project 365 #244: c and theo by the old bridge in the woods

project 365 #244: charles and theo by the old bridge in the woods
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

My friend C and I and the dogs went hiking yesterday afternoon, up past Candler to this trail where we'd gone once before, years ago. It's a steep trail and very overgrown, which always makes me wary of bears, although we did have the dogs with us, but I have absolutely no clue how the dogs would react to bears. Anything from puppy affection to abject terror to simply refusing to acknowledge them - all possibilities are equally likely and I hope I never find out. But we saw no bears; instead, we came to an old bridge with a hole right through it that C climbed down through while I, more cautious, scrambled around the banks and rocks of the mostly dry creek to take pictures from downstream. It was a nice hike and then we went on over to S' house where she was having yes, another dinner party, which was tremendous fun.

The other good thing I did yesterday was go to work. I actually kind of like going to work on the weekend when I'm not expected or supposed to be there, because it's quiet and cool and I can actually work with no distractions. I finished the newsletter and felt very proud of myself - I taught myself InDesign in the process and the newsletter looks okay. Not bad, really: I wrote 90% of it and edited the other 10% and imported the various bits of data into lists and took all the photographs and did all the layout and design. Yay me, I have mad skillz, or at least I felt like I did when I left work.

I got an unexpected phone call from an old friend late last night too, and he sounded good and we talked about inconsequential things for about an hour. I was surprised to hear his voice. But glad. It's funny the way phone calls can shake and rock your small universe and the ones that do are always the ones that you don't expect at all: you don't glance at the screen to see who's calling, you don't wonder, or you partly think that it's someone from the party you just left calling to tell you that your camera is still there or something like that. I suppose it's been over a hundred years now of human evolution that the ringing phone can skew the universe; I wonder if, or how, really, we've changed in that time. Like everything, I suppose it's just speeded time up: from the courier on the lathered horse with the parchment missive or maybe just the black fletched arrow coming out of his back (message enough) to the multi page letter in elegant script that your great great great grandmother read by the window in a small room with too much velvet furniture to the restless getting native and sending out easily misinterpretable drum signals ("Og say, M. . m. . mouse coming?" "Mouse? What Og mean?" (ground shakes) "M. . . mm. . mammoth!" (all trampled)) the message gets through, it's just that maybe there was more time to assimilate it then. Or not. It's just the message and the medium, all getting tangled up together.