Inappropriate

I solved one problem yesterday, but a mystery remains.  I used a different software to scan the 8x10 negative on my Epson printer and it worked.  This isn't it, though.  The mystery?  WTF is the dark area at the bottom of the negative?  I'm guessing it is the sagging bellows on the camera, but it didn't show up in the photo of the bird bath, so I can't be sure.  Trial and error at $100 a lesson.  

Here's a full 8x10 scan of the second negative.  Same f'ing blackness.  I look at the photos and wonder. . . "Why?"  And still. . . I'm intrigued.  Would you stand in front of a strangers camera for an 8x10 portrait if you saw him set up on a street? 

I wonder if I would be allowed to do this.  Would the cops tell me to move along?

I could do this with my Fuji GFX, but people would not be intrigued, I know.  People would just scowl and move along.  But an 8x10 camera?  That's a horse of a different color. 

All it's going to take is a whole lotta chutzpah.  Egoless chutzpah.  

I wish I had something else to tell you, but I don't.  I'm worn out.  Last night, I sat on the couch and watched YouTube clips of Hank Moody for about an hour and a half.  Holy shit. . . I forgot how much I liked that show.  Now that you can get into trouble for making a suggestion (see several of that sleazebag Swallwell's detractors claims), shows like "Californication" and others of its ilk are "cancelled."  But fuck. . . .

I shouldn't even say that out loud.  And I'm no Hank Moody.  I ain't no flirt.  

But I did buy a pair of cool sunglasses.  

Busy day.  Sprinkler repairman at nine.  Cardiologist at 12:30.  HVAC maintenance between 3 and 5.  All mom's.  I won't even get to take a walk or go to my house today.  Selavy.  

However. . . and I must. . . I do love the inappropriate comment.  Just sayin'.  

8x10 or A.I.?

Here's my "masterpiece."  I'll bet you've never seen this one before.  The big 8x10 camera on a sturdy tripod was hard to carry even to the yard.  I'm pleased enough that the image turned out, and now I have confidence that I can make pictures with that monstrous thing, but I can't scan them after I do.

"What?  What is this?"

This is only part of the 8x10 negative.  For reasons I have yet to figure out, the scanner won't scan all of it.  It only scans medium format sizes, so I have to find out if other software will let me scan the entire image with the Epson.  

I scanned three images just fine--without realizing what was happening, but when I tried to scan the fourth, the sanner went haywire.  Won't bore you with all of it, but after an internet search, I read that it possibly could be a dirty glass.  That didn't sound feasible to me, but after fucking around with it for awhile, I got some alcohol and cleaned the dust and fingerprints off--and then it worked!  

I had another scanner that did the same thing, so I trashed it and bought a new one.  They ain't cheap.  Now I know that all I needed to do with the other was clean the scanning glass.  

Whatever. 

It was only on the fourth scan, though, that I realized I was only getting a portion of the whole negative.  

I think using the big fucker is cool, and I wonder if others might think so, too.  I imagine many projects I might do.  But if I took it out, would people stand before it?

I've become super paranoid in my old age.  

And I ask you, is that image better than this one I made for Red in A.I.?

Youza!!!  If you can't take the picture, make it.  I think it is wonderful, really. 

For all you A.I. haters, the only thing that stands between you and it is business interests.  I took my mother's car in to get it detailed yesterday.  It really needed it.  I sat down inside the carwash for a bit and watched the incessant television that is omnipresent.  Why?  Do you really need a t.v. in a carwash?  Restaurants?  

TMZ was on.  O.K.  I'd watch a little trashy t.v.  It's better than "The Golden Girls."  The segment I saw was an interview with a plastic surgeon of some repute, I guess, or so they said.  He had told his daughter not to go to med school but to become a lawyer instead.  Why?  A.I.  He believes that there is going to be much less need for doctors in the future.  Already, he said, A.I. does a better job of diagnosing illness than do the doctors at Mt. Sinnai, one of the best hospitals in the world--80% of the time.  

I don't find that difficult to believe at all.  

A.I. robots, he said, are already great at some types of surgeries, and they are only going to get better.  "But they can't do the aesthetic work you do?" quizzed the moderator.  

"A.I. is so good at aesthetics now, it might do a better job," he said.  But, and here's the thing, the AMA has such power, they will slow down if not kill the infusion of this technology.  

And that is it, isn't it?  It will be a battle of the dollar.  Hospitals will want to do everything with robots that cost less than doctors and doctors will fight back.  The business of America is business.  I forget who said that.  

A.I. is great.  I just looked it up.  Calvin Coolidge.  

As I see it, A.I. is a tremendous tool, but it is just a tool.  People who rely on it rather than use it are fucking up, I think.  If I had an A.I. robot taking out my appendix, I sure as shitting would want a doctor there to supervise.  I wouldn't want old Short Circuit ripping out my guts because it got a virus.  I would want the doc there to hit the panic button.  

But the MBAs that run hospitals won't want to pay for both.  I think the real innovations will not come from America but from China.  

All that remains to be seen.  

Yesterday, when thinking about really good photographers who worked with 8x10 cameras, I forgot about one with whose work I was enamored when I was a college wannabe photo student.  Emmet Gowin.  He was one of my favorites.  Last night, I watched a little YouTube thing on him.  He was from rural Virginia like Sally Mann, but what I didn't know was that he had been her photography professor in college and became one of her major influences.  Yes, of course.  That makes sense.  Ten years after I'd seen Gowin's photos, I saw Mann's.  

Here's the doc, if you are interested.  And just like any YouTube video on Mann, they can't show Gowin's most intimate work.  If you are interested in that, you'll have to look it up.  

I have no interest in either photographer's work beyond the work they did with family and friends.  All the landscape stuff bores me.  But what can you do?  Kids grow up and people die.  What you make when that happens is the question.  I don't think either of them solved it so well.  

Okey dokey.  Here's some music that sounds like an Emmet Gowin photo in a way.  Maybe.  

Red loved both the image and the song. 

Talent

From today's N.Y. Times:

As I was gathering material on the absence of young people at anti-Trump demonstrations, I came across evidence of powerful technological forces weakening persistence and cognitive tenacity across the board.

Dana Fisher, a professor in the School of International Service at American University, tracks the demographics of participants in major anti-Trump demonstrations.

She provided the following data about the three No Kings protests: “At No Kings 1 (June 14, 2025) the median age was 36, at No Kings 2 (Oct. 18, 2025) the median age was 44, and at No Kings 3 (March 28, 2026) it was 48. Clearly, it’s getting older.”

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the N.Y.U. Stern School of Business, who has turned the issue of the detrimental effects of social media into a cause celebre, responded by email to my queries:

When I began my research on social media and Gen Z, I focused on the evidence that it increased rates of depression, anxiety and self-harm. It does, but the effects are substantially larger for young women, and for liberals. Young women on the left fell first and fastest, in terms of mental health, once everything moved onto smartphones and social media, around 2012.

More recently, Haidt continued, he realized that

I vastly underestimated the damage from social media because even larger than the mental health crisis is the diminishment of the human capacity to pay attention, which is driven in part by the explosion of short-form videos since the arrival of TikTok. The average American teen now spends five hours a day on social media, mostly swiping through short videos.

