Momentary Reprieve

Nope.  This is not an image from the Epstein files.  The fellow who sent it hasn't been mentioned so far as I know.  This is just a group of kids at a party in the basement of a friend's house, kids having fun.  I've forgotten what it is like to laugh ridiculously and have stupid fun.  No, I can still remember laughing until I couldn't breathe, but it has been years now.  Ili and I were like grown up children sometimes.  I remember my mother telling one of her friends, "They do that a lot."  

Ho!

I post this today to get away from the constant moan this has become.  Nothing new happened with my mother yesterday.  She is still lying in a bed in a shitty room.  They did do a heart doppler thing on her and physical therapy people did come and get her up and walking.  And at my insistence, they did clean her, and I gave her a toothbrush and toothpaste.  And I did meet with the Case Manager and an imperious Palliative Care person.  And last night, the form was sent to IR for an MRI that has not yet been scheduled.  So there was some forward movement, but. . . nothing has really changed.  My mother doesn't seem to be in as much pain as before.  Her heart and kidneys are good, and I think it is possible that she will live forever.  

But with her in the hospital, even with the hours I spend there twice a day, somehow my days are not as full.  I have hours now. . . with which I don't remember what to do.  I have done quite a bit of work around my house, and yesterday the cleaning crew came so everything is sparkling.  I unwrapped my palms as the temps were only falling into the mid-30s last night.  

And for three nights now, I have not cooked dinner.  

Yesterday was, in fact, a gastronomical feast.  O.K.  I exaggerate.  But, while my mother was getting the heart doppler thing done, I went to the Lakeside Cafe at the hospital.  It is not the big cafeteria with the sushi, I so stupidly/bravely had one day (surely made from amputated parts) that actually was not horrible, 

but another, much smaller place that serves no flesh at all.  The hospital is a longstanding one.  It has been here since 1907, first opened by the Seventh Day Adventist as a Sanitorium for TB.  Later, it expanded and became a hospital.  When I was a kid growing up here, it was famous, at least among us kids, for having a psych ward.  These were the days of straight jackets, and tales of escaped lunatics were popular among my crowd.  It is the very same hospital in which my father was housed after his automobile accident long, long ago when I was a senior in high school.  But that is another story for some other time.  

Over the years, the hospital has expanded until it is now a behemoth that covers what must be square miles of town.  Last time my mother was there, if you remember the photos, she stayed in one of the newer building with an expansive window that looked out over the distant downtown.  The place was like a hotel suite.  

This time, however, she is in one of the oldest buildings, probably built in the 1970s and never renovated.  

The old building housing the mental ward was only recently torn down.  

Selavy. 

 In earlier times, when my father was there, this Adventist hospital did not serve meat.  Rather, they served soy based meat substitutes developed at the Seventh Day Adventist college, Loma Linda.  All meals were, as promoted by Adventist religion, vegetarian.  And the food was made fresh for every meal, and at the cafeteria, you could get a breakfast, lunch, or dinner for nearly nothing.  

Now, of course, the food service is farmed out and only very unhealthy, horrible meals are prepared, both for patients and visitors.  

Except for this tiny Lakeside Cafe.  It is true to it's Adventist vegetarian roots.  And that is where I decided to eat while my mother was away.  After a long while looking over the meal choices, I decided on a Caprese sandwich--thick slices of Mozzarella cheese and tomato with basil and balsamic on focaccia bread.  

It was the best thing I've eaten out in a loooong while.  OMG, as the kids say.  It was delicious.  When I go back to see my mother today, I'm sure to have another.  

I'd spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon at the hospital, but there was still a lot of day when I left.  I decided to go to Fresh Market and get some of the groceries I needed hoping to pick up one of their prepared meals for dinner.  I love going to Fresh Market, but it is very dangerous, and so after getting a good organic yogurt and a big organic navel orange, oh. . . I bought some sort of buns for the morning.  I perused the prepared meals. Hmmm.  General Tso's Noodle Bistro Comfort Bowl.  Sesame chicken on a bed of spicy noodles and lentils or some kind of bean.  Onward.  I had a yen for champagne when I walked past the wine shop, but I didn't want to spend $60.  Lamarca prosecco is only good for mimosas, I think, but. . . wait.  Lamarca Luminore.  $21.99.  What the hell.  I'd try it.  

