didn't type in a private journal or write on old-fashioned paper. So, where did the time go?

I didn't clean the kitchen. Several times I set a deadline to get in there and get after it. Oh, we cleaned up after our meals and such, washed dishes. But it's been a while since I cleaned off the counters thoroughly, dusted the bottles of booze on the counter, etc.

We got up a little late, but I think we were out of the bed and had it made by 8 o'clock. We watched CBS Sunday Morning. Drank coffee. Talked about taking a walk. Which we never really did. Rather we walked to Whole Foods and ate at the fish bar (I had trout with kale and some grain dish and a Ginger Beer). We bought a few things of prepared food. FFP took the groceries home and I took some pictures in the neighborhood for Austin Daily Photo. (When I say we didn't 'take a walk' I mean we didn't go far enough for exercise. The round trip to Whole Foods, even with my detour, isn't much more than a mile.)

When we got back, I got stuck into updating financial spreadsheets and Quick Books, doing end-of-month for the business, checking accounts and credit cards, paying some stuff, recording muni bonds we bought. Simple as our life is, this kind of stuff takes some time and then, the next day, there is more to do.

Finally, I took a break with the New York Times magazine crossword which I found unsatisfying for some reason. I read some other parts of the newspaper. I decided at one point that I'd clean the kitchen in one hour. Instead, when the time was up, I went to the gym across the hall. I just rode the recumbent bike until I was all sweaty. I took a shower. FFP and I ate dinner, each separately making a salad and eating some other stuff. I had a little wine from the bottle we'd opened the night before. I went through all the Sunday papers and read some sections from other days that I hadn't read. We watched a movie on DVD about a crackhead teacher and coach and a little girl who befriended each other. ("Half Nelson.") We rent this stuff from NetFlix and I dont' know when it got in our queue or why. We happened on "Slingblade" on IFC and watched the end of that. We can watch that movie over and over for some reason. Then we just watched IFC and they showed another movie called "Love and Sex" and then some doc about nudity and other censored acts and references in movies. I just left it on this channel while I read until it was late. I didn't get any of my books read, just papers. And the papers are so depressing. So I do this every night and go to bed depressed.

This morning I have to take my dad to the eye doctor. It is the most bizarre parking thing. They have about six or seven handicapped places for this medical office complex next to a hospital. If you don't get one, you have to park in the hospital lot, taking your chances for a place remotely close to the office where you are going. He could take himself (although they may dilate his eyes, so you know, better not to drive I guess), but he could end up walking a block or two with his walker and that isn't good. Whatever. I'll drive out there and take him. I'll take some reading material for the waiting part.

So, when I wonder where this day went and why I didn't get things done, I'll know. I blogged about getting nothing done. Then I did an errand for my dad. Heck, though, maybe I'll clean the kitchen today. You never know.

Companions

I sometimes wonder how I'd get along without FFP. (Pictured here in my shop window reflection fashion.) I don't like how that plays out in my head, to tell you the truth.

Oh, I do lots of things independently and do have friends and relatives who provide some help and comfort.

But I rely an awful lot on FFP. Not just his handling of many of the details of our lives (social, chores, financial). I also rely on him to be there to reassure me that whatever I'm doing is OK. He did this throughout my career. He does it now when I go off and play tennis or work out instead of doing chores or accomplishing anything in retirement. If I goofing off, he says it's OK. so I can do things I should be doing when the spirit moves me without a lot of guilt.

It's also good to have someone around to talk to, to bounce things off of, to laugh at things with and to share discoveries with. We are always reading something aloud to the other one or showing the other one something on the WEB.

Right now I should be doing some cleaning and going though my inbox and updating the budget. But I feel like blogging, drinking coffee and reading the paper. Which I will do. FFP will say it's OK. That I deserve it. That he "isn't doing anything worthwhile either." (Which may or may not be true.) Or he just won't say anything and I'll know it's fine.

I'm always so pleasantly surprised when I look up and realize he has taken out the recycling or trash, cooked some salmon, done the laundry, done some other chore.

Yeah, but mostly I just like talking to him, watching movies with him, listening to music with him. I don't mind spending some time by myself. I even used to take vacations apart from him and spent a lot of time away on business trips.I did fine on those trips. Enjoyed my alone time to some degree.

