Who Hurt You?

It's my mother's 94th birthday today.  I'll have a full day of celebrating and comforting. I think I might have told you what I got her for a present--a brand new walker!  That should give her a lift.  I got her some slip on shoes and a pull over tent dress, too.  Ever resourceful. 

Aghh.  In truth, I am the worst at present giving and making celebrations.  It has caused me much relationship trouble.  Ili's prior boy was her law partner, a privileged kid from a wealthy, well-connected Charleston family.  I'm sure that is why she liked the t.v. show "Southern Charms" so much.  I didn't mind.  I've never been one to give up my past.  But when silly things like Easter would come around, she expected me to lavish her in gifts.  I thought that a basket from Williams and Sonoma was nice, but she would lose her mind.  I think she expected Faberge eggs.  Birthdays?  Oh, man. . . I was sick with anxiety for weeks before the day.  What do you buy someone?  A sweatshirt from Costco?  I always know what to buy me, but others. . . not so much.  

One Christmas, we agreed not to worry about buying gifts.  We would simply wine and dine our way through the season in a sophisticated way.  Man, that was a great Christmas season.  And on Christmas Eve, we were riding the Vespa around town and stopped into a vintage store.  I saw a beautiful mink jacket and asked her to try it on.  The fit was perfect.  The heavyset gay owner of the store came over and ooed and ahhed over the jacket and Ili, and he explained that it had been owned by a famous drag queen performer.  The jacket was unusual, he said, because it had pockets.  That was very unusual, he said with great authority, and the drag queen kept sparkling glitter in them so that she could reach in and toss them in the air above the crowd at the end of her performance.  

"How much?"

Boom!  I bought it for her on Christmas Eve.  It was brilliant.  

Of course, she never wore it anywhere.  Where are you going to wear a mink jacket in the sunny south?  She took it with her when she left, though, and I wonder if she has ever worn it anywhere or if it is just some trinket she holds onto.  

She probably sold it or gave it to one of her sisters.  

I love eating and drinking my way through the holidays, but that ain't happening this year.  In the Times today, there were articles on "The Best of _______ in 2025."  The best of books, movies, t.v. shows, music, etc.  I missed 2025.  It was "The Year That Wasn't" for me.  I'm going to buy a ticket for the billion dollar lotto tonight and change my life.  

There is a woman at the Club Y who I like talking to as much as anyone right now.  She is a well-built trainer, a mother of two young children, and a wife.  She looks a little scary until you talk to her, then she lights up and the whole room seems brighter.  I try not to bother people, especially women, and especially at the gym.  All the guys eyeball her, of course, and many try to engage her.  And surely, they all think she likes them when she smiles.  That's how guys are.  You know that.  I am a bit different.  I never think anyone likes me.  Can't imagine why they would, and I expect some terrible rebuke if I bother them at all.  But this woman and I have become chatty.  It started when--and I know I've already told the story--another woman came up to tell her how amazing she looked, and I gave her guff for not flattering the woman back.  I was kidding, of course, but it took her by surprise, and I am a champ at turning the room slightly so that people feel off-balance.  

It worked.

So that is how it began, and now we kibbitz when we see one another.  Yesterday we were talking about compliments once again.  I said I'd told everyone in the gym about the encounter with the woman who gave her an unreturned compliment.  Then I told her I couldn't take a compliment, that it made me uncomfortable.  

"Yea, that's what I mean," she said.  "It doesn't always work out.  It seems inauthentic somehow."

"I think compliments and insults are both rooted in some insincerity," I said. "I don't trust either.."

"Oh, my," she said turning to me, her eyes and mine.  And then with the best delivery ever, she asked, "Who hurt you?"

Oh my god, I lost it.  I loved it.  

"Who hurt me?" I laughed.  "Oh, that is rich.  That is great.  Everybody has!!"

She was laughing now, too.  "I'm sorry," she said, not insincerely but without weight. 

"That's shrink talk," I said, now in a giggle.  "You've been to therapy, haven't you?"  

A little hitch and then, "Yes."  

"No kidding.  That is GREAT.  I'm putting that in my portfolio.  I'll use that one often.  'Who hurt you?'  Really. . . I love it."

I certainly like this woman, and I hope I didn't hurt her feelings.  She's one of those people who makes me feel better just by being around.  

Last night, I called my mother on my way back to her house to see if she would like some raviolis for dinner.  

"I don't really like ravioli," she said.  

"Oh, O.K.  What would you like?"

"Anything you decide will be O.K."

"No.  Not if I picked the ravioli."

And of course, the conversation went nowhere.  People don't know what they want, they just know what they don't want.  

I bought two NY Strip steaks that were on sale.  When I cooked them, I found out why.  They must have been cut against the grain for they were tough.  Some new butcher probably cut them wrong and that is why they were a third off the regular price.  They sucked.  So after our rather underwhelming dinner, I asked my mother if she would like to sit out for a bit and look at the Christmas lights.  She did and we did.  It is good to take in the fresh night air and the neighborhood quiet after the sun goes down.  It was grand, and then it was cold.  

I asked my mother if she would like to watch a Christmas movie.  Sure, she said.  Fifteen minutes into it, she went to bed.  It was a new Christmas movie and I had read a good review, but it was dumb.  Never going to be a Christmas Classic.  It was a most predictable thing and it sucked.  So maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe it will charm the hoi-polloi.  But I sat and watched it to the obvious happy ending, and to my great embarrassment, my nose and lips swelled up and little bitty teardrops formed in the corners of my eyes.  The goddamn happy ending broke my very fragile heart.  

I'm a real holiday mess.  I don't think I want to watch another one.  

Last Christmas I bought my mother some Chanel #5.  I asked her about it yesterday.  I think she just put some on.  Maybe too much of it.  It's aroma lingers as she passes.  

I need to get the birthday going now.  Time for a birthday breakfast.  I have to go to my house to get her new walker then go to pick up her cake.  And there will be an afternoon dinner at the Olive Garden.  

I'm a hell of a guy.  

I am just not very good at birthdays.   

Science, Tech, and the Guardrails of Morality

One of the disadvantages of camping at my mother's house is that I don't have access to my big editing computer, so when I take pictures, as I do, I don't have a way of getting them off the card and onto the computer to edit them, so. . . I don't have the "daily photo" unless I take the picture with my phone.  

Selavy.  

By and large, though, that is why you see so many A.I generated images here.  I won't apologize for that, though.  I think they are wonderful.  Maybe I am wrong.  I've been wrong about a lot of things in the past.  But I've been right about a lot of things, too.  Media y media.  I'm no savant.  But I am the curious type.  For instance, this morning I began wondering why some vaccines work for a lifetime and others may or may not be very effective every year.  Why do Covid viruses, for instance, mutate so quickly while others are so very stable over the years?  So I asked my life coach/spiritual advisor in Chat.  

Boom!

