Keeping A Record

Remember when having a picture of something involved film? Remember the furor over instant photography where the film developed right after you took it? But then to share it you had to send it off for reprints? These vintage cameras were for sale the other day in Uncommon Objects on South Congress. (For a reverie on the Polaroid Camera from five years ago see here.)

Remember when words on paper meant longhand, typing or typesetting?

Well, now it should be easier to keep a record of your life, right? Digital stills, digital videos, digital voice recorders; digital scanners to convert those old pictures and slides to pixels; computers to process our words and blogging sites like this to format them, date them, search them; and social media preserving your real-time comments and making sharing what you're doing so easy.

But somehow I still lose track of my life. Puzzle over what I did yesterday and wonder why I don't have a photo of something.

There is a comfort in it sometimes, though. That one can still get lost. Hide a bit from others and be a recluse.

Today is the first day of Holidailies. Drivel like this is supposed to be my gift to you my reader. But if it fell short just see what other participants have written that might enhance your day. I guess I'll be a little exposed here for the next month. However, I'm not going to be doing a blow-by-blow diary of my activities here most days. Just little ramblings. I have been keeping a diary offline lately. I used it yesterday to figure out when I last got a haircut. And so it goes.

A Mere Reflection of Cheer

After two Blood Marys and much chatter at the Headliners mid-day Christmas party yesterday I snapped this picture in the foyer mirror while FFP ushered some people into the elevator as we were leaving. Yes I have on a red blazer. It is twenty (or thirty?) years old. I liked the bright red ball display in the foyer. The decoration here at our house is still confined to one little bendable Santa perched among the holiday cards we've received.

We went to another party last night. It didn't make me more cheerful although there were gas log fires, many stockings hung by the chimneys with care, an enormous live tree and Christmas music and people sporting the most outrageous Christmas sweaters.

It's not that I'm not cheerful. I'm just not especially cheerful. The season is not pumping me up.

The highlight of my day yesterday might have been an e-mail I noticed on my iPhone on the way to that second party notifying me that this entry was selected as a"Best of Holidailies "by a distinguished panel of readers" that  "has been reviewing all entries posted to the Holidailies portal."

As you may know, dear reader, I've been posting every day because the Holidailies portal was set up this year to urge participants to do so. My friends Chip and Jette are behind this activity. They are assisted by the panel of readers. There are 97 full-blown participants (registering each post with the portal) and there are more who just registered a link to their journal, er blog. I thought writing in this blog form (know as online journal or diary in the olden days of the Internet) would be good for me. A gift for myself if not for the readers.

But it's not a contest, right? It's not about seeing a number by your name that is close to the number of days of Holidailies. It's not about getting a 'best of.' No. No. It's about writing. Pixels to screen. Words. Sentences. Paragraphs. Leading to the people reading and getting some value perhaps. Or leading to self knowledge. It's about editing a picture for each day and wondering why you like the distance and opacity of reflection pictures so much.

Still... acknowledgement cheers me a little. Someone read about the great gifts my parents (well, Mom mostly) gave me. They thought about it. And said, "Hmmm. Interesting. Good even. Maybe 'Best of'."

And so I add the 22nd entry in this Holidailies. There it is: "Welcome to Day 22 of Holidailies" and by my name as soon as I register it the number 22. One of thousands of this antiquated thing called an online journal entry.

Looking into the past...

[Photo is shot through a nice glass of white wine at the MOMA sculpture garden in New York City. That's Picasso's goat you can see. If some outdoor furniture weren't in the way you could see the, um, backside. Something like this, shot when having a fine meal at a restaurant, with the atmosphere of this view, the wine drinking in the middle of the day, is a moment that can be recalled easily by the fuzzy photo.]

I read in the NY Times today about apps that package up your prior social media posts and return them to you some time later. Studying one's past in this way is interesting. I was reminded of my occasional forays into old online blogs, written journals, souvenirs, letters or piles of photos. Even old receipts and budgets and checks can dredge up the memory machine. Back you go...to another place and time that often seems familiar but sometimes seems strange.

I picked a little notebook out of my piles today. Inside are notes from 2003 and 2006. There's the description of a day with Dad when we go to someone's memorial service (I don't know whose it was) and then travel to Dallas to visit his relatives. There's the description of a dream where my dad and I plummet off a cliff in his van and I wake up before we hit bottom. (I don't remember this dream or even writing it down.) There are notes from the anniversary trip FFP and I took to Paris. It seems to be about me and yet it's so distant, so separate. I read about visits I barely remember and encounters that I don't remember. (Do the others remember them?) This time is also covered by online entries. The 2006 ones are in the transition to Blogger. A lot is there but it's all very confusing. I'm glad I have the records, but they also overwhelm me. Things happen faster than I can absorb them. But what if I took it all to heart? Our forgetting is part of our mental health. The time I explored today included a friend's death and the diagnosis of another friend with a serious cancer. Time is supposed to make things easier. But perhaps only if you don't remember...or read your old journals.