In political terms, Haidt argued,

social media has done more harm to the Democrats than to the Republicans, both by weakening their young people (e.g., their requests for trigger warnings and safe spaces) and also by radicalizing them. They in turn push the party to take more extreme cultural positions, which drive noncollege voters to the right.

Most consequentially, Haidt contended,

years of consuming short videos during childhood and puberty seems to disrupt the development of executive function, which refers to the cognitive processes that support goal-directed behavior.

Young people who watch a lot of short videos (which is most of Gen Z and Gen Alpha) find it more difficult to do anything that is hard, or that requires deep thought, or that can only be accomplished with persistent effort. That would include political activism, especially action in realms beyond social media.

Haidt’s concluding point:

I believe that TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are bringing America a cognitive catastrophe. The diminishment of capability is hitting both sides, but it is the left that most needs its young people to come out and fight for change.

Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of the book “Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents — and What They Mean for America’s Future,” suggested in an email responding to my questions that a combination of factors underpinned the relative lack of youth activism:

A key factor is the growth of both depression and pessimism among young adults since 2012. It’s hard to have agency if you’re depressed, and hard to believe that anything you do will matter if you’re pessimistic, even nihilistic.

Another factor, Twenge noted, may be that the left overplayed its hand on controversial issues such as transgender women in sports, equity versus equality, cancel culture, defunding the police, affirmative action, and so on in a way that alienated many young people even if they were liberal otherwise — that may have turned them off politics and taking action.

The rest of the article goes into detail about why A.I. is bad.

It surprises me--no it doesn't--that most of these critiques never talk about the dulling effect of the big screens, t.v. and films.  98% of what is sold is saccharin pablum meant to dull the brain. But, of course, that is a 1960's complaint.  

But MBA programs have been dumbing down American intellects at an exponential rate.  

In 1980, approximately 55,148 MBA degrees were conferred in the USA, marking a significant rise from the previous decade. By the mid-2020s (2022–2025 data), this number has grown dramatically to over 200,000 business master’s degrees annually, cementing its status as one of the most popular graduate degrees.

It is also one of the easiest grad degrees, along with the M.Ed and Ed.D. degrees, you can purchase.  What is the point of an MBA degree?  Bottom line?

Maximize profit.  

And what kind of people are easiest to manipulate?  

We keep emphasizing practical skills over intellectual prowess.  I don't argue against practical skills.  I just don't own many.  But I am reliant on those who do.  Absolutely.  No doubt.  But are they reliant on me?  

Not in any practical way, that's for sure.  Do they need to read?  Not deeply.  Do they need to write?  Not beautifully.  Do they need to understand art and literature?  Nope.  Taylor Sheridan fills all their voids.  

Do they need to know how to fight?  

They don't usually own the big buildings that crowd your town, though.  What are those all filled with?  Rents are high, higher than most can pay.  Artists at every level cannot afford a studio.  Nope, building and construction are driven by Big Business.  

Developers and contractors are the Big Dogs in this town.  They are the top of the practical skills food chain.  And of course attorneys who they work with hand in glove to get the developments done.  

It is well-known that if you are not good enough to get into a Medical School, you can become an attorney.  But that is for another day.  

The arts are gone.  They are not in schools.  Why do we need them?  Tech is the new art.  

And there we have it, the ouroboros.  

I don't know if we do or not.  I am writing without study.  But you get my drift.  

I was all analog yesterday.  I went to the garage and got my big film changing tent, cleared the dining room table, and set it up there.  I took the big, new 8x10 developing tank and the 8x 10 film holders and placed them inside.  First try, having never done this before, went fairly well.  Slow but steady.  When I had he tank loaded, I decided to put film back into the holders.  This all took awhile.  Then it was time to mix up the chemicals.  Wow.  The tank holds 64 ounces, half a gallon of water, developer, water, fixer, and water.  I set the timer and twirled the tank, slick and heavy.  I had no idea if this was working.  I had music playing from my iTunes station, though, and comrades, it was good.  

Two minutes in water, five in developer, one in water, four in fixer, three in water.  About fifteen minutes in all, but it seemed much longer.  Without hope, I pulled the big negatives from the tank.  Well, now--there was imagery.  I hung the images up to dry.  They were test shots of the milk jug and the bird bath.  Boring.  And I hardly expected that the focus would be good, but I won't know that until I scan them. 

Then the clean up.  While I had the tent up, I decided to load a bunch of 4x5 film holders, too.  

The hours had gone by and I had four images to show.  WTF am I thinking?  What is the point?  I wanted to show you some good 8x10 photo images, but who?  Ansel Adams' pictures of mountains or Clyde Butcher's pictures of southern swamps?  Richard Avedon's static portraits on a white background of people in the west?  Maybe the only ones I truly like are Sally Mann's images of family and friends.  Those are a true accomplishment.  

And once again, I thought. . . WTF?  

But sometimes you just have to do the wrong thing.  

If this is the road I am going to travel, though, I will be making maybe half a dozen pictures every week or two, and most, if not all of those will suck.  

All I can say in favor of it is "it's not screens."

I sent that Times excerpt to my conservative friend.  He just wrote back, "How do you get into the freak show?  Be a freak."

I guess that's right.  

Here's a throwback.  80 year old Van Morrison is still kicking and kicking ass with this new song.  What a talent.  

Idealized

N.Y. Times article today on an exhibition about ugly and beautiful.  Not really worth the read, but. . . 

Formally, she looks like she stepped out of Dürer’s tome; narratively, she is the Roman goddess of beauty (and love, desire, fertility, prosperity). Radiant, a literal ideal, she is nonetheless modest — an important quality, in a Renaissance context, for the truly beautiful to possess.

O.K.  The article says our understanding of what is beautiful has changed relatively little over the centuries.  I think I might disagree to some extent.  Still. . . .  

Images like these are disdained by a new portion of the evolving culture.  Ugliness and beauty seem to have intertwined.  Body positivity, etc.  

I am surely only the byproduct of my inculcated cultural values.  I like sailboats and nature, too.  My aged body. . . not so much.  

I watched "Hamnet" last night.  Hmm.  That was a good lesson on the meaning of the ghost in "Hamlet."  My mother watched it with me 

"What did you think?"

"It was weird."

My mother has never read "Hamlet."  It is weird, too.  

This morning, I downloaded Shakespeare's works from the Folger library (link).  I've studied Shakespeare's work in several courses, but I want to read now only for the creative language, the phrasing.  I should have done that long ago, I reckon.  Should have done the same with the Bible, too.  Read H.S. Thompson and you will hear the Bible's influence on his writing.  I need to research that.  Wait a moment. 

Yes, the Bible—particularly the King James Bible and the Book of Revelation—significantly influenced Hunter S. Thompson's prose, providing a rhythmic, apocalyptic, and "wrathful" style. He often drew on biblical imagery, such as plague and Babylon, to describe American culture and politicians in his "gonzo"

There you go.  I knew it without looking it up.  It was obvious.  I'm telling you, kids--stick with the classics!

I have a very busy day.  Yesterday, I loaded up some black and white film in the 8x10 film holders and took some test shots with the big-assed studio 8x10 camera.  I will try the new 8x10 developing tank today, mix up some chemicals and give it all a whirl.  Then ther will be the scanning.  I had forgotten that scanning 8x10 film is problematic.  I'll see if I can solve that problem today.  I read some advice online that seemed reasonable.  I'm still questioning why I want to shoot 8x10 film, but I know there lies a reason somewhere.  Results soon. 

