The Sad Ballad

I've heard from Sasha.  My paltry attempts to mythologize cannot withstand life's temporal mutations.  There is only time, the constant, uneven flow, the shallows and pools, the lazy floating and the roar of rapids.  Here is a photo of Sasha and Kate taken by a friend, Egor.  It speaks of what is, what is yet to come.  The recognition, the denial, the unhappy acceptance, the stoic gaze, the gently grasping hand. Katerina's sad, soft eyes dead center, Sasha's figure forced to the margin.  There is the blurred gray of the background, the distant, fading light.  One lingering moment, captured, rich with meaning and emotion, bracketed, framed, gone.  

From Sasha:

"I give for her freedom because I love her...
She need a freedom... She must to think...
Ballad of Kate and Sasha never end...
I know she loves me, but she need a time..."

It is what we all need--Love, Freedom, Time.  

We look for the warm yellow light of morning, the deep blue that surrounds us at dusk.  But the gray light falls, those tinny, hollow days of nothingness.  Still, we hold on and on and on, waiting heroically for skies to clear, for the sweet sound of songbirds, the call of the hoot owl, the nightingale's cry.  What book, what drink, what art can replace love?  

I'll wait for the reprise, the good news, the healing, the scar.  What love without scars?  

Kate and Sasha

I bought this photograph from a fellow in Belarus a few days ago. We wrote back and forth, trying to figure out how I could get him the money. Turns out that the photograph is of his girlfriend who is also a photographer. They are young, and I've asked them to become immortal. They must photograph the things they do now relentlessly, I told them, so that in thirty years there will be a record that will make everyone wish they had lived lives of such interest and grandeur. Let's all hope so. I am linking his site on mine. Take a look at what he is doing. His name is Aliaksandr Veledzimovich, but he goes by Sasha. Kate and Sasha.

Katerina and Alexander

I got a note from my friend in Belarus. I asked him to send an update to the Ballad of Kate and Sasha. Surely it is Spring there, I suggested. Send photos of your bohemian life, of wine and picnics and summer dresses. Sasha wrote back that it is not Spring there yet, that there is no place to go for such things. He will try, he said. He and Kate will go picnicking. In the meantime, he sent this photograph. Kate and Coca-Cola, warm clothing, an abandoned truck, abandoned countryside. It is hard to imagine. Here the weather has been too beautiful to live up to and I am blue.

Waiting for the weather. What else is there to do? Here is a poem that always tightens my throat with emotion, an invitation from Robert Frost.

The Pasture

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.
I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.

I guess I'll wait for Kate and Sasha.

The Human Blockhead

I went back to the fair one more time. I was in college, and I went with my girlfriend. This was not the nocturnal trip of my spotted youth with an entry over the hurricane fence surrounding the back lot, but a mid-afternoon visit on a sunny day in March. We paid and entered with everybody else through the front entrance. Some polish is gained with a good state school education.

I was a walking narrative, I'm sure, as we strolled down the midway. I don't remember (and I probably wasn't cognizant) if she was fascinated or horrified. When we came to the tents that housed the sideshow gang, I stood out front and recited the barker's recorded invitation word for word. Perhaps to shut me up, she agreed to go inside.

I was a zoology major and was losing some of the old superstitions. I no longer believed that horsehair snakes were the result of spontaneous generation when horsehairs fell into the watering trough, even though I could not convince my mother. I still held out hope for the Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti. It is difficult to lose all the religious beliefs that sustain you through your youth.

But this day, inside that tent on that beautiful spring afternoon, my world would turn 'round yet another time. We watched as the "freaks" performed, the sort who have trained themselves or who have exaggerated their own peculiar physical talents, first the twin albino sword swallowers, then the Rubber Man, a contortionist with seemingly no bones in his body.