But I'm comforted that we will be together again when we're apart. Sitting home reading in our separate chairs or back-to-back doing something at our computers. Going out to eat, just the two of us, taking along our books or magazines to read. Going out with others knowing that we'll both probably want to go home at the same time.

This morning I was playing tennis. There were only three of us so I took on the other two for three sets of "California" or "Australia" doubles where you play against two people but they don't get to use the doubles alleys. I was having a really good time and thinking what a good time I was having. FFP has only played tennis a few times and isn't into it. But I felt good when it was over and, on my way home, my cell rang and he said he'd been working out and was going to shop for groceries for us and his mom. So, yeah, as soon as my independent activity was over I was happy to link up with FFP.

It's no wonder, I guess, that I feel that he's essential. I've been married to him more than half my life. Amazing.

Fact and Fiction

I discovered Sunday while we wandered around East Austin taking in a couple of Artist's studios that mirror glass is being used for some interesting in-fills and remodels. That's me then reflected in the door beyond the interesting rusty iron and mesh fence.

Mirrors and reflections. Versions of images, versions of truth. I was riding the recumbent bike to nowhere across the hall in the condo gym this morning. As I knocked around on this free Friday, I'd been thinking about what to write in here and why I did it. Yada yada. I'd been considering moving my protagonist (one Cliff Pogonip) along that concourse outside into a warm August day. First he'd meet some folks and learn the identity of the harried woman. By the way, I changed that paragraph to say she scurried, putting harried and scurried into the same sentence which sounds silly but I'll leave it for now. Hmm...and that word harried. Interesting word. But I digress. Here we go, out into the August heat.

Pogonip wasn't tempted to buy the papers. Even if he had been he had no change to plug into the machines. He didn't think he had any U.S. dollars on him at all. In fact, nestled in a cardboard travel organizer delivered to his London apartment yesterday, there was a hundred dollar bill and several twenties and fifties. It had contained ticket info on a flight to New York, a ticket to fly to Austin and a thick itinerary with car services, dates, times. He'd dug into the stuff to see what time he was being picked up at the apartment and to find the ticket info. On the flight over yesterday he'd fumbled with the packet and found the car service information and already filled-in forms for entering the country ready to be signed. He'd been whisked by a car service to the apartment in New York that was his but was fully occupied by two aspiring artists, one a painter and one a playwright. He had slept fitfully in an alcove with a curtain that contained a bed, nightstand, chair. His tenants were out for the opening of an off-Broadway production soon after he arrived and asleep when he slipped out of bed, showered and went downstairs to catch his car. He'd plowed further into the folder to find the info on his morning car service and Austin flight. He supposed that somewhere in there it said who would meet him at the airport. He didn't look. Instead he pulled out his phone and powered it on. There was one new missed called. He didn't listen to messages but called the number of the missed call.

OK, I didn't get him outside. So sue me. It's fiction and it goes where it goes.

Speaking of which, it's fiction. In the paragraph prior to the one above, presented to you first on November 16th, I mention the newspaper headline about a terrorist attack. ("Two Austin Men Dead in Berlin Attack."). Did I feel a frisson of synchrony on the bike this morning when, on CNN on the little TV in front of me, the headline came on saying "Two Americans Killed in Mumbai." I did not. I felt a bit betrayed by fact trumping fiction. Sort of like the writers and producers of a "Numb3rs" episode must have felt when that California train wreck occurred after they had spent a boatload on an episode about a train collision. (They taped David Krumholtz talking about how it was a coincidence and they were sorry for the victims and showed it before the episode.) I didn't feel too bad though because my investment in my fictional terror attack is small, after all, and I don't believe it was predictive, psychic or any other phenomena.

Fact and fiction are all of a mix anyway. Oh, some things are real. All too real. There was one of those religious stampedes today where people get killed in the rush. Well, it was the religion of consumerism. And the guy had a heart attack, but people were hurt in the Wal-Mart rush to get some goods and maybe they trampled the guy. It reminded me of those pilgrim things where people die. But you can't make this stuff up because, if you do, it just seems ripped from the headlines. Every fiction is fact. Every fact appears from a certain angle, made-up.

