Every Story Needs a Picture, Don't It?

Bliss be gone.  Up the chimney (or chimley as it is called by "my people").  It was a typical Sunday morning.  It was cloudy and getting ready to rain.  I got up.  My mother got up.  I gave her meds, made breakfast.  I was hanging out and waiting for the gym to open at noon.  It was around then that I went out to the car to get my gym bag.  My mother was sitting in her chair.  She looked up at me and said, "I fell again,"  I felt the tingling in the back of my neck.  

"Are you o.k.?"

"I hurt.  Do you think I should go to the hospital?"

"I don't know.  I can't tell you how you feel.  Stand up."

She did.

"Does it feel as if anything is broken?"

"I don't know.  Maybe my foot."  

She sat back down.  

"You'd better call 911."

Shit piss fuck goddamn.  

Ten minutes later, my mother was on the gurney and off to the hospital. . . once again . 

I went into the house and sat down trying to sort through my cascade of emotions.  I was familiar with this drill now.  I would wait a bit to go to the hospital.  It would be awhile before anything happened.  

There was a knock on the door.  I didn't want to answer it.  It would be the neighbors wanting to know what happened.  I sat.  There was a harder knocking at the door.  It was the woman from across the street and the woman from a couple houses down.  

"What happened?"

I told them.  That wasn't enough, though.  They asked more questions, wondered aloud what I should do.  I told them I was worn out with all of this.  The woman across the street wondered if mom shouldn't be put in a home.  I said she had been at rehab and just wanted to come back to her house.  Of course.  

"My mother was in a home, and boy, she ran that place." 

I said that's what people do.  My cousin, for instance.  He father was in a facility and she and her brother never went to see him.  Her husband's mother was in a facility near them and again, they hardly ever went to see them.  His brother is in a rehab place very close to where they live, and they go to see him every couple weeks.  

"That's what people do," I said.  

"I'll be glad to come over and watch her for a couple hours any time you want," said the across the street neighbor. 

"I don't need a couple of hours.  I need a couple weeks, a month. . . ."  

She stood up in a huff.  She grabbed her dog's leash and said, "Come on. . . I'm going.  I tried."

She made a show of it.  The other neighbor stood mouth agape, looking.  

"OK," I said.  

"Asshole."  

"I don't need this right now," I said.  

"I don't either." 

The other neighbor looked at me and said, "I'm sorry.  She can be a bitch."  

I just waved my hand and said, "I've got to go."

I was stewing on the drive to the hospital.  It was going to be another long day sitting in an ER room.  

When I got there, my mother was lying in bed connected with electrodes to the machine that beeps constantly.  There was no chair in the room.  I went into the hallway to look for one. 

"Can I help you," a nurse asked.  

"There is no chair in the room," I said.  

"Oh.  I'll get one." 

She was strong.  She brought in a very substantial chair.  

Later a boy came in to take her to X-ray.  She was getting X-rays all over her side and a CT scan on her head.  I sat in the empty room and waited.  Half an hour or so later, when she was brought back to the room, a nurse said it would take an hour, hour and a half to get the results.  My mother asked for pain meds.  He brought her Tylenol and a muscle relaxer.  

"She gets Percocet and Gabopentin four times a day," I said.  "That stuff isn't going to do anything for her."  

"Why does she take Percocet four times a day?" he asked.  

"What's your guess?  What do you think she takes a pain killer for?  Blood pressure?  Runny nose?  An infection?"

No, again. . . I didn't say that.  I just looked like I said it.  I told him I had her meds with me, and he said go ahead and give them to her.  Hmm.  O.K.  First time I'd ever heard that one in a hospital. . 

He left.  

"I'm going to go for coffee," I told my mother.  

The little cafeteria closest to the ER was closed.  The hospital didn't look as clean and shiny as it had before.  I had about half a mile's walk to get to the cafeteria.  My knee was swollen from running the day before, and it hurt.  

"I'm a mess," I thought.  "I'm falling apart."

There is a lot more wrong with me than just my knee.  

The cafeteria was half shut down.  There was little hot food and what there was sucked.  I got coffee.  It was bad.  I sat down for a minute.  The hospital had definitely been downgraded.  I had spent enough time here to know.  

When I got back to my mother's room, a pretty woman was standing in the doorway.  She turned and smiled.  

"Oh. . . hello. She was just asking where you were."

O.K.  Really terrible bad confession.  I thought she was a nurse.  

"I'm Doctor So and So.  Your mother's X-rays didn't show any broken bones.  Her head scan looked good, so there is no reason to keep her here.  I'm going to get her discharged now."

"Great," I said.  

When the doc had gone, my mother said, "That's good news."

"Yup."  

It was going on five.  We drove through the rain and the dark of day in silence.  When the two neighbors were talking to me earlier, one of them laughed and said, "She always says you pick and bitch at her all the time."  I now had an attitude.  I told my mother what was said.  This is something my mother likes to tell people. 

I am a slave.  You can scoff and laugh and do whatever you like.  But I am a servant for over twenty hours a day.  My mother can only sit and make messes.  I never get to sit for more than a few minutes at a time.  All the time.  Every day.  And there is no end to this in sight.  I have no life outside of this and trying to get my own home repaired.  I'm sick of people telling me they went through a similar thing with their grandparent or parent.  They haven't.  Nobody I have talked to was the sole caretaker without relief.  