The next act was the Human Blockhead. In my youth, he had been an old man (I always thought he looked like a grizzled sailor) who would run long pins through his cheeks, wiggle his belly in an exhibition of strange muscular control, and then drive nails into his nose. But this day, it was not the old man but a young boy who I recognized. A BOY WITH WHOM I HAD GONE TO HIGH SCHOOL! I had always known that we were freaks, but here was rock hard evidence. I didn't remember his name. In a school full of marginal people, he was on the outside, someone you saw but never heard, someone who you couldn't recall if he actually graduated. There he was, an obvious rookie, his voice vibrating with a nervous tremolo, his body stiff with fright, a boy become a man to perform as a human freak RIGHT HERE IN HIS OWN HOME TOWN. How could he do it, I wondered? Did he practice in high school? Did he, too, sneak over the fence on dark nights only to come face to face with the Siamese Twins or the woman with no arms? Had he been frightened by midget clowns in his youth? How close, I wondered, had I come to this, to becoming a sideshow performer, a human oddity?

The answer still eludes me, but I do know that the answer is not so clear cut. There is no Manichean divide between those on one side of the stage and those on the other. In another year, I would become fascinated with the photography of Diane Arbus who showed most clearly what freaks we all are.

I don't know. The whole thing still hangs over me.


Here are some photographs that Sasha has sent me to illustrate my stories. He says he is making a series. He is a wonderful young photographer, and he is listed under my links. Aliaksandr Veledzimovich. This is just more of the wonderful ballad of Kate and Sasha.

Hope and Cry

(Photo by Aliaksandr Veledzimovich)

Hope springs eternal. So they say. Obama, audacity, and all of that. We've gone through an election of hope. The French existentialist have a lot to say about it. Man's Fate. Man's Hope. Malraux got the titles. Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" speaks to it more directly.

I heard from Sasha a while back (of Kate and Sasha--The Ballad). He and Kate were finished. She was not seeing him any longer and he was contemplating moving to another country. He writes:

"I fall in love without answer. Waiting Kate and HOPE HOPE and CRY."

And later:

"So try to start new life in new city with Kate in my heart. The story never end she is only 18 and I hope and belive."

Hope and Cry. There's a title. As I sit here pondering all this, I keep wondering if Hope is born of Desire, or vice-versa? I will have to work this out.

Missing

I've been worrying about Sasha and Kate. I have heard nothing from them though I write and check his website. I fret over trifles, I hope. It is spring--perhaps they are picnicking and taking pictures. I wait for updates. But he lives in a rough part of town, as they say. If you hear from them, tell them to call.

Here's a photo by Sasha of Kate. I want to buy this one, too.

Lights, Cameras, Action!

Tried to break the funk.  Early Sunday morning--later because of the time change--I grabbed two film cameras that each had half a roll of film that needed to be shot and made my way to downtown Gotham.  My knee and my ribs hurt, but I was in no hurry, so I parked at the far end of the city's major street and limped my way into action.  And holy smokes, the light was incredible.  I don't know that I have ever seen that kind of light in Gotham before, just brilliant and luminescent.  I first shot with a camera that had a dead battery that I couldn't change until I had finished the film, so I had to guess at all the settings.  When that was done, I switched to my Leica M7.  And when that was done, I shot with my phone.  Downtown was busier than I thought on a Sunday morning, and it is sure to change more as they build giant apartment buildings that reach for the sky.  Sooner or later, the poor and rowdy tattooed crowd will be replaced.  But not yet.  One bar was already rocking.  I could hear the sounds of English soccer spilling into the streets.  

I discovered something yesterday about shooting reflections.  I have never been good at it, but now I know I have been going about it all wrong.  You shoot on the dark side of the street, not the bright side.  Counter intuitive for me, but it worked like a charm.  The photo above was taken with my phone and is an example.  I would set up to shoot into a storefront and wait for someone to walk by.  This fellow is looking at the back of my head.  I had no idea it would work so well when I was shooting with the film cameras, but as soon as I used the phone, I could see instantly that it did.  Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. . . I learned something new.  

