The "Art" of Living

Man alive, I've got some good images to share, but we'll start with this little dandy I made with my iPhone yesterday while sitting in the garage with ma.  Never underestimate the iPhone.  It's not just "better than nothing."  It plays a good part in the art of photography.  

"Art ?!?"

You know what I mean.  

I slept poorly last night, though, so the writing may be a little off.  I slept well from ten 'til two, then it was a torture, so I got up at 3:30 and read a bit.  This is something new to me.  I will usually just stay in bed and try to ride it out, but that wasn't working last night.  I went to the living room and read for about ten or fifteen minutes.  That was all it took.  When I went back to bed, I fell asleep, off and on, and didn't get out of bed again until eight.   

So we will see how it goes.   

I didn't go to any markets yesterday.  Once I made up my mind about this, I felt some relief.  If I'd gone, maybe I would have gotten into a rhythm and a groove, but it didn't feel that way at all.  I decided to take a long walk instead.  By the time I had made up my mind, however, it was well after noon and the sun was beating down like a hammer and the air was a wet wool blanket, but I didn't mind, for it would have been the same or worse in a crowded market place, so I felt I'd made a capital choice.  

I didn't carry a camera on my walk, either.  That was also a relief.  I walked a bit and ran a bit, not an actual run but an old man walk/run that is running in name only as it is just about the same pace as walking only you appear to be running in some silly, awkward way.  I read an article, though, that said running, even at a 20 minute mile pace, gave much greater health benefits than simply walking. 

I must assume they meant if your knees are good.  And back.  Mine are not.  

But for the moment, I felt more alive, so there was that.  

When I got home, I was a sweaty mess, so I decided to drink some electrolytes and sit at the computer working on a couple pictures until my body had settled down.  And oh. . . well I'll show you.  Just one. 

Now if you don't like the car photos, you probably have already cancelled your subscription here, but I am fairly excited by this. I dragged the shutter, as they say, as I shot out the window of a moving car in the rain.  Oh, hell. . . another. 

I lost myself in these for a bit until I was shivering from the fan and ac and drying sweat.  By the time I had finished showering and beautifying, it was nearing four.  I had told my mother I would take her to the grocers with me that afternoon so she could stock up on things she likes.  I was going to make a seafood stew for dinner, and we would get all of those ingredients, too.  I buy all the groceries otherwise, but the cod, scallops, and shrimp were very expensive.  The sum total of our visit was a bit astronomical, but we had filled a cart to overflowing. 

Which meant I had a lot of unpacking to do when we got back to her house.  

And then I chopped vegetables and prepared the stock and wine and got things started.  

And then. . . Lagunitas, Little Sumpin'.  

In half an hour, the carrots and potatoes and celery and onion were done.  It was to add the seafood which only needed to cook for three minutes, so I tasted the broth to see what it needed, and by the time I'd set the table, the stew was ready.  A good seafood stew is really easy to make. . . and awfully expensive.  

But what isn't now?  Thanks, Trump and all of you who voted for him--three effing times!

I fear Trump or his people are now reading the blog.  After I posted yesterday, Trump said the same thing about A.I. evolution as I had.  The Times needs to pick up on this.  What is coming is inevitable. 

Maybe those photographs aren't great, but they do excite me. That is the lake I sit by to watch the moon and listen to the night, a southern cypress shoreline on a chain of lakes miles long, connected by creeks and canals hundreds of years old.  When my house was built in 1927, people still hunted in the woods surrounding some of them.  Those woods are gone now, even the ones that were a preserve when I first moved to town, but when the last of the older generation of the wealthy family died, the children decided to sell it off to the highest bidder.  One of my neighbors was the head of The Nature Conservancy at the time, and they tried to buy it, but they were outbid by developers.  Now megamillion dollar homes line the far shore.  Developers ALWAYS get what they want.  It may take awhile, but they do.  If you have ever tried to fight a development, you know what I mean.  Nothing trumps money and stupidity.  Not in the long run.  

When I took this photo, I think I must have thought it said "GREED."  

I've been re-reading a book Travis gave me, the lectures of James Salter for "The Art of Fiction" series.  It breaks my heart.  I want to begin again, to pay more attention to things I've seen and done and said.  And it is crazy, for as much as I love his writing, I am not in any way enamored of the writer himself.  Nor he me, if you ask Q.  The way he presents the work of other writers, though, shows him to be a better reader than most, a true student of the craft of fiction.  I'm sure that all the insights are not his own, but he has collected them well and I'm certain amplified them in his own way.  He speaks of drafts and of rewriting and of the time one must spend writing and not living and of what is lost in the process for the little gain, if there comes any at all.  Why do people write?  

His is very honest about this.  It is the desire, he says, to be admired and loved.  

To wit--Proust.  As I've said many times before. . . but then I saw this.  I may have to give him another go.  

The Lost Weekend

The weekend never happened.  My cousin bailed inside twenty-four hours.  By 1:30 Saturday afternoon, I was back on duty with mom.  My one night at home cost me time and effort and money.  I will have to pay the maids full price this time 'round as I have slept in the bed and cooked in the kitchen.  Hanging out with my mother attached to your hip for an extended period is more than people not endentured can endure, I guess.  I just didn't expect her to tap out this quickly.  

I was sorely disappointed.  Can you imagine?  I mean, can you imagine that going to your own house would seem like an exotic vacation?  

So I splurged on dinner.  Top sirloin, grass fed, organic.  $30/lb.  But I know how to cook a steak now.  Did I tell you?  I know.  Once again, you could (almost) cut it with a fork.  Not really, but it was tender and juicy and tasty.  

Dinner was eaten in virtual silence, however.  My mother hasn't much to say and can't hear much of what is said.  I'd yell that the steak was really good and she would nod.  

That photo at the top is me at the hipster film lab just before I got my hair cut again.  I don't like the way I look just now.  It isn't just the hair, though I am going to grow it out again, but the face.  I've aged drastically.  As one will, I guess, but I blame it on current conditions.  How much stress can an old guy stand?  I try to have a lot of backbone, but it is becoming bent under the pressure.  These sideward whispers for pity will become shouted cries for help soon enough.  

"I WANT TO LIVE, FUCKER!"

But will we?  I have friends fretting about A.I. now.  A.I. isn't going to kill us.  People will.  They will weaponize A.I. to take or keep wealth and power.  The world is bending the knee to dictators around the world.  Do you think if the West pauses A.I. research that China and Iran and India and North Korea and Russia will?  Hell, kids in grade school can code.  When the shit hits the fan, when A.I. drones are flying overhead, do you think Trump will hesitate to start dropping nukes?  Don't be silly.  We live on a dying planet with weapons of mass destruction.  I shouldn't really complain about taking care of my mother.  It's just that I'd like to have a last dance before the fire rages.  

Given my circumstances, I've begun a series of photos taken from my car.  Let's try a few.  

I like this one a lot.  I rather despise photographers who try to tell you why their photo works or is good, so I'll try not to do that here.  Tempted, though.  

I do like the layers and the bland chaos of them.  

Oops.  

I have a lot more, of course, but I'll save them.  I don't want to overwhelm you.  You'll be begging me for more at some point, once you get your pretty little heads around the concept.  You'll see.  There will be a book, I'm sure, at some point, but you will be able to brag that you were among the first to see and appreciate the images.  

Good for you.  Or is it "good on you"?  Those Brits are weird.  

