Another Day

Originally Posted Saturday, October 11, 2014

I'm supposed to be in NYC today.  Was supposed to leave Thursday, actually.  I had a ticket and a hotel, but something went wrong.  The trip didn't seem right.  Supposed to.  Bad choice of words.  I was to.  Now, however, I sit before my computer on a sunny southern morn.  It is the way of things. 

I will try to make today count, nonetheless, but I feel nonplussed.  I like the word.  It is its own antonym, much as "literally" has become.  The ways of language cannot be controlled by linguists and grammarians.  It is controlled by common usage.  Word yo. 

It is Pride weekend in my town today.  I asked my friend at work what he was doing this weekend.

"Getting laid," he said. 

"Do they have a booth for that?" 

Perhaps I will go to the park and take pictures as I would have in NYC.  Perhaps I'll move in closer and ask people's permission.  Young men kissing and holding hands, older men smiling, women in love. . . .  But I will be an outsider, an observer if not an intruder and that might not be kosher, at least as far as my own feelings go.  I might be doing more than documenting, but then again, aren't I/we always?  Agenda laden, we are, and I am not averse to pushing buttons. 

"What's the big red one do?"  (link)

I may just get into the car soon and drive away.  I want to make a tour of the south, drive to Nashville and Memphis and Oxford and New Orleans.  What could be more relaxing than driving the south with no agenda, no purpose but simply to look and see?  I know I've said it a thousand times before, but this is the good time of year to do it and I haven't taken a vacation for a very long time now.  I don't even have to plan this one.  Just get into the car and go on a moment's notice.  It should be fun. 

New York will have to wait for another time.  It will be there, I supposed, though it is a different place every time you go.  Soon it will be nothing but billionaire's billion dollar condos.  For all their money, they are not really so very much fun and they are stealing the life from the city from what I've read.  There will be no more bookstores, no more strange, unusual specialty shops.  NYC will be clean and slick as a razor.  I guess I'd better hurry. 

Now I must motivate myself to move and make use of the day at hand.  I only have so many of them and very few of them free.  Dribble, dribble, dribble.