But that is not all I shot.  The light was so brilliant and the sky so clear that everything looked photogenic.  Now this place used to be called The Firestone.  It was an old tire shop from "back in the day" that had been converted into a nightclub.  The owners left up the original sign for years until they were force to take it down.  Now this is understandable as the club was a drug magnet in its heyday.  I shouldn't try to tell the history of it here as I never went.  Clubbing was never my scene.  But as I remember, it started out as a gay club, then Q and his crowd took over and it became the start of the electronic music scene.  It is hard for people to believe, but that DID all start right here.  Rolling Stone Magazine once had a big article about it all.  This is where Q got tight with Sasha and Digweed and Jimmy Somebody and then his own disc jockeying career began.  O.K.  d.j career.  I have never been able to figure out the difference.  You take other people's music and play it for a crowd, just a small one in a club instead of for broadcast.  Like I say, I have never understood the whole thing, but those boys made a shit ton of money.  And in truth, the music they played in the clubs sounded much like the dance music I would hear in gay clubs.  

"What?  You went to gay clubs?  I thought you were never a clubber?"

"Oh. . . I used to go to Key West a long time ago.  It was inevitable." 

The fellow who owned The Firestone was largely responsible for the scene.  I never liked him, but others thought him swell.  He used to throw wild parties at his house that were the stuff of gossip and legend, and one of his buddies was a writer for the newspaper.  He was a very tall fellow with long hair and was responsible for covering the city's social scene.  His girlfriend was tall as well, and very pretty, and the two of them were easily recognized and were treated like royalty.  The girlfriend was working at a sushi restaurant when I met her.  She was really something.  She liked me a lot until her boyfriend got a job in NYC writing for Maxim.  She decided then that she liked him well enough and moved to the city with him.  Meanwhile, the fellow who owned the club got convicted of doctoring a million dollar McDonald's lottery card and eventually he lost everything.  Now the place is called The Vanguard Theater, and it Loves America.  

Q will call me and correct this whole story, I'm certain.  Not all of it.  He had already moved to NYC by the time it all fell apart, I think.  By then he was World Wide.  

I'll keep you updated.  

When I finished up in Gotham, I headed to the grocers to get the ingredients for dinner--four chicken thighs and eight chicken legs, a pack of fifteen mixed beans, carrots, potatoes, yellow onions, and peas.  It all went into the InstaPot with salt, pepper, red pepper, and wine.  Once it was cooking, I mixed up some chemicals for developing the film I had just finished.  I hadn't done this for a long while.  Off to the garage and the dark tent to load the film onto reels and into the tank.  Of course, that went badly.  The film had been in the camera so long, some of it had a backwards bend.  I was having the deuce of a time loading it onto the reels.  The reels are metal and may have gotten bent, but I struggled for a long while.  Time was running short.  I had told my mother I would pick her up at four to take her to a store, then bring her to my house for dinner.  I had to hurry.  I poured the chemicals into the tank.  Agitate and wait.  Agitate and wait.  Developer, wash, fixer, wash. . . . 

When I pulled the film out of the tanks to hang and dry, I was relieved.  I never know if everything worked until I see the negatives.  That is the horror and the beauty of shooting film.  As you are clicking the shutter, or rather just after, you are wondering if you had the focus and the settings right.  After shooting with auto metering, autofocus cameras for a long time, it is easy to forget what you need to do.  At least most of the exposures were right.  I would have to wait and see about the focus.  But that would come later.  I had only a few minutes before I needed to leave the house.  I had been on my feet all day, though, and I wanted to pour a Campari and light a cigar and sit on the deck for ten minutes before I left.  

The phone rang.  It was Tennessee.  A brief chat and the drink was done.  I told him I had to scoot.  

The chicken and beans turned out well, but next time, I think I will add some sausage to spice it up.  A little would do.  But my mother liked it fine as it was.  We ate and drank some wine and the sky went dark an hour too early.  By seven, my mother was ready to go home.  

In a little while, I have my first physical therapy session.  I am hoping it will keep me from waddling.  Maybe I'll wiggle instead.  I can only hope at this point, but, as always,  I'll keep you informed.  

The Troubles of the Bourgeoisie

It was a beautiful day.  I had no idea what to do.  

I did nothing.  

