One Over X News

My Rare Saturday Off

For the most part I think I am a considerate and helpful person. Some may differ with my self-assessment and from time to time I can be selfish, overbearing and all those things that make us humans and me in particular a man. In general I think I am pretty accommodating, though. The only time that I am not is when something conflicts with a portion of my schedule that I have no power to modify.

It is pretty rare that I get a Saturday off and in truth I really did not have yesterday off. It is just that I had been scheduled to work six days last week and that on Thursday it was decided that I did not have to work for the entire day on Saturday. I had to attend a meeting on Saturday morning, though. So I worked Saturday but only for a couple of hours.

My daughter, Amanda submitted some of her art for a local youth competition. One of her pieces called Prima Vera was accepted for the competition and was hung for display in the Hennegar Center for the Arts in downtown historical district of Melbourne. Because of her other obligations for a school assignment that is due on Tuesday, Amanda could not attend the awards ceremony. She asked me to attend, since I had most of the day off. I had no other plans and I had planned to attend anyway - ever since I was given the balance of Saturday off.

There were a lot of things going on in downtown Melbourne yesterday. There was the St. Patrick’s Day parade queuing up and so some of the streets were blocked off completely. People that were attending the parade had parked along the side streets. So there was limited parking close to the Hennegar Center. I found a place to park in a lot about a mile or so away. So I walked. It wasn't all that bad. It was a beautiful day with a light breeze and generally on the cool side. This is really the time of year that I like being in Florida. What was a little annoying was that as I walked I had to weave my way through the small crowd that was gathering to wait along New Haven Avenue for the parade.

When I arrived at the museum, I walked around for a bit looking at the art on exhibit. Then I went to the upstairs ballroom to find a seat for the awards ceremony.

You might think that I would be comfortable around artists. Usually I am. There is a sort of soul-mate thing going on whenever I am around other creative people. We each have found a way to tap into the flow of creative energy that underlies the veils of reality. Yeah that sounds like something out of one of my books but it really is something that I believe. From my conversations with other creative people over the years, I think we are each attuned to a different level of consciousness at least. So whatever you want to call it, there is something that makes creative, artistic people a little different. Those of us that have that ‘bug’, as my friend Jeff put it, do not have issue with it and fundamentally embrace it even when at times others in our lives perceive it as a bane.

Very often I find inspiration in the works of other creative people. I think we all do, at least those of us that appreciate art. Yesterday it was an even greater inspiration to me that the artists were all young people, no older than 22, and the majority of submissions were from artists of high school age. I can not tell you how truly impressed I was with the quality of the art. Even though Amanda's work was a first rate creation of line art, it had met with stiff competition. It was Amanda's first time and even though she did not win an award just being selected from the hundreds of entries was an accomplishment.

For some reason, though I wasn't all that comfortable at the ceremony. I don't know why. Maybe it was the usual 'I don't like being in public around total strangers' thing. It could be that I felt out of place. I was a parent. There were other parents there but each of them was with their aspiring artists. I don't know what was going on with me. I was just a little uncomfortable.

One humorous thing happened though at the time I didn’t realize that it was funny. While I was sitting, waiting for the awards ceremony, I was enjoying four young flautists performing some chamber music. I must have sat back on my cell phone. I almost never have the keys locked - my bad. I inadvertently dialed the last number called, which happened to be my best friend's number - the one who lives in California, the inspiration for many of the characters in my books; yeah, that friend.

Now this was around 1:15PM EST (10:15AM PST). I would have never called her at that time because sometimes she works late and I would respect the possibility that she was still sleeping, even though we had made arrangements to get in contact later in the afternoon for doing some research for a marketing plan that she is researching for her business class. Anyway, I accidentally called her. Remember now, I do not believe that anything is ever an accident. I use the word here just because it was something that I never intended to do not that I believe it was pure coincidence that I called her. Apparently her voice mail picked up and for a few minutes it recorded the sounds of flutes.

After the awards ceremony, I negotiated my way back through the even larger min-throng that was forming along the parade route and back to the place where I had parked. I navigated out of the parking lot and down a barricaded street but was permitted to leave, rejoining US-192 just past the break where New Haven Avenue splits off and Strawbridge carries on toward the causeway and bridge over to Indialantic Beach. Traffic was heavy for downtown Melbourne on a Saturday. Whether it was the parade or the weather of the combination a lot more people than usual were downtown. There was a mini-traffic jam and really the congestion continued even once I had reached the barrier islands. For my part it was too cool to have been at the beach yesterday but not for tourists. Bikini-clad ladies were prevalent even though it was at best 70 degrees. It was a nice day for a drive and I suppose everyone else realized it too because Highway A1A was crowded too.

I was in a hurry to get home. My friend and I had arranged to connect for doing her research sometime after 3PM. It was already close to 2:20PM. Suddenly my cell phone rang. I have a bad habit of picking up my cell phone before even bothering to check caller ID. Usually when I receive a call it is either Amanda or Rob. Sometimes it is Jina but that is not very often. This time it was my friend in California.

“That was really nice music. I was sorry it timed out,” she said.

I laughed, “Oh so it was you that I called.” I then explained what must have happened. She laughed and we finalized arrangements to get connected for the research a little later.

It was a Saturday, a rare one that I had off. I usually don’t like having Saturdays off. I have worked retail for long enough to actually enjoy the excitement of a weekend in a store. But as Saturday’s go, it was not bad.

Oh yeah, and somewhere in all that I rewrote the first two pages of Book 1-2e. I think it is even better. When I am certain that it is finished I will post the first section here. I did that before for the version that is in print. Even those of you that have not yet read Book 1 will be able to compare the difference between Books 1-1e and 1-2e.

E

posted by Unknown @ 7:12 AM