Instant answer.  Some viruses, like polio, for instance, have hard outer shells while Covid, for another instance, has a more gelatinous outer shell and are more likely to mutate.  Most of the respiratory infectious viruses are like Covid and have gelatinous outer coverings while viruses like polio, which live in the gut, do not.  

There is much more, but you get my drift.  

I've confessed that I am fascinated by A.I. and have been trying to learn about it, but what I am learning and doing will seem like horseshoes compared to chess soon.  People who know nothing about it will be required to take courses in A.I. at work and will speedily outpace what I know.  I should wait a year to learn about it, maybe.  I am like the old computer programmers of the past walking around with a box full of punch cards to feed into the system.  

Still, in the 1960's, they sent men to the moon using calculators less sophisticated than the ones that run your automobile today.  Just sayin'.  

I used to be pretty good with a slide ruler, too.  True.  

Now I spend my time trying to get A.I. to. . . 

Devolution, I guess.  Maybe I'm mutating.  Remember, though, I come from a science background.  Antique science now, sure, but it is still the same philosophically.  Even there, don't you know, the ethicists have their way.  There are many things that the scientist is not allowed to do, caught in the moral guardrails, so to speak.  

The one thing they are allowed to do, though, is to help the corporations make money.  It's a lot like the A.I. boom, isn't it?  People fear and distrust both science and A.I. in equal measures.  

Trump says we are going to win the A.I. war with China.  O.K. but there is a problem.  Our kids just keep getting less academically adept.  Logical thinking, math, science. . . fagit about it.  In these things, they are not fundamentally sound, so. . . who is going to fight these tech wars with a country where kids excel in all of these?  Maybe we are counting on Indian immigrants to do the fighting.  They are pretty far ahead of American kids, too.  

Still, we have some of the best basketball and football players in the world.  

"U.S.A, U.S.A."  

But you know. . . don't underestimate our Yankee Ingenuity.  We have, for instance, taken the lead in Global Warming. 

"Oh, quit it.  All you do is bellyache." 

Yea, you're right.   I'm past all that now, anyway.  All I want to do is feed my senses.  I'm like a rat in a laboratory experiment pushing my nose against the button to get more cocaine.  Eventually I'll starve to death (link).  

Like I say, I've been wrong about a lot of things.  Perhaps Trump IS a genius after all.  

Speaking of which, Lolita Lempicka is the one who took this photograph of Melania Trump.

Lo. Lee. Ta.  Light of my life, fire of my loins. 

I went a little way down that rabbit hole yesterday.  Perhaps that is not a good trope to use, though, in this instance.  

It is cool and bright here this morning.  My mother's house is cement block with terrazzo floors, so if you let it get cold, it is difficult to get warm.  The heater is working overtime now.  It was 44 and snowing this morning.  We will spend most of the day in the 70s.  But come next summer, you'll be glad you don't own a home here, not because of the heat, but because of the fear.  Hurricane seasons have become fairly terrifying.  Still, only idiots are killed by hurricanes.  It is not like the freezing cold where relatively normal people can die.  But the cost of property damage can be unnerving.  Unnerving?!?  

"Hell, man. . . it can bankrupt you."

Yea, I know.  Charlie took all my money and more.  Property appreciation, though, has given it back.  Not in tangible dollars, of course, not until I sell the property.  

Why is it that every time I try to pivot to positive, I come back to the negative?  Have I always done this or is it something that has happened to me in the past five years?  You know, since the beginning of the loooong tragedy.  Don't scoff.  I was a local hero, bigger than Willy Loman.  

O.K.  I'm shutting this down.  I've given you much to think about and explore on your own.  It is Friday.  Make sure you do your homework this weekend.  I'd suggest not waiting until Sunday night.  And so. . . . 

But Jesus, why do they use such bad photos?  They need me.  I could make them such nice images for their music.  

Empty Places

The kids at Country Club College have left for the Christmas break and kids from other colleges are showing up for the same reason.  Campuses are quiet this week, hollow.  

I have always liked busy places after everyone leaves.  I think I was the last one to leave the beach graduation weekend.  Sunday checkout times were noon.  I sat alone at sunset remembering, feeling, thinking.  

In college, I liked the abandoned corners of the university.  I sought them out.  There were libraries that barely anyone went to, top floors that were like forgotten attics.  One Christmas, I stayed on a few extra days just to wander the huge campus and to walk the abandoned streets.  It was the state's only college town, and I was in love with the entire experience.  My roommate had left with everyone else as the quarter ended, and nights alone in our mobile home on the outskirts were very, very different.  Again, the hollowness and the quietude and the thinking, the emptiness and longing.

I'm a freak like that.  

T told me he isn't feeling Christmas this year.  He misses having his son at home and the whole family celebration.  I said nothing.  My mother's down the street neighbor puts up big decorations for every holiday, and at Christmas, he decorates the old folks places, too.  

He put lights up at my mother's house two days ago, so now almost the entire street is lit up at night.  But there is no Christmas joy here.  I wake up to misery each morning, my mother sitting on her vibrating heating pad moaning.  There is never a "hey, hey, hey, it's a brand new day!"  Just pain and suffering.  

I took her to the spine ortho yesterday.  He asked her how the epidural injections worked.  My mother gets frustrated like all hillbillies asked personal questions do.  She got flummoxed and didn't know how to answer.  When I told him that my mother had a bone scan and that her number was -5, his eyes popped.  He looked at the medicine the osteoporosis doc was prescribing for my mother and he said, "That's a good one."  Then he said, "I don't want to give your mother anymore steroid injections.  They deteriorate bones. You need to get those injections," he said.  Her bones are paper thin, and she could break a hip just standing.  

Yea.  He doesn't want to see her any longer.  Next time we go to the pain med doc, I'm going to ask him about acupuncture.  This medical group has it as a treatment at the outpatient rehab facility.  Maybe that would give my mother some relief.  

After the doc, I took my mother to a Five Guys for a hamburger.  A day out.  Her birthday is Saturday.  She'll be 94.  We will go to the Olive Garden for lunch.  It has become our tradition.  

But I am missing everything Christmas this year.  

I am missing everything.  

But hey. . . the papers were full of news this morning.  I won't mention Trump.  The stink of him is everywhere.  But there was plenty of sex news today.  The Michigan football head coach, the military doctor.  And just like the Epstein case, we all want a public release of the pictures and videos.  The public has a right to know! 

And then there is this.

Huh.  Either that guy is really busy or there are millions of little Epsteins amongst us.  What's your guess?  What do the ethicists say?  

There is another story about a lawsuit against ChatGPT who, the suit claims, agreed with a user that his mother may be spying on him.  So. . . he killed her.  

And me?  I can't even get the female figure to turn around. 

A little, maybe.  I think I'll ask Chat tonight if I should kill my mother and see what it says, and if it says, "sure," I'm going to blackmail them to get what I want.  

