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Sunday July 2, 2000 ". . . I am always looking out for new friends---assaying for friendship. . . . There is no more delightful adventure than an expedition into a rich, many-sided personality. Gradually, over a long probation--for deep minds are naturally reticent--piece after piece is added to the geography of your friend's mind, and each piece pleases or entertains, while in return you let him steal away piece after piece of your own territory, perhaps saving a bit up here and there . . . . and then letting it go unexpectedly. It's a delightful reciprocity." W. N. P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man
and you are a bad speller
ties and other discards |
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staying busy Yesterday I felt a little dull, just drifting. Determined to seem,if not be, more active, I start with a dog walk. I snap a digital picture of some graffiti for the journal. We go all the way to 39th and Lamar or so and back, but we stop at Upper Crust for a snack and a Café au lait. I squirt water in the dogs' mouths while SuRu goes in. A woman wearing a Villandry T-shirt (a chateau in the Loire) reads a book. A woman reads the paper and drinks coffee but races for the bus when it pulls up. Two young and skinny mothers come up pushing their performance strollers. "The eXtreme baby-pushing team," says Ru. "I was thinking they couldn't take the babies inside, but I guess they can," I say, looking at the very types of dogs for which such rules are made. In fact, they quickly return to the sidewalk and leave the strollers, but take the babies. The two or three mile walk and a shower make me feel good and energetic. No one is home, but me. FFP is at Westwood. The parents are at church. (They tell me when they get home that they went to Sunday School, too, and then found an IHOP, their favorite after church place.) I watch the Wimby coverage and old movies. I sort old slides. I completely dispense with the back newspapers with the exception of a couple of old Circuits and Living sections. Mom and Dad take turns coming into my messy office, sitiing in the extra comfortable chair. Mom wants something to read to 'learn about computers.' I have a copy of 'Internet for Dummies' that we got free with some software. The Internet is primarily what she wants to do. E-mail really, I think. Maybe she isn't sure. I know she wants me to set up a laptop to play Solataire and do e-mail. Need to do that. To do that I need to clear enough table space to set it up in here where I can connect it to our network. Easier said than done. The parents go off to visit a friend in an assisted living center in the afternoon. They are entertaining themselves well. I get a surface clean. It's a card table that I set up in my office and haven't ever managed to give up due to the additional horizontal filing surface. I do get things a bit neater in here. I go through yet another slide tray and organized the slides into archival sheets. There is a picture of some friends of mine from college. And their daughter. She is a babe in arms. A couple of weeks ago I had a drink with that baby. She's a vibrant young business woman. There are two slides showing other people along with me taking pictures from another angle. In one I'm using my treasured Polaroid color pack camera. In another, a borrowed 8MM movie camera. Not Super8, 8MM. I recently came across my cache of these films. Must get them transferred to video tape to see them. No projector around anymore. It quit working and I gave it to some young kid during a garage sale years ago. Forrest cleans out a couple of drawers and uncovers old running shorts, socks and a large number of old ties. He needs the drawer space for his workout clothers since Westwood doesn't do laundry. They are destined for the ARC pickup this week. I am inspired to clean out some stuff myself. But not so inspired that I actually do it. My quote from Barbellion today reminds me of my friendships and my marriage. The layering of information, the exchange of confidence until you can anticipate lots of things, but still find new veins of thought in your companion. I fire up an old IBM Think Pad for Mom to use for Solitaire. She learned to use the little pointer thing and the mouse keys before. She thinks she can learn her way around computers. I have doubts. I start a WEB browser for her. I've set up an e-mail account for her. I gather up a few things to actually read, yes read. Some magazines and the newspaper sections that I couldn't throw away without reading. I join my extended family for a leftover dinner, television ("Law and Order" "Notting Hill") and meanwhile read. I never read enough. Certainly can't get to the books I want for fighting through the papers and magazines. Not to mention the things I read on the WEB. I go to bed and read some more until Forrest comes to bed. Old New Yorkers and some magazines on Digital Cameras and Computer Graphics. |
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