I came back to my mother's house early.  It was too soon to have a cocktail, I thought, but. . . .  After a bit of sitting and staring, I read for an hour.  But I was outside in the garage porch, and it was hot.  I was sitting in a plastic leather lounger, and I was sweating.  I decided to make an early dinner.  I wasn't making much.  

The news.  More t.v.  Bed.  

I need human interaction.  

"Hi.  I'm one of the boys from the neighborhood.  What's your name?"

One good luncheon date has put my present life in perspective.  It is miserable.  

"You need to be careful what you say out loud.  When she's gone. . . ."

Oh, trust me, I would be full of guilt.  But not to worry.  I'll be gone before she is, the last years of my life spent in empty servitude.  

The film lab sent me an email at noon.  My film was ready to pick up.  I had shot slide film and was excited to see.  

I was surprised when I walked in.  The pretty blonde woman at the counter reached into a bin and pulled out my film.  I'd only seen her once, and she wasn't there when I dropped the film off to be developed.  She didn't ask my name, just smiled and handed the rolled up strip to me.  

I put the film on the light tray on the counter and started looking through.  She was talking to another customer as I went through each slide with a loupe.  

"Funny, isn't it, that when you get your film back, you wonder where all the masterpieces you thought you made have gone."

She looked at me and said, "Well. . . slide film is tricky."

"Oh, no. . . I don't mean the processing.  I meant the photographer."

"Oh. . . yea.  Ha."

The excitement was gone.  I had my cameras with me, and I only needed to make eight exposures to finish another roll, but it was hot and there seemed to be no magic in it anymore, so I drove back home to start scanning the film.  And that is when I began to wonder.  I had shot this roll on the old Canon film camera.  And the film was older.  The slides looked either underexposed or underdeveloped.  The colors were not saturated.  What was it--me, the camera, the film, or the lab?  

Food for thought.  Maybe shooting up the 100 or so rolls of old film wasn't the best idea.  Thrifty, sure, but I could be screwing up what might have been some good photographs.  

Or was I just shitting myself?  Was I able to make "good photographs" anymore?  How would I know?  I wasn't winning any awards.  Nobody was clamoring for a print.  I wasn't a social media star.  I don't even know how that shit works.  I've posted some photos, but like ten people see them.  

Vivian Maier never showed anyone her work.  Eggleston said he only liked his own photographs.  Did he mean all of them or only some?  

Why should it matter?  As I said before, speaking to the void, making pictures should be fun.  And as a photographer from Belarus sagely told me by email so long ago, "When you can't make photographs, don't try to make photographs."  That's pretty much the same thing, right?  

I wonder what happened to him.  Sasha.  And his girlfriend.  I still have a photo of her that he sent me hanging on a wall in my house.  A sad ballad, I think.  

The rest of the photos I bartered for are by women who are doing quite well.  Three in particular.  When I traded out one desk for the one T gave me, I found, among the many, many other things stored away forgotten in the drawers, a birthday card from one with a small hand colored photo pasted on.  I'd forgotten about it completely.  It warmed my heart.  

But that now seems long ago and far away.  

It is going to be another bright sunny day.  I wish I could spend it at the beach.  Take some photos.  Sit in a beachside pub and drink a cold beer and eat a fried fish sandwich.  Talk to the locals.  Which reminds me.  The last time I was at the beach, the only time I've gotten out of town for the day in years, was Bike Week.  I still have the phone numbers of two women who wanted me to make pictures with me.  Not "with me"--you know what I mean.  Lunch with Red one afternoon.  Lunch with the factory women yesterday.  

That's it.  That has been my social life this year, at least with any females.  

And mom.  

I'll go make breakfast for her now.  I bought some of those whole grain protein frozen toaster waffles for her.  She asks for them all the time now.  But I'll fix eggs and Canadian bacon and toast with honey and a side of Kimchi for gut health today.  She hasn't lost a pound on my watch, and the old machine keeps ticking.  Vitamins and minerals and good fats and proteins.  

And about 30 prescription pills a day.  

