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musing #1
View of Fox Point from the Hot Club
A Manipulated Photo by Janet
I took the photo this image is based upon on a Sunday morning this summer. The scene interested me because some of the windows in the brick buildings were arch shaped like the iron railing I was looking through. As I manipulated it, I became more interested in the rectangular edges of the buildings and the shadows falling across them than in the echo of the arch shape. In this image, the arched windows recede into the light gray and are barely visible. The water almost looks solid enough to cross on foot. There's still mystery and ambiguity in even the most industrial urban landscape. Stop me before I have a full blown Artspeak attack without the credentials permitting me to do so! :-)
I had a black & white period back in the '70's. I mostly photographed urban scenes. Come to think of it, that period coincided with my studying urban economics in grad school. I really liked cities then. Still do in lots of ways. I could never decide whether I was a city person or a country person though. Somewhere along the line I got the idea that I couldn't like both the outdoors and the city. That I had to choose. More mundanely, I also realized I was making more money at a hack programming job than most of the urban economists and planners I knew who already had their PhD's. Don't have to hit me over the head with no tire tool. I wasn't going to single-handedly save America's cities.
musing #2
We certainly have a lot of black and white cats. I came home covered with bandaids. None of the ones who got me were black and white though. Slinky got one hand and Katrina (feline - not the human volunteer of the same name) got the other when I tried to put them back in their cages. I haven't been handling the cats much because I've been overwhelmed with dishes and laundry and Roberta takes charge - but she left early and Dawna was busy in the sick room, and ... whatever... It seems to me I bled particularly easily today. Probably means I have some awful disease in addition to garden variety depression. Probably means my biorhythms are low or something.
I have definitely been in a funk for days. Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat please put a penny in the old man's hat. Some kid is knocking at my door like there's a fire or something. I run downstairs and find out he's selling candy bars to help kids learn how to handle drugs and gang violence. I tell him I don't eat candy bars. He asks for a contribution to please help the kids learn to stay away from drugs and gangs. I say no. He leaves. OK, so like are kids from my neighborhood really going to go out and wreck themselves on drugs because I didn't buy a stupid chocolate bar? Is the money to bribe the parents to pay attention to their kids so they don't get messed up in this stuff? Exactly what the kids against drugs were going to do with this money was never explained in the pat sales speech.
I haven't finished my Christmas shopping. In fact, I never got the World Peace Blend coffee from Urth Caffe so my fax probably never got there. I meant to call them this afternoon but by the time I tended my wounds, showered, and put on clean clothes I was ravenous for lunch and feeling pressure to shop even though I wanted to sleep. I forgot all about World Peace Blend coffee. I can send him Starbucks Christmas Blend. It won't get the laugh, but at least it's coffee.
I wrote more Christmas cards today and mailed them off. I feel like I'm trying desperately to reach out. Somehow, I got the idea - I think from a Murder, She Wrote episode - that if my house isn't full of cards from friends it's a sure sign I have a tragically lonely life. The episode I'm thinking of had a murder victim whose bulletin board contained only a lottery ticket: no postcards from friends, no mementos - I don't remember the exact line... With that stuck in my mind, plus the "small can of tuna and half a loaf of bread... unblinking light on the answering machine..." thing (oh, I know I should put a link here to the entry where I wrote about that but I'm not going to look it up now - it's the middle of the night ). So here I am in my lonely hovel with my lonely cat and his lonely litterbox and no answering machine at all because I have voice mail. Friends call and I'm not home. Friends move to Italy or Worcester. The nieces will each be in therapy an extra twenty years because of me and there won't even be therapy then because managed care will have driven out all the social workers to the fields to harvest sugar cane for the revolution...
musing #3
Only 8 shopping days 'til Christmas. Rejoice rejoice Ema-a-an-u-el....has ransomed captive re-e-tail sales...
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