We shouldn't forget Faulkner.  He's not as much Biblical, though, as he is old timey preaching.  There is a Southern Baptist preacher whispering in his ear in all his work.  

His oeuvre. 

O.K. Old tyme is a'flying, and this old flower ain't got none to waste.  As Aretha said, "I ain't lying."  Maybe we can end with her today.  She was pretty good.  

Just her proppers, if you know what I'm saying.   

Fire!!!!

No bliss this morning.  No zen.  My mother kept me awake for most of the night.  Sometime after I fell asleep, the door burst open and my mother called my name.  

"What is it?"

"I'm feeling dizzy."

"O.K.  What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing.  I just thought you'd want to know."

Verbatim.  

For the rest of the night, my mother was up and banging around.  I don't know how much I slept.  I'm exhausted, and all joy is gone.  In truth, there is only misery.  

The day started off well enough.  I made her breakfast and she was fine and happy.  When I left to go to my house, she was upbeat and good.  

I took a long walk from my house across the campus of Country Club College which was hopping.  There were plenty of girls in formal and semi-formal dresses.  People were having photos taken.  I didn't know what was going on, but it looked as if there were plenty of parents there, too.  At the chapel, it looked like there might be a wedding.  The day was perfect and everyone seemed joyful. 

Down the street bordering the lake with the big old mansions all the way to the golf course.  In the big historic home, there was a large wedding party, too.  Up to the far end of the Boulevard and turning back toward the house.  The Boulevard was unusually busy, crowds of people in the park, in front of shops, and once again, the teenage girls were lined up to get into the Brandy Melville shop.  Halfway up the street, the barricades were up and the tables were being set for that night's A Taste of Money or whatever the big dining experience is called.  Hundreds of tables, block after block.  I was told later that you have to reserve seats within an hour of the offering or you won't get one.  A table is very expensive, but it is a See and Be Seen event if you are a remora.  Corporate tables, etc.  

Off the Boulevard and into my neighborhood, the sidewalk filled with walkers.  

"Hello. Hello."

Back home, I looked at the big 8x10 film developing tank that finally arrived.  WTF was I going to do?  I went to the garage and looked around until I found the big 8x10 film holders and some boxes of old 8x10 film.  If I want to shoot color film now, it will cost about $25/sheet.  Black and white about half of that.  Yea.  It takes a whole lotta money and commitment for this.  

I have one 8x10 camera, and it is a doozy.  Cameras are pretty simple, really.  There is a front "standard" that holds the lens and a back "standard" that has the ground glass you focus on and a film holder.  In between is a light tight expandable bellows.  Now let's see, there are. . . let's count the number of movements this camera will make.  You can raise and lower the front standard, shift it left and right, tilt it left and right, and tilt it up and down.  There are knobs for each of those movements.  The same goes for the rear standard.  That is eight movements and a whole lot of knobs.  Then there is the focussing apparatus, too.  

The camera is big and the image on the ground glass upside down and backwards.  The camera is mounted on a large moveable head--tilt, turn, and side to side movements each with their own twisty knobs.  There are bubble levels on the top and side of the camera so that you can shoot on straight horizontal and vertical planes.  

All of this is set upon a very sturdy, i.e. heavy tripod.  This is not a field camera.  It is meant to be used in the studio.  

What studio? 

I bought it long ago and have barely ever used it.  You need to be an engineer to get it set up to take a photograph.  God help you if anything is off, for you will have wasted $25 and won't even know it until after you develop the film.  

I fucked around with the camera for a long time trying to "master" the movements.  I want to make some pictures "just to see."  

Cha-ching!

I have everything including the big developing tank which will let me develop four negatives at a time. . . . 

If I sent the negatives off to a lab, it would take at least ten days before I got them back and around $10 per negative.  I'll be shooting b&w at first and doing the developing myself.  

Maybe. 

If I were trying to shoot portraits with this camera, set up would take many minutes, and then the person would have to not move, not bobble head, not sway. . . .

I'll start with food or something until I get it down.  

The phone rang.  It was my mother. 

"Where ARE you?!?!?  It's late."

It was five-thirty.  I'd lost myself in camera shit.  I still had to go to the store and get things for dinner.  I'm not back in the groove of not having my life again.  It is going to take a minute.  

I guess I'll pack up all the camera gear and bring it to my mother's.  I'll practice with it here.  I don't know.  I really don't know.  

My mother is very actively miserable this morning.  She doesn't want to be miserable alone.  She moans, she sighs, she wanders about with her walker back and forth, banging in cabinets, banging in drawers, explicating in explicatives.  

My nerves are singed.  

"Help! Help!  Fire! Fire!"

"Breathe, buddy, breathe," I keep telling myself, but my heart races and I know my blood pressure is sky high.  I'm shooting off adrenaline every few minutes.  

I need to go fix her something to eat, so this is over and done.  Back to the grindstone.  Outside there is a picture perfect day.  

Enjoy.  

Back to Mom

First day back at mother's went o.k.  When I got here in the morning, she was feeling bad.  Later in the day when she called me, she was feeling worse.  I feared another hospital trip on the first day here.  I rushed back and gave her some meds and she went to bed.  I took a trip to the grocers and got some fixin's.  She called when I was on my way home in a terrified voice.

"Where ARE you?"

Yup, I thought, that's the way it's going to be. 

When I got to the house, I put on the rice and prepped the broccoli and cut up the chicken into small pieces, washed my hands, and made a Negroni.  I wasn't going to, but man, my nerves were already quaking.  I asked her to come sit outside with me.  We chatted, and in a bit I ran in and turned on the burner for the broccoli and came back out to sit with her.  At six, I said, "Let's go watch the news while I cook."  I put on the chicken and just as it was finished cooking, I added some Alfredo sauce.  The news was about the Artemis II capsule's return and the fact that the Iran Peace Deal is going so badly the Trumps want to distract us with the Epstein files again.  Oops.  

I put the rice into bowls, added the chicken pieces, and put the broccoli on top.  My mother ate it all.  She hasn't been getting this sort of thing since I left.  By the time the news was over, she was feeling better.  We watched Artemis parachute into the sea.  She was no longer moaning and complaining.  I think that with my cousin leaving had put her in a bad psychological state.  

She is doing fine this morning, drinking my strong coffee, as she calls it, and eating a little raspberry Danish roll with it.  

Just tap your heels together three times. . . . 

Me?  Oh, I drank too much and fell asleep on the couch.  My mother woke me up and told me she was going to bed.  I did the same.  

She'll get used to my rhythm again, my sitting with the computer in the morning, making breakfast, cleaning up, then leaving the house after ten or so to do what I need to do, coming back in the afternoon to sit with her again for the rest of the day and night.  

Maybe I will, too.  

So. . . Swalwell.  Maybe he couldn't keep his pecker in his pants or his hands to himself, but sometimes even that won't do.  

"The way he looked at me made me feel uncomfortable and gross.  He would ask me questions with provocative implications."

Not saying he wasn't a creep or even a villain or criminal.  I would have no way of knowing.  What is obvious, though, and even literally said in some of the women's statements, is that he was reported when it became clear he wasn't going to help them get a better job.  Why would they admit that?  