I should say, these are made with a digital Leica.  I've taken it up again.  But when I place a digitally captured image next to an image taken with film, even though the film image has been digitized, I can see a big difference.  Digital images are just "too good."  I was surprised, really, at how different they really are.  Maybe today I'll make some film pics from the car to show you.  What the hell, right?  As I say, given my current situation and all. 

Sunday.  There are markets all about town.  My desire is to go into them with camera.  I don't know if I have it in me, though.  It will be dreadfully hot and I have no confidence.  I look like someone you wouldn't be afraid to yell at.  And then there's the parking.  And I don't even want to go in for a mimosa now.  I'd feel like a creeper.  

I'm just feeling very, very small. 

But it was glorious being home on Friday night.  There were treats and music and images to work on.  I miss it all.  Working to the music. . . I can't begin to explain.  I enter into a trance, a small bite of Nirvana.  It was the first time I have gotten to see the new house across the street at night.  The owner spent over $300,000 on landscaping and another I don't know how much on lighting.  It is fairly magical.  

But I'm back at mother's now. It is beige with mismatched colors.  Beige walls, beige wall to wall carpet, beige furniture, then some bright throw rugs and flowered things.  Beige blinds.  I think the lighting might be beige, too. 

It is nice.  

Now I must attend to mother.  I'll leave after our late breakfast and try to be a photographer.  I think I will make a seafood stew tonight.  Cha-ching!  But food is "what we've got," and so it should be something good.  There will be the cooking and the cleaning and then the television, my mother always in the corner of my eye.  

I'll leave you with this.  Remember I've told you how much I like the way the kids at the vintage markets costume?  This was in today's N.Y. Times.  

"What trends are you seeing among college students and Gen Z?

There is a lot of talk right now about how young people dress in this placeless, context-free mishmash. We call it “Gen Z chaos” in the office. When I was in college, your clothes reflected who you were, what you were into, what music you liked, what hobbies you had. I think you can’t really look at someone and glean that info anymore. There’s a lot of cobbling together thrifted clothes, stuff you’ve bought off TikTok Shop, making a shirt you inherited from a sibling into something that looks, well, interesting, perhaps rather than good. (Sorry!)"

I'll do what I can to get a photo or two, but don't count on it.  

Here's a little Sunday music to start the day.  I used to love lazy Sundays with my Own True Love.  Great brunches, a little wandering,  mid-afternoon of loving and napping.  Waking to an easy cocktail and a light dinner of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.  Weekend flowers filling the rooms.  Plans for upcoming trips we would take.  Then maybe a movie at home as we resigned ourselves to the coming Monday, and bed, once again, to spoon.  

Fuck yea.  I miss that.  

Back to Bed

Here's the photo I should have posted yesterday, I think.  It looks a bit 9/11ish.  Early morning, though, and I hadn't thought about it.  I began to think about it after reading an article reporting that the cloud of toxic debris from the falling towers has caused the city's residents lasting health problems.  

Whoever could have doubted it?  

It is like living with the idea that you are going to die.  You don't want to think about it.  

"You'll be fine."

The hazards of life are many.  Last night, I watched a couple documentaries about sex and drugs in Georgian England.  Gin, opioids, and syphilis.  An estimated one in five persons had the disease.  It was incurable and viciously attacked the organs of the body.  Famously noses would rot away, but it would also eat into the bones and cause terrible pain.  Hence the need for alcohol and opioids.  Laudanum was available from chemists and barbers upon request.  Opium was widely used.  Gin was drunk by the pint glass.  The average lifespan was thirty to forty years though it was possible to live into one's sixties.  What a terrible existence.  

But they had their fun.  

I just got curious and looked up STDs in other mammals.  Yup.  Horses, monkeys, rabbits, and even dolphins.  It seems there is great evidence that human gonorrhea came from cows. 

Stump broke, I assume.  

Sex is a dirty business no matter how you look at it.  Humans are depraved.  

Then they die.  

Now the great fear is Death by A.I.  Really?  I have a difficult time calling up such a scenario.  But if I had to choose, I like the idea of us all going together.  I've said it before; this one at a time thing is bullshit.  

I slept in my own home last night, but I stayed up far too late, and now I think I will go back to bed.  I'll tell you about my weekend once I've had it.  I'm far too tired now.  And so. . . .

Weekend

It's my first "weekend" in a very long time.  My cousin is coming over from the coast to visit my mother.  You'd think I'd be excited to have a few days at home, but that is far from the case.  I will sleep in my bed, but my house is basically a museum at present.  It looks like a home, but the cupboards are bare.  I will have to supply it for two days.  Coffee for the unused coffee maker that will need to be cleaned.  What else?  I'll need to bring meds and supplements, of course, or maybe not supplements.  I will have to make at least two trips back to my mother's house a day for her meds.  I'll need to have dinner with them one night, I guess.  But my evenings will be free.  What will I do?  I could visit some new places that have opened, or I could sit at the computer listening to music and working on photos.  Or . . . or. . . . 

I am sure to be paralyzed.  

And then it will be back to routine.  The entire prospect is causing me anxiety.  I'm on a two day shore leave, really.  That is all. 

So, I read that Vance thrilled the MAGA crowd last night.  He is sure to be the next president.  I despair.  I am seriously considering not voting for the first time since I was able to vote.  I voted for McGovern.  You see how that turned out.   I am torn between political poles right now.  I am a liberal patriot, you see.  I love this country's freedoms and fortunes, but I see them being destroyed by both parties.  Do I vote for the clown car of t.v. personalities or for the Death to America crowd?  I could take positions from both parties and make something that represents my views, but the wells are poisoned by ideologues and crooks, and I fear too much that this country is doomed.  

Crooked elections?  You bet.  The one that elected Bush over Gore.  That was the most corrupt election since Kennedy beating Nixon based on votes delivered by Mayor Daily in Chicago.  No wonder Nixon tried to cheat in an election he was sure to win by a landslide.  

But none of those sent me into the spiral of despair I feel at present.  "Fire and Ice."  Frost knew.  

I'll bet you can predict what will happen to me on this weekend's shore leave.  It is easy.  What happens to a sailor who gets to go ashore for the first time in years?  He still has sea legs.  He gets drunk, gets a tattoo he'll later regret, maybe pick up an STD, and goes to the brig for doing something heinous.  Shore leave never works out for those who want to have fun.  The smarter thing for a sailor to do is just to appreciate the solid world for a day or two without any expectation.  Maybe go sightseeing, have a good meal, get back to the ship before curfew and savor the time.  

I won't be getting a tattoo or an STD.  I'm pretty sure of that.  But I'm certain to have some amount of disorientation all the while.  

I am not certain you can understand.  

I did not feel well yesterday.  My mother just told me she is not feeling well today.  She's clammy, she says.  I wonder if I am picking up some little bug at the gym now that the kids are back in school.  Moms and dads spread illness, too, and maybe I'm bringing the back to my mother.  We will get our shots in October.  Fingers crossed until then.   

I wish I had known earlier that my cousin was coming.  I could have planned something, but I only found out last night.  