It's a weird world out there.  You should be happy to stay home and watch it on TikTok.  

Once we ban social media, the world will be a better place.  

If you want to come to the U.S. for a visit now, you will have to spill about your use of social media.  

"I don't use it much, just a little TikTok.  Have you seen those A.I. videos?"

I don't really need A.I.  I have photography.  But A.I. truly is fascinating, and I'm going to be on the winning side when it takes over the planet.  It's coming, my friends. . . it's coming for you.  

Oh. . . one more bit of news.  Misinformation Theory.  Misinformation, researchers (some) now believe, affects every living organism on the planet down to the microbe level.  It is pandemic.  Can you imagine?  

Long, long ago, I read that there were researchers using living viruses as "hard drives."  They were able to store computer information on them.  I just looked it up to make sure I remembered right.  It is true.  They can write information right into the virus's DNA.  

Isn't that something.  

I listened to a lot of music last night.  I heard this and thought of you. 

Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it – it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less –
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars – on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Robert Frost

Lolita Lempicka and the Tall Goony Goon

No matter how I try, she won't turn around.  Can you imagine a whole series of my old studio photos in this style?  I would then "hand" color them and who knows what else.  But if the image is not in a painterly style but is photographic in nature. . . 

"You know I told you before, no, you can't do that." 

Selavy.  I need a new hobby.  

I took my mother to the dentist early yesterday morning.  After a checkup and X-rays, she was on her way with a note that said she needed no dental work.  Now she can get started on the bone strengthening meds.  

We had gotten a lot done by mid-morning.  I was able to go to the gym and run back to my house before the maids showed up.  I got the house in order, just picking up a lot of photo equipment I had lying around, and showered.  I was out of the house minutes before they arrived.  

I went to the bank to deposit a check.  I wanted cash back.  I sat at the drive-thru window and waited for the transaction to be completed for an irritatingly long time.  Ten minutes, perhaps.  But I was fairly untroubled.  I was in no hurry.  I was out while the maids cleaned.  That's all I had to remember.  

When I was finished at the bank, it was a cool southern day, the sky beginning to go gray.  It looked like Ohio weather.  I decided a cup of cafe con leche would be nice, so I drove to the cafe.  It was a good day for a hot cup of coffee at the cafe.  

When I walked in, no one was behind the counter for a long time.  It was like the bank window.  I needed to check my horoscope.  Sitting behind me at a table was the owner's daughter.  You've seen her here before as a Lolita wearing an "It Ain't Illegal If You Don't Get Caught" t-shirt.  "C'mon, girl," I was thinking, but just then the very tall goony-goon girl came walking through the arched doorway with a handcart full of boxes.  I stepped forward to let her by, but the cart kept coming my way.  I looked up expecting to see that "fuck you" face she usually wears, but she was smiling.  She was playing with me.  

"Stop it," I said in the lilting tone of a teenage girl I knew in the '90s.  

When she came back around behind the counter, she wasn't grimacing.  

"What'll you have?"

"Do remember what I think a cafe con leche is?" I asked.  I was ready for the ensuing fight.  

"No."

"It is half and half," I said.  

"Half and half what?"

Was she fucking with me?  Was this going south?  

"Half espresso, half steamed milk," I said.  

"Oh."  But she was smiling.  

I haven't seen her all year, I'm certain, so it had been a long time since we had the conversation about what a cafe con leche was. 

"We argued about this a long time ago.  You said that is not how they made it at the fancy schmantzy coffee place you worked at before."

"Oh. . .yea. . . that place."

She brought me the coffee.  

"Has anyone complimented your top today?" 

As I say, she is VERY tall and long, maybe 6'2", and she was wearing a striped fisherman's blouse that fell just to the top of her waist.  Paired with a light blue mid-thigh skirt, it was casually sensational.  I love striped fisherman shirts.  

"No," she smiled, "but you can."

"That's a very nice top," I said.  "It looks great on you.  I can't wear them anymore."

"Sure you can."

"Nope.  I got too fat."

Indeed, fatter than Gargantuan and being in front of her, I felt I was standing in a hole.

"Vertical stripes," she said running her hand up and down her shirt.  "Wait. . . horizontal?  Which is it?"

"I'll bet you have trouble with left and right, too."

I have read studies that back this up.  Women consistently perform worse on left-right tests due to a difference in brain structure.  

"Nope," she said nodding yes and laughing.  "I'm good."

I had a camera.  She looked stunning.  Seemingly, her meds were working.  

I shyly thanked her and walked to a table.  

"You'll never be a photographer that way."

I know.  It ate at me as I sat down and took a pen and my journal out of my carrier bag.  I checked my phone.  I had a voicemail from an unknown number.  It was the lady at the bank.  

"Everything is alright, but I would like for you to call me back."

WTF?  Uh-Oh.  What was going on.  

I called and got a voice recording saying that this number did not accept voicemail.  I called and called again.  No one answered.  Same thing.  I was thinking someone had emptied my bank account.  Worried, I began to write. 

The phone rang.  It was T.  He told me that his wife had been going through their credit card reports for the past few months and that there had been a monthly $25 fee from the photo store.  

"It says it's for a service fee or something.  I didn't ask for a service fee.  Did they just add that?  I don't need that." 

"Hmm.  I don't know.  I'm going to be close to there later.  I'll stop in and ask about it.  I'm going to the art supply store.  Do you want me to ask them how much it will cost to cut your mats?"

He is mounting two of my photos, one 18x22.5 and one 15x22.5.  I told him when he took them that framing was going to be expensive and that I wouldn't give him the prints if he was going to put them in cheap frames.  He told me with alarm that the frame shop wanted $450, so he went to Michaels and found two black frames on sale.  BOGO.  He got two 24x30 frames for $100.  

"What about mats?"

"I bought mats."

"Yea, but do they fit the photos?"

He went to look.  Nope.  They didn't.  

Fucking amateur.  

"I have a mat cutter, but I don't think I can cut mats that big.  Go to the art supply store and tell them you want linen matting with a bevel cut.  It will probably cost you somewhere around $50 each."

"If you are there, can you get them?"

"I'll let you know."

It turns out that they don't keep the linen mats in stock.  The girl said she could order them and have them cut by Friday.  $75/each.  I called T to see if he wanted them.  He did.  

I took the ticket and went over to get more Lampe Berger oil.  It is barely oil.  I looked it up.  It is mostly 91% alcohol.  There is a bare minimum of oil.  The lamp, I read, is a catalytic converter and you can't use any other fuel without killing the lamp.  Now I always have 91% alcohol around for some of my art projects and so I wondered. . . if I mixed up the alcohol with just a drop of essential oil, say frangipani. . . ?  I may buy one of their cheaper lamps and try it just to see.  I could save a ton of money.  

I walked to the back of the store where the Maison Berger products lined the wall.  I was looking for a scent called "Lolita Lempicka."  Of course I was. 