But you learn after awhile that other people are trouble and that you must become a houseplant in all dealings with them or face the consequences.  Living with and taking care of your ailing mother will keep you out of a whole lotta trouble.  

People need to read their Shakespeare.  

But. . . having said that. . . why would anyone text someone an unsolicited photo of their Johnson?  Didn't Anthony Weiner teach anybody anything?  I mean, not even a solicited one.  My social media accounts are now filled with stories of female teachers having sex with their underaged students.  In the main, it is the texting that did them in.  For some reason, they felt the need to send nude pictures to the boys.  

"Why would you be getting those stories?"

Did I tell you that teachers in my jr. high school were sleeping with the boys?  True.  Ms Margarine (not her real name, of course, but an offshoot of it), was short and chubby and not attractive, but she would let the boys drive her car after sex, so some of the Bozos did it.  Other teachers, the more attractive ones, were more discreet.  And, of course, there was no texting to do them in.  I played in a rock and roll band and had grown ass women flirt with me, too, but they often smelled of cigarettes, coffee, and perfume, nothing like the cute girls just a little older than I who were my faves.  

"What?  Older?  Really?"

It wasn't just women, of course.  Men, too, especially when I hitchhiked.  It always went something like, "You look like you're in good shape.  Do you play football," or some other comment about looks.  That is when I would say, "This is my stop here."  

When I started going to hair stylists instead of barbers, they always leaned too far in and spent a lot of time working around my ears.  

Sex, sex, sex.  When will people ever get over sex?  

Oh, yea. . . when it doesn't get them where they want to go, I guess.  I've been lucky.  I've been poor and drove shitty cars and dressed like a beach bum.  Nobody ever thought I was going to get them a better job or more money.  It has kept me out of trouble, I think.  

Of course, as we all know, they eventually leave, and always for someone with more of everything, not less.  

Selavy.  I'm a good kid, you know?  The kind who takes care of his mother.  

Have you ever "cheated" on your boy/girlfriend or partner/husband/wife?  I did once early in life.  It taught me a lesson.  

"What was that lesson?"

Never confess.  "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Just a joke.  When I fall in love. . . .  You know the tune.  

Well, that just about wraps it up.  It is time to make breakfast for mother and get this day going.  But let me just clarify one thing--if you want to text me nudes, I would enjoy that, and I won't tell a soul.  Truly.  I don't want you to get me more money or a better job.  I just like the human form.  It is a joyful thing.  

Mostly.  

Fate Awaits Me

I am not sure people pick up on the subtleties of what I post—a reflection of myself in the window of a Tattoo parlor under the title “Reflections of a Man Leaving Home.”  Did you miss it?  Doesn't matter, really.  Shitty pictures deserve to be ignored.  You probably have a higher I.Q. if you didn't notice.  "Special" kids always see things others miss.  They are irritating that way.  

I am in my home in the early morning for the last time.  I won't be sleeping in my own bed again.  My things will sit in permanent disorder as in a museum collection.  After I finish writing this, I will go to my mother's.  My cousin will have left early this morning.  To my face, my mother laments her leaving.  I'm sure.  I am not as much fun for my mother with all my high-toned concerns.  I don't enjoy going to Walmart to "look around."  I don't enjoy breakfasts at Denny's.  

Etc. 

But I feel the need to do more of that for my mother now.  Sure. 

This afternoon, I'll come back and begin packing my things for my leaving.  I will try to move in more this time.  I'll take some clothes.  I'll take some books.  I don't know, really.  

I met the boys for the farewell party last night.  My mother laughed and said, "A welfare party."  She is having trouble with words now, but this one struck me as funny.  

It wasn't a raucous night.  We went to a newish Italian place in an outdoor shopping mall in my own hometown.  It was an attractive place with a cavernous dining area and several bars opening up to covered patios outside.  On the wall was a giant painting of a woman's head and shoulders in a style I can't quite describe.  It looked to me as if the artist had painted it from a decoupage.  I thought it quite good and remarked how few places have the chutzpah to put up figurative paintings.  

We sat at an outdoor table and ordered every happy hour appetizer on the menu.  The food was excellent.  We ate and drank and watched the crowd as we kibitzed.  At one point later in the evening, a pretty woman stopped and said, "Well this is a table full of attractive men."  I was pretty sure she wasn't looking at me.  The shock jock, however, said, "Yea. . . but I still wet the bed."

"What?" said the pretty lady.  

"It's O.K., though," I chimed in.  "He uses plastic sheets."

And that was the end of that.  Nobody at the table blinked. 

"Good job."

I think I was the only person at the table who was even a little sad.  I haven't had a woman's compliment for a very long time, and even if it wasn't meant for me, it was fun to hear.  

I won't be anywhere, once again, to hear another until I'm on a walker, I presume.  Well. . . not from anyone under ninety, anyway.  

I'm going to need some Xanax to get through tonight.  Friday.  Party!!!  

Think of me when you go out tonight or when you are sitting in your own home with your own things.  Think of me when someone gives you a wink and a pinch or when they buy you a drink.  Think of me at happy hour or later over a sushi dinner.  You'll know where to find me.  I'll be there on the couch watching television with my mother ever in my peripheral vision.  

Now I must go.  Fate awaits me.  

Reflections of a Man Leaving Home

This is one of the four 4x5 negatives I took to the photo lab.  I was right.  I am totally disappointed.  I shot this with the same Polaroid camera I shot all my "cool" Lonesomville Polaroids with.  I bought an adapter for it from "Lo-Fi" that let's me shoot 4x5 film with it.  Otherwise, the camera is useless.  They don't make film for it anymore.  So I have a walkaround 4x5 camera I can use on the street.  Yay!  Look what I can do!

It is shit.  

Here's the kicker.  I bought into a Kickstarter thing for a developing tank for 8x10 film that will let me develop 16 4x5 negatives at a time.  A year ago.  It has finally shipped.  WTF was I thinking?  My God, I am a desperate man.  

I DID use my Chamonix 4x5 camera to shoot film with, too.  It does a much better job.  It is just a really complicated camera to use, especially if you shoot the same film twice. 

Double exposure, one horizontal, one vertical.  Whatever.  

I have one 8x10 camera that is meant for studios and not very portable.  I have several 4x5 cameras including the big Black Cat Liberator made by John Minnicks, a studio 4x5 camera that is not useful for going out, a Graflex 4x5, two converted Polaroid SE cameras, one Polaroid Land camera I had converted to shoot 4x5, and my latest purchase, a Chamonix field camera which is a real gem, but. . . . 

I'm a real doozy, I am.  That's just a small part of my camera collection, and it is basically going to sit around on shelves until I get a bug up my butt again.  

I must have the Nerd gene.  

O.K.  I'll get a cup of coffee now and tell you about yesterday.  Wait.  What?  Where are you going???  I'll tell you about today, then.  I'll tell you about tomorrow!

This is my last night at home.  My wasted homelife is coming to an end.  I've enjoyed doing nothing, I think, just being with my things.  The "boys" are throwing me a "going away party" tonight.  Sort of a bon voyage.  I may not be seen again for years.  

