365 Photo Project - Day 65

Taken: March 6, 2010, approx. 5:30 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.


I'm still hanging around the house. Still hacking and slouching. But I wrote most of the afternoon on my laptop (yay for progress), talked on the phone with the folks and with an old, dear friend, and took a long, hot shower this evening. I'm starting to believe that my old self is somewhere in there. Maybe she'll come out soon. Maybe even tomorrow.

It was a lovely day today. I'm running out of seasonal descriptions but suffice to say the blues were true, the greens vibrant, the scents on a very fluffy little breeze came with a hint of floral. It all feels like a good omen.

When you’re fighting off something like a bad cold, there’s a real tendency to talk to yourself a lot. I mean the inner talking to yourself. There you are, sitting alone in a room that smells vaguely of menthol, sitting all alone because, well, you're contagious and your sinus headache makes reading, watching TV, surfing the internet or even talking at all impossible. You end up your own captive audience. Nothing to do but close your eyes and listen.

It’s pretty trippy stuff, least it is for me. Low-grade fevers always bring a fascinating variable to the game. Sometimes I write stuff down just to look at it later. Most of the time, it just makes me laugh. Every so often, there’s a gem in there somewhere.

The one thing that never changes is how quickly I get sick of listening to that voice. Not very Zen of me, I know. But every time I think I could be one of those live-in-the-deep-woods loners, I remember how bored I get hearing myself in my head. When I finally feel better, all I want is to get the hell out of the house and to hear somebody else talk for a change. Anybody.

I'm a writer so I'm like my pug in this photo -- I'm curious. Everybody's heard that old saw about "writing what you know" but unless you're someone like James Lee Burke and lived several lifetimes in one, you're gonna run out of things you know pretty quick. So, you gotta get out among the civilians and steal yourself some lifetimes. Which means, you can't just listen to that voice in your head I guess.

I sat on the porch during the very last moments of the day today -- that's how near-perfect it was outside. There was a big cloud hanging over the horizon and I thought it would make a nice image. But I didn't like the way the photos I took turned out. I went back out, sat down and waited for inspiration. And then Chamuco, the young black pug of ours, came padding around the corner. When he jumped up to examine what was on that chair, I had my photo of the day.

Shot this with the K100D and a 200mm lens. Edited in Photoshop.