Of course no visit to Fresh Market is over until you've toured the giant candy display.  Chocolate peanut caramel cluster.  Yea, yea, yea.  

I took the groceries back to my house and put things in the fridge.  The house was, as I said, sparkling.  I took the sheets I'd wrapped around the palm trunks and put them in the wash.  I looked around.  It was almost three.  What to do?  I couldn't remember.  So, creature of habit. . . .

I sat outside with a decaf latte and wrote in my journal.  The cafe was nearly empty.  I finished writing on the very last page of the journal.  That one was done.  I put it back in my courier bag, took my coffee cup inside, then drove across the street to the liquor store.  

When I got home, it was not quite four.  Again. . . what to do?  I took the prosecco from the freezer, popped the cork, and poured some into a coup glass.  I went to the deck to sit outside.  

Holy smokes!  You can go right ahead and judge me if I am wrong, but that was as tasty a prosecco as I've ever tasted.  It was more than drinkable.  It was--dare I say--quite good.  It had been a very long time since I took a photo of my drink to send around, so I took the picture.

But, sadly. . . I no longer had anyone to whom to send it.  People are not interested in me anymore.  

Such is life.  

I sat with one glass and then another as the temperature began to dip and I began to feel the chill.  

Not quite five.  Fuck it.  I took the General Tso's out of the refrigerator and plated it, covered it, and put it in the microwave.  How long had it been since I'd used the microwave?  I took the plate and the champa. . . uh. . . prosecco. . . to the t.v. room, put it on the wooden tray, and turned on the television.  

I know I've already said it twice, but this was a three "holy smokes" day.  The General Tso's was delicious.  

There I was, in my own home, eating and drinking in the old places.  My head was spinning with distant familiarities.  

Dinner done, I cleaned up.  I washed the glass and serviceware and hit the disposal.  Nope.  It just hummed, gummed up, I guessed, from months of inactivity.  I have a tool somewhere to use under the sink to turn the gears to get it working again.  But I wasn't ready to look for that, to bend and twist under the sink. . . . 

I locked the kitchen door and drove back to the hospital to see my mother.  

I think I might stay at my house tonight.  I will need to tote things back there.  I will need supplies.  And it will be a little weird, I think, but yea. . . I will go back to my house, I think.  I'm afraid to get used to it because I don't know what is coming up, but for the while, I need to be in my own home.  

Everything is weird.  Everything is sad.  But for a moment, there was food and drink and a lovely afternoon.  

Everyone, from time to time, needs a reprieve.  

Even those who don't deserve it.  

Nothing Good Can Ever Last

Every night for three days, the temperature has dropped lower than predicted.  It wasn't supposed to freeze last night.  It did.  Nothing seems to be going right.  

No shit?  

Did I tell you about the E.R, fuck up?  I'm not sure.  My mind is a gumball machine right now.  I had a call from somebody in E.R. on Monday night at nine.  I called back the number the woman had left, but as always, it went straight to a mechanical voice. . . yea, yea. . . I remember writing that yeseterday now.  Here's what I haven't reported.  I called them back at 9:30 yesterday morning, the time they apparently wander in to work.  

"I just wanted to let you know that the X-rays show your mother has a collapsed vertebra."

WTF?!?  This was the X-ray done on Saturday, the day my mother went to the E.R. and the made for t.v. doctor wanted to discharge her without having seen her after mom lay in a bed for four and a half hours.  

But wait--it gets better (worse).  They didn't know my mother was in the hospital.  They hadn't been informed she had been admitted, so. . . "We haven't sent this to her management team.  I will do that now."

What a fucking shit show this has been.  

I sit around my mother's room for hours and only see her nurse.  Yesterday I was told the attending physician was in a meeting with staff until eleven going over the patients' charts, then they would make their rounds.  

"What time?"

I just got a sad shake of the head for an answer.  