I went to one of my financial centers yesterday to take care of some business, or, rather, to find out how to. I felt I had accomplished something.  I was proud.  When I finished, it was three o'clock.  My belly cramped.  What to do?  I would have only a little time before I went back to mother's.  I didn't want to sit in the house until then, so I went to the cafe and got a French soda.  The girl behind the counter was one I had wanted to photograph with her girlfriend years ago when they were working in the kitchen, cool punk looking girls who had a band.  I hadn't seen her for. . . how long?  I live in a time warp now, but it seemed like a year or more.  I remember when she first started working the counter.  She didn't know how to make most of the coffee drinks.  She was uncertain as kids can be.  Now, she has lost her girlishness, and she wears some of the world on her countenance.  It seemed a pity to me, but there was a bonus--she knew how to make the French soda.  But as happens, some of the glee has left her eyes.  They have dulled.  Less lilt in her movements as she learns to plod.  As happens to the vast majority, and this I say with great dread, what is lost is not nearly made up for by what is gained.  Only here and there is the trade equal or even sometimes good.  I knew a girl once I nicknamed "Eden."  She lived purely before the fall.  I saw her a few years later.  Oh, she was certainly postlapsarian then.  There was surely a touch of evil there.  

Maybe even wickedness.  

But who am I to judge?  

I do like those who try to make their lives a work of art and or adventure.  As Bukowski said, what matters is how well you walk through the fire.  We all get ravaged by the flames, don't we?  

I was texting with C.C. before writing this.  I told him I needed to go and write my daily stain upon the silence.  I said it would probably be much of what I had written him.  

Such was not the case.  This is as always, the spontaneous outpouring of a bedeviled brain.  Unscripted.  Unplanned.  Unedited.  

Uninspired.  

But yesterday I went back and read parts of the blog I have posted this year.  Sometimes, I thought, there is a bit of inspiration there, and I can't figure out why the world had not caught on and why I am not being carried shoulder high through the town square.  

But today, I think of the plodding, of the craven greed of one party and the bitterness of the other, and of the hatred of each, and I am not so certain about wanting to be carried shoulder high by the throng above the throng.   

I'll settle for a little cafe where we can sit and chat.  

Can an Image Be Sexual?

"Some souls must be sacrificed in the making of art and to the artist who makes it."

Do I believe that?  I might if I believed there was such a thing as "art."  But I do believe in creativity--or I think I do.  Maybe.  Ingenuity?  Some sort of impulse?  

Ego?

I started thinking about this because of an article a friend sent me a couple days ago (link).  I felt it might be a provocation, and I landed on this statement concerning Brooke Shield's Calvin Klein ad: 

“The marketing’s reception underscored the public’s capacity for moral outrage while also proving that sex sells: Even as networks pulled the ads, demand for the jeans skyrocketed.”

And so I sent that back with the following statement:

"Everything, it often seems, is a battle between sensuality and ideology.  As a self-proclaimed iconoclast, I can fall on either side of the fence. . . but most often. . . 😈 "

 Moral outrage is a form of insanity, I believe, and is incredibly dangerous.  

"When the American actress Brooke Shields was 15, her appearance in a 1980 Calvin Klein Jeans campaign brought the controversy already swirling around her — about the sexualization of minors in the media, largely on account of her starring role, at age 12, as a child coerced into prostitution in Louis Malle’s 1978 film, “Pretty Baby” — to a fever pitch."

As Lou Reed might say, "those were different times."  Have you seen the movie in its original form?  Oh, my!  Did you see Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet", 1968?  

Remember this?  Or even worse, the old Abercrombie and Fitch catalogs?  

Well, thank god we have moved on.  

Oh, shit. . . wait a minute.

“You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”

So yea. . . we put them in underwear.  Now something does.  Not the Mormon sort, but better than nothing.  

Some would have it that art should be polemic in the service of an ideology "for good."  I want it all.  I want more than what there is.  I want to see anything taboo.  I want to see the things that piss people off.  I may not like it, and I may squint and only look for a millisecond, but. . . I would not ban it.  Not even bad porn.  Hell, I don't like watching porn at all, but those 8mm films from the '50s are really something else. And "back in the day," Jim Linderman's "Dull Tool Dim Bulb" blog with its collection of erotic postcards made schmaltz interesting.  

But as I wrote, I could come down on either side of things.  Art and literature are not for everyone.  

Speaking of which, I have been reading more of "The Book of Disquiet."  I like it more now that I am deeper into it.  It is not a book of beautiful prose; rather, it is a book of ideas.  He says the same thing many times over but with subtle differences.  I'm determined to finish the book now.  I am at times inspired by and other times argumentative with what he puts forth, but either way, my brain is working which it hasn't for quite some time.   I'll have more to say about that, I am certain. 

One thing that confuses me is when critics use the word "sexual" in talking about an image, words like "hypersexualized," etc.  I don't think an image can be sexual.  It might be sensual, but that is a different thing.  It confuses me as much as the subject/object distinction.  Who is the subject when one is looking at a picture?  What is the object?  I've struggled to understand this since reading Bergson and others.  I get that some want to go beyond the image and talk about it's production whether in Marxist terms or other, but there is a great deal of uncertainty there.  Or so it seems to me.  

I'm probably naive or worse, wrong.  I read an article in the Times this morning about the terrible amount of waste and pollution that goes into making fashion clothing.  If fashion is art, we can look beyond the art to its production.  There is a physical accountability.  

I'll need to give this much more thought.  I'm tripping over my own thoughts now.  That's what I get for talking out loud.  But I'll let you all discuss this amongst yourselves for now.  We can take this up later at the cafe over coffee and cigarettes and absinthe.  

I'll bring the dueling pistols just in case.  

Remember I told you that I was looking forward to being disappointed when I got my two rolls of film back?  I wasn't disappointed.  Or I was.  This is a tough language riddle to untangle.  Let's try this another way.  Remember I told you that I hoped to have one good photo?  Yea.  This is the best of the twenty-four photos.  Am I still in love with the Hasselblad?  I think so.  Am I still in love with film?  

I'll give it more time.  But it is expensive.  I don't mind black and white so much because I always develop and scan it myself, so the investment is largely time.  I've been taking the color film to the lab, though, and to have it developed and scanned by them is expensive.  I've developed my own color film at home, but it is more difficult.  If I am going to continue shooting color film, I'm going to developing it on my own.  But I have to say, this lab does a really good job.  I have no complaints except for the amount of money I spend.  

I'm not saying that this is a good photograph.  I'm just saying it was the best of the lot, and I kind of like it. 

"I'd give it an 80.  I like the beat and it's easy to dance to."

That's for all you hepcats who remember Bandstand and Rate a Record.  Wouldn't it be fun to have an art show like that?  Maybe I can start a YouTube channel.  Just put a bunch of college kids in a room and let them grade the images.  

"What do you like about it?"

"I think the colors are nice and the way the light falls off at the bottom.  I think it is very moody."

I'll consider it. It would get me back interacting with kids again.  I'll call it The Last Picture Show.

YouTube is very restrictive, though.  There are a ton of rules you can't break or you get banned.  No nudity, no violence.  Yea. . . this would never fly.  If this were truly a free country. . . . 

What else do I have?  I went to lunch with T yesterday after the gym.  He was in town one last time and called in the morning to see if I wanted to go.  We went straight from the gym in gym clothes and didn't feel we should sit inside, so we took a sidewalk table at the sushi place on the Boulevard.  Our waitress was especially attentive and very nice.  We ordered green tea.  When I get green tea out, it is always better than the green tea I make at home, and I can't figure out why.  I think I make it too strong.  Miso soups and sushi rolls.  And suddenly we were among the bees.  Three of them, anyway.  Bees on the Boulevard?  Yea, when did that happen?  T kept swatting them away. 