Our Friday is not black. But it is bleak. The weather that is. We got out to take some cleaning and mail our holiday postcards and ended up eating at Pecan Street Cafe on East Sixth. They have been there since before we married and they are still there and still serving a lot of the same dishes. Like the spinach crêpe that I had. It was cloudy and threatening. Downtown wasn't it's usual bustling Friday self because of the holiday. It drizzled on us a bit on the way back. We decided that staying in and drinking coffee and reading would be a nice way to spend the evening. I have things that need doing. Neglected chores (clean the kitchen), neglected sorting and filing. But I feel lazy. I feel like letting myself think and read. Next week social events loom and a visit from relatives. Obligations.

Where am I not today? I am not at the mall. Or shopping at all. My e-mail in box was full of special on-line offers and I did look at some. But, no, not tempted. We are listening to that iPod I bought a while back. FFP wanted to create a Genius playlist and after fumbling a bit I figured out how to do that again. I was in the middle of writing my little novel paragraph above when he asked me about it. So I'm sure it is different from the paragraph I would have written without interruption. Now if I only knew if it would be better or worse. That's fact influencing fiction in the moment.

Dirt and Stuff

Trying to be my own maid (and secretary and bookkeeper) is always a challenge. (No, that's not the floor of my closet. The photo was shot in Uncommon Objects Sunday. I resisted becoming a typewriter collector and I haven't owned a pair of boots in years although I'm often tempted.)

Yesterday and the day before I tried to move some of the dirt around and straighten things a bit. On Tuesday I ran out of steam after giving the main bath a good cleaning. Yesterday I managed to do a lot of dusting and to vacuum the floors and the one small rug. I usually just use one of those Swifter things but, occasionally, you have to suck it up. The dirt that is. I didn't move a vacuum here and haven't bought one. (I'm not sure where I could store it for one thing.) My friend who lives on 11 has one that I borrow. So added to having to get it out and use it, I have to go upstairs, haul it down and later take it back. I've seen that several people have those robot things that go around apparently on their own vacuuming. Hmmm. Anyway, I needed to give the kitchen a good cleaning, too, but I haven't got around to that. I thought I might do that this morning but writing on my holiday postcards (secretary) and updating our budget (bookkeeper) with last night's eating and drinking indiscretions and, well, blogging have taken up the time. And I need to exercise before I go eat a big Thanksgiving meal at the club.

I have to say that we are very circumspect about buying stuff these days. The condo can't swallow stuff like the old house where I had a walk-in closet in the bedroom and seven other closets and a storage room, wine storage room, walk-in pantry, tons of kitchen cabinets and drawers, many file cabinets, desks with drawers, beaucoup bookshelves built in and free-standing, media cabinets, a double garage, etc. etc. Sure we have crammed as many storage opportunities as possible here and given away much of what occupied that space, but it does seem, well, finite. Very finite. That's a good thing, I think.

My in-box on my desk is full of things I need to do, though, and my files and some boxes in the extra closet need sorting and trimming. I didn't succeed in getting here with everything trimmed down and organized.

This closed-in feeling has brought me up short for Christmas shopping. FFP and I don't do much for each other, usually, just giving blessing to something the other person would want or need anyway and getting what we want for ourselves. We usually buy some token gifts for the parents. (Book for my dad, audio tapes for dad-in-law and a calendar or soap or something for mom-in-law.) But in years past I've bought gifts for friends, toys for my great nephews and niece, gifts for my sister and brother-in-law and nieces, etc. I just can't do it this year. Everything time I look at on-line come-ons or ads in the paper or stock in stores I feel that the stuff is not desirable but burdensome. So I've completely abandoned the nieces/sister crew to their own devices with an economic stimulus package of checks from me with minimal instruction. If friends bring me presents, I won't be prepared to reciprocate unless I buy a few emergency things but I haven't gotten the spark to do that.

This morning's paper was groaning with ads for deals tomorrow (Black Friday). As I looked through them I thought, "But you would have to pay me to go to the store tomorrow." So I tossed them all.

Ah, well, the more stuff you have, the more dirt you have to deal with. And this season seems to be rife with useless things. My not favorite: a marshmallow shooter. Huh? What's wrong with toys like Slinky? (The woman who ran the company making that classic toy died recently.) But a marshmallow shooter? Can you think of anything messier or stupider? Can you even plug an iPod into it?It seems all the gadgets have an iPod dock. Even now that I have an iPod I'm not tempted by these things. I do still want a new digital camera (or two) and a GPS. (I saw an ad for one digital camera that had a built-in GPS to identify where you took the picture. Which I want but in a smaller camera.) But I haven't had the umph to not only spend the money but learn to use them and sort through all the accessories, etc.