So far, I have only seen mom's E.R. doc, and then only because I was. . . "adamant."  Last night, I was told that "tomorrow" mom would have an Interventional Radiation appraisal.  The IR docs are the ones who perform the kyphoplasties.  Meanwhile my mother lies in bed.  We try to talk, but she can't hear me and she keeps falling asleep.  But I am so burnt out, I do, too, sitting up in the little folding chair.  My eyes just go shut and I am gone until my head falls.  

"You look tired," my mother said.  I've looked in the mirror unwillingly.  Yea.  I don't look so good.  I feel myself running down, feel the internal collapse.  

When I left my mother's room last night to go get dinner, I told her I loved her and said I'd see her tomorrow.  

I was hardly out of the parking garage when my phone rang.  It was my mother.  

"I've lost my notes," she said in a panic.  "I don't know how to get out of here.  How do I get out?"

"You are staying there," I told her.  

"I am?  Oh.  I don't have any food.  What am I going to do?"

"They are going to bring you dinner."

"They are?  Oh. . . I'm so confused.  Stay in touch."

Another piece of scaffolding fell inside.  

I went to an "upscale" Mexican place and had "street tacos" and a skinny spicy Margarita.  This place makes the best in town, and I drank it down.  The tacos came, but I could barely eat.  I ordered another Marg.  I let them take my plate away and sat for a bit with the thousand mile stare.  Finally I got up, painfully, and limped slowly to the car.  I felt I could lie down on the sidewalk and go to sleep. 

The tenant texted a photo with the message, "The light is still on."

I was confused.  What light?  Was the my attic light?  I'd been in the attic that day cleaning my a.c. lines.  That wasn't my house.  What the. . . oh. .  . then I got it.  A strange fellow lived in that house with his little dog.  He looked a bit like Gandalf.  He was an artist of some repute who worked for The Big Mouse.  His house sat far back from the road near the canal.  I think the house is probably older than mine.  He lived alone and no one had ever seen a visitor, so who knows how long he lay before his death was noticed.  It is very sad, especially to me who doesn't even have a dog and knows I could suffer a similar fate.  But that was a couple years ago.  Since then, the house has sat empty, the shrubs growing up to obscure it.  Rumors have it that coyotes have taken up residence there.  A contractor down the street looked it up wanting to buy it, but he said it was held in a family trust.  A few months ago, the tenant told me there was a light on in the second story window.  And there it was on again.  It is very odd.  If you were a person who believed in spooks. . . . 

When I walk down the hallway to my mother's hospital room, I see she is on the floor of the dying.  These are all old people who lie in bed unmoving, mouths open.  I don't want to see it anymore.  

My mother wants to know what is going to happen because the case worker was asking her where she would be going when she was discharged.  I told her it depended on how much care she would need.  I have no idea yet.  

I came back to my mother's house because this is where my own meds and supplements are and because there is no food or other necessities in my own cupboards.  My refrigerator has only an onion that has been there forever and packs of film.  I poured a scotch and sat on the couch.  I turned on the television in which I had no interest and fell asleep.  

Another frozen morning.  I will go to the hospital in a little while and see what's gotten fucked up now.  

My response to the tenants text: "I just want to go to sleep forever."

"Don't say that." 

The Horror

I am crumbling.  This seems too much to do alone.  I'm falling. . . falling.  

5:00 a.m.  I had been having trouble sleeping and had gotten up to pee not because I needed to but because I needed to get out of bed for the moment.  I was sitting on the side of the bed when the phone rang.  There is only one number that will ring through on my phone after ten o'clock.  It was my mother.  

"Where are you?!"

"I'm at your house."

"Where am I?"

"You are in the hospital."

She said people had come into her room asking her if she had an attorney.  She rambled on not really coherent.  They asked her, she said, about her cardiologist.  More rambling.  

I was beginning to piece things together.  She had been complaining that she felt like she was getting congestion in her chest.  While I was there last night, a tech came in and gave her an EKG.  Later that night, I had a message on my phone from someone in the E.R. asking me to call back.  They wanted to give me the results of some tests.  I called the number I was given, but once again, it went straight to a recorded message saying that the office wouldn't be open until Monday morning.  