So, no, I don't think I'll sign up to be automatically reminded of my social media posts. I think I'll make myself make an effort to dredge that stuff up.

Finally All Will Be Revealed

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

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

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

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

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

It's That Piggy Time of the Year

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

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

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

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

What Would You Pay For?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shrinking for the Global Good

While I've been missing from this space I've been thinking. Yeah, really. About lots of things. About how we are all connected. About shrinking the footprint those of us in the developed world make. About my own (continuing??? I hope) downsizing. We've been downsizing a lot of things, really. Commitments. Spending. But mostly stuff and space consumed and car trips.

Today's illustration is a collage of (mostly) decade-old scribbles from a notebook. Originals recycled. Yeah, I have no delusions of about the value of my own messy notebooks. I do however try to capture actual journal entries in a computer file and I enjoy scanning some of the hand-written and drawn stuff for my amusement. Several cubic feet of this stuff remains to be dealt with in the downsizing of the 2000's, but every little bit helps, I figure.

We have moved out of 3000 square feet on 2/3 of an acre into 1200 sq. feet in a high rise footprint. We still have a house that serves as a home for my dad (and housing for a few visitors) and we help FFP's parents remain in their cottage. So, yeah, decadent amounts of space. But less. We consider stuff acquisitions now in terms of having space to store things. I'm also thinking about how much I might use something. We are trying to buy local (from the grocery store downstairs, from local restaurants) and support local arts groups and charities serving our community. I go days without starting my (old but fuel-efficient and with maintained pollution control) vehicle. I am planning trips, but when I go somewhere I want to stay a little longer and make the jetting less wasteful.

When I read my papers about tent cities in the U.S. and conditions world-wide I feel a little helpless in the face of it, but I really think that what we do right here makes a tiny difference. I know that our lives are wildly extravagant to many people in my own city and country and unbelievable to millions around the world. I don't want to give up my computer and my AV stuff and my meals and fine wine and my glorious lifestyle. But I'm trying to make changes, not sacrifices, that both simplify my world and make a small difference in the rest of the world and the future. Is it 'enough?' For me, it is. I'm going to try to escape the next couple of decades (after which the world belongs to someone else) in relative comfort with time to think and space enough. Free time and free thinking...they are pollution-free and can be constructive!

Ephemera, Ephemeral

This title (illustrated here with a collage of scanned paper ephemera) has been kicking around in my head for a day or two. Also this one: Words and pictures.

Life consists of nothing but millions of moments. Each marked from our perspective with ephemeral thoughts or actual ephemera (a ticket stub, disposibile drip catcher, label, a piece of currency). Even the most substantial things eventually flee us...or we them.

Moments are marked by ambient sounds (I happen to be listening to Jeff Lofton's jazz trumpet on his WEB site as I type this), the light, the disappearing coffee in your cup. If you follow something like Twitter or Facebook feeds you can follow the beat of your friends' moments. There's you, wasting a moment, watching others waste a moment. [I stopped here to get another coffee from my Capresso Jura E8. I also thought "I wonder if I'll mention that I heard Jeff Lofton's quartet at Belmont last night after getting some free premium Crown Royals at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse bar. I wonder if I'll remember what we did last night next year or even next week."]

Making it all add up, looking back (looking forward is so much harder) is the stuff of memoir. If I ever write a memoir, please consider it less than accurate. Because...

Yesterday I was reading scribbled notes in an old journal, trying to see if there was anything worth capturing before I did something with the journal. (It's a pretty one with lovely paper, made in Florence with scenes of that same city reproduced in a watercolor on the cover.) I immediately fell into a curiosity about what I was doing at the time I wrote the notes (six years ago, 2003). I could see that we were getting ready for a trip to New York. I was confused as to why. I was only slightly less confused after reading pieces of a pretty comprehensive online journal. All of which made me think that I wasn't writing enough journal entries of the type filled with 'then we did this, then I did that, then I showered and put on blue jeans.' Moments lost.

