(College room-mate? I have no clue.)

I lacked focus all day. The problem- one of them, anyway- was the large box that had arrived from the Scan Café people out in California. They run a decent service in digitizing old analogue photos, and they had done a pretty good job on the first load of 35mm slides I had sent them in desperation to try to reduce the amount of junk from the estate.

I dreaded looking at this batch. Sometime during the chaotic summer I had thrown all the photographs that filled the bookcases to overflowing one of similar size, printed the label from the website and dropped it off at the UPS store.

It had been months since I had seen the box and was actually at peace with having got rid of my history. Quite liberating, actually, now that I realize the ultimate fate of all this crap we accumulate.

Now it was all back. Rhonda the Concierge propped it up by the front door, and now I have to deal with it again. The pictures themselves were back, including the 35mm slides that I recall dumping out of their well-organized carousels into a loose pile in a backpack while participating in the orgy of discard at Raven and Big Mama’s house last Spring.

Tentatively, I opened the box and removed the four CDs that contained the digital versions of the analogue masters. I sighed. They would all have to be organized, again.

I thought that there was no way to live this all over again, not in real time, but the urge to at least sample one of the discs and see if the process had worked overcame me.

Some must have come from the “doubles” we sent off to Raven and Big Mama- I had not seen them in nearly thirty years.

(This image is from the North Shore of Hawaii with my older son and Big Tom, R.I.P. I think it was Thanksgiving of 1984.)

I got lost in the images, some of them well focused, and others not. Remember when you did not know what the image looked like until the prints came back from the drug store? I was equally at sea with how to re-catalogue the images so that they had some coherence and sense. I glanced up as the shadows lengthened and realized I had lost the afternoon.

I shut off the computer and left the North Korea of 1996 and went over to Willow.

(Vic is bemused on the central square of Pyongyang, DPRK. 1996.)

It was Buffalo Night, last Friday of the month, and Tracy O’Grady was putting on the traditional pub fare from her hometown on the east end of Lake Erie. That is always a draw for the regulars who have a taste for her take on the regional cuisine, and there were old and new faces along the bar.

“How was your day?” growled Old Jim, surrounded by noisy people as I slid onto the stool up the bar to his left.

“Weird. Been all over,” I said waving at Tex as he bustled up and down the bar providing refreshments to the Friday crowd.

“Like where?”

“North Korea. Vietnam. You know.”

“I don’t,” he said, taking a sip of Bud. “I know that I am going to be in Las Vegas, but that is a matter for tomorrow.”

(Laura, the other Jamie, John-with and Jerry the Barrister waiting on Buffalo comfort food.)

“Are you going to gamble?” I asked.

“Life is a gamble,” he responded, and reached out to the bucket where Tex had placed reinforcement Bud long-necks to minimize the inconvenience.

“No shit. Figure the odds.”

Original Jamie arrived, looking at her watch. “Bea said she would be here at five-fifteen.”

Jon-without smiled wryly. “That is probably a goal, rather than a statement of objective fact.”

(Buffalo comfort food. Photo Jon-without.)

“I imagine it is a matter of focus,” I said.

Bea arrived in her own time, looking vivacious as always, and took the gentle ribbing about her timeliness with good grace. Jamie arranged for one of Kate Jansen’s wonderful cakes- chocolate with an Amaretto cream icing- and after the wreckage of the main course was shoveled away, we sang as she blew out the single candle.

(The Birthday Girl and lovely Jamie).

I had my week’s supply of carbs long before I finished the generous slice Bea carved off the cake.

I arrived home in time to attempt to watch the third episode of the quirky Sherlock Holmes update series “Elementary.”

Fourth time is the charm, I thought, and I think I made it all the way to the end. For the life of me though, I am not sure what the story was. Something about a search for a knock-off Julian Assange? I think that was it.

I woke up early, but it wasn’t my fault. I still felt the sugar shock of Kate’s wonderful cake, and there was a vague recollection of some awful dream there in the deep darkness.

I could not recall the specifics. It seemed to have been a combination of the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act or the communications with the former spouse. Secretary Gates and Secretary Hagel were there as referees, and urging their retirees to sign up for health care elsewhere so they could purchase more F-35 fighters.

I don’t know where I stood on any of those, except I knew they were all going to cost serious money.

I was up anyway, though out of focus, so I got out of bed and turned on the MacBook Pro. Then I began moving my life around into new folders.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303