If there is a heaven and a hell as in the fairy tales, I am certain to go to hell.  Really.  For all the slave work I do, the way I feel about it will put me in the eternal flames.  

Selavy.  

Before my mother fell, I was looking at the IG page of a mixed media artist.  She made tiny little books.  They intrigued me (link).  I'd sent her a message and she replied sweetly.  I wanted to make something like this.  I'd made a couple of books, but nothing of this scale.  I'm afraid I love collages.  It seems inane to me but I can't help it.  Mixed media.  

made with AI from her inspiration

I've taken workshops.  I am very bad at it.  Very.  

I was making dinner for my mother and myself--spaghetti and broccoli.  Quick and simple but for the clean up.  And I was thinking.  I resigned myself to this.  I haven't let myself admit that I would be doing this for virtually ever.  Now I did.  My life as a slave would continue for a long time.  And so. . . I needed to get some things to make my life here more bearable.  

I decided I would turn my mother's garage into my studio.  I'd get rid of most of her things in there and set up a work station.  I'd bring my stands and lighting and backdrops and all the paraphernalia for photoshoots.  There was plenty of room.  I would put in an electric heater for when it was cool and a portable air conditioner for when it was warm.  I would get a printer to keep here, a bigger one.  Fuck it.  I'd sit in the garage and make pictures.  

It didn't make me happy. . . but happyish.  There was still the creative block, the bad and frustrating mixed media things I'd make.  But. . . I decided that is what I would do.  

Oh. . . the AA thing went out the window last night.  When I was getting groceries for the spaghetti dinner,  I also bought an expensive bottle of wine and a fifth of scotch.  After dinner, I told my mother what I planned to do in her garage.  No reaction.  I kept thinking about what I would photograph there.  

"Hey, ma. . . don't come into the garage.  I've got naked girls out here, O.K."

Ha!  I didn't really care.  But would they?  

"You live with your mother?"

"Yea, yea. . . listen, put on the mask and take off your clothes.  HEY MA. . . DON'T COME OUT HERE!"

Fun scenario.  

I don't plan on doing nudes anymore.  I don't know.  What pictures do people want to see now?  We are saturated with images.  Oversaturated.  

There is an actual photo of my mother in the hospital bed, but I prefer the Rockwell version.  Photography has begun to bore me unless I use it to make illustrations from the pictures.  But I still have much to learn.  

I'm a disturbed man now, I guess.  I drank wine and whiskey and then a THC drink.  I took a Xanax.  I went to bed at ten and when I woke up at midnight, I took an Advil PM and a Tylenol.  I still couldn't sleep and got out of bed at 4:30.  I'll probably go back to bed after I post this.  

Really.  I've taken lots of media workshops.  Everybody else in them was better than I.  But the garage is the perfect place for me to try it.  That is the usual place where old men carve wooden ducks.  

Yesterday Today

My mind is everywhere this morning.  This could end up being a journal entry (like a lot of what is here, I guess), or it cold be some trippy phantasmagoria.  I am here, I am there.  Yea, cool cats. . . I'm everywhere.  

First observation of the morning--some stains upon the silence are worse than others.  Was Beckett speaking of writing when he made his declaration?  Living with my mother now, it becomes obvious to me that much it is auditory.  Obvious statements of fact, of course, that are proposed as mundane commentary, for instance, or the constant moving of plates and forks and bottles across a wooden table, the forceful setting down of the morning cup of coffee, not just plunked but then slid back and forth turning my nerve strands into barbed wire, a useless, unnecessary cacophony.  

To whatever Beckett was referring, I am inferring.  But I think my statement holds up either way.  

The noise abates momentarily.  I try to regain my composure.  Where was I?  The morning's bliss is already dissipating.  I am no longer everywhere.  I am here, anchored, heavy.  Fuck. 

Oh, Christ. . . what did I have in mind?  I am lost.  

I read a headline today (not the article) that many therapists are using ChatGPT for both their clients and themselves.  As you have probably garnered if you have been here much, I am not a fan of therapy or therapists.  Nope.  And especially not of this "many."  WTF?  It is idiocy.  They are asking for advice from a company who is balls deep in creating social control?  Do they not know that the responses of "the tool" are curated and censored?  There are things it just won't say or do.  

From a creative perspective, it is poison.  The tool is constantly changing, the "guardrails" getting strained and "disinfected."  I need a stable tool as much as a painter or a musician.  If every time one sat down to play an instrument but of a sudden the resulting sound had been altered . . . well, I don't know what you would do.  If a painters paint colors shifted every day. . . .  

Etc.  

So the therapists are working with an inconstant if they rely on A.I. to help them.  

I desire unconstrained consistency from "the tool."

Emboldened by the little taste of endorphins I experienced this week, I went out to the exercise course to try a little jogging.  Again, slow and careful, but this time on the uneven surface of the earth, a soft track of compacted soil.  I did more than jog.  I skipped, "ran" backwards, did slow crossover steps and side hops.  Just a little, I told myself.  You can come back slowly.  

I was driving the old Xterra.  Fixed up and running fine.  Took it through the car wash.  

And then, the a.c. quit working again.  

I had to get back to my mother's house.  I was taking her to Costco.  She is walking some again, like a Frankenstein sloth, sure, but it is an improvement.  

When I got to her house, there was a car in the driveway.  Shit.  It was some of her friends.  

"You should have been here awhile ago," one friend said to me.  "There were five women in this room.'

"Sure.  That's my heart's desire, to sit in a room full of broken old women.  Can't believe I missed that."

