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Tuesday January 23, 2001
"Nobody loves jazz. People love Miles or Dixieland or Bop or Ellington or Swing or Free Jazz or Fusion or two, three or four of the above --- but nobody loves jazz. It's too varied." Ron David, Jazz for Beginners
Gems await polishing, Cape Province, SA.
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what all those little pictures mean Stayed up too late, got up too late. Then I started too slow. Started on my work e-mail at home. Then started to work. Gas warning light on. (On my old car I would just go and go when it sat on empty. No warning light. I bitched about not having the light, but I never ran out of gas. Now I'm looking at it, thinking, 'what do you know?') Go to convenience store around the corner. Delighted that it reads credit card. Last time I had to go inside. Then it pumps so s-l-o-w-l-y. It is doing about a gallon a minute or less. So I just give up after five bucks or so. Then, on Mopac, I'm behind a car doing fifteen under the speed limit. Kind of erratic, too. Finally pass it on 183. Car is, um, from the School for the Blind and Vision-Impaired. I take it all as a signal to slow down. What the heck. At work at 9:35, I can't find a place to park except on the third floor. This gives me a s-l-o-w tour of all the pickups and SUVs driven everyday to a software shop by drivers who are probably alone with a briefcase as cargo. Some disappointments at work. In myself and in others and in the system. But it's only a job. Right? Lunch at Mom's with SuRu. They eat simple food. Kind of boring. But good. Salad, pork chops, potato casserole, fruit salad. Mom wants to know what 'all the little pictures mean.' That would be, I suspect the icons on her Start menu and desktop. Perhaps I should have hidden some things? Anyway, I vow to help her learn. "It's not in my book," she says. "That's because the book doesn't have Microsoft Works and all that, just Windows ME," I say. I know she doesn't understand exactly. But I say it anyway. FFP makes sole with dill and bananas and we have a salad with it and a Sauvignon Blanc. I talk to buddy Les on the phone. And to SuRu. We are too lazy to walk, SuRu and I, in the dark. 'Jazz' is on again. The story has arrived at Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Love those guys. In the process of cleaning out in here, I found a little notebook. Apparently, it lists the stuff I brought with me when I moved to Austin. In 1975. A sad and small list indeed. Lists contents of boxes, what I had movers pack save a few pieces of furniture. (A 3/4 bed mattreess and springs, a dresser and some cubes as I remember. Perhaps I had a chair but I don't remember it. A smal B&W TV. A cheap stereo.) Heavy on books, computer manuals and junk. I had little of value. A lot of the stuff should have been discarded. When I drove my car (a beat-up VW beetle) down, you will be happy to know I had a sleeping bag, a spare fan belt and assorted books and screwdrivers in it according to this manifest. It's kind of sad that I attempted to write it all down. Maybe I came close to succeeding. I included lists of clothes I couldn't wear and the titles of books. I have more junk in this office than I owned then. I couldn't furnish a one bedroom apartment at the time. About the time I bought a couch and some bar stools to have something in the living room other than a bumper pool table, I married FFP. Our combined stuff strained a 600-sq-foot house but we got it in. Am I happier now. You bet. But not because of the stuff. Nope. Most of the stuff will appear useless and quaint in twenty-five years. |
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