The Days of Our Lives

Soap operas seemed like a somewhat

scary alternate reality to me as a child

A lugubrious monochrome world

of subtleties of emotion and relationship

that just didn't exist in our own home,

A dreary promise of the endless

unhappiness, desire, betrayal, unhappiness

and interminable ennui of adult life

Never watched them

no one in my home growing up

They were a basin of dull life

where you went around in circles

until being pulled down the drain

the courtroom docket on Perry Mason

It all designed to see soap

cosmetics and labor-avoidance

while spell-binding the gullible

with the neurotic fears

of the housewife


My life has been a struggle

to swim upstream

away from the daytime dramas

the sad life they suggest

Giant portable Cannabis grow unit

outside the convention center

Monday morning

Oakland is a kaleidoscope

of the unexpected

Chatted with this conventioneer

maybe it was his grow trailer,

I mentioned

Sessions going after

banks that handle the

 Cannabis industry funds,

We agreed that capitalism runs

the game, government

is just parliamentary procedure

Normal USA

Tribune Tower

in a graphic artist's

imagination

A vast improvement

over previous conventions

held here

I'm on my way

Travelling lakeside

Gloomy downtown

and yet metaphysical

Bee sequence

Down by the estuary

endless life



Live by the book
die by the sword
it's life and life only

 Au Printemps

2.

Haven't seen Citizen Kane

on the big screen but once

I may go Friday night

they have an organ that rises

out of the stage

 cartoons and a raffle

for $5 a ticket

Uptown Station

Built by Uber

Oakland was bilked by Uber

Promise of jobs greatly

reduced

Used to shop with the ex at

 an Emporium located there
soon to be
Uptight Station

And we shopped this

great serpentine-tiled

I Magnin building

Now there's a swank café

on the ground floor

All of this slated

for eventual revival

RAY's everyday coffee

It's superb

every cup is superb

 Monkey blanket

over a baby on a cold day

bus through challenging

MLK

Boarded up

old housing stock

who cares about

the structures

It's the fate of
the great old trees
that really concerns me,
I've seen too much of
 California's arboreal legacy
be lost for private gain

Building site
where Biff's was
Several constructions
projects have been torched

 A widespread
urban renewal
all at once after
years of dormancy
and neglect







A sidewalk garden
revealed a phantasm

At Manila and Pleasant Valley
a pleasant young girl
talking into a phone
held horizontal
waited for the 12 bus
 with me




I have this sort of thing
a couple of times a year

That suits me fine

But it's fun to look
and to capture a few
extravagant desert images


Where's Wayne Thibaud?

The Mothership!
the Mothership!


(followed by)


It's the blimp!
It's the blimp!