A Midsummer's Sunday Afternoon

I realized only yesterday that today would be the longest day of the year. I should be aware of things like "solstice" in advance, but somehow, I ain't.

It's a strange notion to know that days will start to shorten, incrementally, as the planet continues turning and the part you inhabit is beginning to angle away from the sun. Since I live in San Francisco and our best weather is still a couple months out, it's not really an issue, but for folks like my friend Charles and his clan who make their home in Minneapolis, he can't help himself from becoming aware that he just passed a sign that says, WINTER: ONLY TEN WEEKS AWAY!!

It just ain't right to sequence thoughts that way, when Wimbledon is just beginning, but there you have it.

Headed to MOMA Sunday afternoon for the Robert Frank exhibit of photos. Mid century American misery and joy, a time when folks lived without air conditioning, traveled by Greyhound and gazed hard-eyed at the world around them as well as at a future that was very far off indeed.

These photos feel more real to me in a way than the world around me now does. I think it must have something to do with how you take in images into your brain when you're growing up; the mechanism in those first years is so profound and powerful that they will never leave and are embedded forever. Which is kinda reassuring actually.

Yet I also had the sense that we're only here for less than a second it seems like; time has a way of collapsing into itself - totally a Joseph Torchia/Kryptonite Kid moment: "Good mourning, Superman."

Before leaving I went to the cafe for something to eat. Earlier in the day in some weird, random interaction a dude I met online (allegedly 27) offered to buy me ice cream if I would let him have his way with me me for 30-45 minutes non-stop. Ha, like my ass could be bought by a frozen dairy dessert. I informed him as a general rule, I don't eat ice cream. "You can have any kind you want!" was his response. Anyhow, in the cafe there was a piece of carrot cake under the glass that said, "eat me." So I did.

And found myself riveted by the woman sitting a few tables away, so i snapped some pix as subtly as possible. And while they don't do justice to her palpable inner tenacity nor how really red her lipstick was, you can see that she knows how to wear a hat. Click to make larger






That said, it wasn't until looking at the photos that I saw the almost epic facial expressions on the Asian woman sitting one table over.