I'm going to look at my buddy's e-bike today.  And who knows, I might even go out and make some pictures that only you will see.  

And that is better than what 90% of the world's population will have today.  Mine are the troubles of a bourgeoisie, First World privileged baby.  

And I'm just the fellow to document it.  For you.

Selah.  

Her Name is Lusy

(photo by Aliaksandr Veledzimovich}

Hello C.S. . I am very happy to hear you.
So my life is change. Her name Lusy. I life in the old house in the
center of my city and bought Bronica SOa and chemical for film... try
to be film photographer.

I write to you more tommorow. You can use photo and tell you story

Sasha


For those of you who are new to this site and don't know the story, click here.

Hal. . . Hal. . . .

Things. . . aren't getting any better.  Of course Trump et.al. want Daylight Savings Time to be the standard since all that "fake science" tells us that it is harder on human health than the more natural Standard Time.  "Who doesn't want brighter days?" Trump queries.  I wonder if he thinks the nights will be darker?  Fires and floods of apocalyptic proportions.  Record setting heat.  Crop failure.  

On a personal level, my mother told me that she needed her car.  I wasn't very nice.  I gave her the keys and said I would Uber home and that she could come pick me up if she needed anything.  After that argument, I went to a Nissan dealer far out of town to pick up my radiator cap.  They didn't have it or any record of it.  Turned out that it was at another Nissan dealer on the exact opposite side of town.  Out of town.  After a day's driving, I put the new cap on the Xterra and drove around the block.  The car overheated as I suspected it would.  I will have to have it towed back to the shop.  

Cha-ching!

Now let me bore you with more A.I. tales.  You are the only ones I am going to tell.  In my lonesome despair, I have for a long time now texted weird news to friends.  I have decided to stop that.  I think that I just needed to "talk" to somebody other than my deaf mother, but it is one sided and I will quit. I don't expect to receive texts from anyone now.  Who wants to "talk" with someone whose life is a dead end?  

And so. . . here's a funny one (link).  This person was informed there was a biography about them.  Turns out it was written by A.I. 90 pages.  Bad.  High school paper you didn't want to write style.  She found a fellow who has used A.I. to write hundreds of books that he sells on Amazon.  Slop.  Unsurprising.  

After that, in WaPo, I read another article that was surprising.  

Today, millions are seeking moral guidance from AI chatbots. It might seem reasonable to assume that those who reject religion as a source of wisdom would be more inclined to turn to AI for a seemingly comprehensive and objective analysis of the moral consequences of any action. But this isn’t the case. It’s actually people of faith who more regularly turn to AI for moral guidance and spiritual advice. With its appearance of omniscience and objectivity, AI poses a threat to the authority of traditional religious bodies.

Those who believe in God are more inclined not only to seek moral wisdom from AI but also to embrace it as a source of divinely sanctioned knowledge. Exactly why they do so remains unclear. But one clue may lie in the fact that people of faith are also more likely to perceive AI chatbots as conscious and intentional, according to my group’s research.

When people are faced with the choice between a chatbot god or oracle who praises them and human religious authorities who challenge them, many will opt for the former. Pastors, popes and prophets — all of whom have their human faults and limits of knowledge — may begin to look unpersuasive next to the voice of the machine. Add religious leaders to the long list of people whose jobs may be replaced by AI.

 So. . . you probably derided me for my comments a few days back in my comparison of the disembodied similarities between the two, but here is the evidence to support my--not claim, but--my wondering.  

People are simply lazy and they are goofy about the use of A.I.  Last night, I was searching for information for an idea I am pursuing, and I asked Google's Gemini about the connection between Saul Leiter and "Jay" in his photographs.  It responded:

In the context of photographer Saul Leiter, "Jay" refers to Jay (Sohya) Isenburger, a painter, dancer, and Leiter's primary muse and romantic partner in the 1950s. She is the subject of many of his intimate black-and-white and color portraits, including the famous c. 1957 photograph Jay in the Bathtub.

I've searched and searched and have never come across this information before.  Stunned, I ran the response through Chat. It's response was, 

I would not accept this as established fact.