Besides minutes ago FFP came in from his Pilates class and dug around in the drawer for our tickets to a ballet tonight and a musical performance at the Paramount tomorrow night and I was thinking how much less attractive and interesting the computer-printed and bar-coded tickets were than some tickets I saved in my ephemera boxes. I was thinking I probably wouldn't save them nor write about seeing Ballet Austin's "Hamlet" and Ramsey Lewis and Ann Hampton-Calloway in any coherent way that I could ever find again and associate with this Valentine's weekend in 2009. And that made me a little sad but that's life. How many moments do we spend trying to recapture moments as we hurtle forward through another day, another 86,400 seconds (some spent sleeping...did I mention I had interesting dreams last night now forgotten and unrecorded?). We can collect ephermera, words and pictures. But the past is running away to a speck in the distance, each moment an emepheron, souvenirs of same notwithstanding.

I love this forward motion, but something in me wants to capture it even while understanding that I will never succeed. Hence words and pictures to recall if not recapture.

Top Ten Reasons to Blog

Yeah, everyone is always re-examining blogging and whether they personally should do it. (Often these same people are writing comments in their favorite blogs saying 'Please, please, don't stop.')

In countdown fashion, let's do it. Top Ten Reasons to Blog:

• The number ten reason is....Because everyone sees things differently and my viewpoint is important. (See above photo from the clock they burned during First Night at Auditorium Shores. Pizza on Earth. A more realistic goal. One person's added footnote.) I thought maybe this should be the number one reason, but, really it's so egotistical. I mean, speaking for my blog, I just write what's in my head most of the time and don't research Middle East politics or something. In fact, your faithful chronicler has yet to get it firmly in her head how close Egypt really is to it all. Geography-wise. I can't remember all the new countries from the Soviet bust up, much less research and interpret the Gazprom crisis between Ukraine and Russia. Anyway, so my viewpoint might be worth something, but not the top of the list of advisers you should listen to on World Affairs or philosophy or domestic politics or the revamp of the SEC so that Madoff represents the end of an era of fraud.
• The number nine reason is...Even if your viewpoint isn't an earth-shaking opinion, it is a little bit of human life. Add up all the blogs from all the people and it's a history of ordinary life and all that jazz. But really are one woman's friends, meals, movies, rants, reading list yada yada really a significant part of what's going on? Particularly when, statistically, she is 'out of step' with the mainstream?
  
• The number eight reason is...Otherwise how would I keep up with my own life? I note that one of the blogs I read mentioned this recently:

  "I don't really want to stop blogging. It's been part of my life for over six and a half years now, and besides all the stuff I've recorded that I'd never remember otherwise..."

  This reason isn't higher (lower) on the list because, really, why not have a private journal and stick all the pictures and words there and don't pull any punches and really have it all. You could still use handy search and keyword stuff. You could make it a blog but entirely private. But, no, we do this writing entirely in full view of whomever. Who, after all, are we fooling? We don't just expect to keep track of stuff, we expect to be read. (Hi, faithful five readers!)
• The number seven reason is...It gives me an excuse to type like someone is making me (paying me?) to do it each and every day (or so). Hence I'm sitting here with a fresh cup of coffee at nine in the morning with bed head, wearing sweats and writing here because it's a 'duty' after all. So I'm not writing a book, reading the paper and getting material for more reasonably important views on something, exercising, managing my money, cleaning house or saving the world (for peace or pizza). But it's OK. Gotta blog first, then all that will come.
• The number six reason is...Bulleted lists are fun. No, that isn't it...let me think. Yes, that's it...I have a 'rule' that each entry has to have a picture. Usually an original one and not just something stolen from the WEB. Between that and Austin Daily Photo, I have to take pictures and I like the result. There is a collection of my pictures made automatically by Blogger and also I can just sit and watch the slide show screen saver on my machine. Yeah, I love words but I love pictures, too.
  
• Number five. hmmm (can I really think of ten reasons for my biggest time waster???). OK, links. Since a blog is hyper-text you can link to sites that have real information or other blogs with more articulate and clever writers. You can link to yourself, too, in endless loops and circles. You can link to random silliness. Your readers (and you, later) follow a little trip through cyberspace with you as tour guide. It's not just writing, it's hyper-writing. Some people forget that this form is different in that way.
• Number four? It keeps me somewhat connected to modern technology. Oh, sure, I use a blogging tool that the legion of monkeys typing Shakespeare could probably navigate but once in a while as I blog or sail through others' blogs (an inevitable result of blogging is reading other blogs) I eventually want to do something that makes me look at HTML or puzzle something out that is at least vaguely technical and this makes me feel less like the techno-saurus that I am.
• Number three? Otherwise I'd be doing Facebook. Nothing against social networking sites but they are so 'in and out,' so one sentence/one picture, tag you're it' that really it's not writing is it? The best Facebook folks link to their blogs. (The journalists do this, I've noticed. Well, one journalist anyway.) I mean I just went over to Facebook so I could write about it and found some cool links and such and I made a status update that I was blogging. Which wasn't as interesting as the person who found a double yolk in an egg or the one drinking a smoothie and coffee at the same time after a run but still one doesn't bump into a coherent essay unless one follows someone's link. Facebook, though, has become exceedingly popular with my set lately. But, I digress which brings me to number two....
  
