Breathing

If you are watching the Ken Burns "Vietnam" series on PBS, I think you'll know what I mean.  It is good, but not good enough.  It gives a satisfactory retrospective of the war and the politics that surrounded it, but something is off.  It never quite gels, I think.  Oh, it is a "must watch" show, but it is not one of Burns' best.  Of course, what I love most about it are the photographs.  History is told differently through pictures than through writing.  It is incomplete and momentary, but it is evidence in a way that nothing else is.

I am saddened by the demise of magazines.  Jan Wenner is selling Rolling Stone.  The physical magazine will cease to exist, I think, just as Vanity Fair and the rest.  I love print.  It does something that a digital copy can't do.  I don't mind digital magazines as they can do things that print cannot.  There is something, however, about pictures and words on a piece of paper that thrills me.  Good pictures.  Good words.  Good paper.  And then, the "something else," the layout on the page, the fonts and design and the colors of the letters.  One of my favorite magazines was "Smart," something I cannot find online for some reason.  Terry McDonald was the editor.  I used to have every copy of the magazine.  A woman made me get rid of them and a bunch of other things I had saved a long time ago.  She is gone now.  I'd rather have the magazines.

I have taken to carrying a camera, a notebook, and a pen.  I want to make them work together, but so far, I have not done so much.  I'll keep carrying them, though, until I begin to utilize them to effect.  It is the only life that interests me any more.  That, art, literature, and music.  Food and drink, I guess, too.  Walking and breathing.  I must make a list, really, and keep it simple.  Life has gotten too complicated.  I've had too many things going on inside.  I lie in bed at night now and listen to my breath.  All the thoughts fall away. . . and then I am asleep.

Last night, I dreamed of a girl's track team.  Ha!  I was going to run with them in a 400 meter race.  I was half way round the track when they had crossed the finish line.  I was fat and stiff and slow, but I was happy and we all laughed and they didn't mind that I wasn't as fast as they.  They still liked me.

Random thoughts.  No continuity, no segues.  Just a picture and words on a screen.  A physical page might be a different thing.