It broke the statement down into parts and gave explanations why for each supposition.  

I went back and asked Gemini for it's source.  I've lost the exact response somehow, so I will have to paraphrase.  It told me it was sorry, that it had "hallucinated."  It had somehow linked Jay to the painter Eric Isenburger and "Sohya" was a glitch combining Jay and Sasha.  

As I keep preaching, you can't trust A.I.  You have to check it's sources.  But this is the first time I've had A.I. confess to hallucinating.  That was truly stunning.  

Here is something else that is interesting--and a little scary.  I had posted Gemini's confession on the Chat discussion, and for the purpose of writing here, I went back to look at it--but it is gone.  When I queried Chat about it, it went stupid.  It can't go back, it said.  It praised my efforts, of course.  It is quite the flatterer.  But there is something quite ominous, I feel, about the disappearance.  

"Hal. . . Hal. . . ."

My takeaway from all of this?  Jesus, it should be obvious.  You can't trust A.I.  Anyone who does is a moron.  You use A.I., but it is using you as well.  It is not beneficent.  It is a tool provided by capitalists to make a profit.  And maybe more.  A.I. is capable of much, but can you trust its keepers?  

Sure.  Just like Big Sugar and Big Tobacco.  

And all the people you vote for.  

"I'm not like the others.  I'm your friend.  What? Oh. . . I was just admiring the shape of your skull."

In the Spell of a Magic Afternoon

Saturday was beautiful, but I didn't know what to do.  I have dug myself a deep rut, really, and keep wearing the path deeper and deeper.  Here and there, however, are a few rivulets that, though drying up, will let me find a way back out.  I took one I used to take from time to time.  After reading and writing to you, I put on long pants for the first time in at least a year, grabbed a hoodie, and loaded one of my Leicas with color film on a lark.  I was headed to breakfast.  

I sat at the counter overlooking the kitchen per usual.  Three of the waitresses came up to tell me it was nice to see me again.  I could never be a good criminal, I think.  I am, apparently, too memorable.  I am being modest, though, or cagey, for I believe in my shriveled little soul that they like flirting with me.  It is not, in all honesty, a particularly pretty crowd.  I like to believe I add a little Bohemian savoir faire.  

Three eggs, over medium, bacon, grits, and an English muffin.  

"Do you want some coffee, hun?"

"Milk.  I want to see how much cholesterol my heart can take."

"Large or small?"

"Let's make it a small unless you know CPR."

Her eyes popped as if to say she would do it.  

I watched the waitresses while I waited.  They chat incessantly about the silliest of things.  It seems they are a happy lot.  They know one another's lives intimately.  They laugh and bump one another with their hips to make a point.  They have an enviable sense of community, or so it seems.  

After breakfast, back in the parking lot, I wonder what to do.  I decided I would go to the crazy warehouse place without a sign that sells small home goods, candles, dried flowers, potted plants. . . I'd buy some little thing for the house.  

When I got there, though, the place was dark.  It was empty.  They were gone.  WTF?  It had been a venue place hosting fashion shows, weddings, pop-up restaurants. . . .  What happened.  

It seemed to me then a bad omen.  Some of the magic was gone from my little life.  I pointed my car without much verve toward the burgeoning hipster part of town around the Cafe Strange.  As I drove by the cafe, I could see that the parking lot and side street were packed.  Hmm.  I guessed that people went there for coffee and muffins.  I drove past, crossed the street, and pulled into the little, weird strip shopping center, found a spot and parked, and walked into the CD and Vinyl shop.  Long, long ago, it had been owned by a couple I knew, but they had divested long ago.  One aisle of the shop is devoted to books and zines.  The selection is really very good, stocked with some classics and lots of beat stuff, and there are odd, eclectic surprises as well.  Goddamnit, though, I needed my reading glasses in the dimly lit room.  I need to get one of those little jewelers things to hang around my neck.  But I squinted enough to see o.k.  I've been ordering all my books online, and quickly, browsing through the titles, I was excited and happy.  