"You're just riling them up," I said.  I left them alone, though I planned on killing them if they landed on me.  But bees don't bother you if you leave them alone.  I've even found that true with hornets which are among the most offensive of bees.  I think they are bees.  Maybe they are wasps.  I could look it up, but I'm not going to bother.  

O.K.  I couldn't resist. They are wasps.  So are the "meat bees" or yellow jackets that have plagued so many of my meals in Yosemite.  

But these were bees and not aggressive at all.  I watched one of them try the wasabi.  It didn't care for that at all.  They liked the soy sauce, though and stayed with us throughout the meal.  

The sushi place is on the Country Club College end of the Boulevard, so there was a pretty steady stream of coeds in hoochie shorts strolling by.  Believe me or don't, but Country Club College girls are not like coeds anywhere else, by and large because of their backgrounds.  This is not an Ivy League school, but it is a fine college and is just about as expensive, so it attracts a fun crowd.  The girls are a product of their environments, daddies with tons of money and beautiful mothers who were like pollen to the bee.  It is that combination that gives them their "air."  Their hair, their skin, their teeth are all from the pages of Vogue.  They are used to servants and have always had time for sports of one kind or another.  They walk and run through my neighborhood every day.  

Old guys, though, make a mistake because their dress code is so revealing.  These are not sexual beings, or so I have read, and the dress code is certainly to make you look, but not for the reasons that old guys think.  Those short short shorts are not an invitation.  They are bait.  Wherein lies the pleasure?  

"What the fuck are you looking at?"

I've seen old guys get schooled this way.  

I explained this to T as they walked by.  You could see their mouths tighten and their eyes cut sneakily toward the table as they walked by waiting for an opportunity.  I've observed it my entire life.  I used to get a state grant every summer to do a video project with high school kids for six weeks.  They came from different schools from all over the county, so the boys and girls did not know one another, but within a few days, things were heating up, and I'd watch the boys show off for the girls early on, and the girls would look on as if fascinated, and the boys would feel emboldened and alive.  Then, on a dime, the girls would look at one another and laugh derisively, and the boys were suddenly falling, falling through some trap door below their feet.  

In a few weeks, though, the flirtations took hold.  It was always fun to watch.  

Brad Pitt, I think, has a way in some of his movie rolls of not looking at women before he looks, and when he does, you can't nail what the look means.  That is a skill, anyway, that I have tried to cultivate.  With Pitt, it comes off as a confident uncertainty.  I have no idea how it comes off with me, but it seems to have kept me out of trouble.  

"Don't be creepy.  Don't lean in.  Don't reach.  Don't touch.  Keep your hands to yourself."

I observed old guys say things like, "You look like you need a back rub," when I was still a youth.  They would stare hard with laser eyes.  

"Uncle Bruce is a real creep."

O.K.  Jesus, this went off the rails.  Plenty to disagree with and criticize here.  I should have stayed with the bee thing.  Or photography.  

When we had finished eating and the waitress came to clear the table, she asked us if we would like more tea.  

"I put an extra tea bag in for you," she said when she brought the pot back.  And we were able to relax, for the bees left when the food was gone.  T was driving back to his beach house.  Tomorrow he and his wife go back to Tennessee.  They'd be back in November for a month, he said.  

I've eaten out more in the last week than I have in the past months.  It was fun, but it has gotten to be very expensive.  I have gotten a little electric shock with every bill.  The Asian marketplace with all the different kiosks isn't as bad, though, as long as you don't mind a little Asia belly.  Maybe it is something you get over if you eat there enough.  Cooking at home all the time as I do, my stomach is only used to the germs in my own kitchen, and believe me, there are plenty.  I've asked friends from Africa and South America and Mexico who now live here if they get sick when they go home.  The answer is overwhelmingly yes.  

I have an American belly.  Ha!  I made myself laugh.  I surely do.  It has gotten big.

I have to get ready to take my mother to the dentist now.  A cardiologist appointment lay ahead.  I need to make my own appointment for my annual physical.  I have put it off as long as I can.  I don't want to hear any bad news.  But there is only one direction in life, isn't there.  We live with the curse.  

I find some people are appreciating the video links I've been leaving, so here's another.  London, 1965.  Single girls sharing a flat.  They seem pretty hip for 1965, I think.  Surprisingly so.  The early Beatles era.  The BBC commentator would be flogged today, but it is a nice reminder of the time.  And so. . . .

Hair Folly

The morning coffee was good.  The gym was good.  My haircut was good.  The hamburgers and hotdogs were good.  

So why do I feel the way I do? 

Rhetorical question.  

Let's talk about my hair.  Well. . . I'll do the talking.  As I walked up to the door of the beauty salon, my little Jewish Russian, seeing me through the big glass window fronting the shop, came out to greet me.  She was all smiles, but. . . .

"How do you like your hair?"

"Depends on the day, the hour.  Sometimes it is o.k."

"It is lying flat on your head," she said.  She was already fussing with it before we got inside. 

She sat me in the chair and started looking, touching, thinking.  She's a real visual artist, and she was thinking hard about what to do.  

"Something is going on.  You've lost your curl.  I need to make some separation."

"I think it needs to be longer.  My hair needs weight."

Usually she colors my hair before she cuts it wet.  Today, she said, she needed to cut it dry.  I sat, complacent.  I felt it didn't really matter to me anymore.  I'm resigned to a life that hardly matters. 

She cut.  We talked.  She said I would need to start using product in my hair, maybe mousse.  I broke up when she said it, and she looked at me confused.  

"Oh. . . it's just that. . . have you ever seen the cartoon Rocky and Bullwinkle?  You sounded just like Boris when he says to Natasha 'moose and squirrel, moose and squirrel.'"

She laughed, but I wasn't sure.

I was in the chair for three hours--laugh, I don't care--and so we covered all aspects of our current lives.  So who's happy?  Life is hard.  You do what you do and suffer the consequences while other people wonder why you did it.  That's as close as I can come to understanding things, anyway.  

She cut, we talked, then she got the foil and the chemicals and painted my hair with a brush for longer than usual.  Then we sat while the chemicals did their jobs.  And we talked.  Once in awhile, she would get up, peel back some foil, and then get the brush and put on more goop.  And we talked.  When time was up, she washed my hair in the backwards sink, then we went back to the chair and she cut some more.  I pretty much kept my eyes closed or looked at the floor.  I didn't look in the big mirror in front of me.  

When she was done, she rubbed in some mousse.  And then. . . .

It looked like shit.  It was worse than it was before.  What to do?  She wet it and wanted me to do what I do messing up my hair with my fingers.  Nope.  She pulled out some product, some waxy, paste stuff, and rubbed it through my hair.   Now it was my turn.  

"Do what you do."

I did.  And it worked.  

She has come around to liking my messy bed head look.  I've always wanted hair that looks like the hair on Greek and Roman statues.  

We were getting closer.  But we weren't finished talking, so we sat another half hour or so and finally she said, "I like it."  I looked in the mirror.  Yea, it looked better than when I came in.  I'm less blonde and have more low lights.  We hugged, said I love you, and I headed back to mother's.  

Now that's a lot of talk about hair, isn't it?  Far too revelatory, too.  I mean who in the world gives a shit about my hair?  