I'm just pretty bah humbug, I guess. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and dusting stuff in between. I do notice that things get dusted around here that wouldn't have at the old place. The maid didn't dust very much, but I always expected her to do it and wouldn't do much myself. And, of course, there was so much more stuff getting dusty and square feet of places to pile it. So...things are cleaner now in the smaller space, I think, even with my bungling attempts at being the maid.

As I write this final paragraph I've failed to work out much (a few weights) and made it through a Thanksgiving buffet with all the parental units. I'm sleepy. Maybe I'll nap while not cleaning or working on my Christmas cards.

Where to Begin?

Where to begin? Or end for that matter.

I appeared on Friday to agonize over home. I've had a lot of thoughts since early Friday. And a couple of nights of dreams.

The dreams, then. My dreams night before last took the form of writing collaborations. Amid the usual (for me) dream scape of lost luggage and weird logistics of going places I'm not sure I need to be, there I was with sheaves of yellow legal paper with lots of handwritten notes for a novel of some sort. I seemed to be collaborating on the work with someone else (who remained quite vague) and then with a different person. I was untroubled by this apparent lack of loyalty and, with this second assistant, agreed to make the two principal characters, apparently based on us, dead in the book. Not dead as in dead and gone and not influencing the action in the present, but dead as in ghosts who could only see each other.

Last night my dreams were more usual. We were walking a long way, but I'd lost my shoes. FFP was helping me along. My stocking feet felt good. We were on a moving sidewalk for a very long time and then a set of colorful triangular steps that seemed perilous and to not be where we were supposed to be walking. In my dreams I'm often walking or driving when the walkway or roadway becomes something else again.

Why am I talking about dreams? I don't know. My little piece of the world has seemed dreamlike for a few days. I'm not sure why. Perhaps I have settle into the condo enough to internalize some of the facts of living here. Like you can't hear it rain. Not that it has rained much since we have lived here. We've had a drought. But at the old house you'd wake up and hear the pitter-patter on the roof and windows and that was cool. I'm sure it could rain hard enough that we'd hear it in here, but it would have to be quite a storm. It's nice to wake up on Sunday and see that it's been raining, though, and not worry about the paper being wet. The newspaper guy delivers the papers to the concierge who runs them up to the hallway in front of our door. Nice.

We are also noting how our place is so small that it's hard to lose track of each other or our stuff. That's good. Of course, we can be 'home' and be in the mail room, storage area, gym, parking garage, lobby, etc. That's weird.

It feels more monumental to get the car out now. Friday night we went to a opening of a big wine and gourment shop in Hancock Center. Too far to walk. Since we were already in the car we battled the IH35 service road to go to an Italian place on E. 11th. When we lived in the 'burbs (close-in burbs, though) we'd jump in the car at the drop of a hat. We'd jump in the car (sometimes both in separate cards) and go to the club to use the gym. We'd sometimes drive to a restaurant that was an easy walk away. Certainly going downtown or driving to a restaurant far afield was no big deal. I'd walk out to the garage seven minutes before my tennis game at the club (or any other event there) and figure I wouldn't be too late. Now I need to add seven minutes to get to my car and get it out of the building. And, for meetings at the club at night, there is a lot of pesky traffic in the way. I think this is basically a good thing. We went to luncheons on Friday and Saturday that were downtown and all we had to do was walk over. No driving downtown and no finding parking or using a valet and waiting with everyone else after for the car. Last night we went to a dinner party at some friends' apartment in the Monarch. We just hoofed over on our feet with five bottles of wine.

I've been thinking more about the novel. You know, the one I've posted two paragraphs of here in the harsh light of blogland. (Here and here if you are following along.) I was going to get the guy to meet up with the person picking him up at the airport, have him learn who the woman sitting next to him was, etc. Move him along. This would require, however, deciding on the weather. Will it be hot when he steps out of the terminal? Will he remove his blazer against the heat of an August or will it be pleasantly cool and sunny. Of course, if it is May-September it's probably hot, but if it's October-April it could be anything. So I have to decide what time of year it is and then, if it isn't in the prolonged Austin summer, I have to decide whether, you know, it is a twenty degree day in January or a sixty degree one. Of course, maybe I could just take this guy outside without comment on the weather, his clothes, etc. But it doesn't seem right. Even if you don't write these things you should have established them in your head. And, to be honest, if it's August, he felt the heat in the jet way between the plane and the air-conditioned terminal.