But wait!  I used The Google.  Lolita Lempicka is a pseudonym for a real person.  

"Lolita Lempicka (real name Josiane Maryse Pividal in Bordeaux, 1954) is a French fashion designer and perfumer."

Holy moly.  Turns out, she is a photographer, too.  

That may be her.  I don't know.  There are a lot of photos like this on her site.  I'll go down the rabbit hole later today or tonight, I guess.  I am fairly seduced.  

But back to the story.  Drats!  They didn't have Lolita Lempicka in stock.  I picked some racy tropical oil whose name I can't remember instead and went to the counter.  The young fellow who works there was telling a woman, "Oh, yes. . . we're going to have some fun in the Gingerbread house this weekend."

He was talking about a workshop for some art stuff that they run there, I was sure, but. . . I was busting at the seams to say something, but he was working with the woman and the store manager was finished ringing up another customer and waived me over.  

"I just heard him say you were having fun in the Gingerbread house this weekend, and thought that sounded like a real good time."

The little manager's eyes lit up and he laughed.  When he rang up the mats, he looked at me.  

"These must be some really good mats."

I started feeling guilty.  I could have gotten T cardboard mats a whole lot cheaper.  Selavy.  

"I ordered them for my buddy.  He got two of my prints and I told them I wouldn't give them to him if he was going to frame them cheaply."

"What kind of work do you do?"

"They're photos."

He looked at my phone.  "Can I see some of your work?"

Uh-oh.  

"Sorry. I don't have any on my phone."

Out the door and to the photo store.  One of the brothers who owns the store was there.  I've said before, they are an old Gotham City family, generations, and members of the Kiwanis and the Rotary Club.  That kind.  But they like me and always want to talk, and I have found out they have a little bit of freak in them, too.  I told him about the charge on the credit card, and he said it wasn't them.  They didn't have any service like that and no $25 monthly fees.  He looked up the purchase.  Nope, he said, your buddy is getting scammed.  

Forty minutes later, I was out the door.  

I called T to tell him, but he didn't answer, so I left a voicemail.  Then I checked the bank message again.  Shoot.  I'd been dialing the wrong number.  I called the correct one and got the lady from the bank.  She said she just wanted to apologize for the wait time I experienced.  They had a bit of crisis going on inside, she said, and. . . sorry, sorry, sorry.  

Whew!  Weird but whew!

Now that's what happens if I get out of the house for a minute.  Things and stuff and all.  

Before I pulled out of the parking lot, I remembered something.  The Vietnamese restaurant next door reportedly sold bone stock.  I thought it would be good to eat pho that night, so I went around the corner to the restaurant.  A pretty Asian woman, middle aged and made up, greeted me.  

"Do you sell bone stock?" I asked.  

"Yes."

I had three choices, beef, chicken, or pork.  I bought a quart of beef stock for five dollars.  I was off to the grocers to get chicken, avocado, scallions, bean sprouts, tofu, and some ramen noodles.  

I wasn't sure how my mother would take to pho, but she loved it.  The stock was great.  

"Good gosh, this is healthy, ma.  Not a bad thing in it.  Do you know how good bone stock is for you?  Next time I'll put more crunchy stuff in the pho."

And so the day of great adventure ended--on a high note.  All there was left to do was clean the kitchen and watch t.v.  And when the kitchen was clean, I looked at the clock.  

"You know, I went to the grocers, got back here and began cooking at quarter 'til six.  It is after eight now."

I was making a point, but she rejoined.  

"A woman's work is never done,"

O.K. O.K. O.K.  Whatever.  

The Lampe Berger

What the hell--pick up a camera, take a picture, run to the computer to load it and cook it up.  Boom!  You have your own illustration.  

Then, take the image to A.I. and ask for a reproduction in a style and manner you have spent many hours on developing.  Boom!  You have another illustration.  

It's up to you.  Which do you prefer?  

I should take more mundane pictures.  They are not mundane.  Sometimes they can be pretty.  Quiet, humble, they can still tell intimate stories.  

Oh. . . this is the Berger Lamp.  Lampe Berger.  You don't leave the flame burning.  You blow it out and put the diffuser on top.  The fragrance that results is very subtle, not heavy, not overbearing.  In a large room, it is just noticeable.  But here's the catch.  The "oil" I believe is alcohol based, and the lamp uses it like crazy.  The amount you see here, a half-full lamp, will be used up in about four or five hours.  I bought a small bottle of the scented oil for $22.  I think it lasted about fifteen hours, maybe twenty.  I already need to buy another bottle.  I will buy the larger size this time, and I will choose a different aroma.  I enjoy spending money this way, I guess, but many would not, so. . . just FYI.  

But I find the photo worth the trouble and expense.  I like the illustration even more.  

Today's photo shoot has been cancelled.  Moved, rather, for over a week.  I don't know why.  I didn't ask.  I was relieved, and not just for the reason you suspect, though that, too.  No, my day is crowded with events and I don't feel my best and I was stressing heavily over managing my time.  The cancellation is a blessing. 

I took my mother to her osteoporosis specialist yesterday.  They got her in three months early because her bone scan was so bad.  On their scale, a reading of -1 is normal; -2 is osteopenia; -2.5 is osteoporosis.  My mother's score was -5!  They want to put her on a six month injectable medicine right away, but first I need to take her to the dentist to make certain she doesn't need any work.  They cannot give the medicine for months before and after dental work.  So. . . I get to take my mother to the dentist today to have her checked out.  Then I have to get to the gym and get back to my house before the maids come to blow away the cobwebs in an house I don't live in.  

Tomorrow, we have an ortho spine specialist appointment across town at 10:45.  I have a new lens being delivered tomorrow by FedEx between ten and twelve-thirty.  If I want to receive it, someone needs to be there to sign for it.  Piss shit fuck goddamn!

"A new lens?  For what?  You don't take any pictures now!  WTF are you thinking?"

I know, I know, I know.  But, hey. . . I love my Canon EOS Mark IV camera.  It is the one, or rather an upgraded version of the one, I took all my studio pictures with (other than when I was shooting Polaroid film).  I have figuratively hundreds of cameras, but 90% of them are manual focus.  All seven of my Leicas are.  

"What!  You have seven Leicas?  You're not a moron. . . just a case of arrested development!"

Yea?  Well, I read this in the WaPo this morning:

So fuck off--pot calling the kettle. .  . . 

But yea. . . buying more equipment is dumb.  However, to my point, the Canon is autofocus and it does a great job and I love the files it produces and sometimes I want an autofocus camera.  I didn't have a 50mm lens for it, and I thought I needed one, so I went on the KEH website and bought a nice used one for $175.  That is insane for a lens that good, but Canon know longer makes DSLRs, so the lenses have dropped in price.  I'm thrifty that way. 

