A different kind of day...

Today definitely had a different feel to it, but not all in a bad way. It started out rainy and gloomy which was fine because it matched my mood of the moment. I was feeling a little somber and questioning why in the h e double hockey sticks I did not give my contact information to Kathleen. I bought a soda out of the machine and even though it had not been opened it was only halfway full. I was able to get it exchanged, then later I got a smoothie, dropped it onto the ground and it went eeeeeverywhere out at the bay. Later I got a Gatorade and nearly knocked it off onto the ground spilling some of it. I took it all in a pretty good stride, but it all has a different feel today, and no stars at the pool tonight. But I would rather have met someone nice like that, enjoy the moment, and wrench in the loss, that to have never met. The bittersweet candy that is life.

I read on a piece of glass art today "Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away". The art was $1600, but I enjoyed the words for free. :O)

One thing for sure I've gotten to do a lot having spent no more money than I have, and met some reeeeallly nice people. If you don't like to socialize then don't come to the Keys, there are not really any sour lips here.

I went to an art gallery downtown on Duval, and one that actually has real art, not pictures of palm trees. He owns every piece of art in his galleries and what works of art they are. I stood in the gallery studying each piece, a lost art in and of itself, for a long while. There was one interesting artist by the name of Michael Gorban. The paintings are so wonderfully vivid and detailed. He is a Jewish painter and moved to Israel after much prejudice from his birth country of Russia. As a child his father had given him some marbles and he still pulls a couple marbles out of his pocket when he paints for color inspiration, and a lot of times will work the marble into his painting somehow. Here are just a couple of his art works on display (http://galerierueroyalekeywest.com/MichaelGorban.html), and notice how the little girl is focusing on a little marble on the floor. Believe me it does not do the painting justice, it is awe inspiring in real life, and well as wallet emptying. He practices four hours a day, two on sketching, and two on painting. As I love to say, many think they see the talent, I see the hard work.

What makes Key West so funny, and weird, sometimes is that I spent so much time in the art gallery, studying beautiful art, valued at well over $20,000 a piece, turn out of the gallery and there is a cheesy t-shirt shop next door and the first t-shirt I see had a picture of a toilet roll and I quote "This is how I roll". LOL...Only in Key West, what starkness. :O)

I met a guy named Bob who is here with his wife from Jersey Shores and he was a very nice guy. He is a guidance counselor at a school and has traveled to many places. We talked for what seemed forever about travel, life, different cultures,marriage and love, economy, you name it. He and his wife have been married for 25 years and he seemed a quite level headed individual.

The young lady working up at the front desk in Kattie's (Kattie is super cool by the way) absence is really into art. She paints and has started her own website and is trying to build from the ground up. She is smart and sweet in some ways, but also young and full of it in others. As you get older, if you get wise, your lips stop moving so much and you start thinking more, she's still at the lip moving stage but I'm sure she will learn. She read a couple pieces of my work and loved them, and was asking me if I was published yet. Not yet I said, but working on it. A nice person indeed, and fairly easy to talk to.

That's really what I like about life and what I try to do, and that is see some beauty in each person I come across, no matter how starkly different they may be from one to the next or even me.

Other than that I walked or rode a bike around the dripping streets of a rainy Keys thinking about love and relationships. I did a bunch of stuff yesterday too, more than I cared to type, as there was really only one thing/person that I wanted to write about that day. ;O)