The real actual weather in Austin today is dreary and around sixty. We have tickets to see Chekhov's "Three Sisters" in the afternoon. I can't concentrate long enough to read the synopsis on Wikipedia. I think I have a little hangover. Nothing too serious. I'm just a little dreary myself. Wine flowed last night and some guy whipped up a cocktail that I believe involved gin that I may have (OK, I did) had one of. I have lots of things I need to do like wrap a present for my father-in-law, print mailing labels for holiday cards, clean the condo. We were thinking of visiting a few galleries in the East Austin Studio Tour before going to the play.

But. Where to begin?

You Can't Go Home Again

By rights I ought to feel silly pointing to this building (shot here reflected in the pond north of the Palmer Events Center) and saying "I live there." I don't, though. Feel silly, that is. People do find it exciting or shocking, though. Austin hasn't been that much of a high rise living town until recently. Before the 360, the 18 story AMLI and the Monarch, most apartment and condo projects were shorter and lower key. But we are movin' on up to apartments in the sky. OK, our place is not on such a high floor. I am a little tired of answering the questions about how we like it, do we miss our house, do we miss the space, the stuff.

By rights I should miss our old place. Miss the pretty yard, the space, the stuff I left behind, gave away. But really I don't. It's the same old, same old really. Wishing I could/would find the time to clean out the drawers, shelves, cabinets and the storage unit in the parking structure. Wishing I would find time to write. I am forced to keep things tidier, I guess, because the piles would be in my face.

In spite of living at the "Shoal Creek Manse" (as we called it, tongues firmly in cheek) for about thirty-one years, I don't miss living there. And I finally realized why.

I don't ever settle into a place, I don't think. Not in a way that makes moving difficult. Maybe I did as a kid. I started out living in a 2-1 farmhouse with a basement and a screen porch (which got enclosed at some point and became a narrow tiny bedroom for my six-year-old self at some point). I knew nothing else, really. Except the grandmother's house which, come to think of it, had a porch that had been converted to accommodate my old granddad. (He was twenty-one years older than my grandmother and thus a quite elderly man when I was born. And I don't mean sixty. He was seventy-three when I was born.) I do remember not liking to spend a night anywhere but my grandmother's house or at home. Possible exception was my aunts' house in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Gradually I became comfortable with being away from home. I even sought it out, eager to see things, have adventures.

When I was about ten, we moved. To a bigger town than the small town with my grandmother's house. (Our farmhouse was outside this smaller town.) We moved to a brand new tract house in town. It wasn't a city but this town had a bowling alley. Imagine that! I don't remember being disturbed by moving. My whole family went, of course, and we still saw my grandmother. Sometimes she took a bus and a cab to get to our new house and come take care of me.

That little 3/2 house was my home for ten years. I went to the elementary down the street and to the old Junior high and high school 'in town.' I rode my bike around the neighborhood, learned to drive and drove around town. (I wasn't allowed to drive far out of town, but I had a friend that lived as far east as we did west and we were back and forth all the time.) It came time for college. I'd be going away to live in a dorm. I got to take a couple of trips that summer after graduation. And while I was gone on one of them, my parents packed up and moved to a suburb of Dallas so Dad would be closer to his work.

I never really lived in that new house. (Another 3/2 tract house, with a bit bigger family room.) Oh, I did go there on school holidays, I lived there one summer and commuted to my college town. Between apartments and situations I'd move in with all my stuff and out again. When I graduated from college I got a job in Dallas and, too broke to put a deposit on an apartment, lived with the parents for quite a few months, paying my mother rent. It was a crash place for me. The very friendliest of places to light between here and there.

I moved to Austin in 1975. I rented an apartment that I would live in for less than a year. I married FFP and joined him in a little 2/1 house that he'd bought several years before. A little more than a year after that we saw a 'For Sale' sign down the street and bought a bigger house. Which we remodeled four times, making it bigger and bigger, until it had three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a large separate office with wet bar and a large entertainment room. (At 550 square feet, almost as big as the first house.) The master suite had been expanded to include a commodious bath and a pretty big walk-in. The basic house always had tons of storage, fairly good-sized bedrooms and a huge kitchen with walk-in pantry. It wasn't a manse, but it was big, especially compared to the tiny apartments and tract houses and dorm rooms I'd lived in.