Shall I confess?  There are plenty.  Not you, I know.  I can feel your disgust coming through the screen. You may have already cancelled your subscription.  Or you can call me a Narcissist and be using the term, for once, correctly.  I am only hoping to be able to stand to look at my own reflection in a pool of water in the pale moonlight.  Plus, and this is the big thing, I need to have some confidence when I approach people to take their picture.  I need to be able to look them in the eye and not feel deflated.  And therein lies the tale.  Street cred.  

On another day, I would delete all that and begin again.  

This isn't that day, I guess.  

It was time for the afternoon cocktail.  The tenant was on her way.  The afternoon was cloudy as the rain approached.  There was the breeze as the temperature fell.  I sat in the garage porch with my mother and felt. . . good.  I did.  I felt good. 

When the tenant pulled up, I asked her if she wanted a really good beer.  I poured her a Punks.  She lit up.  It is a very good beer.  And so we sat in the garage with mother and chatted and drank until the rain came.  When the wind shifted, we closed the garage door and went inside.  It was time for me to work.  

Not having a grill here, I decided to cook the hamburgers on the stove top in the enamelled cast iron pot.  Get it hot, pour in some olive oil.  Let that warm, and then hamburger patties, three minutes per side.  Chopped onions, sauerkraut, sweet relish, catsup, honey mustard--anything you want.  The burgers needed a minute more, then I plated them on brioche buns.  And good god, they were among the best burgers I've ever had.  

The tenant filled us in on her summer in the north helping her mother take care of her 107 year old grandmother.  More beer.  

"Who wants a hot dog?"

Everybody.  

"See Dick.  See Dick cook.  Dick cooks hot dogs."

Whatever.  Same thing.  Brioche buns, any toppings.  Whiskey.  I still felt good.  

When the meal was done and the tenant had gone, I cleaned up the kitchen.  Another Labor Day behind us.  What lies ahead?

Oh, hurricanes, of course.  Politics.  More warfare.  Renaming things.  Melting glaciers.  

or

Football season.  The World Series.  Wondering what that pop star will do now that she is married.  

Or, you could join me in watching this.  The old BBC.  How can it not be good?  

In the Moment

I'll give up the tech talk about photography.  That was all for me.  I doubt anyone else is interested.  It is like that part of "Moby Dick" where Melville writes about the classification of whales.  I always told students they could skip that part.  

I'll just show the pictures.  

I didn't take any yesterday, though.  I tried.  I got into the Xterra and drove a giant loop around town.  The good news is the Xterra is up and running fine again.  I really like that car.  But it is old and I can only hold my breath.  I realize that what I like is the large windows.  New cars have tiny windows.  I like to see things.  Car manufacturers like to save money.  That is all I can figure out is behind the move.   

So driving around town, I did see things.  But I never stopped the car.  I just didn't have it in me.   

And so I went back to my own house and opened the new book I've been so excited to get since Q told me about it.  He thought he might read it next.  I'd never heard of it, so I looked it up.  Oh, my!  The reviews were wildly good.  It was hailed a masterpiece in each and every one. It sounded like something right up my alley (link).  

I read for an hour and was deeply disappointed in Pessoa's "The Book of Disquiet."  The prose is purple, languid, and strained, I think.  It seems artifice rather than artifact.  Too many words for too little good.  

I doubt that I will ever finish it.  

Have you ever tried to read Thomas Wolfe?  Compare him with Faulkner.  For elegance in writing, give me Fitzgerald and Wharton and Woolf.  And, of course, for writing stripped to its bones, Hem.  

But don't trust me on this, for I have never been able to read Proust no matter how hard I have tried, and he is hailed by all as a great literary master.  

Pessoa makes me yearn for Bukowski's simple prose.  I feel Pessoa is trying to write where Bukowski merely tells.  

Call me a simpleton if you must.  It is probably true.  

I'll give it another go, though.  Perhaps I simply wasn't in the mood.  

I sent the review to my conservative buddy.  This was his reply:

"The chair I am sitting in faces the back of our property. Across the alley is the garage of a neighbor. There is a lamp above the door. I focused on it and then tried to recall and identify all the items at my side. The lamps on the mantle. What color and shape. The coffee machine in the kitchen, what is on the shelves around it. I only imagine I know what is around me.

The hummingbirds are still here. They will be headed your way in a few weeks then on to Central America."

That is far better than the book, I think. 

I received a random text yesterday from an unknown source. 

"Take thoU SAnds of photos or live in moment?"

What?  WTF is that about?  Someone who reads the blog or just coincidental?  

I felt like responding.  What does it mean to "live in the moment"?  It is a cliche, I think, used in pop psychology, probably widely by therapists.  As cliches often do, it may have come from a more impactful source once, but what does it mean other than to be present and paying attention to what is going on around you at a particular time without distraction?  And that is exactly what I am doing when I am making pictures.  The "or" part of that statement seems a non sequitur. 

The writer Peter Matthiessen did not like to take photographs on his travels, he said, because it distracted him, and I completely understand that.  Writing and photographing use different regions of the brain.  When I am making pictures, I am not collecting the information I need to write.  Observing in words is different than observing for graven images, and I can't do both at the same time.  

Jim Harrison said he had gotten to the point where he didn't know any longer if he was writing or if he was thinking.  I understand that, too.  

So, perhaps the author of that statement intended "observe for writing or make images."

Most likely, it was merely some whacky spam.  I'll never know.   

It is Labor Day, of course.  I have a busy day.  My beautician asked if I could come today instead of Thursday.  12:30.  So I will go to the gym, shower, and go get beautified before I come back to mother's to cook the hamburgers and hot dogs that I bought yesterday.   Brioche buns.  All sorts of condiments and sides.  I invited the tenant who will join us.  I bought two tall boy four packs of Punks in the Waiting Room, too.  $28.  But it has truly become my favorite beer, and it is only available at the brewery, so it is always a special treat.  

After Labor Day, we keep our weather eye out for hurricanes.  It is the most depressing time of year for me.  PTSD.  I am "triggered" by dark skies and wind.  

It is a good time to bury my nose in books rather than trying to "live in the present."

Oh, shit. . . I almost forgot about this!  No time to discuss it now.  Just watch it.  I'll quiz you on it tomorrow.  

Moxie

This is a photo from an article I sent to some of my friends about an exhibition at the Harvard Art Museum titled "The Way We Never Were" (link) questioning the narrative of life in postwar America which, the article claims, was built around commercial photography.  Man, I love the pictures.  You can see their influence on many of today's most highly considered art photographers.  

Of course, photographers like Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand gave us a different vision, and I am mad for those, too.  

So, tongue in cheek, I sent the article with the following message:

"They are liars.  Those photos are EXACTLY how postwar America was.  Harvard is a bunch of fucking commies."

C.C. wrote back, “History is written by the whiners.”   

I thought that funny enough to send to Q with the message, "I wish I were half as clever as my friends," to which he replied, "We all wish that for you."

As C.C. put it, "It's a cold room."

I wish I could go to see the exhibition.  

I thought about going out to make my own shitty photographs yesterday, but I couldn't muster the chutzpah to do it.  The more I thought about it, the less appealing it was.  These pop-up "vintage" markets aren't really vintage at all.  There are booths full of old jeans and t-shirts, and though I love the crazy hipster kids who costume with delicious creativity, most of the crowd looks like the clothing hanging on the racks.  There are armies of people wearing t-shirts and jeans, an ocean of dull blues and beige.  