Then tomorrow morning, my cousin leaves and I will be on duty.  People tell me that is not fair.  To me.  They say I should put my mother in a "place" and rent out her house to help defray some of the cost.  That's what they did, they say.  In truth, I never thought about the rental part.  But I can't do it.  I can't just wave my mother into the sunset.  

What do they say about sacrifice?  Isn't it suppose to be good for the soul?  

I'm going to need to admit that I am living at my mother's house this time and not carry a tote bag back and forth every day.  I need to set up there for more comfort.  Maybe I'll put an a.c. unit in her garage and turn it into a makeshift studio.  The problem with that is I would have to face my increasing lack of talent.  It might just drive me into a further depression.  I don't know yet.  First I'll just have to get back into the groove.  My cousin has taken my mother out every day for lunches, shopping, worship, the works.  My mother is doing better, I think, because of that.  I'll feel guilty now if I don't.  

Piss shit fuck goddamn go to hell sonofabitch. . . . 

I had to give up saying "cocksucker" after calling someone that around my gay colleagues.  That was an awkward moment.  

That's what I have other than a tale of adventure and daring at the Post Office yesterday.  But I'll spare you that, at least.  

I may have to quit the blog.  Nobody wants to read The Adventures of a Reluctant Caregiver.  The Mother Tales.  The Lost Life of an Old Man.  

Etc. 

Seriously, though.  It will be hard to keep embarrassing myself day after day after day.  Maybe I'll try writing something serious, but it would take much more time to parse something out of any length.  I could challenge myself to a post a week, maybe.  Little researched assignments.  My observational life is going to be very minimal, and everything I am really interested in is now, by and large, taboo.  Sure, I know what you are going to say, but why would I expose myself to that?  I don't need any more disapprobation.  There was a time. . . but now it just isn't healthy.  I'm not as solid as I used to be, and truly, I am drawn to the furthest margins of acceptability, so. . . I choose to refuse disclosure any longer.  

I still have SOOOO many pictures that will never be seen, so many tales that will never be told. . . so many opinions I will no longer offer.  I can't say this to the left, I can't say that to the right, and I'm no Goldilocks.  

I'll have plenty of time to consider.  Would you all like to see some botanical prints?  Canine portraits?  Images of geometric patterns in nature?  What about cool car pics?  Sunrise or sunset?  The blank reflections of mirrors in mirrors?  String art?  Different kinds of fabrics?  

Fuck, man. . . just let your imagination run wild!

Maybe just photos of my mother and I on our steadfast marches to the grave.  That should cheer everyone up.  

O.K. Enough of that.  Maybe I'll just catalog old photographs and make up shit about the past.  

Probably.  That's what old men do. 

That and sitting in the garage listening to old radios.  

Blink

Blink.  

Enough said.  

I heard a a segment of the BBC World something or other yesterday while driving.  I just caught the tail end of it, but was fascinated.  A scholar of some sort was explaining the difference between Persian and Arab culture.  According to the scholar, Arabs defeated the Persian armies in the 5th century and displaced the Zoroastrian religion with Islam.  Persian culture, though strictly hierarchical, was more liberal culturally in that it allowed other religions, particularly Judaism, to be practiced.  My quick A.I. scholarship this morning says this occured in the 7th century.  I'll go with the scholar, but I'm certain it must have been a gradual process for one religion to replace another.  

I find this fascinating as a westerner, one taught primarily about the influence of Greek and Roman cultures on the world.  Before 9/11, the average American knew very little about the Middle East beyond 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights.  When I taught college students the difference between a tale and a fable, I'd have them read "Godfather Death" and then Maugham's "Appointment in Samarra" which begins, "There was a merchant in Bagdad. . . ." 

None of them, not once, knew what country these cities were in.  Everyone sure as hell knows where Baghdad is now.  

I asked Chat to illustrate the difference between a Persian and an Arab scholar.  

Kind of silly.  

I've met many Iranians who identify as Persian.  

"Many?"  

Well. . . more than two.  

The Islamic regime in Iran is a ruthless and repressive entity, but when Trump said he would wipe out an entire culture, I decided to learn something about it, especially the Persians.  

I have the Penguin "History of Religion" books, two volumes.  I have read from them from time to time, but when I go back to my mother's, I think I will spend more time with them.  I find religion both brutal and appalling, but it has been the backbone of many cultures, and I guess I could know more about the way it has evolved civilizations.  But Jesus, really, those two volumes are longer than the Bible.  

Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s oldest known monotheistic religions, founded in ancient Persia (modern-day Iran) by the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra) around the second millennium BCE. It emphasizes the worship of Ahura Mazda as the supreme god and centers on the cosmic struggle between truth and falsehood. Its teachings profoundly influenced later Abrahamic and dualistic traditions.

Zoro and Mazda.  Did you know the western word "paradise" was derived from the Persian word for "garden"?  They conceived of the garden as paradise, a contained heaven and thus they cultivated many.  

So much to learn.  So much to know.  Maybe I'll need to learn Aramaic.  

And so, perhaps, we live another day, the oil syringe stuck deep into our veins, the worst El Nino we've ever seen brewing now, heated oceans and melted ice caps, the dying of polar bears and coral reefs, and we looking to the moon, as my mother informed me yesterday, so we can build outposts there and "control the world."  

"Beam me up, Scottie." 

Otherness.  I am fascinated by the "exotic."

Money and Respect

I'll explain the photo in a bit, probably.  Maybe.  We'll see where this all goes.  

After sulking most of the day about various things, I was uncertain about going to Grit City to see "the peeps."  I realized I had a lot of anxiety, and indeed, fear, for I don't feel socialized now.  My timing is off.  My pace has slowed.  I am diminished.  They would notice and whisper behind their hands.  

"Uh. . . ."

I've been seeing a lot about a sardine fast.  You eat only sardines.  Nothing else.  Sardines and water.  It stimulates peptide production so that you lose weight quickly without reducing your muscle and bone structures which is much different, let's say, than most diets and GLP-1 supplementation.  Five days.  

I didn't have time.  I'd have to go in as Quasimodo.  

It began to rain.  There was an excuse.  I wouldn't go.  I went to the gym late in the afternoon.  When I got home, I showered and dressed.  I grabbed my things and got into the car.  What the hell.  

It's been awhile.  I'd forgotten that there are still people who knew me professionally.  I was good.  I was smart, funny, kind. . . .  Yea, I know. . . you don't see that part of me.  As I say, it has been awhile, and it was nice to be reminded that I once was more than simply competent.  I had been, as hard as it might be to believe, a source of inspiration.  

"Everything has gone downhill since you left.  It is horrible." 

Yea, yea. . . I could be making that up.  But I'm not.  

Still, on the drive home, I felt the distance between then and now.  The last couple years have stymied me. It is impossible to sit around in hospitals and doctor's offices and rehab centers and not think about inevitabilities.  It is difficult to keep your spirits up when you are not quite active beyond caregiving.  

My mind was full when I got home.  I didn't want to think, though, so I poured a whiskey and turned on the final of the NCAA tournament.  

I had to turn it off midway through the second period.  Michigan is the first completely paid for college basketball team.  They bought all of their players from other colleges.  It is Big Money ball.  But apparently, they had bought the refs, too.  It was a terribly refereed game which is O.K. if it is terrible for both teams, but hideously egregious calls kept going in Michigan's direction.  The game was close, but the outcome seemed clear.  