Do I miss that big house? No. It never felt like home. I realize that beyond the farmhouse or that first tract house, no place ever did seem like anything but a temporary place to sleep, eat, entertain.

If I feel I 'want to go home' what it really means is that I want to exit the company and clutter and be alone in whatever abode that is. Maybe a room someone has loaned me in a house. Maybe a hotel room. Or a condo in a high rise. Home is me, alone, writing. (Or in the modern era, blogging.) Or just thinking. I can even be 'home' in public if I'm not with anyone. People can be all around as long as they aren't with me and don't require anything of me.

FFP is an exception to the people rules. I can be in close proximity to him and still feel at home. I do enjoy some alone time when I don't feel that what I'm doing (cleaning, playing music, dragging things out of closets) might disturb him. But I can certainly be 'at home' with him in the room. (Like now.) In the old house, we had office space as far away as possible from one another. (Not really intentionally, just the way it happened. We called and e-mailed each other. We still e-mail each other. So sue us.) As we moved out and fixed up the house, we moved into the large office together and now we share a small one. I'm at home here. But I'm just as much at home in a coffee shop somewhere with a notebook or my laptop. Home is in my head somehow. We have made our place more comfortable here since we were 'camping' in the living room but I'm no more at home here now.

Yeah, homesick is something I really can't feel. I can miss seeing people. I used to miss FFP and the various dogs when I'd be on a trip without them. I used to miss seeing my parents. But the structure and surroundings? I could enjoy them, some were more comfy and accommodating than others, but I could never really miss them. If I didn't have a comfortable place to be, I'd regret that. And I'd feel lost if I didn't have things I wanted in close proximity to me. I could miss a town, I guess. I've certainly come back from Europe missing Mexican food and I've missed places I've been because of the things to do (entertainment, museums, cafes, bars, the streets). But I'll sleep happily here or there. We have everything we really need and enjoy from the old house here. So, no, I don't miss it. I find I miss some of the neighborhood restaurants and coffee shops that aren't quite duplicated downtown, but I'd miss the ones around here and their particular joys if I was back there.

You can't go home again because it's not a spot with GPS coordinates. At least not for me.

Walking After Midnight

Yesterday afternoon I took this picture of the shadow of this new arty fence near the South First pedestrian bridge. (More here on Austin Daily Photo.) I'm so excited that this bridge is usable.

I get inordinately excited about walking different places. It may seem a long way to walk to SoCo for lunch, but the walk is part of the program, part of the visit with my friend and a (little) exercise.

I didn't really 'walk after midnight.' (Patsy Cline made the tune "Walking After Midnight" famous. Lyrics here so you can hear in your head. I just made a 'genius' play list from it. It's playing Robert Earl Keen now. Hmm.)

But we did walk after dark. Friends were treating us to a dinner at the (newly renovated) Paggi House. This place is close to us but the pesky Little Colorado (Lady Bird Lake) is in the way. We took our lives in our hands and walked the dark trail to get under Cesar Chavez and over to the pedestrian unfriendly south side of that street and then got to the Pfluger Ped bridge. We were home free then. I had told FFP that if we were accosted in the dark by evil doers he should start quoting lines from "Slingblade" and they would flee, assured that he was crazier than they were. He'd just been watching and quoting from the DVD before we left home. Anyway, yeah, we made the bridge and then Paggi House is just across a well-lighted street. We dodged the cars, choc-a-bloc in the parking lot, stacked in by valets for people who couldn't, ahem, walk there. (The place is basically cheek-by-jowl with the Bridges condos. They can really walk there.)

We had a meal. Really good food. Service a little dicey. Good wine, too. Good company. Then...time to go home. Hmmm...so we walked a little out of the way for light and decent sidewalks. Back to the now precious to us South First Pedestrian bridge that is actually usable. Yeah!

Best Laid Plans

I was supposed to play tennis, but the organizers couldn't get up a game. I thought I'd work out before my walk/lunch date at noon then. But I got distracted by a project of FFP's and interested in finishing redoing a friend's WEB site. Then I thought I might do a workout after lunch (and walk). But then it seemed too easy to sit in front of my computer and finish the test version of the site and enter some receipts into my budget. Time ticked away. And I hadn't worked the NY Times crossword or done some accounting chores I needed to do. And I hadn't worked out. And I hadn't gotten a shower.