Why chance a hostile encounter for that?  So I did some internet chores for awhile, but by mid-afternoon I felt terribly guilty about wasting the opportunity, so I grabbed my cameras and headed out the door.  If I had enough moxie, I thought, I would use the Hasselblad on the crowd.  When I got near, though, I changed my mind.  I didn't have it in me.  And I was hungry.  I thought about going to the Asian market and getting some sort of snack.  At the last minute, though, I turned into the liquor store parking lot and parked.  I would just make a quick run through at the market.  I grabbed my cameras, got out of the car, and began to walk across the parking lot when I changed my mind.  It just felt wrong.  I didn't have it in me, so I got back in the car.  I decided, however, to drive by the market just to take a look.  I'm glad I did.  I didn't wish to photograph that lot today.  

When I got to the Asian market, I grabbed my Hasselblad. I had seven shots of color film left in it.  I wanted to shoot them up and take the film to the photo lab to get developed.  

The place was packed full of people.  I went to one of the booths and ordered some Sichuan fried chicken wings.  Then I got against the wall to wait for my order.  The interior was dark, but I took out my phone to meter the needed exposure.  I looked at the Hassie.  I could do it.  I looked around and put the camera to my eye.  The camera has a loud mirror slap when you take a picture, but the place was so busy, nobody noticed.  I held the camera by my side.  I wondered about shooting from the hip. With the Leica, you are still holding the camera in a shooting position even when it is not up to your eye, but the Hassie is a big box and there is no way you look like you are actually using it.  

Pow!

Rewind. 

Pow!

Hey, now, that was pretty good.  If the photos turn out ok, I have an idea for using the big old camera in the streets.  

The wings were good and messy.  I washed up before I headed out into the street.  I still had a few photos to take.  

Looking through the finder of that camera is nothing like looking through the viewfinder of a 35mm DSLR.  It is big and luscious, and so I stood at a street corner and finished off the roll.  Everything looked good, but it could have been an illusion.  I was excited to see.  

I drove to the photo lab.  It was busy.  Some tall old buffalo of a buffoon had boxes of old movie equipment spread out over the floor and was bloviating about it all to the kids who looked on, baffled.  I imagined he was giving it to them just to get rid of it.  They said they would have a look through it in the coming days.  I don't know why, but I found the fellow irritating.  

A girl was standing at the counter in front of me filling out the mandatory card for film development.  As I waited, the kid behind the counter said, "I was just talking about you yesterday."  Now what was that, I wondered?  "I was telling someone about your M7."  Huh.  Yea, that's the camera every hipster kid envies but can't afford.  I was like that for many years.  How can you justify spending that kind of money on a camera, let alone the lenses.  I tried all manner of alternatives for years until I decided fuck it.  As I read on a post today, "You can always justify buying another camera.  Some people do cocaine."  

That's pretty much it.  I drove old beaters and wore the same clothes for decades.  I could have the camera I wanted.  

But it's a slippery slope.  The justification keeps getting easier.   

If you have Instagram, here's a link that pretty much sums up shooting film (link).  

I am looking forward to being incredibly disappointed when the film comes back.  Truly.  But at the moment, I am happy.  I have hope.  I'm sure the images will be magnificent.  

I'm hoping for one good one, anyway.  

It was time to get back to mother's.  The day was wicked hot and the rains would be coming soon.  I bought a little pizza for dinner.  It was a early, but I made a cocktail and told my mother I needed to do some reading.  My life in her house is intellectually sterile, and I've decided I need to at least read for a few hours a day.  At least that. 

I tried. I made an hour.  I'm out of shape both physically and intellectually.   But I'm working on both.  Each.  

I want to play more with the Hasselblad today.  There are places to go.  

I hope I have the moxie. 

Let's have a little Sunday music to help us chill.  

Even Androids Dream

The trouble I've had writing lately is organizational, I think.  My life, being routinized, lacks a real narrative structure, at least, to me, a conscious one, so I simply record random facts seasoned with opinions.  I just deleted a post again.  In the past, the vast majority of my posts have concluded with a reference to where the post began, no matter how subtle.  The subtler the better, really.  Many, if not most posts, it was unconsciously done, but when I did it, I saw it and thought, "Voila!"  I had developed a storyteller's knack.  

My classroom lectures were much the same.  I mean. . . I was usually surprised and pleased.  

Now I struggle with the same narrative day after day after day.   The groove is too deep, it seems, the record stuck on repeat.  

Now that's a fine trope that takes a moment.  I can imagine telling a room full of freshmen such a thing and getting back the blank stares of incomprehension.

Here, I think, I can introduce a random fact.  My mother went to lunch with her neighbors yesterday.  When I asked her if she had a good time, she said that the food was ok and that a string trio perfomed.  

"That is why Dan and Donna went.  They enjoyed the music.  It didn't bother me."

Sometimes my mother's hillbilly ways break me up.  

Her ninety-one year old neighbor's daughter drove them.   

"She retires in July.  I asked her if she was going to travel.  She said oh, yes!"

My mother delivered this in a gleeful tone as if discovering some marvel. 

I said, "I had wanted to travel, too."

"Yes, I told her you were stuck with me."

This was delivered with the same dull glee.  Sometimes her hillbilly ways are not so endearing. 

But yesterday I did have lunch with T and his wife.  They are very sweet to me, and T's wife said they were going to build a place for me so I could come stay with them.  I was pleasantly shocked by this as I believe most people only tolerate me.  

"That would be swell," I said, "but I will be dead before my mother.  The life I am living will take me to the grave."  

I do not say this for effect.  It is something I believe with all my being.  It is my Sisyphean fate.

A hillbilly's marvel is really only anything just beyond arm's reach.  A hillbilly's life is never gleeful.  One thing is much like another.  When, for instance, my mother returned from a Viking Cruise down the Danube one Christmas with her friend, I asked her how it was.   

"The buffet on the boat was fine.  The boat would stop and we would get off and walk around."

"What did you see?"

"Just some old churches.  There were Christmas lights."

The buffet was o.k..  

There is a scene Jim Jarmusch's film "Down by Law" where the three main characters have escaped from prison and having come out of a vast Louisiana swamp find themselves standing by a railroad track.  

"Standing by the tracks, Jack and Zack are exhausted, irritable, and bickering. They look around the flat, repeating wilderness and grumble about how every place looks exactly the same, emphasizing the circular, existential nature of their journey."

I had to look that up to make sure I was remembering correctly.  I doubt that I have seen that movie since it came out in 1986, but that scene burned itself into my brain as it perfectly captured the essence of my childhood and adolescence lived always on the outskirts of life in the poorer, uglier stretches of the world.  One thing was as good as another.  A roof over your head and something in your belly.   A six pack of beer and a pack of cigarettes.  

O.K.  I'm working to make something out of nothing here.  T's wife chose the wrong part of the restaurant in which to sit yesterday, a small backroom with nothing to look at but one another.  I ordered fried squid which was terrible.  

When it was time to go back to my mother's, I called her and said I wasn't up for cooking.  I stopped at the store and bought some sliced ham and a pack of sliced cheddar cheese for sandwiches.  When I got back to her house, it began to rain.  It was early, but I was sick with the remnants of vertigo and bad squid, so I said fuck it and poured a scotch to take to the garage/porch.  Hillbilly that I am (again), I sat in an old chair covered in some found material among the garden tools looking past the garbage can into the future.  In a little while, my mother came out to join me, but the rain had turned into a squall and she wanted to close the garage door.  