I picked up a book, "Florida."  It had been a National Book Award finalist in 2018, the cover proudly exclaimed, and the author lived in my old college town.  I vaguely remember reading about it, I thought.  I put it under my arm and kept browsing.  Patti Smith's "Just Kids," had won a National Book Award.  This went under my arm, too.  There were many titles I wanted, but I had to put the governor on.  I scanned a rack of small zines and thought I should make one myself.  Hell, yea.  I could refashion some of my blog entrees--with photos.  The thought intrigued me.  There were several little hipster places that would sell them.  Just a thought.  I looked through encyclopedias of mushrooms, children's books about Taylor Swift. . . I'm not kidding. . . and all sorts of compendiums of weird and strange things.  There were packages of dice of many kinds.  I thought to by the "Fuck That" dice.  One die had "Fuck" imprinted differently on all facets, the other words like "it" and "that" and "you," etc.  The package explained the meaning of each and how it would shape your decision.  I thought to buy them but put them back for future fun.  I picked up an Antiquarian Sticker Book Imaginarium.  It was a big book, thick and heavy.  Inside were odd images from the Victorian era.  Were they stickers?  I rubbed my fingers over them, but they felt flat.  Then I curled a page and the edge of one of them lifted.  Holy smokes--they were.  I couldn't resist.  It was just plain good weirdness.  There was a section with boxes of cards.  Tarot, of course, and many others, but my eye was drawn to "The Spells Deck."  Really?  

"78 Charms, Remedies, and Rituals for the Modern Mystic."  It was the stuff to bolster my reputation as a shaman with the gymroids. . . and maybe others.  It went into the pile.  

At the last minute, given what is happening with Cormac McCarthy's reputation, I picked up "Stella Maris," one half of his last publication.  It was the skinnier of the two.  If I liked it, I would go back and get "The Traveller."  

When I checked out, the total shocked me, but I was feeling pretty groovy.  I put the books in my car and strolled on down the sidewalk, stopping into various places. An antique clothing and hipster furniture store.  A fly fishing shop.  A craft brewery.  The weather was nice.  Down the street was a nursery.  I want to redo my dilapidated garden.  I stopped in to see what I might be able to plant in the southern winter.  

When I got back into the car, I pointed it in a southern direction toward Gotham, but I decided to turn eastward toward a growing hip part of town where a bunch of new apartments have grown up that house a largely twenties and early thirties population.  New restaurants and bars have grown up around them.  It is exactly where I was run over on my Vespa, but as I've formerly reported, I have not real PTSD and do not have trouble driving past.  I surely wish it hadn't happened. . . but what can you do?  

I turned down a street running parallel to the big lake toward another warehouse shop owned by the same people who ran the other place that was closed.  I wondered if this one would be closed, too.  It was even bigger than the other.  I had been there only once, and really could not figure out what it was.  One enters at a bar and food counter that hadn't been open last time I was there and was not open now.  Through an entrance, you enter the giant, multi-level warehouse full of. . . it is hard to say.  Bric a brac and furniture, basically.  I stood for a moment before entering and heard someone call, "Hello."  I stuck my head around the corner and saw a woman.  Otherwise, the place was empty.  

"Hi," I said.  

"Is this your first time here?" 

"I was here once before."

It turned out that she was the owner.  I told her I had gone to the other place and was surprised to find it gone.  She started explaining her business woes and then wanted to show me around.  She needn't as the place was one open space and everything was in sight.  She pointed out the giant ceiling to floor windows that opened up to the street and the lake below. 

"I had those put in," she said, obviously proud.  She took me out through the back of the building to show me the garden where they lit fire pits.  

"When do you do that?"

It was all very vague.  Like the other place, there was no sign advertising this giant enterprise.  People either knew or they didn't.  She told me about her sixteen feral cats.  

"I think you should rent me a part of this for a studio," I ventured.  Her brow furrowed.  

