Fish on!
Just a couple of pictures of fish from Austin’s Town Lake. And the downtown post office.
Cherchez les poissons:
Dark of the moon, good time to fish. Guess it was a good time to fish, Wednesday morning. To be honest, it’s always a good time to fish, just some times are more enoyable than others.
I was unsuccessful at one spot, one fish, like, she knows me, and she sniffs at anything I toss her way, so I moved. I was at the creek’s mouth, just at the edge of the flats, and the water was up, crustal clear, too. I watched as a gang of bass (bass don’t school, don’t have pods, they are punk fish who move in gangs), I counted three then five, all moved across the shoals. The biggest one was the slowest, and I tossed a bait right at her, landed right behind her.
She turned around, sniffed, I wiggled it once, and it was fish on!
Her tail left a trail in the shallow sands and mud. She tried, one last time, to dive under the dock, but her tricky move didn’t work.
She was too heavy for the rod, and I eventually just had to pull her up by the fishing line, I’m guessing a good 21 inches and a full five pounds. Huge mouth. I got her picture (with my toe in it) then gently released her back into the water.
Must’ve scared off the rest of the gang, as they scattered under her thrashing. but not two minutes later, there was that little guy from the day before. Same fish. Flipped off the deck before I got a picture, the first time. Feisty fellow. But I got his picture this time.
Shirtless in Austin:
After fishing, and catching another trophy-sized bad girl, I knew I had a little business downtown. So off I wandered. I had a floral print shirt draped over my shoulder, I had it own, briefly, when I ducked into a favored coffee shop for a Leo-mix double (espresso) on the rocks. Ambled outside and in the mid-day heat? Off comes the shirt.
I stopped, briefly, going into the post office because a woman of advanced age was exiting and I politely held the door for her. Another female slid by, and her sotto voce comment?
“I’d get in trouble if I dressed like that.”
It’s searing heat, in the upper nineties, with bearable – to me – humidity. Anything more than a loincloth is too much. But dressed like me? Three, maybe five miles of trail? And sidewalk? All good.
I figure a lot of people would be much happier if they dressed to suit their environments. I still don’t get why so many people downtown dress as if it was winter. In the middle of August.
So far removed?
I’m pretty much removed from the illicit drug scene these days. Been to Amsterdam, but all I did was drink coffee. Although, I must suggest, I approve of the laws and lifestyles there. Stoners are much easier to get along with – especially when compared to drunk tourists. So neither is my scene. At all. My life is weird enough without any chemical enhancements.*
*Other than coffee, but that’s more like an elixir than a chemical.
What caught my attention, more than once, was first a Houston Chronicle article about illegal amphetamines, then a Newsweek piece.
Both articles were severely disturbing, and not in a fun way. Weird to have read two pieces, back-to-back. What really caught my attention was that recipes are available on the internet. And the main ingredient? My favorite antihistamine.
As a mere child, I had numerous encounters with Poison Ivy and probably its in-bred cousin, Poison Oak. The stuff grows alongside Austin’s Hike & Bike trail in a number of places, and I’m just careful about it. Better safe than sorry. I wandered down to the creek’s shoreline to fish, and I found a spot where there was access, albeit access through a patch of ivy. Many kinds of ivy. Poison Ivy chief among the varieties.
What I’ve found, if I’m exposed to the stuff, a quick and thorough shower, or a swim in the cold water of Barton Spring, and little dose of some kind of antihistamine goes a long towards prevention. last time I bought the stuff, my usual brand (knock-off Actifed) wasn’t available. Plus thee was a little sign suggesting a two-package limit on any OTC with that psuedo-ephedrine in it. Means it’s now harder, if not impossible, for me to buy it in bulk.
My problem is the stuff works like a charm on my poison ivy. For me, it’s a precautionary measure, as much as anything.
But for Fishing? In a Poison Ivy patch?
On the job training?
Got a late call for a reading the other evening, and seeing as how I’m out of the “office” for the next few days, down in San Antonio, I figured I’d better just handle it right away. Which I did. But as I printed up the chart and then printed up a second support chart, I got to thinking about work, and the kind of training I’ve received.
None. As in, no course work to prepare to be a consultant.
I took a couple of astrology classes, once upon a time, but as it turned out, except in the instance where I learned how to do the math to do a chart by hand, I knew as much, if not more, than the instructors.
Part of that is training from learning to read and write critically, a heavy dose of the academic side of life. Not that it’s worth anything, outside the hallowed halls, but that’s where it started. Since there’s no curriculum, there’s not much of a chance for any kind of continuing education.
If I had to do it all over again, I might look into some counseling classes, how to deal with difficult clients. Marketing and business management would be a good idea, too. But I don’t have it to do all over again, so there’s the problem. I have to make it up as I go.
Wished I had more common sense, too. But being blessed with a hyperactive imagination means that common sense doesn’t work too often. Not that it matters to me. So I was sitting and thinking about all this, and how I would love to have some continuing education in my business. But there is no model, no rules, and if there were rules and model to follow? I probably would just have to do something else.
Two articles from old New York Times Review of Books prompted this thinking. One was a by Neal Pollack, and the other, I don ‘t recall, but the big print was about how, these days, an author needs to have a good stage presence.
Yeah, and marketing skills. Plus a good bedside manner.
One of the older clients in San Antonio was gently chiding me for my attire. But as I thought about it, back to that pesky neighbor and her comment about the weird guy who doesn’t wear a shirt. Ever. The more I thought about it, the more I was reminded of a quote, I think from Oscare Wilde, “I am writer so that I don’t have to meet my clients.”*
Another local reader wrote a book about how to be a professional psychic. From what I’ve heard, the idea is that you print up some business cards, and rent an office someplace. Wear a suit to work, and charge $200 per hour. My information is strictly second-hand, anecdotal evidence; however, the idea seems to be lacking.
The Neal Pollack article started out with the dangers of creating a fictional character with one’s own name, citing Kinky Friedman as the lone example of success.
It gets more amusing to me, as I flipped back through the other NYTBR – one of the pull out quotes was something like, “Did she have a nose job?” As I’ve got two books on Amazon, and one of them has a picture of me, holding large bass, and both me and the bass are virtually clothing free. I’m naked from the waist up, and the bass is all naked. Pretty much a natural state, although, lately, I haven’t been catching fish that large.
I’m not too concerned with my appearance. When a client meets me for a short reading, I’m in my casual best. I also charge a “casual best” price. Relaxed. The way I like to live, and therefore, the way I conduct myself.
I was considering these facts, and the meat of those articles, while I was fishing. Do I really want to spend a portion of my life, idly chasing fish in the river here?
Sure. Beats working.
*”Being a writer and a Texan is an amusing fate, one that gets funnier as one’s sense of humor darkens. In times like these it verges on the macabre.”
Laryy McMurtry
In a Narrow Grave Albuquerque: UNM Press. 1968.“If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate. The Ode to a Grecian Urn is worth any number of little old ladies.”
Wiliam Faulkner in an interview—1955 (?)“The South has produced so many good writers because we lost the War.”
Walker Percy“A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.”
Samuel Johnson“Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.”
Daphne Du Maurier