Back inside, I decided to make a sandwich.  And I swear, it was the best thing I have eaten all week.  I put a slice of ham and a slice of cheddar on a piece of bread slathered in honey mustard, folded it in two, and ate it in a few bites.   It was wonderful.  I made another, then another.  My mother had one, too.  We watched the news.   I had another whiskey.  

It was Friday night I remembered.

I searched for something to watch on t.v. and stumbled onto "Vladimir" on Netflix (link).  I watched three episodes, then took an Advil PM and went to bed.  I slept eight hours without moving.   If you don't use it all the time, that shit is like heroin.  

It is Saturday.  There is another pop-up "vintage" market in the hipster part of town.  I don't know if I have it in me to try to mingle with the crowd.  "The force that drives the green fuse" has dwindled.  I may just sit and stare.  One thing is much like another.  

Voila.  That's the best I can do.  I've tied the ending to the middle unless you count the photo at the top.  If only I had begun en media res. . . . 

Vertigo

Just another little test shot I made with the Hasselblad around my yard, but it pleases me.  Maybe only me, but I was the target audience for this one.  Yea, I can work with this.  

I watched this with my mother last night.  That it was directed by Aronofsky was the real sell.  

That and Magnolia Pictures which releases really good movies.  

It was OK.  A little weird, but not as weird as I expected.  I imagine, though, that they were cut off from filming a lot of what goes on at The Villages.   I expected to see more of a contrast between the Happy People and those struggling on the Road to Destruction.  

When it was over, my mother asked if I was ready to move there.  

"Mom," I said, "I'm ready to move anywhere to get the fuck out of the life I am forced to live now."

No I didn't.  

"You'd be a real hit up there."

"When do you want to go to the nursing home?" I asked.  

No I didn't.  

My life is a torment.  My mother likes to just pile it on.  

In the night, I got up to use the restroom, and when I lay back down, the room went spinning wildly.  It lasted far too long with my crying out, "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!" and waving my arms around for balance.

I sat up as I had been taught to in the hospital after being run over to near death, rolling over to my left side, swinging my feet to the floor, keeping my head parallel to the wall as I sat up.  The terrible spinning stopped, but the unease did not.  I felt nauseated for the rest of the night.  I wanted to sleep but couldn't. 

And that is what I suffer this morning.  Sucks.  

So this entry will be mercifully short.  Looking at the computer screen is making my head spin.  I think I need a far horizon.  

Just a couple quick notes.  I've been trying to be more productive lately.  I think I have been influenced by watching these silly videos on small Japanese restaurants.  Holy shit, they work and work and work and still maintain a smile.  

So I organized my camera collection and then tackled my finances.  I am an economic moron, but I have to do some sort of IRS tax distribution of funds or the government will fine me 25%.  It seems abominable to me, but it has to be done.  Just finding my paperwork was a struggle.  But I've managed to get things together and am going to Schwab today to try to work things out.  

I took my car in yesterday morning and picked it up in the afternoon.  $750.  I'm $3,000 in on that 2007 Xterra in the past few months.  I'm hoping not to need repairs for a year or so.  

Today I am having lunch with T and his wife.  I hope I am o.k. for that.  

My mother is going to another breakfast with the neighborhood folks, so I needn't make breakfast.  I'm thinking of going back to bed and trying to get some sleep. 

I've gone past "mercifully short," I know.   And so. . . .  

Shortcomings

This is the least interesting picture I took with the Hasselblad a few days ago, but it does what it was supposed to do.  Since I had nobody to photograph, I used this bird feeder because it approximated the size of a head.  I wanted to see what the depth of field would look like, to see if I could get away with using a Hasselblad rather than a 4x5 camera. 

I now have a love affair with the Hassie.  I want to show you all the pictures now, but then I'd be weeping in the coming days for having nothing to offer.  I'll practice great restraint and wait.  

I just deleted the rest of this post. It was shamefully bad, even worse than usual.  I started over, but the writing did not improve.  I think I'm going to have to bail on this today.  

Some days are just like that, but such days seem to be more frequent lately.  

As Brando once said about skinny dipping, "I'd rather not reveal my shortcomings."

A Little Asia (Belly)

Voila!  The magic of film.  You can't do this with a digital camera.  Well. . . you probably could, but it wouldn't be the same.  I had trouble spooling the film on the reel.  I told you.  I guess I never got it right, so several pieces of film were ruined.  Ruined?  It all depends on what you mean by "ruined."  This might have been a lovely picture, but therein lies the fun and the magic, right?  O.K., I'll say it. 

Piss shit fuck goddamn.  

There is the dark tent fiasco of loading the film onto reels, the mixing of chemicals, the developing, fixing, and rinsing, the hanging and waiting for the film to dry, the cutting of the negatives, then the slow process of scanning to see what you have, and then. . . probably 90% of the photos are boring-- or the above.  But you are not done. You still have to import the file into a photo editor and finish it, or, rather, turn it into a digital file which is exactly what you would have gotten with a digital camera or your phone. 

And yet. . . I don't know what to say except, "There is something about film and film cameras."

Plus, I have over 100 leftover rolls of old film at home.  Hours and hours of breathless, breathtaking fun.  

My mother went to breakfast with the neighbors yesterday, so I got an earlier start.  I was finished at the gym by the time I often get there.  I was supposed to see T there, but I was gone before he arrived.  I got home and finished up scanning the rest of the three rolls of film and showered and was ready for lunch at 12:30.  T said he was on his way to pick me up when the cleaning crew arrived.  I sat outside and talked to the "head lady" while I waited.  She is a Jamaican raised in New York, and we get on thick as thieves.  We tell tales and laugh like old friends.  

When T arrived, he got out of the truck and started right in with her, too.  

"Hello darlin'," or something like that.  When I climbed painfully into his big truck, I said what a nice woman she was, and he told me, yea, he heard how we get along.  I had butt dialed him and he had heard us on his way to pick me up.  He recited some of the conversation.  

"Did you hear me tell her what a fuck shitwad you are?" I asked.  

"Where are we going?"

Where we went, however, was not open for lunch.  We decided to go to Gotham and get some Michelin recommended Udon noodles instead.  The place is around the corner from the photo store, and T wanted to go in and buy a lens for the camera I had recommended he get, so I said just park in their lot and we'd walk around the corner.  

But he couldn't.  Fucking cowboy has a twenty foot long truck that won't fit into normal parking places. We drove back onto a side street and found a place in a puddle of water nobody else would park in. 

"You need a town car, son."

The tiny restaurant was fairly empty and the beautiful waitress told us to sit anywhere.  I let T pick, then complained that we were sitting too close to the speaker playing pop music too loudly.  But T was undeterred and started singing along. 

"How in the fuck do you know the lyrics to this song?"

It wasn't just that song, but the next and the next.  

He told me he knew the songs because of his son who is an up and coming record producer. 

"He produces all sorts of music," he said and went on to tell me of his offspring's recent successes. He was producing music for the woman who was the opening act for Ella Langley.  T is a fan of Langley's music and his wife had gotten them tickets to her concert coming up for his birthday, and when his son heard this, he arranged for T to be backstage for the concert and to meet Langley.  

"I feel kind of stupid," he said. 

"Oh, hell, they'll have lots of food and liquor backstage.  Just eat and drink and have fun.  Just don't act like some dumb hillbilly and you'll be fine."

He cocked his head and gave me a look.  He's a sophisticated hillbilly, I know.  He runs in high cotton, as they say.  