When I woke up this morning and saw the final score, I was glad I went to bed.  

Money is everything now.  Money is what separates the rich from the hoi-polloi.  The distance grows larger every day.  Here is one example (link).  

I can't believe how many people don't subscribe to the Times.  People are always asking me to gift them articles I reference. WTF?  Where do they get their news?  Where do they read about culture?  It mystifies me.  

The article, for those of you who mystify me, is about the new new luxury travel for the ultrarich.  It keeps them from all waiting, all lines, all the irritating people.  It is for you who can spend $12,000 for a luxury class ticket from NYC to Paris.  You'll never see a line.  You'll never have to carry a bag.  You'll have no need to even see any of the "regular" people.  Privacy is what you pay for, privacy and servants.  It is for those of you who can afford to pay $110,000/week to stay in your own hotel suite on your own private floor at a luxury hotel.  

And then. . . there is that picture at the top of the page.  I took it on my Easter walk.  The place was closed, of course, but I put my camera lens against the window and shot through.  This is what a barber shop looks like here in my own hometown.  It is for men who get haircuts, who wear suits and have nice homes and take their families on expensive trips to Aspen or Jackson Hole or one of the luxury islands on the Georgia coast.  Aspirational men with high incomes, men who work in or visit one of the thousand private equity firms in town, "Wealth Management" places.  

They are nowhere near the top.  

But they are nearer than most.  

The crowd may be elevated, but it is still a crowd.  There are country clubs, and then there is something else.  

Big money controls everything now, and these fellows follow it like remoras stick to a shark.  Yes. . . that is pretty good.  Let's call them that. 

The Remora Class.  

I laugh now at a memory.  My father and I were snorkeling on a reef in south Florida, just floating around watching the anemones and clownfish and colorful sponges when a remora swam underneath my father and tried to attach to his belly.  My father was a brave man, in general, but that turned him inside out.  I thought he would have a coronary kicking and thrashing about.  I was a zoology major in college then and wise to the ways of nature, and I thought I would drown guffawing through my snorkel. 

It was a short swim to shore where my father popped up white as a ghost.  I called him "Shark" for the rest of the trip.  

I've wanted a flying car since I was a kid.  Now that the roads are impossible to navigate, they are finally getting them for the ultra-rich to help them cross town quickly (link).  Important people have important things to do. 

Just for fun, here is a link reporting the fortunes of the ten most successful Saturday Night Live alumni.  It is shocking to me.  How did we decide to give comedians so much money?  It seems crazy (link).  

Of course, they deserve it, just like Brittany Spears and Hannah Montana and Taylor Swift.  Well. . . those women are worth a hell of a lot more than the SNL cast, but. . . . 

I fret about the cost of filling up my gas tank.  

It's a Wonderful World.  

Here's another fun fact.  When he died, Jimmy Buffet was worth one billion dollars.  Bob Dylan is "only" worth five hundred million.  Troubadours of the People!  They understood your hopes and dreams and aspirations.  

I haven't been in a barber shop since I was a teenager, of course.  That is where you get "normalized."  

But there was a time when I was a pretty respected "professional."  

Imagine that.  

I know, I know. . . I said "imagine."  

L'Etranger

 

Sometimes digital photo colors seem shallow and other times they just seem to pop.  It's all in the exposure and processing, I guess.  

Nothing about these pictures attracts me but the moody colors and the fact that I haven't anything else to show you right now.  After Friday, I'll probably have to fall back on A.I. again.  

Went for a walk down the Boulevard Easter Sunday morning thinking it would be empty.  I was wrong.  Every restaurant was open and packed.  Crowds coming from the big Catholic Church at the eastern end of the street.  I felt as if I should have dressed better.  But I saw incredible things that I can't even mention here for fear of sounding like a criminal voyeur.  By and large, though, it was something.  

Two brand spanking new women's shops have opened on the Boulevard, and on Saturday there were about fifty thousand teenaged girls strolling about in skimpy, provocative dress.  Then I saw a line of young girls on the sidewalk stretching for many blocks waiting to get into Brandy Melville, a "one size fits most" teen shop, I guess.  

The other store is a high end lingerie shop, I think.  The Boulevard is getting dangerous.  I can't even tell you.  

Who knows?  If I get teleported, I hope it is to the Boulevard and not to a Waffle House or iHop.  As Lou Reed so famously said, "It takes a whole lotta faith to get by."

After the Boulevard stroll, I cut back through what once was the Black neighborhood.  It has become, however, increasingly gentrified.  I wanted to pass by the many Black churches on Easter Sunday to see the crowds and to hear the music.  This stuff won't be around for much longer, I know.  Not here, anyway.  One of the churches is 150 years old, and I was sad as I walked by knowing it would not have a congregation much longer.  

When I got back to the house, I worked on the garden for a few hours, sweating like a drunk trying to dig out these impossible runner roots from some insidious kind of palm my neighbors planted that pop up in my yard.  I finished breaking the sod lifter handle and almost broke a big, thick shovel handle, too.  

I'm getting too old for this shit.  But, Cowboy that I am, I was able to dig them up.  

By three, I was headed to my mother's with big chocolate bunnies and wine for dinner.  We crossed the street and ate with the neighbors--baked ham, sweet potato casserole, green beans, and a fried rice salad followed by sweet potato pie.  Southern as all get out.  It was a good meal, but I have to work harder than I like at these gatherings to keep the conversations going.  There is a delicate art that lies somewhere between saying too much and saying too little.  It takes concentration and a spiritual energy.  

So when the evening was over some three hours later, I was exhausted.  

Back to my own home to collapse on the couch knowing my time here is coming to an end.  I can't shake the shallow, empty sadness with which I am plagued.  

But today in what is sure to be a rainy afternoon, I will drive to Grit City to see my old colleagues for Happy Hour.  About this, however, I am unsure.  I feel myself a great disappointment right now, unfit for public consumption.  I have thought about it recently and believe I would be unwilling to consummate a physical relationship out of embarrassment.  I couldn't submit another person to such horrors.  

And so the isolation grows.  

Hey, have you heard that 20% of the world's oil is shipped through the Straight of Hormuz?  That's right.  And did you know that the "war" has caused oil prices to surge?  

Every fucking news story starts or ends with this bit of information.  WTF?  It is obvious for whom news broadcasts and print articles are made.  

But they will not say that our president is insane.  See?  They know that needs not be said, that it is a well-known fact that is understood.  You'll neither see nor hear that statement at the beginning or end of any news piece.  They could be sued for saying that, but there is no law against behavior unbecoming of a president.  Isn't that something? 

Now we know, however, that we are oil junkies, that we have a needle with an oil line shoved deep into our veins.  The show "Landman" becomes biblically prophetic.  Nothing works without oil.  It is not just driving around town in your Fast and Furious inspired car.  Every part of your life is dependent on oil, your food, your drugs, your homes. . . all of it.  

Yea.  The world will fight over oil.  And I think Trump will be the first to drop The Big One.  

The draft is coming back, kids.  It's coming back for you.  

O.K.  I'm done whining and playing False Prophet.  There's a new movie you should see.  Camus was an existential playboy, so they say.  Surely you've read, "The Stranger."  It will leave you emptier than a Beckett play.  But I do not believe that is the life that Camus led.  He liked cafes, smoking and drinking and making love.  Revolution and rebellion were romantic endeavors.  He was a Sartrean Everyman bringing Existentialism to the people, more palatable and tasty.  He was the philosophical equivalent of James Dean.  

