-- Thursday, March 2, 2000 --

1:14 a.m. Here is my second really great bird shot from my one-day vacation. This photo is my homage to the Sole Proprietor's classic bird-on-a-table image. And now would probably be a good time to talk about the online journal as an art form.

The small tidbits of a typical day -- nothing special. Presentation is everything. Online journals come and go, and little lives are measured and weighed. Who can say what's truly important in the greater scheme?

We've all of us sat at this table. Waited patiently for the grim waitress. Read the placard; fanned the Sweet 'n Low. Looked around at the view. The all-important view.

My camera has a three-times zoom, and look! look! look! That's what journals are good for, too. Some give you the long view -- the dream of a sailboat and a beautiful horizon to sail away on. Some journals only see the metal bars, and grip them feverishly. And some, of course, examine the tabletop.

The indefeasible point of view.

Each one is interesting -- and each one is wrong -- because each one misses the point. Of view. I couldn't tell you the truth about this photo if I tried and tried and tried. There are as many truths as there are beads shattering in a kaleidoscope.

It's funny to me how much I worry about the truth when I sit down to write. But I have people to protect and secrets to maintain and issues to sort through before I can begin this daily tidbit of conversation.

What I try to do, however, is to tell you the biggest truth of any one particular day. And, if I can't do that, then I step down to the next, and the next, and the next ... until sometimes I'm all the way down to the coffee spoons.

I've been drawing the circle tighter and tighter ever since I began this exercise in communication -- and I haven't even unpacked yet. I want to mention that I saw an awful lot of those small dark birds on the island and an awful lot of "Catalina chicken" for sale on the menu.

Gives one pause. I want to say that I'm ambivalent about vacations -- but I've got too much missed work piled up to linger on philosophy right now. I want to say that I was able to leave my journal preoccupation behind for a day -- but that would be a lie.

I mean, we sit down for a nice fishy brunch at a lovely dockside establishment and no sooner does the ice tea come than I see that bird out the corner of my eye. I immediately think: Sole Proprietor! I grab the camera. I zoom in and press the button and scan the results in the handy viewfinder.

I relax for the next five minutes because I have tomorrow's topic, and when the chicken breasts on sourdough arrive, I take a guilty bite.