Good stuff sneaks up around things’ edges these days: today’s were a slightly older, definitely grayer-haired-than-me guy in a kitted-out red Mercedes blaring “The Show” at volume in a mall parking lot, and fresh hot French fries I gifted a coworker, and cool air-conditioning on a warm sunny day.
A flashback soundtrack, driving there and back today to a bespectacled new waver’s still brilliant singles-pastiche album, tapping my steering wheel, wondering when I stopped being able to sing high harmonies but glad to have hung onto the rhythms and melodies, if not every single explicable lyric.
Out of office and into a car, floating along underneath the Central Freeway like a trapped balloon, then rising over hills and onto Oak, out the Panhandle, along Fulton into the Richmond, all for a story. Then back by way of Geary to Cathedral Hill, and down Gough and Tenth to, eventually, my desk.
Put the bottles down on the tabletop, sit too close to the speaker, you’re not here to retain some one-to-one model of reality, if the folks in the room and their choices are any indication. Some of us showing up’s the victory, after all. The song matters even if just an excuse to be heard.
I stopped at a restaurant at our local mall for takeout after catching that three-hour World War II movie and filling up my car’s grass tank. It was sunny and hot, with only a few cars parked, and I wondered how many white roofed multistory apartment buildings an enterprising developer could set up.
You won’t catch me far away on days off. Energy is everywhere, but I guess I’m just using it differently. Once what needs done is done, I’m on my way. Was I just wasting it earlier, or did every distraction simply serve the greater good, the later readiness, the better service. Signs seem uncertain!
<img src=”https://georgeous.org/uploads/2023/31b7a2caa4.jpg” width=”600″ height=”451″ alt=”A car is visible in a rear view mirror Friday, August 11, 2023 in North Broadway in Walnut Creek, California.”>
The distant fog gets closer during the slow slog home, with height and time to take in everything it is and everything that’s coming. In the meantime, there was chicken rice and conversation, early mistakes and slow recoveries, quick auction digests and a great version of an all-time classic album.
Sometimes it’s clouds in the air over this side of the bay, like yesterday, low stratus or marine layer fog streaming overhead. Sometimes it’s smoke, from a grass fire or a burning recreational vehicle or, like today, a manufacturing and recycling site alight. Mostly our luck holds until it doesn’t.
A good talk today at an auspicious time, an expansively reaching day at work with several good exchanges, an indecently good dinner from home, a comically clumsy field trip through a grocery store, a couple of songs nearly in my register at karaoke, with someone else’s particular choice appreciated.
I wound up following a country music band up the road several miles on my way home from work. I don’t remember seeing them on the bridge, so maybe I’ll look up their itinerary and see from which way they came. Working musicians bound for a show, more grit than glitter, less limelight and more glow.
<img src=”https://georgeous.org/uploads/2023/1ca6f6a383.jpg” width=”600″ height=”451″ alt=”A shiny touring bus with a trailer for the Hot Country Knights band rides eastbound in Interstate 80 lanes Monday August 7th 2023 in Berkeley California, approaching a elevated crossing bridge just before the Gilman Street off-ramp.”>
