What made you smile today?

Summer continues swimmingly, if much too swiftly. Things happening, I didnt even realise.

But it made me smile when this afternoon, when I was blissfully, as usual, lounging on the terrace of Corinthia, enjoying an angol turos retes with my tea and, because the waitress who likes me insisted it was very "finom", an apple pite, club house music started resounding on the far end of the boulevard, coming ever closer, and presto - Gay Parade, passing by right in front.

I was a little bit embarassed about having afternoon cream tea instead of marching along in solidarity, but there you go, and it made me smile anyway. It was, like two years ago, a rather schizophrenic affair - and a teeny bit bigger. At the head, following a contingent of somewhat embarassed looking cops: a party truck, house beats thumping, outrageously or barely dressed gay guys dancing, making lewd inviting gestures to the drivers stuck in the traffic jam in the opposite lane. A bunch of regular people walking more than dancing. A truck from the COXX club with hot dancers, including a girl (?) in striped black and white eighties legwarmers or the like and a matching striped hotpants. Then: a group of lesbians carrying black and white portraits of famous lesbians from history. Then a closing truck, and more cops.

I should have went along solidarity-wise, but I didnt feel like dancing, and I still had tea.. but considering the ludicrous, hateful violence and repression that gay marchers have recently been spewed with in Poland, Russia, the Baltics and Romania, I was glad to see Budapest live up to its name as liberal haven and gay capital of Central Europe.

Later, with the sun still mellow and bright, I decided to go take more pictures in Jozsefvaros, the famous/notorious inner city eight district of Budapest. I've been going there quite a bit (see the photos in the link), and decided to retrace my steps from last time to re-take the pictures that I thought didnt turn out so well.

So happily I'd rush in on my bike, hop off at a particularly inconspicious doorway or windowsill, rifle through my photos, locate the tag or broken window or god knows what, and hunch down to take a picture. Got some estranged looks, that.

But mostly, actually, people are quite nice. At one crossroads in the heart of the neighbourhoods, I'd been sizing up a piece of wall with vintage bullet holes, then taking a picture of a cellar doorway, while a scruffy but kind-looking man leaned outside chatting with his two grinning and bouncing kids behind the bars of his apartment's ground-floor window. Roma, I guess. Thought I'd love to take a picture of them, but didnt want to be impolite. But things tend to take their own way..

The guy wanted to look at my camera, the kids wanted to look at my pictures, and of course they wanted to know where I was from. The guy, who looked like 55 but was probably more like 40, was a friendly bear. They'd lived there for 5 years, he said. He didnt know whether it was one of the buildings that would come down in the redevelopment. The kids were adorable, shooing off dad so they could hand me back each picture they looked at themselves. The boy was so little, I couldnt understand his Hungarian, but he joked and grinned; the girl was eight or nine or so; she said she knew the English words for cat and dog. "Look, we're in prison!," she joked, pointing at the bars; the guy joked, "yeah, its for the little one cause he'll run right off down the road!" (Dont worry, the door was open, they were just kidding.) I pointed at the girl's B/W striped shirt and said, yep you're even dressed like in prison. She giggled.

Dad asked if I would take a picture of them all, and I did, and later some. No digital though, I explained - film, it has to be developed first! But I'll be around here more often.. oh, then just knock on the window, show us the pictures! They were adorable.

Still in the same street, a little further down, a woman on a bicycle stopped me and asked, dont you work at XYZ? She was a Hungarian woman, turned out to work at one of the other programs in my office, recognized me. Kind, funny woman, big glasses, very un.. unlike some of the people you get in an organisation like ours. Started talking and it turned out she was really active in trying to save the open-air market in the 6th district, pretty much the only one of its kind left; it's supposed to make way for some fancy new development with a "European Culture House" consisting of brand restaurants and the like. She'd just come from a workshop on urban development.

Highbrow, lowbrow, but it all comes together right there, right in what I was making pictures of anyhow. Plus: nice people all around; and a feeling that, as I was kind of ambling around in the district, it showed itself to be home - my place, my city - my peeps. Safe place to be.

Little girl (between 3 and 4???) waiting in line with her mother at the pharmacy.

She'd picked one of those tri-fold brochures out of a health information rack, and had folded it over.

Opening it back up, she looked at the bend in the paper.

Putting it up to her ear, she had created a flip cell phone.

"yes?"

"I'll be coming home in a little while...what do you need....?"

......

