What Are You Doing?

Man, I had a hard time yesterday making pictures.  It has been a long time since I shot "in the field," so to speak, and I managed to screw up all the camera settings so that I shot everything too wide open and too slow.  Nothing was in focus.  Everything was blurred.  It wasn't until late in the day that I realized what I was doing and what needed to be done.

It was a beautiful day at the beach.  There is certainly no recession here.  The streets were full, the restaurants crowded.  I took a walk on a now-popular beach early in the morning with all the people my age.  Nobody under the age of thirty was up yet, of course.  After my walk on the beach, I came back to my relatives house to shower, then I was out for lunch on an upscale square by the bay, happy, tacky, and prosperous.   The line at the Cuban restaurant I like was around the block, but I squeezed through and went to the little bar as I have done for years.  It even seemed the bartenders there remembered me.  I ordered chicken and yellow rice and a glass of Sangria.  Felt smug as the Christmas carols played behind me.  Christmas in the tropics.

After lunch, I walked around the square trying to capture "the mood."  What else was there to do?  Privilaged children of prosperous parents waited impatiently for ice cream outside the numerous shops that lined the square while relatives took pictures with their phones to post as quickly as possible to Facebook. I was nervous, of course, being a man without a woman or a child.  I may have been the only one, suspicious as a rabid dog or a gypsy come to steal the babies.  If they only knew.

I soon tired of this usual scene, though, and headed back to the downtown section that on the Friday after Thanksgiving seemed simply abandoned though it was truly waiting for the sun to set, the fabulous restaurants with their white linen tables and tuxedoed servers standing at rigid attention.

There is something fabulous about an abandoned downtown in the late afternoon that I cannot resist.  After walking with the unfortunate who peopled the lesser bars serving happy hour beers, I found a street side couch with a pretty waitress who was willing and even happy to bring me a vodka and tonic.  She managed it with aplomb.

Later, back at the house, all the t.v.s were blaring, everyone glued to some news story or another, shooters everywhere.  Endless opinions swirled around as the leftover turkey was served from a soup tureen over noodles.  Luckily, I had a bottle of vodka in the car.

But I cannot write it now.  I can't think.  The clan is up and there is an endless chatter.  They want to know what I am doing.

You know something?  Me, too.