Author: Jeff

I have eight prints to give away. They’re 6″x8″s made on a Kodak printer at a drugstore. The print quality of most of them is great, but I’d rate a couple of them at just pretty good. Most are photos that have been posted here at one time or another.

The subjects of the photos are:

• seagulls (taken)
• Cold K (taken)
• a winter hat
• windows
• stickers (taken)
• a crustacean
• a famous Italian explorer
• a Lincoln administration cabinet member

If you’d like one, claim one of the items listed above in the comments and send me an email (jeffATstruatDOTcom) with your address. Also, let’s do some fake marketing research, in your comment tell me: If you left a bowl of jelly beans out to be picked over for a few days, which color would the largest number of the leftovers be?

I give Tricia a flower. She gives me a cookie. I’m not saying the one gesture is a response to the other. But it has happened just like that more than once.

There’s a large furry hornet sitting in the grass next to me. It’s moving slow because of the cold or it’s busy with a patch of clover pollen. It’s hardly moving. I lay down to soak in some more sunlight, to recharge my head where doughy histamines have given way to foggy anti-histamines. I turn sometimes to poke at the hornet with my finger or my camera. Eventually it’s bothered enough that it jumps from between the grass blades and flies a few menacing circles around me, then bolts.

Here’s a March calendar for you to print out:
Letter Size
A4 Format

There are no birds visible outside Tricia’s window but one, a tiny bird perched at the tip of the tallest tree. That bird hasn’t moved in awhile and I’m beginning to think it might be a leaf. When I look away and then back, it’s in a different position, but it still isn’t moving.

Busy. Here’s a rushed print calendar for February:
Letter Size
A4 Format

“You know how you associate certain albums with certain times and places? This one reminds me of living in my old studio apartment. The one I mentioned before.”

I feel a similar association with a song that comes on later. But the one overwhelming thing that this song makes me recall is itself. The song is timeless.

When it ends, iTunes plays through the rest of the album. Then, before moving on to something else, it chooses to play that song again. The feeling of hearing it rushes over me as strongly as ever, but the associations I feel have shifted. There is still the song, but now I also picture the moment we heard it the last time.

Here’s the print calendar for January 2006:
Letter Size
A4 Format

Dancing with my neighbors in the entryway of someone’s apartment, I catch sight of myself in a mirror and notice that I still can’t dance. My head bobs to one rhythm, my feet shuffle to another, and neither of these motions resemble the tempo of the song that’s playing. So I reposition myself directly in front of the mirror, turn away from it, and keep moving.

• If you have a particular understanding of one aspect of world affairs and you believe that the majority of the public’s understanding of this matter is more or less consistent with yours, and if one day the media confirms your understanding of this matter but reports it as new information, then you were misinformed.
• If a barber tries to put product in your hair, don’t resist. He’s probably right to do it, and you can wash it out when you get home anyway.
• Something about friendship, distance and making space, time and loss. It’s hard to explain.
• The “Robin laid an egg” line in the schoolyard version of Jingle Bells is a pun. I never realize that until last week. You know, I knew the younger brother of the guy who added the “Joker got away” line. He was in my class. True story.
• Chas, I never answered your question. The thing is I don’t miss my childhood much, or anyway I don’t miss it often. My chilhood was easy enough and happy enough. I’m sentimental about it at times and am always curious about other people’s childhoods. But I think I prefer being an adult more than I did being a child. I think I’m getting better at it too.
• Calendar tomorrow.

Okay. Enough reflecting. I’m going to go kick 2006’s ass. You got my back?