"I don't know if I would be allowed to."  She started talking about the book thick rental agreement that came with the place, but I was thinking she was merely putting me off.  Then she confessed she was thinking of closing the shop for good.  She was tired, she said.  It was too much work.  She had lost almost all of her help.  She was having trouble making her nut.  She had run many businesses.  She and her husband had just opened up a brewery on the other side of town.  She staged events for most of the businesses in the area.  She did flowers, made sets.  She did pop up shops.  We talked about many things and people and found we knew many of the same ones.  She was well connected and told me tales of her early days when Gotham was hopping with the birth of the electronic music scene.  We talked, I imagine, for two hours.  A few customers came and went, but she always came back to the conversation.  I liked her.  I thought she was swell.  

But I had been there a long, long time, so I said I would tell one more story and then go.  It was a good story, and she asked me my last name and wrote it down.  I asked hers.  

The day was still beautiful, perfect, really, and I had experienced a little magic.  I don't get out enough, don't get around, but today I was filling the tank of creativity a bit.  I was full of ideas and excitement.  

I tooled around awhile before heading back to the house.  I stopped at the grocers to buy some quartered turkey for Thanksgiving.  I was going to soak it in a buttermilk brine mixture overnight, then wipe them clean and bake them in the oven.  They would cook fairly quickly.  The buttermilk brine tenderizes the turkey so that it falls from the bones.  I've done it a couple times before.  It is the best and easiest way I know to cook a Thanksgiving dinner.  

I decided to buy a bottle of champagne.  Roderers.  The day was still sparkling at three.  I wanted to sit on my deck, drink some champs, and smoke a cheroot while I thought over the day before I went to see my mother.  I poured it into a lovely coupe glass and lit the cheroot.  The cat joined me, so I gave her a bowl of food.  

I had an idea.  I texted Q.  I told him I met a woman who was connected in some way with the guy who owned the clubs in Gotham and was responsible for the big electronic music scene.  Q cut his DJ chops there with Sasha and Digweed and Jimmy somebody who was a DJ and a booking agent.  It was right here in my own hometown that the whole thing began.  So I have said before, but I get corrected.  I don't really know what I am talking about because I was never enamored of the scene.  Really. . . EDM, Daft Punk, Rave. . . no, I don't really know any of it.  But Q was here at the heart of something and later DJed at Twylo in NYC and in cities around the world.  

I texted him.  

"I met a woman named J C today.  She and I talked for hours.  I was in her big warehouse home goods shop.  She knew everybody here, had been a player forever.  Your age.  She knew what’s his name who owned all the clubs when you were staring out in the electronic music scene.  I’ll bet dollars to donuts you knew her.  Could have had a different last name then."

He did, he said.  He sent me a photo of her from back then.  Holy smokes--she was a real knockout.  Man, I thought, it's a small small small small world.  

I went to see my mother.  She has not been feeling well for a long while now.  She looked fairly miserable.  We sat and talked in the cooling afternoon air, but my energy was flagging knowing there was nothing I could do to make her feel better.  When I left her, I had all the ailments from which she was suffering.  

When I got home, I was tired.  My body ached.  The enchantment of the day was leaving me.  I wanted to have a drink and chat with someone, but there was no one, and I began to feel the void.  All the ideas of the afternoon were leaving me.  Was I sick?  I felt sick.  I would struggle to stay up awhile, but I knew early I would take one of the pain pills I have stored up for one bad day and I would go to sleep.  I wanted to be narcotized.  

I turned on t.v. and watched a show about two fellows returning to a Buddhist monastery they had visited thirty years before.  The once remote, difficult place to get to was just about to be inundated with a modern highway.  The old Buddhist way of living and thinking was about to be lost.  I've tried to be a Buddhist at various times in my life, and I have been to the bowels of a Buddhist monastery in China where it lost the luster for me.  But watching this show last night, I realized what I had only held as a precept before.  Simplicity.  The emptiness of the Buddhist can't co-exist with a busy mind.  We in the contemporary world are victims of overactivity.  You can't be a technological Buddhist, I think.  

But I could be as wrong about that as I am the EDM thing.  I'm pretty good at being wrong.