I have an old Sony R camera I bought maybe twenty years ago.  Using Sony cameras has never given me pleasure.  It's two things: the menu and the haptics.  But the new Sony's have the best autofocus system in the game right now and I have a full host of Sony lenses, so I am tempted to find a new Sony, or nearly new A7 for a good price.  

Yes, I know.  

On the other thing, though, given what scientists have just learned, I think we need to raise the Age of Consent to forty, just to be safe.  The adolescent brain, or so I have read, is too ready to take risks.  We don't trust them to understand the "adult world" for that reason.  So let's be scientific about this: RAISE THE AGE OF CONSENT TO FORTY NOW!

After adolescence, though, the brain is surely devolving.  Maybe we should make it Forty Only, no over or under.  

"The mind is a terrible thing. . . ."

Or, as Bill Maher almost said, "I was only fifteen when the priest wanted to rub body lotion on me.  How could I decide?"

Or as Dave Chapelle said of the R. Kelly tapes: "When I was fifteen, I knew whether I wanted to let someone to piss on me or not.  Just sayin'."  

I don't want to underestimate the brilliance or the stupidity of other people.  I try to be fair.  

I still have a full day, but the pressure of being creative in front of others is off for the moment.  Performance Anxiety you say?  

Always. 

I was so excited by my new lamp, I photographed it twice, once with the Leica M10P with a 35mm Sumicron, and once with a Leica M10 with a 0.95 50mm lens.  At that range, that lens is almost impossible to focus.  

But. . . there is always A.I. 

O.K.  You are right.  It misinterpreted the image a bit because I created it in the same "chat" as the other.  I could go back and get a more accurate rendering, but I was in a hurry this morning and didn't want to take the time.  Such things are not as quick as you might think.  

I am trying to content myself with the things I have at hand.  I could use a whole lot more quietude in my own home, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon.  Outside of my mother's house, I am trying to give myself some breaks, though.  I've decided on "age appropriate" workouts in the gym.  I am using the phrase for most things I do now.  At my mother's house, I try to get used to loud t.v commercials, but it is absolutely impossible.  I need to buy some noise cancelling headphones so that I can read, but I really can't read with headphones on.  I'll keep trying to embrace "the culture," though, as if an anthropologist studying some alien culture.  

"The people of commercial television are a dull but happy people, content with minimal story content interrupted often by nonsequitor messaging.  They seem most enthralled by new diseases and information about medicines that help reduce symptoms without them at the cost of many, many side effects."

It suits me.  I'm a voyeur, you know.  That is what I am going to tell strangers I want to photograph.  

"Hi.  I'm a voyeur and I would love to take your picture."

It's best to be honest.  

"Look at you!"

I loved the way Roger on "Mad Men" delivered that line.  It was perfect, as were most lines he delivered on that show.  

O.K.  I have to prepare for the day.  It is cold here now.  The high temperature will only reach into the 60s.  It was forty-nine when I got up this morning.  Will I need to put on shoes to take my mother to the dentist?  Oh, golly. . . I hope not.  

How's It Going to End?

I'm up at five.  Set the alarm.  I have to have my mother at the doc's office by 7:45.  Stupid, really, getting up so early.  I realized that when the alarm went off. . . but I wasn't sleeping anyway.  Rough night.  Rough nights.  All the darkest thoughts plague me.  They are not unfounded by any means.  No. . . reality is a dark master.  We live our lives dressing it up, disguising it, or simply running away from it.  But run run run as fast as you can. . . .  And so the nights are dark as winter, the blackest blacks.  

Five o'clock is hardly better.  

But it is.  Somewhat.  There are distractions at five o'clock.  There are the news websites full of yesterday's news.  There is coffee and the kitchen light.  And there is peace for a minute.  My mother sleeps.  There are not so very many peaceful moments in this house anymore.  

My mother's mind is going, as is mine.  I am unable to sit in quietude.  There is no tranquility.  My mother  is confused and miserable and borderline panicked.  I am as well.  My heart races, my blood pressure skyrockets.  I tremble now and shake with nervous fatigue.  Each night, as I lay dying in a small, lopsided guest bed, I panic wondering what to do.  Should I tell her in the morning that we need to make arrangements for her, that I am going myself to the hospital, that I am going to take a mountain of pills?  My heart pounds and I rise in the dark, stumbling, unable to find the light.  

I thought I had pills enough, but I've been told I am silly.  

"Do you know how many of those you would have to take to kill yourself?"

That fellow has nembutal, he says.  He has fentanyl patches.  

"You can't take enough oxycontin to do yourself in."  

Most of my friends agree that they don't want to go through what my mother is going through.  But some of them are close, and those are not the ones talking about nembutal and fentanyl.  They are the ones who are hanging on for. . . well. . . "dear life."  But they also have someone to take care of them.  My mother would starve to death if someone didn't prepare her food.  She can't open a bag of chips by herself and certainly can't open a jar or can.  She has no idea what drugs she takes or when or how many or why.  Today, she is about to get another one for osteoporosis.  There may be more in the offing.  If I were to go to the hospital, I don't know what she would do.  I guess she would have to go, too.  Perhaps we'd be shipped to the same place for the terminally ill and dying.  

These are the bizarre thoughts the haunt me sleeping and waking.  

I haven't made any plans for our houses and money and possessions.  I guess everything will go to the state.  

But as I say, I get no peace.  My mother has risen--the scraping and rattling of the walker, the banging of doors and drawers, the moaning and complaining, the wandering and searching, the incessant rattling of the vibrating heating pad.  You can't imagine.  You haven't any sense of this.  It is a psychological torture test.  

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.  

I'm not even detailing the terrible things I have to see.  

"You're lucky to have your mother still.  It is a blessing."

 It might be o.k. if I weren't dying, too.  But I am.  

It's o.k.  Everyone is.  My heroes have.  Many were braver than I. . . guns and ropes and. . . pockets full of rocks.  Can you imagine?  Oh, Virginia.  That is desperate.  Heads in ovens.  Carbon monoxide.  And yes, they still had barbiturates back then.  

And then there was old Dorothy Parker.  She toughed it out 'til the end. 

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

She died in a hotel of a heart attack.  73.  

Hemingway, 61.  Fitzgerald, 44.  Woolf, 59.  Faulkner, 64.  Shakespeare, 52.  

In some ways, she had a very long life.  

How much money must one have to take up a residence at the Beverly Hills Hotel?  Wouldn't that be something?

Bang bang bang!  Thump thump thump!  The scraping and the knocking and the rattling!

Carradine, Williams, Bourdaine. . . .  I don't want to strangle.  Don't want to drown.  Couldn't pull the trigger.  I just want to go to sleep.  Where in the fuck do you get fentanyl patches?  

It is a romantic idea, of course.  I don't think I could do it.  I'll just hold my breath and wonder. . . how's it going to end.   