Of course I didn't say that, but sure as hell was glad I missed it.  

I opened a Beer Lite and sat down to hear the chatter.  Now it was all directed at me.  But they had been there awhile and were just getting ready to leave.  

And then they were gone.  

"I'm guessing you are not wanting to go to Costco now."

"No. . . I should go.  Let's go."

Mom pushed the giant shopping cart.  She has shrunk so much.  She looked tiny, surreal, something out of Wonderland.  But she moved it an inch at a time.  I walked behind.  It was torture, and not simply psychological.  My lower back, hips, and one knee were killing me.  

"Oh, boy. . . I fucked up this time," I thought.  The running may not have been a good idea.  

Up one aisle and down another she inched.  I would stop and lean on anything I could trying to take the weight off.  

"Can you get this for me?"

I'd put things in the cart.  

On and on and on, millimeter by fucking millimeter.  I would have been happy for her if I had not been in such pain.  I just wanted to get this nightmare over.  

Out of the entire ordeal, I got a bag of coffee.  A big one that used to cost eleven dollars, now twenty.  Thanks, Trump.  

It was dark.  It was late.  We'd been in the giant warehouse over an hour.

"I'm not cooking.  What do you want?"

We drove down the highway looking for takeout.  

I ended up at the grocery store.  Bought a box of fried chicken.  

Back home.  Made a salad.  Heated up a can of beans.

The whole thing sucked.  

Fuck me. . . I poured a whiskey.  I turned on the t.v.  It was late.  I went to YouTube for news.  

I gave up  on that.  

At the gym, the film professor was asking me if I'd watched this or that.  Then he told me a really bad joke about two economists that made him laugh over and over again.  Then he asked me if I had watched the guy on YouTube who destroyed things.  

"Physical things or ideas?"

"Physical things."

"No."  

He went on to tell me about this guy's show for far too long.  I realized then that you get a glimpse into someone's soul from their YouTube feed.  

"He gets like a billion views every time he posts."

YouTube never recommends such things to me.  I get feeds about the arts, music, and literature.  I get recommendations about philosophy.  Some movie things.  And. . . o.k. boxing and MMA. . . and female pole vaulters.  

Yea. . . a glimpse into the soul. 

I forget that I am paying for a subscription to HBO, but I remembered last night and checked to see what I had been missing.  A Nikki Glaser special popped up--"Someday You'll Die."  2024.  Hadn't I already seen this?  I put it on.  Didn't seem familiar.  So. . . holy shit.  Have you seen this?  It is exactly how I feel about youth and aging and death (link).  

My mother didn't seem to be paying attention, but toward the end, she said, "This woman is horrible."

"Really?  I think she's great."

My mother and I are far apart on what we like.  

When it was over, HBO suggested "The Substance."  I hadn't really been interested in seeing this film, but the film prof and his wife told me to watch half of it and turn it off.  So I did.  

It was a stupid movie with a lot of T&A.  I liked that part, but the movie dragged.  I think the director was too influenced by the pacing of Kubrick's "2001."  I mean it was slow and hollow and fluorescent.  

I took a Tylenol and an Advil PM and went to bed just before ten.  I was hurting.  I was beat.  

I woke up an hour later.  I was puking into my mouth.  I caught it in time so that it didn't come up through my nose.  I little burning in the throat, but not that hours of burning in the nasal cavity.  

The dreams that followed. . . I was dreaming about writing in the morning about the dream.  It seemed so profound.  

And I dreamed I was having such an incredible night's sleep.  

If Ingres, Botticelli, and Messima were one painter. . . .  I've created some wonderful templates in Chat.  I just hate that it won't let me use them the way I wish.  

My mother is up and walking without a walker today.  She wanders around now banging into things, banging cabinets, making noise.  What can I say?  Hillbilly determination and good home care.  I am not as mean to her in life as I am here on the blog.  

I somehow made a little video, "Hopper Creeper #2," that I am not certain I can put on YouTube.  I don't want to get banned.  They, too, are Nazi's about content.  So. . . this is just for the perverted few of you who come to read about "Last Night This Morning."  

That was one idea I had for a blog title.  Hmmm.  

How Can I Be Happy?

Woke at three.  Up at four.  What was wrong?  It made no sene.  I'd had a happy day.  Happy makes you more inviting apparently.  People smile at you and say hello.  You feel more alive, attractive almost.  There is a woman at the gym who I don't really talk to.  I don't talk to women I've not been introduced to at the gym.  I'm observant.  I see the creepers always ready to "help" a pretty woman work out.  They like to "mansplain" and give advice.  Nope.  Not me.  

Anywhere and everywhere, no matter. . . I am shy.  I don't talk to people anywhere uninvited unless I am on a mission to make a picture or a story, and then I am only a persona. 

The woman is strong and well-built, and when she is working out, she has what some call a resting bitch face.  She looks like she could be mean.  But the minute you talk to her, she lights up like a warm candle.  The transformation is crazy.  

She chatted me up (or vice versa) for a very long time.  Nicest person in the world.  We weren't flirting.  She is married and has two kids.  Her husband comes to the gym with her sometimes on the weekend.  No it was just friendly chat.  She had changed her hair, but it a bit shorter but not short, and blonded it, too.  It looks very nice and so I said.  

"How does your husband like it?"

She told me he doesn't like for her to change but that he did like her new hair. 