Now "The Stranger" hits the screen.  You'll have to read the movie, though, if you do not speak French.  Or, as I have recently heard, you can buy those earbuds that will translate the movie for you.  I think they are expensive, though. 

From the Times review: “Existential ennui is not exactly fun to watch (or, one assumes, easy to perform), yet a meaningless life has rarely looked this beautiful.”

One thing that confuses me, though.  Why is the movie titled "The Stranger" and not "L'Etranger"? 

Disconsolate

I am despondent this Easter Sunday.  My cousin informed me yesterday that she was leaving to go home Friday morning.  I will be back to full time caregiving duty.  There is no escaping it.  I will be in my own home for a few moments each day just to check on things and to sit in peace to reflect among the wreckage my richly textured things.  

I felt as low and lonesome as I ever have last night as I made my pho dinner.  I sat outside as the drumsticks boiled into broth.  Sunset, or nearly so.  Saturday dusk.  The streets were quiet.  Not a soul passed by.  The emptiness crept in as I looked to my future.  There would be no travel, no nights out or even nights just sitting alone.  All that would be replaced by routine and duty.  

Friday, flying high, I did what I was told people do on Good Friday--eat fish.  I went to my favorite sushi restaurant and had a feast.  

Tonight I must dine with my mother and cousin at the across the street neighbors' house.  Mom's life, not mine.  But it has been so long since I've had my own life, I have only remnants now.  I've done nothing, really, for well nearly a year and a half, and little before that.  Even stupid things like a trip to the cafe or a happy hour with gymroids have been compromised.  Forget about anything large like a trip to Cali to see my mountain buddy or a trip to the Midwest to look for America with my old colleague who now lives there in her old family mansion.  Nope.  I can't get further than a few miles from home.  

As lonesome as I was last night, though, the stake was driven deeper into my fragile psyche when I watched this (link).  It is a YouTube fellow's piece on reformed pot haulers from the '70s and '80s in the Everglades.  Don't watch it.  It is too long and sometimes redundant, and the "outlaws" are far from interesting now, I think.  But it was the call of Everglades City and Chokoloskee that hit me hard.  My friend grew up in that part and has been after me for years to go down on a photo tour with her.  Last night I realized I will probably never get to go.  I had hoped to get away for a few days before my cousin left.  I thought I might have more time, but the Friday thing was rather sprung upon me.  I am sure she is tired of playing caregiver to my mother.  It is not the vacation time she has grown used to.  

I don't want to dramatize too much.  It isn't a prison.  Jesus, I can't imagine what that must be like.  No, I will have all the modern conveniences, the food I want, shows on demand, coffee and liquor, etc.  And for the moment, at least, I can leave my mother for little bits of the day.  That will, I assume, eventually come to an end.  

People tell me I should hire some help, but "help" is someone to sit with my mother for a shift.  They may make lunch, I don't know, but I don't need a shift off.  I need days and weeks.  What would I do with a shift?  Go shopping?  No, a shift will do me little good.  I am tethered either way.  

A group from the factory is meeting for happy hour on Monday in Grit City.  My cousin will still be here, so I am going to try to go.  That's as far out of town as I will get for the foreseeable future.  In my despair, I think maybe in the rest of my life.  

Every day now, I become less interesting as a person and more the automaton.  I must drink less and read more.  My experiences and ideas will now only come from others.  

My cousin is taking my mother to church today, so I am off the hook until dinner.  I am horrible, I guess.  I never take my mother to church.  That has never been anything in my "wheelhouse."  

Quotation marks.  

I've got to figure something out.  I will care for my mother, but I must figure out how to care for myself, too.  My mother will live to be 100.  I feel as if I'll be lucky to make it another year.  

"Lucky"?  

I'd be luckier if someone would send me a bottle of phenobarbital. 

I Only Want To Know About Love

Russell Chatham's images "graced" the cover many of the books I read in the 1970s and 80s.  He was buddies with Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, et. al.  I thought the books required reading at the time.  I don't think any of them hold up as great literature now.  They may barely, if even, qualify as "literature."  

But they were certainly the fiction of the time.  

These were a group of "outdoorsmen."  

Why are you using so many quotation marks? 

The words seem hackneyed to me, that is all.

They liked to fish and hike and hunt.  Not so much hunting, I think, but they did enjoy eating wild game.  Only McGuane is left, living in Montana, a horseman and a rancher.  He is the only one of the lot who gave up liquor, and, strangely for a rancher, became a vegetarian.  McGuane married Jimmy Buffet's sister.  McGuane helped give Buffet's career a boost by hiring him to compose the soundtrack for the movie he directed in 1975, "Rancho Deluxe."  Oddly enough, Buffet's books of fiction wildly outsold both Harrison's and McGuane's.  

All part of a colorful past.  I've already regaled you with tales of my own encounter with Harrison, McGuane, Chatham, et. al. at a reception in Key West, probably twice, so I won't repeat it here again. . . though I am terribly tempted.  My dead ex-friend Brando was with me then as I'd invited him to come along.  

"Why did you do that?!?" he queried.  

I still don't know.  It was simply spontaneous.  

Anyway, as my mother likes to say, that is not a Chatham painting at the top.  I got ChatGPT to make me one.  It is pretty good and could fool you.  I sent it to Travis who owns or owned several lithographs by Chatham.  I saw one in his house one day and have since bought several for myself.  They have remained stored for years now as they are huge and I can't afford to have them framed.  

The idea of living in nature was much borrowed from Hemingway, I think,

"Ernest Hemingway believed nature was a restorative, yet often destructive, force that acted as an ultimate testing ground for human endurance, morality, and skill."

That pretty much sums it up, nature as an existential paradox. His "Big, Two-Hearted River," best illustrates this, I think.  Nick, back from the war, attempts to succor his shattered psyche with a solo fishing trip where he fears to fish the swamp, still too fragile for the adventure.  

So much for the myth of the macho Hemingway hero.  He was always wounded and afraid in some fashion, and are always on the losing side of life's arguments.  

Bukowski captured the sentiment with the title--"What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire." 

Chatham's paintings were collected by Hollywood stars like Jack Nicholson and sold for too much money.  Like the "literary" works of the group, I think his paintings are pleasant and decorative, but not so much serious art.  He was an illustrator in the manner of Rockwell Kent whose paintings I also like.  

But Harrison, McGuane, and Chatham did little to change or shape the trajectory of art.  

I shouldn't leave out Buffet.  

For a while, though, I subscribed. 

Selavy.  

What moral can we take away from all of this?  Quit drinking and doing drugs and become a vegan if you want to live longer than your buddies.  That's about it, though there are no guarantees.  My old college roommate is in terrible shape and never really drank or did drugs at all.  I figure it was ideology that did him harm.  

Back to Zydeco.  This was the song that caught my ear the other night.  I knew the song but couldn't put my finger on who or why.  

It was killing me, so I Googled it.  Ahhh. . . yes. . . of course.  It was Beth Orton.  Turn of the century music that wonderfully tortured me as I longed for the girl who had taken up permanent residence in my head.  