 

Trouble, Man

I post this because. . . I mean. . . I try.  I've been walking around with a camera, but this is the kind of shit I end up with.  I fear it will be the same in the studio next week.  I've just lost my eye, I guess.  But people, it seems, want real pictures and not A.I. generated things.  So I'm here to disappoint.  I've done that a lot this year.  Mostly.  It has been a soul-breaking year for me, and, I think, a body-breaking year as well.  

Something has to kill you.  It might as well be family.  

But that's enough of that.  I may have missed the Christmas parade yesterday, as I have missed everything else and will miss Vespers, too, but I did manage late in the day to get a long limp in that brought me back down the Boulevard.  It was surprisingly quiet.  I guess the early parade visit had worn people out.  I stopped in the bookstore and spied two things I wanted to come back to buy.  And I did.  I got the Pushcart Prize 50th Anniversary edition.  It is big.  It is thick.  It is full of stuff.  I'm fairly excited.  I read the introduction and part of the first short story last night.  Oh, that story seems like a winner alright.  I wish I had the e-version so that I could copy and paste what I want right here right now.  

I just tried Googling it.  Nope.  Selavy.  

I also bought "Banal Nightmare" by Halle Butler.  Can you judge a book by its cover?  It seems so.  I do.  I won't bother with slick, commercial covers.  Publishers know their audiences.  This one had a non-auspicious cover and the stuff inside has had some pretty good reviews.  It is about the petty, peevish arguments and grudges of college profs working at the same school.  I read most novels about academic foibles.  They are fun.  

So. . . the holiday reading season has some promise.  See?  Things are looking up.  I might die happy with a book in my lap.  

"Oh. . . he loved his books, didn't he.  He was a happy man with a book."

There was other goodness, too.  I made a good beef, carrot, bean, onion, and cabbage soup.  I'm a soup man, you know.  And there is enough left over for tonight, too.  I needn't cook dinner.  It makes me really chipper.  

On the negative side, my mother never stops moaning now.  Every breath.  What can I say,"Quit it!"?  Well, I'm afraid I did say that.  You can judge me and feel superior, but unless you have lived with constant groaning, fuck off.  I didn't train to be a medical worker.  THAT was never my life's passion.  There are some who do it for a living, I know.  They go to it every day.  But I am merely an amateur drafted into duty.  I will do my duty, officer, but it was not my choice.  

Let's get back to the sunny side of the street, though.  That may be difficult, however.  We are in for three days of rain.  

Last night, I watched a YouTube video on the photographer Hellen van Meene.  She is Dutch, and like many Dutch artists, she is enchanted by light.  She is also somewhat enchanted by female childhood and adolescence, so she has been embroiled in some controversy.  Indeed, her website is no longer available, and the internet seems to show only her most mundane works.  It is curious to me that we are o.k. with photographs of starvation and massacre, of the most hideous health conditions and death, but we freak out at images of childhood and adolescence.  I am not interested in starvation, war-torn photos, or death and dying, but given the opportunity, I could explore the struggles of youth as well as anyone.  The child is the father of the man, the mother of the woman.  

Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene’s new book invites you to enter her world. Tout va disparaître (French for "Everything will disappear", presents dreamlike portrait studies of really young people in their own individual surrounding environments. Photographed in the USA, Russia and the Netherlands, these young people in carefully planned poses, with muted light seem to be hovering between melancholy and an atmosphere of departure. 

Perhaps that is why it must be hidden except in Kodak moments. 

I have a feeling, though, that van Meene is a bit of a kook.  Just guessing. 

I wish I had a window, a room full of Northern light, and people I could photograph.  I am bitterly envious.  Isn't that one of the deadly sins?  

O.K. Mother is up and banging the table, sliding anything she can find across it.  Perhaps she can feel the vibrations and it makes her feel as if she is hearing, but more than likely it is just another hillbilly trait.  What was it Faulkner said of Abner Snopes?  

Once more he followed the stiff back, the stiff and ruthless limp, up the slope and on to the starlit road where, turning, he could see his father against the stars but without face or depth–a shape black, flat, and bloodless as though cut from tin in the iron folds of the frockcoat which had not been made for him, the voice harsh like tin and without heat like tin. . . . They crossed the portico. Now he could hear his father’s stiff foot as it came down on the boards with clocklike finality, a sound out of all proportion to the displacement of the body it bore and which was not dwarfed either by the white door before it, as though it had attained to a sort of vicious and ravening minimum not to be dwarfed by any- thing–the flat, wide, black hat, the formal coat of broadcloth which had once been black but which had now that friction-glazed greenish cast of the bodies of old house flies, the lifted sleeve which was too large, the lifted hand like a curled claw.

And so it goes.  I must "attend" now.  It is time for breakfast.  I am hoping for a long walk with camera today before I come back to "attend" some more.  There will be t.v.  There will be moaning.  I will make endless cups of green jasmine tea.  There will be pills.  There will be bed.  There will be fitful sleep.  

"Sometimes all there is is trouble, man."

* * * 

Addendum:  Cooking breakfast for mom, I put on some jazz.  This came on.  Yea. Had to post this right away.  

"A love that last's past Saturday night."  

Oh yeaaa yeaaa yeaaa.

Most Wonderful Time

And we're off!  Now it is just a footrace to Christmas.  Yes, Christmas.  When you hear a Black person on tv say "community," you know what they mean.  Community was a very important component in surviving hatred and prejudice.  I understand it.  I, too, have "community."  In some places, the vectors of community overlap.  In others, they don't.  I like Christmas.  I think Kwanza is fine and I'm all for Chanukah, too.  Once, when I asked my Indian book rep if he believed in God, he very excitedly told me, "Yes. . . I believe in God.  I believe in all the Gods!"  How wonderful, I thought.  What an opportunity.  Our little chats have had an outsized effect on my own world view.  So yea. . . I like it when my "community" overlaps with others.  I'll celebrate them all.  

But I like Christmas.  Oh. . . not so much the religious one but the Santa Clause one and the ones I saw as a child in Christmas specials.  

This week has been Christmassy on the Boulevard.  Thursday carols, last night the lighting of the tree, and this morning the local Christmas Parade.  It is a big draw now since Gotham quit having theirs.  They got WOKE.  I preferred things before GPS and iPhones let everyone find the Boulevard, but now my own hometown is like a free version of Disney--only it is authentic, not made of fiberglass, styrofoam, and plastic.  So now the cruise ship lands every Saturday and the hoi-polloi come in from the outskirts where they live near shopping centers and strip malls and all the retail outlet stores built on humongous parking lots, the kind of shitty existence that developers and corrupt politicians have given them, to  mill about a real village from the past when people lived near Main Street.  Such places exist here, usually a day's hike, or about twenty miles, from one another.  Some of them have been ruined by economic forces and, again, corrupt politicians, but they are struggling hard to make a comeback.  My hometown, however, is small and has remained, by and large, intact.  Piece by piece and day by day, though, politicians and developers chip away at the very fabric that made it special.  There is nothing to be done, I think, if history is to be our guide.  Just look at what happened to The Last Paradise, Key West.  I watched that over the decades.  People tried to stop it, but where there is profit, there will be pain.  Let me recommend something to you if you do not understand--Milton's "Paradise Lost."  Yea, I know, it sound odious and not a lot of fun, but you should try it and see.  It is--trust me--a horrible delight.  You'll come away with a different perspective and more insight into life after reading it.  