• Number two reason for blogging? It supports my favorite modus operandi: digression. If you are writing a book or a real essay or article, there is a call for a certain, dare we call it dramatic?, structure. A beginning, a middle, and end. With a blog, it is more like we are creating index cards or pages in our scrapbook with random pictures, drawings, words, quotes, diary notes. It's OK to say "Today I got up late because I had a hangover" then ramble on about hangovers without really concluding anything. You have more to say than you do with a sentence on Facebook: "Linda got up late because she has a hangover." But the expectation is somewhat less than an essay on hangovers. You can 'finish' with less polish. And you can go from hangovers to what booze you like and digress into the ridiculous prices of some wine and talk about wine bottle shapes and then just wrap it up and call it a blog entry. I have rules, but they are lax for blog entries. (Sometimes I even leave out the picture but I really hate doing that. I really like it if they picture relates somehow to the text but I even let that go pretty easily.) [Ed. Note: Do you have a hangover today? LB: Not at all. Nothing to drink last night and two glasses of wine the night before. One Pinot Noir, one late Harvest Malbec. If you must know everything.]
  
• Number one reason for blogging? Have we really already done nine? I thought I'd run out of reasons. Anyway, the number one reason for blogging (especially as opposed to published work but also in contrast to commenting on other blogs and sending messages on other sites) is that you can edit it to your heart's content. I usually publish an entry and then reread it for typos and confusion. So I might publish it and change it one minute later. Yes, I know someone can get the stuff before I edit it, but I ignore that. I even come back days, months, years later and edit and delete. I'm never through editing, I've found, so this makes me feel very satisfied if a little dishonest. I've even been known to hunt down online journal entries from back in the day when I didn't use a blogging tool and edit them. When you see something in print with a typo, does it make you crazy? Especially if it's your own work? Well, that's me. Even other people's typos make me crazy. So writing with pixels that can be turned on or off at a whim? Priceless.
  

Perspective

There are lots of state-wide associations in Austin. These organizations lobby the legislature on behalf of their members and put out newsletters and maybe vet members with some sort of credential. This one looks interesting in today's charged environment. Do you think the members of this group got a lot of business during the Enron debacle? Has everyone forgotten Enron in the wake of Madoff and bailouts? I haven't because I had one loan bond that the *&^%$ broker who sold it to me has to keep on the books at zero value because occasionally the powers that be send a few dollars or a few shares of stock in some company. I then have to explain these little poops of money to my CPA as return of principal on that bond. Assaulted by fraud and terrorized by bookkeeping. It was a tiny part of our portfolio and I'd have been glad to show the loss and move on but NO...couldn't even do that. A couple of failed munis have been similarly troubling. We diversify, though, so we try to just ignore this stuff. Piles of paperwork about restitution arrives. We recycle it. Can you imagine what paperwork the Madoff investors will receive and, if they want a chance at any of their money back, how much they will have to fill out? Ugh.

But I digress. I diversify and so these matters are not extreme to me. Not yet anyway. They are just little additional glitches to add to keeping up with different accounts, stocks, funds, bonds. But is interesting to think of the perspective of fraud investigators coming along, after the fact, looking at things knowing that the financial statements may be a crime scene.

I really wanted to return to the topic I touched on earlier, during Holidailies. Sadly, Holidailies is over now. Oh, it's a good thing really as most beginnings and endings are in a way. And that topic was perspective which I talked about in the entry entitled "Do You See What I See."

Did you look at Holidailies while I was participating? Did you actually arrive from Holidailies? I know some people read from there due to comments and some "Best of" designations. (Thanks, anonymous readers panel.) But beginning on a portal like that is like going to a giant outdoor concert with hundreds of stages with different bands playing around the clock only you can go back and forth in time. You can still never quite see it all and you will never experience it quite like any other visitor there.

The page is static now when you open it because folks are not allowed to post new entries because the fun ended 2009-01-06 23:59:59. Miraculously someone managed to post at the last minute. The happy result for us is that this entry is on top of the Holidailies page. And it is an amazing entry about projects and focus. That entry really hits home for me. I've written many times about the struggle for focus. But a never made an art project to represent it and then blogged about it. Yo! (An example here. Or search for 'focus' in my blog. Searching for a word in someone's blog is an interesting random walk.)