I will go to the hospital in a bit.  It has been a real shit show so far, and now I am haunted by my mother's plea.  

"Don't let me get lost in my mind or my body."  

There is nothing I can do but suffer with her.  I feel as if I've had a stroke.  My body isn't working right.  My mind is slow.  Everything in my life is breaking down and I no longer have the energy to keep up.  

Maybe it is the February moon.  I have always thought it to be my friend, but such thoughts are silly.  It is just another one way alley.  

I sit in a dark and empty house on a stupidly cold winter's night, the full moon still hanging low in the western sky.  I feel the enormity of all things beyond me, the uselessness of endeavor.  

Blue Moon

I don't want to write, but I don't know how not to.  The routine of the last year has been disrupted and so I hold on to that which remains to steady myself.  I'm walking around in circles right now not knowing, really, what to do.  I think forward.  I think back.  Everything looks old.  Everything looks new.  

Brief update. . . I guess.  I sat with my mother in an E.R. holding room for four and a half hours.  They took blood and urine, but she never saw a doctor.  Fed up, I got the nurse to see what was going on.  The doctor who had never seen her had issued discharge orders.  

Spontaneous eruption.  

To put it mildly, I called bullshit on that.  

In a few minutes, a perky blonde in weekend jeans and sweater who I'd seen running the hallways with a stethoscope draped around her neck just like the t.v. doctors popped into the room with a sly smile.  She liked being doctor.  She blithely explained to me that my mother's bloodwork and urine analysis was o.k.  She had no reason, she said, to keep my mother in the hospital.  

"So. . . you've ruled everything out.  You know she has not had a stroke, that none of her vertebrae have collapsed, that the injection of Prolia she had this week has not caused a catastrophic reaction."

"Your mother says she doesn't have back pain," said the doc, "and there is no blood test to determine if she has had a reaction to Prolia."

My mother lay in the bed helpless.  I pointed.

"So it is your determination that she is capable of taking care of herself and you can just put her out on the street."

"I don't have any reason to keep her.  I need a reason."

I gave her a whole bunch of reasons.  Her shit eating grin drooped and became frozen.  I was pretty sure, though not positive, that I could demand that she be examined by another doctor, that there was some federal law that I could object to her being discharged.  It was a vague memory from all the visits from case workers in other hospital stays.  I wasn't certain, of course.  

"O.K.," said the perky blonde with the hanging stethoscope, "I'll admit her."  

And with that, she was gone.  

Five hours on, now.  My mother knew we had been talking, but she couldn't make out the words.  She listens and makes up what she thinks people have said now.  She looked at me with painful eyes.

"I can't go home," she said fearfully.  "I hurt so badly."

"They are going to admit you," I said.  "They are going to take you upstairs.  I am going to go so that they have no choice.  They can't just wheel you out to the curb, but I don't trust this doctor.  I'll be back in a few hours once you are in a room, O.K.?"

"Oh, honey. . . I know.  You go do what you have to do. . . . "

My head was spinning.  I headed back to my house.  Another shit story, but in short, the gas company had torn up part of my lawn to run a gas line across the street to the house under construction.  They said they would put the yard back together, but two weeks later, they hadn't, so I called.  The day before, a guy in a truck threw down some pieces of brown St. Augustine grass that looked like shit.  "Make sure to water it twice a day," he said.  "I was lucky to find any sod at all.  This should come back.  Just keep watering it."

"It's going to freeze for three days," I said. 

"Yea."

I had come home to water the dead sod.  

When I got back to the house, I had a phone message.  It was from the hospital, a Dr. So and So saying that they needed some information to admit my mother and to call back.  He left a number.  I called it.  It was a general number with an automated "If this is an emergency . . . if you know your party's extension. . . for hours press. . . to hear these options again. . . . "

I pressed a number.  Nope.  I called back and pressed another.  Finally, I got a human.  Never heard of Doc So and So.  

Fuck it, I said, if they want more info, they can call back . 

I got another call from the hospital pharmacy.  They were checking on my mother's many, many meds.  We went through them all.  

