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Influencers

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Some people are influencers. They package themselves as a product and try to sell it via the Internet. As they grab your attention, they hope you will send some shekels their way as well as lots of “likes.”

I used to have a neighbor (the pretty woman in the above photo) who was an influencer in at least three areas:

  • “Female motorcycle rider, moto camping, outdoors, exploring, solo travel.”
  • Wellness and fitness
  • Marketing

She is no longer my neighbor because it turns out she was living on the edge. When you live on the edge, it is easy to fall into the abyss that runs close to the edge.

What happened? She was planning on moving to the East Coast. She put all her valuables onto an open-top trailer and set off with her mother. Somewhere in the Mojave Desert, she blew a tire. Eventually, a tow truck showed up and either changed or patched up the tire. No sooner was she on her way again than the car and trailer caught fire and burnt all her goods to the ground. Most particularly, she felt the loss of her beloved Suzuki DRZ motorcycle.

I sincerely hope she manages to pick up the pieces and get a new start wherever she is.

Although I have been a blogger for upwards of twenty years (on WordPress, the late Blog.Com, and the late Yahoo 360), I am resolutely a non-influencer. I write mainly to express myself and to help put in words what I am seeing and feeling. There is no way you can send me shekels, though I accept “likes.” In fact, I cannot even imagine the existence of a person who would hang on the edge of my every word.

Reader, beware: Wherever there is an edge, there is an abyss. Don’t fall into it.

Helicopterum

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Burton W. Chace County Park in Marina Del Rey

delightful It was another warm day, though nowhere near as blistering as those inland areas euphemistically referred to as valleys. Whenever I’m feeling too hot, I always know that it will be miraculous cool and breezy in that park at the west end of Mindanao Way.

So I stopped in at Trader Joe’s for a picnic lunch of a Mexican chicken salad, watermelon chunks, and watermelon juice and found myself a picnic table in one of the three covered picnic pavilions in the park (shown above). Then I moved closer to Stone Point, at the tip of the peninsula, and took out a copy of Roberto Bolaño’s short story collection entitled Last Evenings on Earth and began reading.

Wouldn’t you know it? There are in big cities three things that militate against enjoying a book (or even a good night’s rest): motorcycles, rap music, and helicopters; and I got a 30-minute dose of the latter as it lazily and raucously circled the park without any clear end in mind. I kept thinking to myself how opportune a shoulder-mounted Stinger missile would have been.

But then, one of the drawbacks to big city life is that your neighbor gets all het up and doesn’t give a damn about your need for a modicum of silence. One fantasizes about a gruesome conclusion to each incident, but that never seems to happen. Tant pis!