Mulching Time Again

All these cameras, and I don't have any new photos to show.  Why is that?  No matter.  I don't.  This is an old photo from my trip to Paris years ago.  It is a wonderful photo, I think, compositionally, emotionally.  It makes sense but. . . what?  

There are famous photographers who make a living taking such photographs.  Selavy.  

No new photos and no new stories.  Well. . . there is one I am not prepared to tell.  Maybe two.  But, in an effort to be more "alive," I did take my camera out to make a photo of a store I passed in a distant part of town last night at sunset.  It advertised that it had just about everything--cigarettes, beer, wine, vapes, snacks--that a person could want.  

The photo turned out to be nothing.  At least the jazz radio station was featuring Count Basie and Duke Ellington.  

That was after a dinner of takeout Thai--coconut chicken soup, spring rolls, and sticky mango rice.  I was lazy and didn't want to cook.  

I guess I'm telling this set of events backwards.  Earlier, I went to a different coffee shop, a "cool, hip" chain with a lovely interior, just to change things up.  New experiences, though I've been there before, but not for a couple years.  And yes, the interior was cool and lovely and I sat at the bar and wrote, but the pretty counter woman never came down to ask me what I would like.  She glanced at me and stood lazily doing nothing at the other end of the bar.  Maybe I was supposed to go down there to order.  Maybe.  But. . . really?  The crowd wasn't big and it wasn't my kind.  There was no levity, no fun.  They dressed in standard clothing with faces buried in computer screens.  I sat at my end of the bar and wrote for half an hour about the travails of my life, then packed up and left not a kopek poorer.  

I won't go back.  I much prefer the frivolous goofiness of the Cafe Strange.  By and large, the eyes are more alive.  People giggle.  There is a different self-awareness.  

The big news, though, is that at ten o'clock, I got this.  

It's time to Cowboy Up once again.  I've decided, however, that I will be a smarter cowboy this year and won't do the whole thing in one day.  I am going to do it in pieces over then next two or three days.  I don't want to do what I've been doing in the past just so I can brag on the blog.  I'm going to use the old noggin. . . I think.  

There is that, and there is my mother, and there is the thing I am not telling you yet.  And still there is the scanning and the editing and the getting things ready for the website and the shopping photos around for an exhibition.  The exhibition part could be a ways off, but I should be able to begin setting up a website (not a blog) by the end of the month.  This is hours and hours and more untold hours of work.  

That appears to be what I have now--work.  

It is Friday.  The weather is nice and the days are long.  And so, let's get with our wheelbarrow and pitchfork to work.  

Oy.