"So my mother has been admitted?"

"Yes."

She gave me the room number.  

I was uncertain about a couple of the meds, though, and I had to drive back to my mother's to look at the labels on the bottle and call the pharmacist back.  

At five, I went back to the hospital.  This hospital is huge taking up a very large swath of town with multiple high rise buildings for different diseases.  They have a famous Children's Hospital which is huge.  My mother, however, was in the original hospital wing.  It was old, nearly decrepit.  When I got to her room, I had to squeeze in.  It was a shotgun room, small, depressing.  I had to move equipment to go get to the back wall to grab a folding chair.  My mother barely opened her eyes, but she moved and moaned and said she hurt.  Water kept leaking out of her, she said.  They had to take her out of her pajamas.  She babbled.  

A nurse came in.  I asked for an update.  My mother had gotten X-Rays.  Had she seen a doctor?  The answer was unclear.  She thought that maybe Hospice was going to come in in the morning.  Nothing seemed settled.

I sat with my mother.  She told me that she heard all the things I'd talked about with the doctor at noon through the speaker just now.  Her eyes were opened but she looked confused.  She closed her eyes again, not in sleep, but something else.  I stayed with her for a couple hours, then told her I loved her and would be back in the morning.  

Driving back to my house, the temperature was dropping, the wind blowing in giant gusts.  The sky was cloudy, but suddenly in front of me the moon broke through.  It was big and full and spooky.  

"Siri, when is the next full moon?"

I have palm trees that I worried about.  It will be well below freezing for three days, they say.  I thought that these palms were Canary Island Palms, but it isn't true.  I have taken photos of them to multiple nurseries and nobody knows.  I've tried to find them online.  When I bought the house, I was told they were freeze resistant, but now I worried.  I'd gotten an idea while sitting in my mother's hospital room--I would wrap the ball trunks of the palms in sheets.  That might just help.  

In the cold and windy moonlight, I wrapped sheets around the base of each palm running tape 'round and 'round several times .  I walked back into the house I haven't lived in for so long.  I had no idea what to do.  I poured a whiskey from a bottle that had been sitting in the "library" cabinet for how long now?  I took it to the deck and sat as I used to in a remembered past.  I watched the limbs of the tall trees dance.  The whiskey tasted better like this just the way it used to, just me, the whiskey, the trees, the cold, the wind, and the moon.  I thought about my mother.  I thought about all the things I would have to take care of one way or another.  It was a lot to think about.  

As I pulled into the driveway at my mother's house, I felt a sudden rush of guilt at how I had felt for a long time now pulling into her driveway, the old depression and dread of walking back into a sad house of misery.  Yea. . . so much guilt.  The house was empty, of course, but more than that.  And now, once again, I was wondering if my mother would ever see her things again.  The old pain and sadness welled up into my throat and eyes.  My mother's things.  My mother's life.  

I clenched my jaws tightly and squeezed my eyes and pushed it all back down.  Not now.  

I had hardly eaten all day, but I wasn't hungry.  I made popcorn and opened a beer.  I sat down wondering what to do.  The tenant called and we talked for a bit.  Then I turned on the t.v.  I'd read a good review of the movie "Blue Moon."  It was rentable on Netflix.  Eight-thirty.  I could watch it and go to bed.  

Now I must face the day.  When I woke, it was 24 degrees, 14 with the wind chill factor.  Coffee.  The news.  I don't know what to do.  The routine is broken.  I needn't put my mother's meds together.  I needn't see what she wants, needn't make her breakfast, needn't clean up whatever mess she made in the night.  I stand in empty rooms not knowing what to do.  But there is plenty to do, I know.  I just don't feel like the man to do it.  

911

Another bleak adventure.  Just called 911 as I began to write.  My mother was in great pain and could not get out of bed.  I will get dressed and follow her to the hospital.  I don't know where this will lead, but I don't think this is the end.  I will be busy.  

Just to say.  

Le Mots d'Amour

If you don't like the conversation, change the topic.  O.K. . . of what shall I speak?  

The cold?

ICE?

The troubled times in our land?  