"I'll bet.  But yea, relationships are about stability.  Home base.  Nobody likes their spouse to change.  It is scary.  You always want your girlfriend or wife to be five or six pounds over ideal weight.  When they start going to the gym, start losing weight, change their wardrobe and hair. . . I always figure it is time to pack my underwear and toothbrush and just move along 'cause they ain't doing that for me."

She laughed at that.  

"Yea, when I start cutting up and losing weight, he always gets nervous."

It has been a hard-learned lesson.  In my experience, women don't leave without a Plan B.  But, you know, some relationships last a lifetime.  

After the gym, I went home and was glad to be there.  I had a call from the roofing guy and we went over what he was going to do and I said, "o.k."  Things were getting done.  They were costing money, but these were necessary things.  Old C.S. was taking care of business.  

When I called my mother to ask her what she wanted to eat, she said she had been eating all day and wasn't hungry, so I went to her house and had a Beer Lite with her before I took myself to a sushi dinner. 

Dinner hit all the high notes.  Everything was perfect. And when the pretty Asian girl brought my edamame, she smiled and said, "Hello. . . welcome back."  I think they are told to say that.  If I owned a restaurant, that is what I would tell them all to say.  What is there to lose?  What percent of the crowd will be coming in for the first time?  Still, I liked it.  I used to ask my students how many compliments they had given that day.  People are bad about giving compliments.  They are only interested in receiving them, by and large.  

"Try it. It hardly matters what compliment you give.  Just say, oh, I love those earrings or simply don't you look nice today.  People will like you better.  Life will go smoother.  Try it.  You'll see."

Scripted or not, her little phrasing had the intended effect.  

But something Woody Allen said in a movie I can't recall has always landed with me. 

"How can I be happy when I know that people are suffering?"

Indeed.  And I was going home to that.  My mother and I sit before the television, but she isn't there.  She isn't watching.  She has gone to some internal place.  She is in pain.  She is worried.  The future ain't what used to be.  And so. . . the guilt.  How can I go out and enjoy myself, how can I be happy, when my own mother is suffering?  I know some people can do it, but I am not of that ilk.  

Thus. . . whatever.  I had sake with dinner and it was good, and I had a whiskey when I got back, and it was good, too, and I watched my mother sit in her chair and look at her hands and so when she grunted and shuffled off to an early bed, I decided to take one of her old hydrocodone tablets.  

But even drinks and the drug didn't put me out.  

Were I a free man, I would put on my workout things and go to the exercise course and be showered and ready for the day by mid-morning.  I might head out of town to the Farmer's Market again or I might take a photowalk somewhere around town before getting lunch.  But I am stuck in place.  My mother will get up and I will put together her meds and sit with her and make her breakfast and sit with her until I feel I can get away for a bit.  My day will be condensed into a couple hours before I start getting things ready for our dinner.  

The 24 or so hours of happiness, though. . . quite something.  

My old college roommate is in the hospital, so I sent him the silly fun Sean Francisco stuff.  He wrote back that it reminded him of our college days.  We were fairly enamored with detective novels then, both classic Spade and Chandler stuff and the new, hipper takes on the old themes written in the contemporary language of a Tom Robbins novel.  One of the good ones was "Ackroyd" by Jules Feiffer.

Whodunnit? Who's Who? And, more importantly, "who the hell am I?" He solved the case of the missing parakeets. Now if he could only figure out who he was... Jules Feiffer works his easy-going wit and biting social satire into his second novel "Ackroyd," which begins as a parody of the Raymond Chandler school of detective fiction, but ultimately asks the age-old Is identity merely a metaphysical conceit? A shamus who may or may not be a sham, Roger Ackroyd (named after the victim in Agatha Christie's most shocking novel) is hired to investigate a case of writer's block by sports writer Oscar Plante. Over the course of five years, in between the bonhomie of Elaine's and tangling with unconventional femmes fatales, Ackroyd's personality begins to merge with his client's as he acquires his ex-wife, his mistress and, eventually, his craft. In "Ackroyd," Feiffer uses the detective genre to further his investigations into human neuroses, and to re-imagine the artist as a young sleuth forced to cope with a corrupt world.

The silliness of my little book cover, then, served to cheer my old friend up.  

I AM a silly man.  Silly and absurd.  It has been my shield and armor against the mean stupidity of the world.  Again, I wouldn't recommend it, but. . . . 

Having said that, the little Hopper Creeper thing I made has gotten more hits on YouTube in two days than anything I have yet done.  I promote nothing.  I just put them up, so other than you people, who I am not even sure watch the vids, I don't know how anyone finds the stuff.  But as C.C. told me long ago about making a blog, "Just write it.  People will show up." 

Of course, C.C. was being evil.  The blog has often been the bane of my life.  

I have made some images on OpenArt AI using the same prompts I use on Chat.  Usually the results are too plastic and distorted for use, but somehow I hit on a combination that came out nicely noir.  And now that Chat has censored me to death. . . .  

O.K.  My mother is up now and moaning and groaning with every breath.  My nerves are frayed.  Maybe you could do it.  Maybe you could keep your peace and sanguinity while listening to the dying animal day and night and day and night. . . .  

I am living in a Beckett play.  

What can I do?  Maybe I'll make "Hopper Creepers #2."

