sunday

the original plan was to venture to dallas again this weekend. since i couldn't make it to the arts district last week, this was supposed to be the chance. friday was a late day at work, however. we didn't leave the office until shortly after 1am, technically saturday. i also didn't want to drive back tired on sunday night only to have to wake up early to work the next morning. so this weekend has been devoted to nothingness in shreveport.

yesterday was pretty tame. i left the apartment to reclaim the strawberries i was going to take home from the office and to pick up some caffeine to wake up fully and some chicken to make congee for breakfast. i heated up leftovers for dinner and watched the maltese falcon. i didn’t like humphrey bogart’s character. not that he was set up to be any gentleman, but it’s still hard to like a movie/story when you don’t like the protagonist. i ended up the day by going to bed before 10pm, something i haven’t done since...i can’t remember when.

today was a little more interesting. i got my butt out of bed at around 10am and had breakfast at a little local restaurant nearby. they make breakfast the way breakfast should be made. the two kitchens are open; nothing is enclosed or hidden. you see the cartons of eggs piled on a shelf above the grill. that’s a sure sign for a good breakfast joint. the menu was simple, nothing fancy, just as breakfast should be. it’s a meal that jump starts your day. it’s too early of a meal to be anything more than simple and fulfilling. i ordered eggs with bacon, grits, and toast, having already missed the biscuits. of course, there was coffee. the tab was under $6. they apparently serve homemade chicken and dumplings on weekday evenings. i’ll be going back.

afterwards, i went back to the apartment, realizing that i had forgotten my camera. then, i headed for the r. w. norton art gallery, the one and only art museum in shreveport. tucked away in a neighborhood, the sight of the edifice laid upon a large piece of green land is quite impressive. it’s a beige brick structure that stretches out into two wings, with the main entrance dividing the building in half and brown windows lined with white patterned blocks almost giving the wings a joint at which to flap. the collection, however, was not as impressive. well, i guess it might be impressive if your interest lies in cowboy and indian art, but i don’t care much for it. it pains me to see the way native americans are depicted, knowing how much suffering their race had gone through. they are one of the most tortured, destroyed races in history. but i guess it’s in the spirit of the louisiana purchase and the idea of the exploring and conquering the frontier. i am in louisiana after all. there were a couple copies of rodin that held my interest. but the great fascination was the garden behind the museum itself.

i actually had arrived about 45 minutes before the museum opened. so i wondered the plot of land it’s on and found the garden in the back. along the way, i took some close-ups of tree trunks, wanting to capture the rough textures in the early afternoon light. at the garden, i took a couple of pictures of the pond. it was after checking out the art when i went back to the garden that i got really inspired. there were these girls, between the ages of 8 and 11, who were dressed in sequined cowgirl costumes. they seem to be part of a baton-twirling-dancing group. some were chubby and others were skinny. all little white girls with their matching white cowboy hats and boots, exuding a strong texan culture. later, i saw that they were gathering to have their photographs taken by a professional using the garden as a backdrop. when i reached at the garden again, families had shown up and were taking pictures of each other. without any hesitation and almost without thought, i took up my camera and started snapping pictures of people taking pictures of each other. that was the theme of this roll of film: taking family snapshots. not the snapshots themselves but the act of it. i’m anxious to see how the pictures turn out. it’s been a while since i’ve had a jolt of inspiration like that. yeah, today counts as a good day.