The penultimate (I just love that word, don't you?) entry recorded went with the writing prompt of epiphany (Epiphany) and has this great quote: "Anyway, you can imagine how the kings might feel about their holiday nowadays, latecomers to the party, bearing wine and snacks, not knowing that coffee has already been served, or worse, that the hostess is already hungover."

You see what I'm doing, right? I'm conducting you on a random walk through Holidailies. How long will you be able to follow along without succumbing to the temptation to just follow a link yourself?

Often when I went to the Holidailies page I'd use it to find Chip and Jette's entries to see if they'd updated because when they write they are very cool. I'd just search the page for 'Chip' or 'Jette' to find a link into their blogs (even, though, yeah I have them bookmarked and Chip's on syndication). Today this strategy runs me first to an entry where the excerpt mentions Chip and Jette. A delightful entry it is, too, with a 'Best of' designation which made me look at it and made me learn a new word, triolet, and marvel at someone's long-standing Holidailies production of one (a triolet is a certain form of poem in case you didn't follow that link). The next button in my search does lead to a new Chip entry, however, and I had to stop and read it. (He used the word penultimate. Sweet.) I had to comment, too. I'm back now.

So I searched for Jette and found a new entry. She posted a picture of this, only close up. And, oh...there is my building in the picture! After veering off to Jette, I for some reason I decided to go to the entry recorded just below hers. A rant about returning Christmas stuff. I'm not a returner. (The world is divided into those who return things and those who simply give them away. Or regift them.) But I, um, digress.

So you get the idea. We all take off on a tangent through life, seeing what we see, missing what others see, learning new words at 60 and not knowing some words ever until we die. Do you ever read an obituary of someone you knew slightly and find out about ton of things they did and knew and places they went and think "Hmmm...what a different life from mine they had." And also be amazed that what you knew of the person was a very different view.

Well, that's my random walk of the day. I'm going to exercise and do chores of the domestic variety as well as some financial chores. I may keep up blogging here after the Holidailies rhythm or I may drift into other pursuits. I have several ideas for the long-neglectd Journal of Unintended Consequences, for example.

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.]

The Unexamined LIfe

After you die, people write about you, sum up your life. If you are somebody, maybe someone writes a biography or you write your autobiography while you are still around. (If you are nobody, you write a memoir!) Old Plato said it.

"The life which is unexamined is not worth living."
--Plato, Dialogues

I just finished writing a little piece about a friend who died last year for another friend to use in a tribute. I have so much material about this friend that it's hard to hone in on a couple of pages of words and quotes and a few pictures. The e-mail file for this friend has almost 2000 pieces of mail. As I struggled to keep my facts straight (even the year something happened sometimes eludes me sometimes) I appreciated the scattered online journals that I kept and that e-mail file and files of paper journals and records.

I realize that I've neglected any kind of journal for some weeks except a few scattered and distant entries here that now seem full of self-absorption and self-pity and short on facts.

The other day a friend said something like 'I'm tired of the examined life.' Not me, though. The better record I have the better I feel...even when I can't locate anything in the heaps and piles of pictures and words. I wish I had a record of every bite I'd ever eaten and every movie I'd ever seen and every song I'd ever heard. So. I've got to get back on the journal bandwagon. Online and/or off.

While thinking about this entry, I tried to find the above quote by looking in my old journal entries housed on the IPOWER host. All my WEB pages on this service were out of service. Very disconcerting.

This reflection picture, by the way, is from the store VIVID although in the picture name I identified it as Uncommon Objects. You live, you lose track, you die.

Writers' Negative Space

Occasionally I get comments about my blog's tag line (over there to the right: "Pretending to write but really just blogging."). Or I get comments from people who don't read the blog (because who has the time, really?) but know that I say I blog but I don't write. My lunch companion from yesterday sent me an e-mail in the evening: "...someone "who doesn't write, but only blogs"? Just finished "The Genius of Montaigne" from the 2/14/08 copy of NYRB. It's been decades since I've even glanced at the Essais, but it really sounds like what he was doing was, essentially, blogging!"

Another friend told me that she was reading a book by Scott Adams that he really just collected from his blog entries. (From Publisher's Weekly: " Adams builds his latest book (after 2004's The Religion War) out of entries from his blog, which results in a lot of short chapters and abrupt changes in topic.") She was suggested I make a book therefore from the sea of words washing around the Internet ether.