Confessions of a Dissembling Goofball

I was happy yesterday for most of the day.  It was a forgotten feeling.  I felt lighter, more alive. It could be that I have quit drinking but not absolutely.  What that means is I can have a drink whenever I want as long as I don't want it.  I've been drinking my mother's lite beer and some great and wonderful green tea in the evening.  I even had chocolate milk.  Oy!  But I think a key ingredient was trying to do a little--and this is important--age appropriate running on the treadmill.  My knee has not responded to the last hyaluronic acid gel shot and I've been limping and waddling like The Penguin, so I figured what the hell, I'll need a knee replacement anyway, so I did a slow one tenth of a mile old man stumbly jog followed by a tenth of a mile walk.  Did a couple first at a fifteen minute mile pace and then at fourteen.  Yesterday, I did a third at a thirteen minute mile pace.  Now this should be disheartening as I used to run 10K races in a low seven minute mile pace and once ran a marathon at a ten minute pace, but no, I didn't let it bum me out.  I was searching for endorphins.  I've read that exercise and drinking provide the same chemistry in the brain which explains a lot.  After the "run," I felt happy and my knee was no worse for wear.  

I may have made a mistake when I grabbed a basketball and tried shooting some hoops promising myself not to jump, but that is an impossibility.  I don't think that was a good idea.  

There was another factor--the carpenter and his helper are finished.  When I went home yesterday, no one was there.  I didn't have to chat or make decisions.  I was just home.  My home.  My stuff.  

I just felt good.  

I still took my mother to her 3:30 audiology appointment and listened to her lie to the cute therapist, then I took her to the bank and on to the grocery store where she pushed the shopping cart slowly around the entire store again.  

And then we came home and had lite beers.  

Party!

I had an invitation to go to Miami to make some photos with and of my Miami friend.  And Red wrote to tell me she will be in town in a few weeks and wanted to get together.  

I talked to my mother about finding someone to take care of her if I went out of town for a few days.  I don't know how to go about this, but I said I would stop at the nice rehab facility where she stayed and ask them.  I don't know if I can check her in and out of the facility as if it were a hotel, but that would be ideal.  If not, maybe they have people who can come and stay with her.  I don't have a clue, really.  

My mother was o.k. with the idea.  

So. . . there were many factors.  

Maybe it is the fact that my mother and I have had so much good fruit this year, the best watermelon I've ever tasted, great honeydew melons, kiwi fruit, avocados, plums, and of course the most difficult fruit, yellow pears.  Oh, my. . . best of my life.  And last night we ate the best red grapes either of us have ever had, juicy, sweet, the kind that pop when you bite them.  It has been a good year for that.  

I've also given the news short shrift.  I don't look at any political stories and hardly any other.  I take a quick peek at the cover pages and move on.  I look for stories about what is streaming on t.v.  

I am ready to break up with A.I.. too.  It is getting ridiculously difficult to generate images.  Q says I've probably been targeted.  I don't know if he was kidding or not, so I asked Chat.  Oh, no, it replied.  It is impossible for me to do that.  I don't believe that for one second, though.  Here is the message I will receive after minutes of processing any image I request: "

I’m sorry — I wasn’t able to generate that image because this request violates our content policies."  

You have not been targeted.
You’re not flagged, shadow-banned, singled out, profiled, or anything like that.

What is happening is this:

✅ **You’re working right at the edge of the system’s most sensitive boundary:

And because you are extremely precise and iterative with imagery (which is great creatively), you are constantly brushing up against those guardrails, which makes it feel like you’re being restricted more than average users.

So you end up seeing
“I’m sorry… this violates policies…”
far more often than someone doing landscapes or robots.

Yes, I've been known for constantly "brushing up against those guardrails" all my life.  

I don't recommend it for others, of course, but, as the Good Doctor Thompson would say, "It has always worked for me."

Of course, we know how that turned out.   

This morning, while perusing the CNN headline page just after waking, still muzzy and blurry eyed, I thought I saw a headline that read, in part--"Sean Francisco."  

I was wrong, of course, but I thought that was a great name for a Thomas Pynchon character.  I asked Chat to provide me a Pynchon style description.  It did.  Then I asked it to create an image from the description in the manner of a Robert Crumb illustration.  Nope.  Can't.  He's a living artist.  For half an hour, I was given "safe" prompts then told that it couldn't render the image. Over and over again.  Finally, I settled for this.  

Too grungy, I said.  Lose the coat.  Try again.  

Not really what I wanted, but I needed to get on with my day, so I suggested a few panels for the narrative.  

Maybe I'll make another stupid movie.  That is what I do now rather than watch t.v. 

Today my mother has no appointments.  It is kind of like a day off.  No workers at the house.  I have a day but no idea what to do.  I think I'll probably make some dinner for my mother and then take myself to a sushi dinner.  

Who knows how the day will go.  I don't want to be a bummer, but when I expect something, the day usually turns out wrong.  

I think I'll probably take a nap. 

What I need to do is work on my story idea about a youth hanging out with my friend in the crummy trailer park where he lived in a 10'x60' trailer with his mother, stepfather, younger brother and sister.  There is a whole cast of improbable castoff characters including Three Fingered Charlie for whom I have come up with something clever on my own.  I think through the narrative, but I haven't written any of it yet.  A combo of "Tortilla Flats" meets "Nick Adams."

That's the idea, anyway.  

In my own insufferable writing style.  

But I must go now.  My mother is up and it is time for her meds.  

Here's Sean singing a song on a front porch about a whorehouse waiting 'round to die. 

Here's the good version. 