They don't call it a classic just because it's old.  

I've gotten lost in the weeds, though.  What I meant to say is that I enjoyed the Christmas Parade on the Boulevard when I could walk down and get a seat in a sidewalk breakfast joint and see all my friends from the Friday night before telling tales of adventure and daring.  There would be Betsy, the little rich girl who drove the gold Mercedes convertible her daddy bought her when she graduated from high school still wearing last night's dress, a cup of coffee in her hand, looking like she had just fallen off the pages of Vogue magazine. 

Etc.  

Today, you'll get elbowed out of the way by some hillbilly with six grubby kids picking up candy off the sidewalk that some passing paraders were throwing to the crowd.  

I had decided to go to the parade in the Farmer's Market town to take photos, but I know now that I won't.  I'm tied by the apron strings to my mother's needs all morning long.  2025?  Oh. . . I missed that.  How was it?  

My nerves are shot through with it this morning, though.  I am peevish.  I just want to live my own life for a bit.  I miss it.  

Yesterday, I had to run umpteen hundred errands for mama.  She broke her new glasses.  She needed her prescriptions refilled.  I needed to find some gifts for her birthday and Christmas.  I needed to get groceries for dinner.  I hit every corner of the county.  

One of my stops was to the art supply store.  They sell Maison Berger lamps.  "Lampe Berger."  I didn't know a thing about Berger lamps, but I saw a full wall of them last time I went for art supplies.  I used The Google to find that they were "invented in 1898 to purify hospital air, that uses a special burner to eliminate odors and perfume the home by destroying odor-causing molecules and releasing pleasant fragrances through catalytic combustion, creating a fresh, clean scent without an open flame after an initial lighting. It's known for its stylish designs, which range from classic to contemporary, and its dual function of air purification and home fragrance."

So I went back yesterday to look again.  I walked straight back to the long wall of lamps to see, but I couldn't figure things out.  How did they work?  There were twenty or thirty fragrances and dozens of different styles of lamps.  I walked back to the counter and asked the store manager if there was anyone who could give me a Berger tutorial.  He pulled down a lamp from behind the counter and gave me the lesson.  What I hadn't seen because they were stored inside the box was the wick.  It was easy. You fill the lamp with oil and put the wick inside.  You let it soak up oil for a bit, then you light the wick and let it burn for a couple of minutes.  Then you put it out.  But it stays hot and keeps releasing the oils until you put the top back on.  

I went to the wall and chose a style and an oil.  I was excited until he rang it up.  

$100!  Cha-ching.  

"This is just the thing I need," I said.  "I'm going to start doing surgeries in my home."

His eyes popped at that.  

"I don't know if that's a good idea," he said, uncertain.  

"Oh no, I've read up on it.  As long as you keep things sterile, and this lamp should really help, minor surgeries can certainly be done at home." 

He looked at me a little cockeyed. 

"No, don't worry. . . I'm just doing ear piercings and small tattoos."  

When I go home, I am going to try it out.  If I like it, I am going to give them as Christmas gifts.  

"To whom?"

I only have my mother to buy for.  But truthfully, I don't think she would like it.  She's afraid to turn on the ceiling fans.  "My sinuses won't take it," she says.  She comes from the old ways.  

When I got back to mother's last night, I made boiled shrimp and yellow rice with peas and chopped olives.  Oh, the rice was really good, but the shrimp had no flavor at all.  I bought fresh caught in the wild shrimp, or so it said, but they must have been bait shrimp from the tackle store.  Seriously bland.  

Santa will bring up the rear of the parade today.  He always does, he and Mrs. Clause.  I will be on the Boulevard later today, I guess, to buy some coupe glasses I saw and desired.  I can always find presents for me, of course, but I need to figure out something for mother.  All the women I've ever known were great at picking out lots of special gifts.  I am not, and I end up buying one BIG gift and spending too much money because it is much, much, much easier.  I'm a "Here's a toaster," kind of giver.  It has been a source of grief for me often.  

Did I say I loved Christmas?  I hate it.  I like everything that leads up to it.  Christmas Day, however. . . I can do without.  

And so. . . it is time to begin the sprint.  Love love love and ho ho ho.  Yesterday, the disparate kids from the factory picked up an old group chat sending photos of the snow where they lived now, Minnesota, Virginia, Illinois. . . .  

They love their Winter Wonderlands.  Falalala.  

It's the most wonderful time of the year.  

Life Before Said

There we go.  Last night's full moon, me sleeping in the cabin, waking to feel the shift of the tide and hear the clanking of the shrouds against the mast.  Spent many "a night" like that alone on my small sailboat in some sheltered anchorage.  

So many things.

I have been watching YouTube vids by this guy (link).  The first I watched was on a disappearing tribe in Borneo (link).  I watched it with my mother.  I told her I had been in a place that looked like this in the Amazon Basin, down the Madre de Dios tributary of the Amazon River.  I've told the story here before a decade or two ago, with pictures.  I have one of the long blowguns and darts the locals used to hunt with.  Watching the doc, I was taken back.  Last night, I watched one on Gypsy tribes in India (link).  What beautiful people!  I lamented that I had never gone and now probably never will.  I will take photos of "the culture" here in my own hometown.  Bland, ubiquitous.  

But. . . I met up with T. yesterday.  We had lunch with the fellow who owns the studio.  He owns more than one and is soon to open another in Nashville.  He's a young guy who has done some modeling, and I was timid, afraid that I was over my head.  He was a swell guy, easy, and we swapped tales over lunch before going to the studio.  It was a good studio with big windows and natural light.  He had a blank wall where we would shoot T.  I've looked at the catalogs, and they are shot like that, minimal props, a blank wall.  He had catalogs from the clothing company he represented lying around.  Same thing.  I asked him a few things before I told him our photography was not of the same ilk.  I asked some technical questions, and then I realized I was way ahead in technical knowledge.  Still, the shoot made me nervous.  I knew what it was like to shoot with amateur models.  They tighten up when the camera points at them.  The technical part of this shoot was easy.  We talked.  T told him I had a thousand cameras.  The studio fellow asked me questions, then he was enamored.  He wanted me to bring in some of the large format stuff.  He wanted to know if we could shoot with the Black Cat Liberator.  Now we were in my world.  This stuff was not of any use for catalog work.  He wanted to know about the creative stuff.  I said he should come to the house and look.  He wants to see the prints that T told him about.  He showed him some of the old Pola work on his phone.  The studio guy wanted a print.  He began talking about making a video, but when I realized he was talking about me, I was negative.  No, I don't want to be on that side of the camera.  