My point? [Ed. Note: You are a blogger not a writer so a point is not really essential. But do go on.]

What is blogging? What constitutes blogging? Can a sixteenth century essayist be said to be doing it? How about Pepys? And, more importantly, what is writing? When are we doing it? And, of course, when is it worthwhile?

I enjoy my morning typing. I place a picture on Austin Daily Photo. (Ah, the demands of my life. Every day. A darn photo is required from within the rough boundaries of Austin, Texas.) I can't resist adding words to picture. Then I sometimes type here. But is it writing? (Particularly when I have about seven readers.) Would it be better to be published on paper or associated with Montaigne?

People are desperate at times to have their words on paper. Preferably acid-free but anything semi-permanent will do. Memoirs are popular now and blogging is, mostly, writing what is true for the author in the moment. Supposedly. Of course, we have created such a demand for memoirs that people are making them up. James Frey was excoriated for exaggeration and playing loose with the apparently more or less true shape of his life. Now Margaret Seltzer has been exposed for making up a foster child/gang involvement story out of whole cloth. You know, I read the original NY Times story about this book and thought to myself that it sounded false. If I'd read it online I would have sniffed it right out, I think.

I don't think I would ever write a memoir. In fact, an uneasy feeling about what is true has stopped a lot of my unwritten fiction in its tracks. Someone I have read online for years has written a book and is in fact having a book tour event here in Austin on Sunday. I think Rob has had thousands of readers online, off and on. I read the book. I learned a few new things about Rob. But I didn't doubt the truth of any of it. Because keeping up a coherent story for a long time online is nearly impossible. And, of course, I've seen him and his family in person. And thousands of pictures. So the snooty editors and publishers and agents of the world would do well to take note that one way to be a little sure of the truth is to publish a blogger! Not that you can't be online and have secrets. But it's hard to tell a consistent lie over a long period of time. Think how hard it is to make a novel consistent. Then try to add little random bits on the fly without much time for editing.

The photo (of my reflection in mirrors in a the window of Uncommon Objects) is one of the few taken in this location that actually reveals that the shape across the street is a church. I used it because I wanted to show the ephemeral nature of truth and words for this Montaigne-like essay! Just kidding.

Stay tuned because I got another idea for writing an 'essay' here from my lunch date yesterday. A continuation of the title "Writer's Negative Space" we will explore creativity and the lack of senses. Or not. This is just a blog. You can't hold me to anything.

Why I 'Diblog'

I just coined this word, 'diblog', as a combination of 'diary' and 'blog.' (I'm sure someone else already coined a word for this or thinks blog is sufficient or thinks, as I once did, that you should just call it a journal and journaling.)

You see, I want to write. I do. But all I do is write journals, diaries, scribbles, blogs, online journals, whatever. As it says in the blurb to the right: "Pretending to write but really just blogging."

But what I do isn't exactly blogging. Depending on what you mean by blogging. Sure I provide links and take the occasional stand on the issues of the day or write what would pass for an essay now and then. But mostly this venue is really personal. Sometimes it is very much in the spirit of 'what I did today.' Like a diary. My writing outside this venue, offline, in notebooks and Word documents on my computer is very much in that diary vein. I do have what I consider a real blog (The Journal Of Unintended Consequences) but it doesn't get updated nearly as often as this space. I have a picture blog, too, that gets updated every day (Austin, Texas Daily Photo) but the writing is secondary if often voluminous. It's about the pictures or is supposed to be.

Visible Woman and my writing offline has always been diary-like for the most part. Or it's a journal if you will. I cannot seem to complete a book, article, essay. I have completed a few (unpublished) short stories. And yet this year I have written thousands of words of 'diblog' here and over two hundred pages in offline Word documents.

Why do I do whatever you call this? Well, I think I know.

One of the main reasons is that everything is more easily dealt with once it's translated into words and put down on paper or in pixels.

Another reason is because I want to have my say and not really be edited by anyone. I get comments, but I can moderate them. I can accept edits sent in although they rarely are. FFP will point out typos and mistakes and I can edit them if I wish. No editor is trying to keep me on point, trying to puff things up or slim them down.

And yet I love to edit myself. With my online musings and my Word docs I can edit anything at any time. I was just pondering writing this and I went back and looked at an almost eight-year-old entry on my old WEB site and I wanted to remove a single period. So I did. What power! Once you write a book it's nice to see the permanence of it...but wouldn't you be itching to edit it?

