Not the Most Important

Ahh, well, this morning I was to have had an important call.  A rather noteworthy company down in Sao Paulo, we’d reschedule from last week till this week.  Last week they’d rescheduled at the last moment.  I’d reviewed a bunch of case material I found from the Harvard Business Library about this company.  I dutifully reread the initial two proposal suggestions I’d sent them and this morning I, somewhat less earnestly repeated the process, and of course, they cancelled again at the last minute.  I am obviously not the most important matter before them. 

Nothing a little bike ride won’t cure.  A fine sunny day and I’m out while it is still the morning light.  Out passed the point where Huguenot Street cuts back across the rail trail it becomes deeply wooded.  There’s a low area that seems to always flood and despite this there are dozens of strong trees that grow up from the water, causing me to think that this flooding is a recent development as they otherwise would never have stood a chance. 

Out on the bridge over the Wallkill there are twenty or more ducks upriver in the sunlight.  I try to photograph them, but it isn’t easy to capture more than their forms as shadows.  I become amused by the metal of the bridge itself and photograph nuts and bolts and the main supports that rise up from the stone foundations.  Snapping photos in black and white forces me to focus on shapes and I shoot picture after picture of the treetops back near the pathway off the trail at my place. 

All the while I am accompanied by Franz Joseph Haydn, Piano Sonatas Number 1.  Another confession, I generally spell this composers surname incorrectly.  Back up in the house, I’ve taken Danny Shields out of the bathroom.  My mom had procured me a copy of his book “Reality Hunger” a collection of aphorisms and meditations on writing, which I’d been considering here and there until I was suddenly hooked and brought the book to the living room where I made the time to finish it properly.  “All memory is fiction” for example caught me off-guard and had me chewing and chewing until this moment just now.  Or at least it seemed so. 

Thursday, 01/09/20