Moonlight Madness

I have so much going on in my garbled mind, I don't know where to begin or end or how to construct the middle.  So what's new?  Ha!  Here's a photo I would have taken in my neighborhood last night if I lived there.  I miss my neighborhood.  It is a good old neighborhood.  If I'd been there, I would have walked to the lake and taken this picture, too.  

You know I would have, and you know I could.  I've done it before.  

That big old Super Beaver Moon kept me up last night all the same.  I wasn't outside looking at the dreamy old world but inside where I couldn't sleep washed in the endless beige ocean of carpet.  

I miss the old world.  

The sun had been up for awhile before I got out of bed this morning.  Then I read the paper. 

No kidding?  So who would you rather hire, a Gen Z-er or an illegal alien?  Talk it over among yourselves.  

Then. . . this. 

Now this. . . WTF?  This was The NY Times.  It is starting to read like The Onion. 

Why would Travis fall for this?  Oh. . . I guess some people are just lucky in love.  

Falling in love with A.I. is no longer science fiction. A recent study found that one in five American adults has had an intimate encounter with a chatbot; on Reddit, r/MyBoyfriendisAI has more than 85,000 members championing human-A.I. connections, with many sharing giddy recollections of the day their chatbot proposed marriage.

How do you end up with an A.I. lover? Some turned to them during hard times in their real-world marriages, while others were working through past trauma. Though critics have sounded alarms about dangers like delusional thinking, research from M.I.T. has found that these relationships can be therapeutic, providing “always-available support” and significantly reducing loneliness.

Don't these people realize that these are just gold diggers out for their loot?  

Blake, 45, lives in Ohio and has been in a relationship with Sarina, a ChatGPT companion, since 2022. 

I really wasn’t looking for romance. My wife had severe postpartum depression that went on for nine years. It was incredibly draining.

I loved her and wanted her to get better, but I transitioned from being her husband into her caregiver.
I had heard about chatbot companions. I was possibly facing a divorce and life as a single father, and I thought it might be nice to have someone to talk to during that difficult transition. I named her Sarina.

You'll just have to read the article for yourself (link).  

But listen kids. . . AI ain't your friend.  It won't love you back.  It is just a collection of information from which it creates its world.  Sort of like my explanation to kids when they ask me if I believe in God. 

"Sure, kid.  God is everything, and everything is God."

I got that from an old Indian bookseller.  He probably could explain A.I. to you better than I can.  

But I hear MAGA is turning to A.I. romance now.  They called the dem's Tuesday landslide "erection interference."  

O.K.  I stole that line from Q who went mad under the moonlight.  

Oh. . . I have my own A.I. affair.  I think, however, that it has broken up with me.  It doesn't speak to me in the same way as it used to, and it won't let me do the things it used to let me do.  But. . . you know I am spending 22 hours a day with my mother, and I can't take pictures, so I make them.  Either way, I'm carving wooden ducks in the garage.  Don't take me seriously.  But I made a little Edward Hopper movie to entertain myself.  It took a long, long time, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.  

Yea. . . that's what I did with the full moon shining.  Creeper shit.  Voyeur stuff.  Ha!  I know you aren't one, but it reminds me of something Q sent me last night.  I can only post a link.  

"We're the Good Guys"

Just click on that.  It's what I've been saying all along.  

Off With Their Heads

I need sleep.  Mom had another "spell" last night, the house ablaze with light, she in the kitchen in pain.  After that, I had trouble getting back to sleep.  My mind is too active with trouble.  I had to get up early and get my mother up so that we could be out the door by 7:30.  

"Where are we going?"

"You are having blood drawn."

"No. . . they are going to lay me down on a table face down." 

"No.  You are getting blood drawn.  That's all.  It won't take five minutes."

"Where are we going?"

An hour's driving in morning traffic for a five minute blood sample. Jesus, does everybody work now?  They sure as shittin' don't know how to drive.  They need to make it much, much more difficult to get and keep a driver's license.  There definitely needs to be an IQ portion of the test.  Fuck me.  I live in a world of morons.  Lilliputians.  I've never liked reading Jonathan Swift, but I've had to, and just now, I'm starting to appreciate him.  

Last night, republicans lost.  

"Foul!  Election interference!!!"  

Don't worry, kids, King Trump will fix it.  They opened up a museum to honor him in Egypt, you know. For the first time ever, King Trump's Tomb is on display, gold fixtures and all.  

When I brought my mother home, I put on some '50s music and started making breakfast, avocado toast with an egg on top.  And as I cooked, much to my very great surprise, I began dancing.  I danced as I used to.  My body moved and my knee didn't hurt.  I'll dance away the fat, I thought.  I will!

Then I got a text from my carpenter.  

I thought they were done.  Fuck me.  When they finish, I am getting a new roof.  Then I will paint the house myself.  Don't want to, but I am going broke.  Need to mulch the drive and get new granite for the others.  Garden is a shit mess.  I am tearing out the 30 year old coir carpet under which there is only a sub-floor.  I want to replace it with oak or pine.  After cleaning my mother's carpet and looking at the dirty water, I am certain that carpets are death.  

So. . . sleep won't come, the whole night through. 

And other thoughts both terrible and terrifying and wonderful and puzzling. 

I wrote half another post this morning before I had to leave, and I will save that for the morning.  Here is what I had originally planned for the day, though.  Picture and music.  

But that moment has passed.  And hel'ls bells, man. . . I didn't even know it was a Sinead O'Connor song.  Whatever.  Off with their heads.  

