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April 13, 2000
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easter egg hunt for adults We are all looking for something. The company which leases my company its space here in Austin occasionally gives a party for us. During business hours. Today it was an Easter Egg Hunt. With, I heard, beer and Mexican food. And a band. I could hear the band, but I never went outside for the food, drink or Easter eggs. Not because I'm against such. I just didn't find the inclination. They had to send out an e-mail earlier in the week saying that the Easter egg hunt was for employees only, no children. Gee, imagine people thinking an Easter egg hunt would be for children! Today's quote is from a book recommended by John Bailey on his site. My copy arrived in the mail today. It had been opened. I think Forrest was hoping it was his new copy of the Whitman book I ordered. He gave his copy, improbably, to the son of a victim. At bn.com they said they'd ship in 'one to two weeks.' Seems it's been that. I can't remember when I ordered the Barbellion. It was a while back though. I tend to order things that take a while.
[Note: The following paragraph won't make much sense and, if you read it before, the links won't quite work the same. A couple are broken because of the removal of items from my site. That's because of this entry in John Bailey's diary. I'd be fascinated to know how it came to be, but I suspect I will not. A mystery. A conundrum. And, besides, I know all too well what day of the week it is. As I said below...life's an illusion after all. Ed.] I observed the most remarkable thing tonight while browsing journals. I love the pictures people use of their everyday encounters. The above-mentioned John Bailey makes digital pictures and works them over in Photoshop. I was looking at an entry of his with a picture of a small house in a field. I was only a few minutes later reading Late Night Snacks and, in an entry, saw a picture Steve took that reminded me remarkably of John's. From Pennsylvania to the English countryside there was this remarkable similarity. Uncanny. So uncanny that I have placed them side by side on a page for you. Since I have cited them above, this is probably only a bit of a theft. (Steve, John, feel free to complain if you wander in here.) But I think it's amazing that these two guys, a couple of days apart put up such similar images. As if, thousands of miles apart, they were somehow seeing in their cameras a pretty similar image. In Image Ready, I flipped John's horizontally (which I haven't done here). Even more uncanny. As if life is an illusion and the illusionists ran out of unique ways to tweak what the participants are seeing. Ok...maybe it isn't THAT remarkable. But there is something about these personal pictures, that is fascinating, isn't it so? And my picture of the day shows a lawn chair flying through the air. Actually, it's suspended over a pot on a rod with vines growing up on it. And it's because of this chair, in that bizarre way things go, that our band has grown so. A long story that. When I got home from work today, Forrest was working in the yard. We are giving a party (a benefit for Austin Lyric Opera) on Saturday. So I changed and pulled up a few volunteer trees and weeds. I don't do much. Forrest does a lot. It looks pretty good out there. Oh, sure, there is always something more to do. But it's basically beautiful. "Is that poison ivy?" FFP asks. I stop, remembering the itching, the eyes, the Predisone which made my heart want to escape my chest. I went inside and took a shower. I don't really think I'll get poison ivy. I never think things will happen to me and yet I worry in my own way. Memo to the driver of the silver Lexus: I let you in front of me. You dodged into the next lane, narrowly avoiding colliding with someone. Then you dodged back in front of me, crossed the white line to get in the exit lane (lucky no car was entering, huh?) and raced off to Northland. When you arrived at the Rec Center and turned in, I was right behind you. Were you supposed to be there at six? You were there at eight minutes after. Exactly the time you would have been there if you'd simply driven safely along in the spot I gave you. Without risking a collision or breaking a law. So there. I saw a remarkable movie on the Independent Film Channel tonight. "Two Deaths." It's one of those movies set around a meal. Of course the meal is in 1989 Romania in the middle of armed conflict. And the host is a sadist. Lots of blood and death.
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"The true test of happiness is whether you know what day of the week it is." W. N. P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man |
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chair in suspense
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