A Reason to Be

 

“Everyone dies but you gotta find a reason to carry on…” Jason Isbell

 

Observer or watcher, which am I?  Guess I will go with observer.  

 

Recently the word watcher has gotten odd connotations from mass media.  Movies about creeps insinuating themselves into other peoples lives with malicious intent have used the word watcher in their titles.  Fantasy tales often have characters called watchers who live for inordinately long periods of time, centuries or millennia. These tend to be strong beings who intervene when humanity needs dire assistance. Nope, I am not either of those kinds of watcher. 

 

Observer doesn’t have those powerful connotations.  For observer, an online definition would be someone who sees or notices something but does not become entwined with that which is seen. Yeah, I am kind of like that, a stranger in a strange land. I wander Lisboa floating like a one of those pieces of dandelion fluff that  are carried on the wind for miles and miles. My eyes see but I take little action.

 

As I have shuffles around the streets of Lisbon, I’ve noticed humankind’s acts of artifice out of the corner of my eye.  A façade that remains from a century ago, or an alley that leads somewhere, my limited vision is drawn to these kinds of things. I cannot go where most of the alleys lead because they are gated. But that is part of the attraction, isn’t it?  “What do they have back there?  What are they building back there?” Other times I will observe a fountain that is grand but aged which no longer pumps out water. Yeah, these are the kind of things that my gaze will come to rest upon. I “observe” them.

 If I am in the right mood, I pull out my trusty iPhone 12 pro max and try and frame a picture. Sometimes, when I am really lucky, I can catch a wisp of a glimpse of the faded grandeur of Lisboa. Sometimes I can catch people caught up in everyday life here.  People in Lisboa seem perpetually lost.  Invariably on any five-minute stroll I will seem a clump of three or four people looking down at a screen with one person animatedly pointed down one direction and everyone else muttering, “Nao, nao, nao”. Photos of people and buildings, kind of has a Talking Heads ring to it.

 

Being retired I have no real obligations save those tied to mere existence.  Laundry, food in, food out, bathing and exercise, these things must happen.  Still, for long periods there is nothing else I have to do. I know that two years we all spent in isolation caged a bit of my spirit.  Now that the pandemic has waned my soul wants out and my mind wants more.  My mind demands more.  Thus, I go walking and I always walk with my iPhone.  We all die, but I plan to make these coming moments count. Capturing bits and pieces of a moment in time is something that has value even if that value is fleeing. Tis so much fun grabbing shots of this and that.  

Two videos follow.  One is a favorite and it is weird as hell.  Tom Waits captures my feelings well as it relates to what is occurring in a gated alleyway. The second one is a new Jason Isbell tune and it is where the quote above comes from.  Isbell rocks.