and be careful, if you’re contemplating gathering in opposition to anything, that those so-called “anarchists” won’t magically appear to screw you up, creating propaganda opportunities for the Other Side, incarceration and/or worse.  Gee, who ARE they working for, anyway?  The Feckless Bastards of Intimidation?

Same as it ever was…

[For a little refresher in governmental activism and its long shadowy fallout I might at this point recommend Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” [1990] for those so inclined.*]

Meanwhile, here in the scenic suburbs, life goes on between storms, with exceptions

such as a foray

into Oakland to two friends’ openings fortuitously coincident with the cancellation of the monthly ‘artwalk’, allowing us to miss the hordes, the mimes, the foodtrucks and the impossibility of parking

though we did get a taste of the depressing warrens of tiny aspirant galleries stocked for the most part with depressingly awful aspirant art, fortunately offset by our friends’ more thoughtful and accomplished works as well as a swell dinner.

Saturday brought us visitors from afar – Santa Cruz, Chicago and London – for a walk which

with neither dogs nor bicycles allowed for lots of shiny pictures between squalls

culminating in wines, dinner and observations…all very fine

and having their eyes on the work was at least as fine for me as the rain has been for our moss garden.

Come morning we discovered some of the eyes had remained behind, quietly through Sunday,

continuing damp through Monday as well; the much-vaunted rains, continual.

M

*to be re-read, by me, too, as soon as I can extricate myself from Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan  Novels.