And finally I 'diblog' because I want to remember what I did today and yesterday and I seriously will completely forget if I don't write or type it down somewhere. See those old paper journals above? I was glancing through one of them and I was writing about having our Old English Sheepdog put down. In 1991. Of course, this is something I remember doing and even the approximate time. But the other things going on at the same time, forgotten. Except I wrote in that book.

So yeah that's why I'm here (or over there or inside my own computer) writing what I do. Because I want to deal with my demons, be heard, avoid editors but always be able to edit and, years from now, remember where I was and what I was thinking. I'm not here trying to influence anyone else or become famous. I'm not seeking readers. So, no I'm not sure why I join things like Holidailies because I'm not really seeking readers which is one purpose of portals. Fact is, for a long time I purposely did NOT join portals. I even went to a conference for online journal writers (JournalCon they called it) one year before the word was 'blog' and listed my name in the program without a WEB site!

By the way...I spent my morning at my club playing tennis and then working out a little. I drank an espresso smoothie at the club. This afternoon I ate a chicken sandwich. I changed the filter on my coffee machine. We considered going to a movie but decided to stay home and watch the bowl game with the Texas Longhorns playing. I plan to read, do some things on my 'to do' list and maybe watch a DVD. Just in case I forget later what was up with me on December 27, 2007.

How I Simplified My Life

The title should be extended with "and how my life is still a bucket of chaos." This photo was taken outside a movie theater in Waterville, Maine in July 2005. (I know this because I organize the raw images I download from my camera by month. This simplifies my life. Of course, the fact that I almost never bother to properly label these images helps with the chaos part. I do try to give them better names when I edit them for the blogs.) The picture shows a large model of a building made from wine corks.

I think this will be a little ongoing theme for my blog during Holidailies. What has worked in making my life simpler. And evidence that entropy outruns my best efforts in the same realms.

It is a fertile area: this battle with simplicity and chaos. Simplicity is good for the soul. Chaos feeds the mind.

There is the matter of journals. I still use paper journals but I try to copy them to the computer and (even though I know better) consider that they are saved for posterity. This effort is Sisyphean to say the least. But I have actually discarded some little spiral bound notebooks and they are gone to the landfill instead of taking up space here.

Then there is the newspaper pile. I have developed a method for sorting through a pile of papers quickly. If it's a strictly business section I give the headlines a glance. Charts of stock prices and graphs are ignored. I get that online. If it's a Sports Section, I discard it immediately unless we are in the midst of a Grand Slam Tennis event when I might look at articles about tennis. But usually I get the Grand Slams online through a wonderful portal with draws and real time scores and more. I have more trouble discarding sections about Art and Leisure and Technology and Science. My best efforts at controlling piles of newsprint are simply inundated by two papers that come daily, one six days a week and a few weeklies. We won't even talk about magazines and especially the deluge of New Yorkers arriving fifty times a year. Let's just say that one in my bathroom is a 2005 issue.

And technology. I've greatly simplified my life by delaying technology acquisition. Because as much as that new (printer/computer/camera/phone/GPS receiver/scanner/external hard drive/DVD player/TV/video console/whatever) will enhance your life, it will also suck away your time testing and programming and hooking up and such. Even though it's fun to own your favorite music CD or movie on DVD, there is that matter of storage. So I resist buying technology and media. I will eventually succumb but hopefully less of my time is wasted in the interim. Sadly, I often buy technology for others, especially my nieces, and then find myself testing the item before I send it to them.

I want a simple existence where everything is useful and has its place and I want to live in a reasonable amount of space. But it has to be complicated enough to be interesting, too. In this vein I continue with downsizing and organizing and divesting. Knowing that it will never really happen.

And did I mention that I have a drawer full of wine corks in the kitchen? Hence the relevance of this photo. See I'm making sense here. Aren't I?

Sorry to be Short

Seems like my posts here have been sort of terse for the last few days. I guess I've fallen into a rut of just typing something in, adding a picture, obligation done. I've been writing a lot in my personal journal. But that all seems to fall in the category of "my mouth doesn't hurt or does hurt in the following ways" or "these are the things I'm not getting done."

I will try to be more of a correspondent with the Holidailies obligation. Because that is something that commands more respect to me somehow. (Yeah. Stupid, I guess. Made up obligations to mask real and present ones.)

The picture? My shadow. Tennis court. A lot of my friends can't, won't, shouldn't play and I'm humbled that I still can. One of the friends I was playing with yesterday who is older by ten or fifteen years was mystified about why I'd take a picture of my shadow on the tennis court. Explaining about a blog that begged for pictures seemed futile.

