I spent a little time today watching Steve Buttry address a Connecticut newsroom with one of Digital First Media’s Digital Ninja School presentations.

Who are we, we people who look the way we look to each other and to others? How do (and can) we treat each other when it is just us picking a time and a location of our (or somebody’s) choosing? Do we drive or walk, bike up (like I did) or take the bus? Do we hum when we arrive, play loud or soft music, oldies or newer stuff, word-heavy and message-laden or more instrumental and abstract? What do we say with sidewalk chalked slogans, with highly intricate handshakes and halting hugs and hello-brother/sisters and habariganis? How does it work?

The recommendations came in over the phone while we were still riding south toward Santa Cruz, so we figured it would only be fair to take them at face value and try to find what truth there was to them. There were monarch butterflies by the hundreds in a forest alcove at the bottom of a long ramp. There was an algae-covered pond filling the air with life. But it was the beach, coated with packs of picnickers and surreptitious smokers and sunscreen-slathered seniors, where we found at least several perfect moments made out of confluences, conjunctions, of wave watching and barefoot-in-sand trudging and gusting gales of clean sea air.

Wheels within wheels: you can see them turning within the mind of a sentient car tire coming to life in the desert, pulling itself up out of the ground and coming to grips, to terms, with its landscape and the the objects and the people around it. I can’t remember the last time I saw ideas unfolded from a scenario like this in such a slowly and grudgingly articulated manner. Where does it meet the road? In the endless flow of spectacle; of audience receiving story without question or, ultimately, an answer; in the institutions of law and engines of cultural creation?

Signs like the first one above must be more prevalent at apartment buildings like the one across mine, right? Maybe they’re just phrased differently, or the landscape, the tenor of the language, has changed over time. If I’d lived in the neighborhood back then, I’d know more about who they were hoping to deter. “Peddlers”? “Agents”?

Freedom from the depredations of roving solo entrepreneurial types back in the day, of course, is different from the man standing outside the grocery store (the Berkeley Bowl or the Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s) with the clipboard and the determined expression on his face.

I think she’s finally used to me. I’m not just the stranger who occasionally fills up her water or food bowl, or who she takes off running from everytime he comes tromping through the front door. I’m not saying we’re besties or anything, either. She’s still probably never going to be really happy with me when I trim her claws, but I can’t say I blame her after that one incident with the nail clippers and her poor paws’ quickness. But she’ll come up to me after I’ve been sitting in one of our chairs and nuzzle her face against my outstretched hands, and I’ll feel better — especially after a day like today at work.

Post-soft rock choir practice jukebox time: Spoon, Paul Simon and Feist (@ Parkway Lounge) http://t.co/LlvwR2jh

February 21, 2012 10:17 pm via foursquareReplyRetweetFavorite

@allaboutgeorge

George Kelly

Extra jukebox time: Hall & Oates, Lou Rawls, and D'Angelo (to whom someone is clapping on the 1 and 3)

February 21, 2012 10:38 pm via Mobile WebReplyRetweetFavorite

@allaboutgeorge

George Kelly

Son of extra jukebox time: @FeistMusic, James Blake & Nina Simone with Damian Marley to close

February 21, 2012 11:29 pm via Mobile WebReplyRetweetFavorite

@allaboutgeorge

George Kelly

I don’t usually think all that hard about stopping in someplace like the Parkway Lounge to get some refreshment after choir practice, but tonight wasn’t one of those usual nights. For one thing? I’d had some songs on CDs in my car by a few of these artists, but the CDs were either scratched or I didn’t feel like jury-rigging my phone and my Bluetooth speakers to play them.

For another thing? There were half a dozen other dudes I’d never met who were really only in the bar to catch up on their “SportsCenter” highlights, not suffer through my taste in indie-rock, soft rock singer-songwriter chestnuts and R&B obscurities. Still, my quarters and I could not be stopped or contained.

The sign hanging up over my head is never just that.

I look up at it as it hangs over my head. I remember the less than thoughtful decision earlier in the day, and the rush to make up for it. I recall what came after: apologies, silence, attention and space.

So when I’m standing in the aisle at the grocery store with some dinner to go, and feeling really stupid about ruining what could have been a peaceful and easy evening, taking the message on a sign as a sign — a reminder to carry only what I can use, what will help me do and be better — can be quite helpful.

The kind of day where you get up and it’s bright out and you head up to Berkeley and you drive around and around and around and finally find a parking space but you still have half an hour at least before your movie starts so you walk around near the high school and the courts and some houses off Shattuck and then you take one picture that you actually like. Then you go see the movie and it’s not bad and you leave and go to Emeryville and sit and have hot chocolate and deep thoughts and read more of the e-book sample chapters on your phone and occasionally look up to see how she’s adjusting to her new buddy.

I went everywhere today: down to brunch at Chop Bar, where I enjoyed some amazing company and spied on readers of the New York Times.

Then I attended, alongside several wonderful people, what sounds like the start of an interesting discussion series about relationships, power, permission, choice, identity and visibility. After that came a lot of walking (and a little driving) around downtown and Uptown Oakland: a little time with a sweet DJ spinning at The Layover; a group decision against Disco Volante’s cover charge for a Beatles-cover band; a pleasant stretch at Radio; an even more pleasant one at a benefit at Olufe; and finally, fries and small talk at Rudy’s Can’t Fail Cafe.