But wait!  WTF?  I found a version by Dr. John.  Dr. John?  Yea.

How old was the song, I wondered?  Did Dr. John write it?  

You can stop here if you want.  If you haven't already. But I'm going on.  I found a version by Richie Havens.  Shit was getting weird.  The song has been recorded again and again and again in so many ways.  

There are many, many more, even one by Santana.  But I drilled down and found a version by the guy who wrote and originally recorded it.  

As I say, there are more recordings of this song, but these, I think, are all lovely.  

Now go back and listen to the Zydeco version.  It has a good energy, a good vibe.  It will make you want to tap your foot and get going on the first Saturday in April.  

The Interstate Is Always. . . Road Closed

Maybe I'm starting to understand Generations X/Y/Z's fascination with the Artemis's journey.  In the 1960s, the journey out was the journey within.  People were tripping literally and figuratively.  "The Road" was still a means of escape.  My dead ex-friend always told me, "The interstate lies just down the road."  He meant that when things got bad, you could always go somewhere else.  

No more.  The world has shrunk and it seems every place is doom, at least if you believe what the press say about the attitudes of American youth.  Maybe they pin their hopes on going to the moon.  Just going.  Getting the fuck out.  A generational fantasy.  

Because, as the old song goes, "You ain't going nowhere." 

Except maybe in video games.  Kids don't seem too interested in outdoor adventure anymore.  My friends have owned one of the largest outdoor shops in the Southeast for forty-some years.  They say the industry is dying.  There was a time, however, when it was everything.  Who could have predicted this?  

I feel fortunate.  It sure was fun.  Artemis seems like the little league to me.  But hey, you know what they always say--"Man, you should have been there ten years ago!  Everything has changed now.  They fucked it all to hell."

Maybe its true, but I doubt it. 

Let's go back to the Middle Ages.  Right?  No showers or toilets or toilet paper.  Rats, fleas and bedbugs.  No salt.  No corrective lenses.  Mattresses stuffed with what?  Rotten meat and spoiled vegetables.  

"Man, you shoulda been there.  They fucked it all up now." 

Game of Thrones and all that.  Bullshit.  

Things do change, but you know, there is always something.  Sure, sure, take away the kids' phones.  Make them write with pencils.  Return them to the glorious past.  

Yea, maybe I appreciate Gen X/Y/Z's interest in the Artemis mission.  I'll shut up about it.  

The interstate is just down the road.  Traffic there has been at a standstill all morning.  Officials are requesting you be patient and drive with caution.  They want you to "Arrive Alive." 

Ain't that some shit?  

I guess that rant came from the photo I posted.  Just popped into my head.  I was going to write a bit about Q6+ at his request.  He's a great admirer of Lucy Sante.  There is a big article on her today in The Times (link).  But I have no time for that now.  It is Good Friday, and I have to begin my. . . what is it?  What do people do?  

Just buy Easter Baskets for my mother's friends and neighbors who have been so kind to her.  I'll put little bottles of booze in them, airline size. 

I get a little dread, though, thinking about Easter.  Ili was an Easter baby, and I could never satisfy her desire for Faberge Eggs with jewels hidden inside.  To me (and my ilk), an Easter basket from Williams and Sonoma was splurging.  

Selavy.  Not everything in the past is enviable.  

I can't believe I have a song to go with this.  I heard it last night while working on pictures.  A little bit of slow motion Zydeco.  I flipped.  They have better songs than this one, but this one seems. . . kismet.  I think that's the word. 

 

Not Too Far Out of Town

Grit City is just that now, but it once was an important town on the river, the last navigable inland port from the Atlantic.  The railways all ended there as well.  It was per capita one of the wealthiest cities in the state.  There was an opera house, and I think Caruso may have sung there.  Not being a fan of opera or Caruso, you will have to fact check me on that.  

It all ended when the highway system was built and goods were shipped by truck rather than by boat.  And over the years, Grit City lost its money and its luster and so the Old Boys kept a strangle hold on what they had left.  The town fell into disrepair.  

Over the past few decades, there have been attempts to revitalize the town.  All have failed.  And it is strange because it is full of once and future charm.  The old buildings downtown, the fabulous old homes, and still, the river.  But Grits being Grits. . . . 

I took T to the airport there yesterday afternoon.  When it was first built a few decades ago, it was a hub for international travel.  Only a skip and a jump from Gotham, it was a nice alternative to one of the busiest airports in the country.  

That didn't last too long and so regional airlines serving non-major cities took over.  If you need to fly somewhere near a major city, though, this is a great place.  Sure. . . maybe you can only fly out on Wednesdays and return on Mondays, but you can't beat the price.  

So when I drove T right to the entrance without a bit of traffic, he passed through security and was at the bar in five seconds.  It is like flying in the 1960s.  I've flown out of that airport several times and if it is possible to go where you need to, I'd recommend it.  

After the "See you later, Champ," bullshit, I decided to drive into Grit City proper.  I wanted to look around.  I had strapped a 21mm lens on my Leica.  I felt like exploring.  

As soon as I got out of the car, though, it began to rain.  Where in the heck had that come from?  I ducked under the canopies of the protected sidewalks and bumped around for a bit. To my dismay, there was a new condo or apartment building going up just behind Main Street.  It would take away from much of the city's charm, but this is typical Grit City politics.  They are not preservationists.  They are Greedheads.  

Some of the old brick buildings have already been torn down.  They had probably fallen into disrepair from a lack of maintenance, I'm sure, but it seems a crime.  Many of those left, though, have the old painted advertising signs of yesteryear, faded but still visible.  I photographed a few between raindrops and might post some of them here if they are decent at all.  But the one pictured at the top is bright and brand new.  It sits in the patio area of a barbecue place, and I wonder about it.  It is painted onto the wall and done well in an old fruit poster manner.  It seems a nice sort of revival to me, the kind the city needs more of.  But the town must be simply full of alcoholics for the entire downtown is filled with bars, distilleries, and breweries.  The city had for years one of the greatest music events around--Porchfest--when all the old mansions opened their deep, beautiful porches to musicians.  Block by block by block you could hear a wonderful variety of music from noon far into the evening.  

This year, it was cancelled.  The people who sponsored it said they couldn't afford to do it.  

Still, posters are up for other traditions--Pooch Fest, Couch Races, etc.  The town if full of potential and bad planning.  

Ili's father had been the City Attorney, and she, too, was serving as Assistant City Attorney post-me.  How much they affected politics is hard to decipher.  But being a bit of a stalker after she left, an internet sleuth, I saw that she had represented the city in a number of court cases.  She lived in Grit City before she moved in with me, and we often spent the weekends there.  As charming as it is from the outside, however, I can say that it could be very boring.  It is better for sightseeing, I think.  

I am back in my own home now for a couple more weeks.  It is strange to flip-flop back and forth.  Things that were in the fridge are not really trustworthy now.  I used the whole milk in my coffee, but it curdled a bit when I poured it.  I don't think you can get sick from curdled milk, though, right? 

There will be more yard and garden work while I am here.  Other things, too.  There is never a lack of work to be done.  

And, as usual, I will try to turn my life around once more, away from the overweight, slothful, mindless person I have become, focussing more on mind and spirit and a healthier physical life.

Hare Krishna, Krishna Hare, Hare Hare Krishna.  Ommmmmm.