note books

It was the turn of the season and half the leaves had fallen and the low hills and valleys still blazed with color but the sun had lost its bite and now shone soft and yellow during the last warm days. I pottered in my garden, a man of retirement age not yet ready to lay down, I pottered and I contemplated and moved things around, stones and  branches and pulled, uprooted Bishops Weed and made compost piles and felt the earth and thought about planting garlic. I think he first commented on the garden and how the yard had changed since he'd delivered groceries to the old woman who’d lived upstairs. She worked as a caretaker at that retirement home on the hill when it was a hospital.  What happened to her?" he asked.  “She died a while back”, I said.  "You retired?”, he asked and I had to think about that again and realized that in many ways I was and I answered affirmatively but noted I still did a few things. I was hanging on I guess and winter is coming. He...

On the road again and the feeling was intoxicating. I rented my small houses in inner Melbourne.  I had money in the bank. A fistful of traveler’s checks. My cameras. A documentary film proposal.  And a reel of film to show potential backers.  I felt ready for another adventure. I was flying away, escaping, rising into the clouds fortunate and relieved to be flying solo.  Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport faded into the hazy distance and the blue Pacific Ocean glinted in the harsh Australian light as I headed for America.  I wondered when I might return. My plans were open ended, to travel to San Francisco, and then south to Los Angeles, keep traveling into Mexico and South America and then make my way back to New York City. Hopefully have a film project by then,  It’s a long flight to America from the other side of the world, almost twenty-four hours and I decided to break the journey in the French protectorate of Tahiti. The French invaded in 1842 and hadn...