Watch Your Step

Ili made me take this picture, too.  Umbrella as sunshade.  Bumbershoot as parasol?  She says she loves this photograph.

Like a sabbatical, my week off dribbles away like water through my fingers.  I did little yesterday.  I did nothing.

I can't let people smile when I photograph them.  Or, rather, I need to do both.  People like to smile, apparently.  They do it as soon as you raise the camera like you are taking pictures for the yearbook.  Well. . . I am not smiling in my yearbook picture. . Maybe a little Mona Lisa grin.  I need to look back and see if I was the only one.  Maybe others are happier than I.  Who knows.

Ili sleeps.  I get up early, my body aching--right shoulder and hip, left elbow, lower back.  In the darkest morning, I feel as if I have been getting the shit kicked out of me all night.  I do not wish to get out of bed, but there is no choice.

Thank God I was not tempted to watch the Oscars.

I will make more pictures of strangers today, I hope.  It is better than being on Facebook or Instagram.  They are with you for a moment, then forever.

"The bikers are coming, the bikers are coming."

Drove past the Cabbage Patch on Saturday.  They are putting out the Port-o-lets in the big fields where thousands of scooter trash will camp.  They come looking like comic book characters in super-villain costumes, a can of beer in one hand as they sit on wooden picnic tables or stand looking at some "rad chopper," rough looking women straddling the rear seat or, more often now, riding bikes of their own.  The police will not bother them, of course, for they are busy chasing down those dangerous skateboarders trying to use some abandoned warehouse steps as a playground.

The world is just weird.