I looked to the kitchen where they make these special Udon noodles with water and flour imported from Japan.  The beautiful waitress had her back to us, and I could see the light red tattoo of three Asian symbols lined vertically from the top of her neck as her hair was pulled atop her head.  I say "Asian" because I don't know what they were other than ideographs of some kind.  I would never get close enough to really get a good look, I know.  I don't know where she is from, but I assume Japan, so I am probably wrong.  I've been here several times before.  She brings menus but that is all.  She has never smiled at me once.  And today, a fellow comes to take our orders.  

"Have you been here before?" he smiles.  

"Yes," I say, "but that doesn't mean I know how to order."

He laughs.  

T knows, though, as he lived in Thailand for a year, and so I let him choose the numerous sides we will split and I order a bowl of Udon with beef.  I keep turning to look at the beautiful woman. 

"I don't think they let her wait on men," I say.  

"When I come here with my wife, she always waits on us and is very nice."

"I don't think they let her wait on me," I laugh.  

"Well. . . yea."

Everything was warm and good and flavorful.  It was just what I wanted, an antidote to my home cooking.  I am not familiar with Asian spices and sauces, not enough to use them successfully, anyway, and this just hit that little spot that longs for travel and adventure.  It is as close as I get now.  Lunch. 

When we finished, it was later than we expected.  T had a 3:30 meeting and so we skipped the photo store and hurried back to town.  T has sold his house here an now has decided to sell the condo he is renting out, too.  He is keeping his beach condo an hour and a half away, but he will be living in Tennessee, so I will probably only see him a couple times a year.  

As it is with most of my friends now.  

Back home, I sat down and began working on the scanned files.  But the beer and the food had made me very sleepy, and I decided I needed a quick nap.  Just as I lay down, however, the Asian spices start to work, and I got up for a trip to the bathroom.  Holy shit--it was a good thing, for I remembered just then I had to take my mother to the dentist at 4:30.  I looked at the clock.  It was 4:00.  

I called my mother and told her I was on my way.  Traffic was lighter than usual and I made it in good time. I got her and her walker loaded into the car and we were in the dentist's office on the dot.  

"We tried to call you," the lady at the desk said.  "We got the partial, but it is not right.  They are going to have to make another one.  I'm sorry."

We made another appointment week and a half away.

I could barely keep my eyes open when we got back to my mother's house, and I was not at all hungry.  Neither of us were keen for dinner, but I was keen for a drink to settle my Asia belly.  And another.  And I decided that is what I was going to do.  I would drink and watch tv and take something to help me sleep.  

I slept for ten hours without waking.  

Now I must get on with things.  What things?  You know, the old routine.  I broke the routine for a minute yesterday, though, so there is that.  Maybe I'll go for an afternoon coffee. . . 

But it is supposed to rain.  

I feel like a character in one of Hemingway's short stories where people are bored and do stupid shit to deal with the internal void. "Cat in the Rain," perhaps.  

Or someone in one of Joyce's Dubliners tales.  The silence.  The rain.  The routine. 

And once more . . . many must have it.  

I've posted this video before, but I watched it again last night.  I like the female playing guitar and singing harmony,   Who is she?  She is wonderful.  I love the song but can't abide the lyrics.  I was at a factory party at the house of the lesbian with whom I did not get along sitting in a room away from the crowd with a woman who had decided to take a job elsewhere.  We were not especially close.  She held herself slightly above her station in life, as I recall reading somewhere.  She wrote poetry, and I had gone to see her read at the Country Club College once.  I had to admit, some of it was very good.  She was a good performer, too, drinking from a bottle of water like she was working a sex act.  She was not unattractive. As we sat in the room alone, I told her that her tenure at the factory was safe if she wanted to stay and she said thanks, but no.  The Shins first album had just come out and I admitted how embarrassed I was to like it so much.  She smiled and nodded and conceded the same.  And for a moment, there was the first hint of tenderness between us.  I don't think she liked the lesbian any more than I did though she was sometimes a fellow traveller herself.  I often think of that moment when I listen to this song, that and Ili.  We used to listen to this album and Aretha Franklin's Greatest Hits on long drives to the beach and back.  That's the power of music to bring back some melancholy sadness.

But the lyrics to this song suck, I think.  It is like something written by a confused teenager trying to be creative.  I would love to change the lyrics because the melody is so very wonderful, especially in this slowed down, half time version.  

With the woman playing guitar and singing harmonies.  Who IS she?  

Photos--$1!

I made a poster for my photo booth.  I'll print it on canvas and hang it outside my tent.  I'll surprise clients by giving them a dollar.  Then I'll give them the release form to sign.  I don't really need a release form unless I intended to sell the photo to a company that would use it to promote something.  To simply use it in a book or in a gallery show, though, I wouldn't.  

So maybe I wouldn't have them sign anything at all. 

But, you know. . . Safety First.

"What tent?  What?  What are you talking about?"

Have you been paying attention?  I want to set up a booth at pop up hipster venues and farmer's markets to make portraits in the manner of Mike Disfarmer.  

Don't you think that is a capital idea?  

"Why?  What's the point?  You want to spend your time and money taking photos of people you don't know?  I don't get it."

I know.  I understand it less and less myself.  When I say it out loud, it seems weird.  And when you say it, I lose the ambition to do it at all.  What's the point, indeed.  But have you ever looked at those Disfarmer photos?  Or August Sander's?  Sander's work is incredible, and that's just what remains.  The Nazis destroyed the majority of his work in 1936.  About 1,000 of his glass plate remain.  Can you imagine the rest?  

"Never heard of them."

Yea.  But you might be right.  It's a lot of effort.  Buy a tent, hall it around, set it up, bring out the big cameras, lights, etc, then after a few hours, break it all down and pack it up.  I don't even know if I am physically capable any longer.  It is something a younger person should do.  Maybe I'll just stay home, go to lunch. . . whatever.  

Yesterday I began scanning the film I developed on Sunday.  I am pleased with the test shots I made with the Hasselblad.  I think that maybe I could fall in love with it--for awhile.  It seems I can handhold the camera with the big ass telephoto lens steady enough.  I need to test it on a person now, and I need to cook up the images in Photoshop to see what I can do.  But that won't be happening today, I think. T is going to be in town, and we are going to lunch after the gym.  The cleaning crew comes in the early afternoon, and I have to take my mother to a 4:30 dental appointment.  And I think I caught what my mother had after partying with the church people. I'm feeling pretty lousy. 

Life in the fast lane. 

I wouldn't want to do those tent photos here in my own hometown.  I'd know too many people and feel too odd.  I'd have to go to Gotham or beyond.  It might be interesting to go to a small town market somewhere, but it could be dull as well.  I'd have to try it to see. 

I've still not eaten any sweet or sugary or processed snacks, but I think I'm falling back into that black hole.  I was happy for a minute.  Happy-ish.  But something feels broken inside.  I think I need a break desperately.  I need to go somewhere.  I just don't have a clue about how to manage that.  I honestly don't think I can go on like this much longer.  Hard times make hard people they say.  Sad times make sad people.  Desperate times make desperate people.  I've lost my sense of humor and my joy.  It is getting harder to write anything these mornings now.  I struggle to find something.  When I first started writing, my life seemed to take on a narrative form.  I couldn't wait to see the next chapter.  Now I'm living on Becket's stage. 

But it's possibly only some illness I've picked up from mother's church friends.  It is probably something going around.  As the older waiter in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," says in the story's last line, "Many must have it."