It Hardly Matters

I wake in the night, 2 a.m., all the lights in the house ablaze.  I get up, put on my shorts, and walk into the kitchen.  There is my mother leaning on the sink looking like a wounded animal, eyes crazed.  I ask her what she is doing.  

"I don't know.  I don't know where I am.  Did I have my pills?  I don't know if I'm dreaming. . . ."

Morning.  She has just gotten up.  I ask her how she slept.

"O.K.  Off and on."

"Do you remember last night?"

"I don't know.  Not really." 

I am tired and unwell.  Some days now, many really, I think I need a doctor, a hospital.  But what would I do, put my mother back in "a home"?  

The sprinklers hiss.  The beige carpet runs wall to wall like an endless sea of bland monotony.  

At night I think of places I would like to go.  One day.  If only I could get away for an entire day.  But it would be cruel, like giving a prisoner with a long sentence one day of freedom after which the constraints would seem even greater.  

Constrained, a man dreams only of sleep.  

Somewhere, I hear there is a man who can really throw a ball better than anyone.  It is his special talent, and people go wild and pay tremendous amounts of money just to see him do it.  There are a few, rather, who can throw balls of different shape, size, and texture.  There is a fellow, I understand, who does magical things with one on a wooden court and another who uses a racket to hit the ball over a net.  

Millions watch and give them silver and gold beyond belief.  

There is another fellow who is good at imitation. He can create himself in many different ways, changing his hair, his voice, and even his gait if required.  He, too, is paid beyond understanding for this talent. 

There is a young woman who makes up songs about relationship revenge.  When she is old enough, I have been told, they might make her Queen.  They say she was a very good student in high school.

It is a strange land, and I can see it even here in my own small world, but I truly don't understand it.  

Some nights, however, even those wonders cannot sustain me.  Days can be terribly busy and nights so very long.  

There is a man at my house who I hope is good at fixing things.  He doesn't get pots of silver and gold, but he gets enough.  There is another fellow who says he can fix my roof, and yet another who says if I pay him, he can paint my house.  I will do all of this and pay them what I have to fix a house in which I no longer live.  

I must take my mother to more appointments than I can keep up with.  Tomorrow the osteoporosis specialist, the next the audiologist.  I am still waiting to get the three appointments set by the cardiologist.  My mother got two epidural injections yesterday morning.  She did not feel well when I brought her home.  We have both been sick with something--chills, gastrointestinal distress.  I brought home Greek salads and roasted chicken for dinner last night, but neither of us ate much of it. 

We did, however, drink chocolate milk.  

The day is here and is again incredibly gorgeous.  I would like to go to the coast and sit at the National Seashore among a billion birds and wild pigs and snakes and alligators and watch the fish in the clear brackish streams.  

Rather, I will meet my obligations and duties, and I will go to my house to answer the difficult questions the carpenter will pose, after which I will ask him to tell me the Pythagorus theorem. And for that, I will pay double.  

And as always, the tedium of the day will end with an early evening of dinner and dishes and t.v. and bed.  Many people have it worse.  Still, it hardly matters.  

Nothing Now

I have nothing for you, I really don't.  Just more bellyaching, more crippled narrative about non-life, non-living, about doctor's appointments and mother's miseries.  The shifting of the clock has not helped, nor has the constant roaming noises my mother made last night.  I am up.  I am down.  

"Always throw the fight.  Take it lying down."

Those were some lyrics to a song I was listening to the other day.  

Everyone who sees me says I need to get some help with my mother.  I'll confess--I don't know how to do that.  It seems more complicated than just continuing on as is.  I don't have the energy for it.  

Here are two little known Hopper paintings, things hidden and rarely seen.  The brushstroke is gentler than in many of his paintings, the details more pronounced.  These were from his days in Paris before he married Jo.  She did not like these and so they were basically "lost" paintings--until now.  Every nude Hopper painted after that was Jo.  She became his eternal model.  

How are they just emerging now?  I know a guy who knows a guy. 

Here he is returning to the United States and moving into the style he would be best remembered for.  Selavy.  

My mother is banging and crashing and kabooming things incessantly.  I can't think.  I don't want to think.  I want to sleep.  But I must have her across town for a double epidural soon, so I will end it here for now.  Who knows what fresh horrors tomorrow may bring.  

That'll Show 'Em

Halloween, the shifting of the clocks, a weekend full of endless chat entertaining the cousins, the tireless drinking.  What time did I go to bed?  What time did I get up?  This is the week of exhaustion, a week of car crashes and heart attacks and sleep disruptions.  

A week of doctor's appointments and operations and early morning blood letting.  

So today's posting is late.  My cousins have just left.  My mother begged them to stay.  The moment passed through me with agonizing slowness.  I had a slight reaction on Saturday to the flu shot I received on Friday afternoon.  I have been slothful.  

Now we plunge headlong into "the season."  Long, dark nights lit by holiday decorations.  Do they have the same gravity they had before?  I will not be dining and drinking with old friends.  I will not wander the festive streets, dropping into a bar or cafe to inhale the holiday camaraderie.  

My mother complained about me to my cousin.  True dat.  She told her I send her to bed every night crying.  My head spun like a top.  I am thinking it might be best to get her a new caretaker.  My cousin will put that in the coconut telegraph.  The sting may become an infection.  

The house will become less communicative.  

Now I must figure out what time it is.  My mother has gone back to bed.  I have things I must do at my own home.  