While we were having lunch, my companion indicated that normally he would go for a workout in the afternoon but that the pot pie lunch he was having might mean he'd have to go to a movie. (Being retired is having some cool choices, I admit it.) He also asked me how the writing was going. I said it was going along in my head, that my fictional characters went right along doing stuff in my head if not on paper (or pixels). I also told him that since I'd developed a sense of humor about not writing it made the idea of writing easier. Not that I'd done much.

So time ticks away. And many things are undone. But, it's time to take a shower and work that puzzle. And go out to dinner.

Waiting for Inspiration

"I'm going to work out and I'm going to clean the place, but first I'm going to goof off," I said. To FFP, of course, because usually if I'm not talking to myself then I'm talking to him. I had trouble sleeping last night. We got home around nine after taking my dad on an excursion. His dear friends had invited us all over for a lamb dinner. We went early and installed and tested his new Lifeline equipment. His old phone died of alcohol overdose. (Shorted out from a beer spill.) We watched a little TV with him and then took off for the meal and visit. We all enjoyed it, I think, in our own way. Anyway, we dropped him off and got back here around nine. We watched some football and then I watched a recording of The Simpsons that dovetailed with the NY Times Sunday Magazine crossword. Yeah, no kidding. What fun.

I read newspapers and dozed a few times but then I ended up messing around with the equations for an answer to Marilyn vos Savant's column in Parade. (Yeah, I read Parade, too. I'm not proud of it.) Is that a made-up name? Like the 'geniuses' at Apple? Anyway, algebra. I miss math sometimes. My eyes got bleary. I went to the computer, discovered an error had occurred on something I wanted to write customer support about, posted my Austin Daily Photo blog. I wondered is my monitor was getting fuzzy. My eyese were fuzzy. It was late, late. Went to bed.

I got up this morning thinking I needed to clean, work out and to work on a friend's WEB page that I foolishly volunteered to create some while ago. She is coming by to visit this afternoon and had sent a bunch of e-mails over the last few weeks about updates she wanted. I had to track them down. It felt like 'work.'

So I'm not cleaning. I'm not working out. I'm, well, you know, blogging! And drinking coffee. Because that's what I feel like doing.

Yesterday we walked over to Z'Tejas for brunch. I was reading Marcel Bénabou's Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books and he waxes eloquently about trying to write without the reflection and 'story within a story' and metaphor that is, well, literature:

I dreamed of a book in which one would take everything in its simplest, most immediately revealed sense....A book whose structure would, in its simplicity, have no inkling of resorting to drawers within drawers; a book from which any kind of mirror would be banished, in which one would search in vain for the least surface able to reflect the image of objects; in short, a book that would allow itself none of the facile effects of mise en abîme and specular games.

Now, apart from never having heard 'mise en abîme' and not knowing the meaning of specular, I know mirrors and reflections so when we left I went to Portnoy's nearby and took several reflection pictures as above. [And later looked up the mystery phrase and word. Cool.]

And my point was? I don't know. Just displacing. Did I mention I've worked the crossword in the NY Times? And watched as some workmen messed with the water and chilled water meters in my mechanical closet? So, the day is disappearing. And I really must do something useful.

Reading, Writing, Words, Memory

A while back I wrote about my unwritten books and called out a book by George Steiner that I wanted to buy with that very title. (But didn't because the unread around here is threatening enough already.)

Last night we were headed out to watch the UT Women's Basketball team take on an early, hapless opponent at Erwin Center and, as we were planning to walk, I looked around for a small, intense bit of reading material. What should I find but Marcel Bénabou's Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books, translated from the French by David Kornacker. (Have I mentioned that, if only I knew a foreign language well and wasn't ADD, that I think I would make a great translator?) But, yeah, digression...that's why it's in parentheses. I didn't remember owning this book, let alone reading it. (I'm pretty sure I hadn't cracked the cover.) Plus, for a moment I thought it might be the book that I was talking about in that other entry. That's hard to admit. I write and research stuff and then forget it. (I forget my own life in this way, in large measure. I've recently been rereading online journal entries from September 2001. There are many things in there I forgot I did and felt. Sadly I linked to places that were interesting that are gone from the Internet. I did not, by the way, go back to these entries because of 9/11. No I was looking for something else that, it turns out, occurred around that time.) But I really digress.