Swimming in the Past

My house is turned inside out, secrets exposed. As the spirit moves me I go through closets and boxes and drawers and the 'pencil cups' scattered around the house. The above closet has had a going through resulting in a lot of stuff being sent to the thrift store or thrown away and other things just pulled out for sorting. (The green and yellow paint is left over from the former owners. They sold us the house three decades ago I'm embarrassed to say.) The room that has this closet is rather a disaster of sorting and piling as is my office where the closets and drawers and shelves are becoming more empty and organized as the floor becomes littered with piles and boxes.

On my desk I have the small notebook where I'm scribbling current ideas, to do lists and expenses. But I also have notebooks from 1992 and 1996 open to the pages where I stopped transcribing contents I wanted to save. There is also a micro cassette recorder loaded up with a tape from 1989 that I've been listening to, seeing if I wanted to capture any of the contents. There is a large folder open on a chair with printed bulletin board messages and journals written on the computer and other paper correspondence. I've been reading a journal I wrote in Berlin in 1995 from the folder. On the floor is a pile of more or less current newspapers I haven't gotten around to reading, a pile of hanging file folders I've emptied of no longer relevant content, a pile of magazines (mostly New Yorkers) I haven't been able to give up and a pile of current information for my board duties at the country club.

The sorting in my office and the spare room (home of the above closet) is harder than, say, the kitchen. Things aren't merely things here but memories. It is interesting to see what clippings and printouts and photos survive the sorting. One moment I'm thinking what a full and interesting life I've had and the next feeling much has been wasted. I'm not one to dwell on the past or worry about the future but sitting here among my decades with a file in the drawer labeled 'condo ideas' it's hard to stay in the moment.

Busy?

I am busy. Five days a week I get up for a morning activity at my club. MWF is water aerobics. We welcomed the instructor back from jury duty today. I would rather have more freedom from a structured class. But I am appreciating this class while my dad can participate. Today he put his hands up on the diving board and hoisted himself up at bit. Like a much younger man. So I'd rather not have a class MWF. But I'm glad I do. If that makes sense. Tuesday and Thursday I've committed to playing tennis unless something really comes up to interfere or it rains, of course. I'm not crazy about commitment but I love to play and this gets me out there and my companions are fun. Right now I'm playing most Wednesday nights, too.

I'm trying to get in shape. I would say back in shape but I'm not sure I was ever there. The water aerobics and tennis won't do it so I have to do some riding on the recumbent bike and some ab work and weights. It never feels like I do enough. Last night I walked the neighborhood with my friend SuRu and her dog. My dog isn't a match for the rest of us any more. Sad.

It is the busy time for film reviewers for the Austin Film Festival. The festival is in October. Deadlines loom, films pile up. We are first round screeners. Get the flicks seen by someone. We also go to screener's meetings...we started last Monday.

I've been trying to stay on top of our financial life. Every day I make entries into the budget, check accounts, enter checks into the budget or my dad's account (we pay a lot of his bills out of a fund he contributes every month).

I've been trying to blog a bit and keep up a little private journal. FFP and I are together keeping up the Austin, Texas Daily Photo Site which has been fun.

And the downsizing! I've been going through old boxes of 'archives and souvenirs.' Finding letters from friends and old letters I wrote to my aunts who are dead now (they saved them all) makes me sad and glad at the same time. It's very tedious going through all these pieces of paper and trying to figure out what to do with each thing. I feel I must read the stuff before deciding its fate.

I have a couple of committee meetings this week and another commitment or two. I've never had a problem staying busy in retirement.

The Journal Dilemma

In trying to eliminate a few cubic feet from my life, I've consdiered tossing some handwritten notes and journals. When I'm gone, after all, no one is going to collect all this stuff and sell it to the Harry Ransom center for a few million so researchers can mine it for info. In fact, instead of writing something to get famous enough for that to happen, I blog. And I scribble the my mundane activities and events and thoughts into little notebooks. So, yeah. Toss them. Right? Well, I just can't. Not until, at least, I transcribe them so they can be lost in the cobwebs of my hard drive where they take far less room. What to do, though, when there is some little drawing or doodle on the page? Inconsequential, I suppose.

So glad I retired so that I can spend my entire morning at my country club and my afternoon worrying about stuff like this and helping Forrest start a blogging career.

Maybe Frequent, Short Posts is the Answer

Maybe I should just pop in whenever I have a picture or a thought to share and post something.

We took a trip down to South Congress to visit our CPA and then we stopped downtown to look at the Ballet Austin building which is getting close to being renovated. I walked down the street west to the corner to look up at 'our' building. There is glass on our floor now. Wow.

The sun was blinding and it felt hot and it almost gave me a headache. And it's only May 8.