So. . . I may be good at what I do, but I'm still scared of shooting the commercial stuff.  

I'd rather be taking photos of Gypsies.  I didn't know any of them still used the term.  "Roma," I was told by an Eastern European woman who was a "gypsy."  She was an advocate.  You may remember her from photos.  Her dark hair and eyes were haunting.  

My mother's day out cost her.  She picked up something and felt horrible in the morning.  "That's what happens when you go out this time of year," I said.  I've had all the vaccines and still got sick.  But the world is joyous and beautiful here right now, so what are you going to do?  Last night was the Bach Choir singing songs of peace and joy among the rows of lighted Tiffany windows from the museum.  I, of course, could not go.  2025 was a year of taking care of mother.  I missed it.  

Selavy.  

My mother has a birthday in eight days.  I need to figure out what to do.  She will be 94.  I told her I'd throw her another big party when she turns 95.  This year will be low key.  What do you buy for a 94 year old?  Ha!  Why am I asking you?  In all likelihood, you've never had to consider that.  Whatever I decide, I'd better do it soon.  If I am ordering something, I need to do it today.  

Oy.  

Just more anxiety.  That's what I need.  

But I read about new Christmas movies on t.v. in the Times.  A couple sounded like something I need, some Christmas thing I can watch. . . with mother.  

When I'd rather be lying on my big leather couch watching "Love Actually" with MOTL.  

I'll definitely not be watching the Bill Murray thing this year.  I'm keeping it as light as I can.  

I won't try posting a bunch of hipster Christmas songs, either.  But I do wish Playboy was still around.  I always loved the November and December issues.  Maybe I'll look for old copies in the vintage store today.  That might make me smile.  

You can watch a colorized version here (link).  

Jumped the Gun

Oops.  I blew it.  I looked at the moon rising over the lake last night and thought it was the Full Cold Moon, so I sent pictures around to friends.  Well. . . it serves as a good "heads up," I guess.  Tonight, look up.  And if you can't see the moon where you are, don't worry, Queen Mab will surely disturb your dreams.  

Mine were quite disturbing last night.  Want to hear?  What?  No?  

O.K. Then I'll tell you about my day.  Stop it.  I have to say something.  I took my mother to Costco midmorning.  She used the big-ass cart as her walker.  Slowly we went, inch by inch.  She has cataracts and wears thick bifocals now, so she is moving her head all around looking at things.  It takes her awhile.  And so, to keep from clogging up the aisles even more, I walked behind her.  Once in awhile she would ask me to put something in the cart.  

Costco is big.  My mother is small.  We picked up only a few items and argued some when she wanted to buy things we still have plenty of.  

On our way to the checkout line, a woman using a walker looked at me and smiled shaking her head.  

"I don't know how you do it," she said, then, still grinning, "Not me."

WTF?  

I guess we were pretty obvious.  

Afterward, we went across county lines to a bank on one of the busiest highways in the area, but the sun was shining and the sky was blue and the traffic was flowing nicely.  

The bank business didn't take long.  The bank fellow asked my mother if he could get her some coffee or water.  My mother, being a hillbilly, never ever ever turns down anything that is free.

"I'll have some coffee," she said.  

I was shaking my head.  "Mom, we are going just across the street for lunch."

She was pissed, but she was determined.  "O.K.  Just water."

The fellow got up and went into the break room and brought back a little cup.  My mother put it to her lips like it was mana from heaven.

"You know, you can just call to renew a CD," the bank fellow offered.

"I know," my mother nodded, "but we were on this side of town, so. . . ."

No we weren't!  

After the bank, it was time for lunch, so we went to a Jewish deli across the street.  I only get to go there once every couple of months and I always get the same thing, a combination pastrami and corned beef on rye.  The thing is awesome.  Comes with a salty slice of pickle and Cole slaw.  

We got situated in a booth and I folded up my mother's walker and stored it next to the baby seats.  The waitress brought us menus.  We ordered drinks.  

Mom was looking at the menu.  It was big.  

"What do you want?" I asked her.  

"I don't know," she said.  

"Then we are going to be here a long time.  You know what the problem with most people is?  They don't know what they want."

When the waitress brought our drinks, she asked, "Do you need a little more time?"

I nodded sadly.  

My mother settled on a Caesar salad and chicken wrap.

"Really?" 

I tried talking to my mother, but she couldn't hear me, so I gave up.  I didn't want to shout to her and ruin everyone else's lunch.  

I finished my sandwich with glee.  My mother picked at half her wrap and asked for a box.  

"Why did you order that?"

"I didn't know."  

When we got back to her house, I carried in the purchases and told her I was going to take a nap.  I was beat.  In truth, I didn't feel very well.  And so I lay down at one and didn't get up until three.  I had to dash.  I needed to get home and get my car out of the driveway.  The roofers were gong to deliver the roof tiles the next day.  I wanted to take a long walk, and I needed to wash my hair.  

When I got to my house, the tiles were already on the roof.  Hmm.  Maybe they would finish up in a day.  I put on my walking clothes and headed out.  I really didn't feel good, and I was slow, but as I walked, I began to perk up a bit.  

By the time I'd walked the 3.5 miles, opened mail, got the rent check, and showered, it was getting close to dark.  I moved my car to the apartment and packed my bag into my mother's car and headed off.  That is when I saw the moon coming up over the lake.  

Yesterday morning, I sent this to my old college roommate.  

"Still Life with Woodpecker," I wrote.  "You are about the only person I know who would get it."

He wrote back, "You have to remember I'm working with half a brain."

So I sent him this.

Tom Robbins was "required reading" when we were in college.  I have no idea how his work holds up, but I have a good idea.  Travis and I have talked about how much of what we read by Jim Harrison or Thomas McGuane and some others is impossible to re-read, and that is the difference between fiction and literature, I think.  You get more out of a second reading of a work of literature and less out of a work of fiction.  The test of literature is in the re-reading.  

I guess I've read a fair bit of fiction along with the rest, but, I tell myself, at least it was "hip" fiction.  

Travis and I agreed that it was worth going back to re-read Shakespeare.  Of course.  

And so. . . the holidays march on.  My mother was happy to get out, she said.  "I felt like a human being."  I will try to get her out more often then.  More for her, less for me.  

They light the Christmas tree in the park tomorrow night.  The Bach Choir performs tonight.  The Tiffany windows from the Morse Museum will placed and lit all about.  The Boulevard will be blocked off and the crowds will mill about.  Saturday is the Christmas Parade.  

We will be in shorts.  Sorry.  

If you like bundling up to go outside, this is not the place for you.  But I am a lazy southern boy from Ohio.  This life suits the heck out of me.  Still. . . I like the idea of a snowy Christmas. . . somewhere.