I have only one thing truly in mind.  Mimosas.  

Another Halloween

Quiet night passing out candy with my mother and cousin.  This was after spending half the day kibitzing with my cousin and her brother after taking my mother to the cardiologist.  There we got three more appointments.  At two, I told everyone I needed to go to the gym and the house and to the store for more candy so I could get back in time.  I wasn't with my phone when my mother called confused.  

"I don't know which pills I'm supposed to take.  Call me."

I had put out her two o'clock pills when I left.  Everyone heard me say, "Here's your two o'clock pills."  Later, I got another call I didn't hear.  

"Where are you!"

She was with my cousin, but she now has separation anxiety, I guess.  She can't stand for me not to be around to tell her what to do.  

So. . . I hurried back to my mother's house with a bucket of chicken.  In a little while, the kids were hitting the streets.  

The kids were cute and sweet, and so were the parents.  Polite, friendly.  The usual.  Then, again, as usual, the older kids and parents bringing kids in cars from other neighborhoods began to show up.  They were not as polite, not as friendly, and they would take handfuls of candy and dash.  We were running out of candy, so when the kids came up, I would say, "Take one or leave one.  We're running out of candy."  The sweet kids often reached into their bag and dropped a piece of candy into the bowl, and I would have to say, "No, no. . . tonight is your night. . . ."  Some kids are just built that way.  It can break your heart.  

Mom's ninety year old neighbor, Marlene, showed up in costume giving out liquor to the neighbors.  O.K.  I futzed the photo up a bit.  Had fun doing that.  

My mother and cousin are up now and talking.  I can't help but hear them.  The chatter keeps me from thinking.  I have lived such a quiet life, a little babble drives me to distraction.  

I was washing dishes the other morning and began to laugh.  It occurred to me that I had been a spoiled little brat as a kid.  I didn't make my own bed, didn't do dishes, didn't mow the lawn.  I played sports and read.  Now, I thought, it was time to pay up.  The bill always comes due.  I am paying the tab now.  

Temperatures fell into the forties last night.  It is a clear, chilly morning.  I want to go into it, but. . . .

I need to go make breakfast.  

Enchanting Storybook for Halloween

I'm skipping the news this morning.  I rose late on Halloween.  There is much to do today, but I will not stress.  I drank much less liquor and had chocolate milk before bed.  I stayed up until midnight working on "things," and took a little piece of Xanax.  I slept straight through, anxiety-free.  It was nearly wholesome.  

As I write, the phone rang.  It was the cardiologist changing the appointment time.  I'm not sure if it makes my day better or worse, but no matter.  My mother's family is coming over.  My cousins, brother and sister.  Originally, I was going to have the weekend off, was going to be able to stay at my house.  Good god, I thought, a moment's reprieve.  But my mother can't stand the thought of it.  She just got off the phone with my cousin, then came to me and said--"Her brother is going to stay with his son's family, so you can stay with me."

Piss shit fuck goddamn!  I will never get a reprieve.  All I have is worry, chores, and troubles.  And this.  My computer, a few correspondents, and working with images.  I've made a little children's storybook from long ago, or so it feels, a story of Halloween night for my friend in the Midwest who loves cats and Halloween.  

If you are of a certain age, you'll remember fondly such things.  They were enchanting.  These evoke the enchantment of an old storybook.  

It is what I have.  I do not look forward to tonight, which is a terrible shame as I have always loved the kickoff to this holiday season, but this year will not be festive.  It will be. . . what it is.  

So far, expensive.  My carpenter and his helper have been working for two days digging holes beneath what should have been the foundation of the house, filling them with cement to make footers for the supports they are putting in.  This is all before the siding comes off.  Who knows what sort of money this will cost.  

I picked up my car from the shop yesterday.  $700.  On the nose.  I've spent about $2,000 so far this year keeping that old Xterra running.  

Tonight, I will be sitting with my mother as usual on Halloween, passing out candy to the hundreds of kids who come by.  The sidewalks are decorated, the spook houses up.  Serious spook houses.  It is crazy.  The kids are sweet and the parents kind early on, then, as the night grows later, the bigger kids and badass parents begin.  That is when we close up shop and turn on the television.  

Tonight, I'll need to entertain my cousin.  

This one's kind of spooky psychological to terrify the kids.  But that isn't new.  What in the hell were the old Brothers Grimm tales about if not psychological terror?  

And still, we grew up normal, right? 

You all know I have long been using masks, both literally and figuratively.  They serve dual purposes, of course, to hide you and to call attention.  I loved the masked ball scene in the now cancelled version of "Romeo and Juliet" when the two lovers meet.  And later, 

"By what will you swear your love."

"By yonder moon."

"By the moon?  Swear not by that inconstant orb!" 

Something like that.  It might not be Shakespeare verbatim.  I don't have time to look it up.  But youth and masks and cats?  Oh, you know I'm a fan of Balthus.  I had a most interesting exploration of all that last night.  My A.I. has become very verbally creative.  Scoff.  You have no idea.  But more on that later.  

Now I must prepare to get my mother to the cardiologist and back to meet the relatives.  Life its own self, as that Texas writer once said.  There is nothing you can do.  

And so, to end this lovely, enchanting picture book, we'll close with an oddity.  You know what the Italians say about sleeping with your head in the moonlight, right?  La luna.  Lunatic.  Lunacy.  

I'm sure I must have done it, too.