So I found Bénabou's book and took it to the basketball game and read some of it while keeping an eye on the action. You know, the downtime of time outs, half time, etc. Anyway. It's a very interesting book. Unfortunately I was reading it away from computer or dictionary, though, because there were words I didn't know. I like reading books with words I don't know, but I am frustrated if I'm dictionary-less at the moment of reading. For example, prolegomenon. Geez, one guesses it's like a prologue in spite of looking like a word for a person favoring certain Danish toy bricks.

It's funny but certain books I own I sort of remember reading while not watching basketball. (Even if I remember none of the contents.)

Is this forgetting of the particular in favor of some other kind of memory? Does it support remembering definitions of words in books, general knowledge of behavior and assumptions? I don't know. As I attack the NY Times Magazine puzzle this morning, I wonder. Where is all this stuff kept in my pitiful head? And why is some of it gone or impossible to access? And, if I wrote a book, would I forget it to an extent that I could read it (like the books of others) and have it feel fresh all over again.

In that vein, I'm going to type another bit of my unwritten novel here, assuming I can find the scrap I wrote it on in a book I'm not reading.

The harried woman scurried away as they emerged from the jetway. He was loitering, staying to the right of other rushed travelers. The woman was now chatting into one of the two phones she'd retrieved from her bag while they stood, unavoidably touching, in the crush of the aisle a few minutes ago. He paused by three newspaper boxes, one each for the Austin, Houston and Dallas papers. The Austin paper said in large type "Two Austin Men Dead in Berlin Attack."

I reread the paragraph I blogged before prior to typing this in. And I wondered about changing a word. The paragraph above I typed faithfully from the scrap I wrote in on in the coffee shop on Wednesday. (Did I mention I in this entry that I did that? Anyway. Somewhere I thought I mentioned it.)

What's the point of this entry then? I think to give you a chance to see inside my brain on a Sunday morning. It's a mess, isn't it?

Odd Effects

Light changes everything. Experience changes everything.

I was working with my computer guru yesterday on installing some new some new software. When I first got my iMacs their pretty faces seduced me. I still like sitting here typing away like now. But the hard drive failure on Forrest's and various little glitches have left me with a less than "I LOVE Apple" impression. Not all of this is rational. I am trying to run Microsoft software on both these machines. (Yeah, I'm not in the I LOVE Microsoft camp either. That ship sailed long ago.) I am trying to run these two HP all-in-one printers wirelessly on the Intranet. I am trying to use VMware and a mishmash of XP programs. I am notorious for changing lots of files on my computer willy-nilly in my ADD fashion and trying to backup everything and, I don't know, maybe demanding more of my environment than other people and not remembering what I did to cause something to crash. I've had some weird problems with the CD/DVD drive on my iMac, too, where the Apple side loses track of the drive and I have to go connect it to the VMware XP, eject it, disconnect it, start over. Once a CD got stuck halfway in, too. Anyway, when I look at my pretty Apple machine now it doesn't elicit pure joy. (OK, maybe everyone doesn't download enough CDs to have 7251 songs in iTunes only one of which was purchased online. Still.) And don't call anything 'genius.' Not people not software. You invite the idiot retort. Would I buy Apple again? Maybe. Would I buy HP printers? (Did I mention that the software for their all-in-ones is a big smelly pile? Yeah. It is.) No, when I see an HP printer now it kind of makes me mad. I'm just saying.

It's funny though how these things that maybe have nothing to do with some object like the software that runs on it or something that attaches to it start to make you think of it in a different light.

Well, things are running OK now. Just OK, however. There are a couple of things not OK. And my guru is going to leave the business for a real job when he graduates. I'm happy for him, but I will miss his help. And talking to him. Interesting kid. Like a son I'd be proud to have. Anyway.

When we were finishing up and banishing a couple of last minute little difficulties, I noticed the light outside. It was amazing with dark clouds in the east and the last of the sun reflected in buildings. The way I perceive an evening is often influenced by how the skyline east of me looks at sunset, assuming I notice it. This view was amazing. See above. (Not that my bad photography captures it.)

It's funny how we react to the things around us. Funny and not all that rational.