An Apartment Dweller Sitting Behind A Computer

Photo by Alyne Lidgley

One of the actual pictures taken by Alyne Lidgley (above).

This picture went from London to St. Augustine through e-mail.

Then it was posted to the blog, where it probably resided on a server in Colorado or somewhere. Then it went, by satellite, to California; after Blogger was sold to Google. And and then, finally from there to New Orleans, through my government phone, and is sitting in front of me after having traveled some 20,000* miles.


But, Google automatically opened a Picasa account for me, which I can access just like signing in to the blog. I guess, in exchange for having free hosting, I have to use the photo hosting site that Google owns.

*The satellites are anywhere from 100 to 1,200 miles up, so I estimated.
The Dark Age
But, one beneficial side effect of this was that, the pictures that I had lost when the blog was deleted around 2009 suddenly reappeared in the Picasa album, under the "from this blog" option.

They are in chronological order with the ones from the new blog that I started. Maybe because I used the same e-mail address to start the new blog as the old one.

But they came back, Lidgley picture included. Even though the blog that pointed to them was no longer in existence.

Maybe they don't delete the pictures when they delete a blog in case other blogs that haven't been deleted still link to them.

Maybe it's like if you have an application on your phone that puts mustaches on photos of people's faces and you use it and those edited versions are stored in a folder somewhere, and then you decide to uninstall the mustache app, you would still have a folder full of people with them on their faces.   

That is the most sensible explanation I can think of for why the photos from the deleted blog are still there, in chronological order, with the rest of the blog pictures.

But they are there and above is one of the ones from The Lidgley Story.

Scrolling through them was also a walk down Memory Lane, and I had to conclude that I have had a pretty interesting life. At least up to the point that I became an apartment dweller, sitting behind a computer.

While scrolling down memory lane, I had another flash of genius, when I came across this picture, from the Dark Age, of my old friend, Mr. Joe Jangles.

Given my new perspective and my programming for success, I couldn't help but think: Mr. Joe Jangles used to pull in around $500 on a busy day (of doing that for maybe 6 hours straight) and I could build a contraption like his; I've studied it, more out of curiosity at the time than anything else.

But, I already play the harmonica and guitar at the same time. Operating the rest of the gear would become second nature, I'm pretty sure.

Yup, there is my future! (left) And, here I was, just recently looking toward it with dread.
$500 a day.

One of the oldest relics, taken on a disposable 8mm camera, developed at CVS and put on a CD, which was then taken to the library to be uploaded to the blog...all this before it even went on the 25,000 mile journey through space...

And, I guess a reminder of how far I have come in 12 years.

Back then, I would have been getting up in the dark at about 4:55 AM, then riding my bike 3.4 miles to the labor pool, where I would wait to be given a work ticket for a $6.75/hr. job, then would be taken to the jobsite by van, arriving on the job by 8:00 AM (having invested 3 hours already in just getting there).
Then, after knocking off and waiting an average of 45 minutes for a similar van to come and take me back to the labor pool, I would be paying a dollar out of my $49.68 check, in order to cash it at the little "Vietnamese" store and walking out of there squinting into the 5:30 PM sun -Nine and a half hours spent, in order to put $48.68 in my pocket, if you don't count the 19 minute bike ride back to the upper middle class suburb, where I was homeless, which I didn't because, being off from work and having the money in my pocket made it seem nothing like work -the pedalling- and having the freedom to go any which way, and not even necessarily in the direction of the campsite, made it even better.
If you skip a day at the labor pool they will never miss you. That might be the zen like reason that I never missed a day.
The job I was on in the photo above (which, for the purpose of the ill fated blog was "Paint"-ed to go along with us having been preempted by inclement weather, I recall.
If you were to walk up to that guy, as he walked around on a springy floor of sheet metal hung from the underside of a suspension bridge by steel cables, as he was doing absolutely nothing constructive at all*
*I really believe that some guy who had some lucrative contract working on the big ol' suspension bridge that stretched from the crack neighborhood just east of the Gator Bowl turned Altel Stadium, all the way to the tasty meadows of the Arlington side, a whole river away from the blight of east Jacksonville, a job that had municipal rubber stamps all over it, this guy basically had to snow someone into thinking that he needed to be out there, and would hire a crew of cheap labor for appearance sake, and then would give the laborers something stupid to do, because I basically spent the day running a metal file over certain nubs that protruded from the brand new, freshly installed girders that were now holding up the suspension bridge, but had rough edges that needed to be filed.
Even the guy who had "trained" me did so with a 5 second lesson, which was accompanied by the following lecture: "Just go like this, rub them down a bit, I don't know..."
If you were to have walked up to that guy, who might be expecting to be asked "What the hell are you doing, anyways?" and were to have offered him the escape from his existence of moving into my current life; would I have to think about it?

OK, next photo.
This one was taken after August of 2006, as evidenced by the haircut.
My guess is that this is in the fall, probably early November, because it looks like I had put gel in my hair, and I wouldn't do that if the temperature was warm enough to where I might sweat and the gel would run into my eyes in the middle of a long Grateful Dead song.

...Gee, I wonder what ever became of Stephen, the guy I met who was kind of a Shaman, and who took this picture as well as several others...

Stephen was a very spiritual, Holy Spirit aware, kind and gentle person, but he smoked like a chimney.

He would constantly, but graciously, beg people for cigarettes, and then would genuflect to them in profuse thanks, enlightening them to the "fact" that, he had allowed them the opportunity to be generous and in being so to bring blessings down upon themselves.

That's nothing like bumming cigarettes, I guess.

And, last but not least, while digging through "the lost photos..."

Yeah, the trip.

I know.

I say it every year...

My nieces will be starting to graduate high school soon...