"hot dogs, pudding and toilet paper?....OK"


.......

"I have to go, we'll talk about it when I get home"



then, she folded the "phone" up, and put it in her straw handbag.

nimh: nice

My son told me that none of his friends believed I was 62.
(I hope that doesn't mean they thought I was 72!)

Habibi's photos - and narrative.

(and then I just laughed when I saw my own avatar - I'd wandered off to post at Taunton and had forgotten that I'd changed the avatar here - didn't 'recognize' myself)

Thank you, rjb, ebeth



Cuuuute!!

Most evenings when I am out watering my lavender plants, such as they are, the boy down the street is out playing with his pvc pipe. Well, I think it's a leftover piece of 3" white pvc; it's about six feet long, lightweight but somewhat unwieldy for his uses. I don't just stare at him full bore, although I do wave. He never waves back. He's busy, trying to stand the pipe up on his head, or twirl it...
I figure he's about ten.

So, I'm watering the catmint on the driveway side, and notice a police car turn the corner and move east in a leisurely fashion. Soon I hear running feet on the other side of the street: it's the boy. He's about ten. He stares after the car for as long as the car takes to get down that street. I try to imagine what he's thinking. Urban woman that I am, I've never lived in a housing tract, don't know all my neighbors yet, much less their fears.



Another thing to smile about - the youngest child of the neighbor to my right has a brand new puppy, a squirmy little spaniel. She introduced me to "Layla". This is good, it'll fill in a certain barking silence around here.



<lord, may it not be from a puppy mill>


Off to look at nimh's photos...

Nice story, osso.

I wonder where that kid got that piece of pipe. I happen to be missing one that fits that description.

Oh, give us a break, Gus. A pipe in your house? Why?
I've been to your house. The "bathroom" is off the back porch. Quite literally, off of the sagging back porch. And "drinking water" at your place is cases upon cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
My littte brother collects beer cans. He has a bunch of them, maybe a thousand, all different. Gus has a thousand, also, but all Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Actually, my smile happened yesterday. A lady I met while statiioned at Walker AFB in New Mexico back in the late fifties called me last night. She dated my roommate, but cut off the relationship for some reason. She was looking for him in a people search web site, and remembered my name. I think she paid $10 to get my (unlisted) telephone number and other info. She even knew we had two sons.

We talked for about one hour, and thanked her for calling from Oklahoma where she now lives.

That was worth a smile.

we were sitting on the front steps with a cup of coffee this morning - actually about10 o'clock - when ANNIE , our neighbour's big old dog came over for a belly rub and some milkbones .
even though she is an old lady of about ten years , she's still behaving like a pup .
when she gets her belly-rub she puts a frontpaw over my arm to make sure she can hold on to me for a while - really quite funny .
once she's had her treat she quickly trots off again .
always makes us smile to see her so happy
hbg

Not having to do dishes on my birthday

and Im looking forward to my big piece of cheese cake this afternoon.

mmmmmmmm

Cheesecake Factory?

La madeline on Lamar.

Far better cheese cake in my opinion...

I had to smile when I realized that shewolf is actually going to eat that piece of cheesecake I had sent her last month. I mean, Jesus Christ.... that thing sat in my mailbox for three days because ol' Charlie, the postal carrier, had an operation, something to do with a hernia I believe, and the package was quite ripe and full of flies by the time he picked it up.

I happened to be swinging my scythe near the mailbox when Charlie pulled the cheesecake out.

"Damn, Gus!", he said as he shooed the flies away and make a grimacing face because of the smell, "Are you you want to mail this thing? Is someone going to eat this? This Shewolf character in New Mexico? Damn, Gus, she might get sick."

"Yeah, Charlie, go and ahead and send it. Her birthday is coming up and I want to make sure she gets it in time."

"Whatever, Gus. Your call."

He waved as he drove off.

I continued cutting my grass, my powerful muscles rippling beneath my shirt as the scythe made its relentless arcs.

The red-winged blackbirds made a ruckus in the swamp as the whoosh of the scythe reached their little avian ears.

Happy birthday you gorgeous, witty, allround wonderful and irresistable woman!

to celebrate a lovely sunday afternoon in the garden we treated ourselves to a piece of almond-strawberry torte with some frozen yoghurt with REAL ! chocolate chips and fresh pineapple slices on the side .
it went down the gullet rather easily
hbg

(since we bought the whole torte , we should have enough for a piece of it for next week's afternoons - looking forward to it )