T.S. Eliot, Stephen Wallace, or Robert Frost?

It doesn't matter.  I can't think.  I can't get the smell out of my nostrils.  Clamnity surrounds me.  

It is Friday.  The temperature will reportedly drop forty degrees today.  I don't think I will go for sushi.  What then?  What dinner shall I cook? 

I must distract myself as much as possible.  I watched a doc on Carol Doda last night.  Half of it.  She was a real hoot, bright, funny, self-effacing.  The interviews with her are charming.  But the language of academia was killing me, tired and frayed with the same worn memes.  Have you heard of the patriarchy?  Apparently, it is a thing.  It seems to have invented a way of looking at women, if you follow the rhetoric, called the male gaze.  If these seem overly broad reaching terms to you, well. . . you probably need to go back to school.  You probably need to have your vocabulary resized.  It's all part and parcel of colonialism and, by extension, orientalism.  This is because the west was powerful and centered everything around Europe, and later, America.  The attitudes of males in the rest of the world. . . well. . . you know. . . don't speak.  God loves the Moors, you know, as did those Modernist painters who stole their images.  Not just the Moors, of course.  It was a grand theft on an unbelievable scale.  Intimacy beyond objectification.  

And so it goes.  

If I adopt the homosexual gaze. . . is that a thing?  Let me Google it.  

Of course there is. . . only it is called "the queer" or "the gay" gaze: a perspective in media and art that centers LGBTQ+ experiences, challenges heteronormative views, and offers authentic representations of queer desire, identity, and relationships, often contrasting with the traditional "male gaze" by exploring intimacy and connection beyond simple objectification, while also describing specific non-verbal cues like eye contact used for identity recognition within the community. It's a way of seeing and being seen that normalizes diverse experiences and subverts traditional power dynamics in storytelling and social interaction.

Intimacy beyond objectification.  There you go.  See?  But first one needs to understand the relationship between the subject and the object.  That one, in truth, has always confused me.  

I guess the true artists were those portrait studios from the 50s and 60s.  Olan Mills.  

I wanted to make the image diverse and inclusive in the spirit of today.  The boy definitely has that yet to be recognized gay gaze. . . but he's beginning to wonder.  He'll find out when he goes to Harvard.  Or the priesthood.

I can't help but be subversive, though.  I can't be sure as there is no science on this, but I think it might be genetic.  

Well, there you go.  That should do it.  It's been fun, a good comic relief from grim reality.  But I must get back to it.  

I should have made the little girl look like Alfred.  I missed an opportunity there.  

Don't Worry Too Much (It'll Happen to You)

My mother had a very bad night on Tuesday.  I broke down.  By Wednesday late morning, I pulled myself together and fixed what I could.  There is more to be done today, but I am feeling I can deal.  Yesterday was my father's birthday, but I hadn't tine to remember.  I remembered this morning and felt guilty.  I'm falling apart inside and out.  A song I used to fall asleep to every night proclaimed "Time's the Revelator."  

Yea. 

I tried to watch "Sinners" last night.  It began with a simpleton's narrative about the devil and music, poorly written to appeal to morons, I thought, but I tried to stick with it.  Then, in the very first scene, the supernatural took over.  I don't need supernatural fictions to scare me.  Real life is more than enough.  Why people are fascinated by such things escapes my understanding, but it is a real popular genre as you all well know.  I got maybe five minutes into this most nominated Oscar movie before I checked out.  Let me know if it gets better.  I don't care, though.  I have other things to do.  

I did watch a number of YouTube videos on the Weimar Republic.  Some things surprised me.  The Neue Gallery in NYC is one of my favorite places.  If you haven't watched "Babylon Berlin," in the original German. . . well, maybe you've been watching horror movies.  

Or The Weather Channel.  If you like this stuff, keep voting Republican.  Climate change is just another liberal hoax.  

There is so much I need to do, and I have so little energy for it.  I dream of Magic Mountain, some retreat or asylum where the days recede unnoticed while you take gentle walks or sit in a rocker with a comforter in your lap.  But care is sterile and too expensive now, only for the very wealthy.  

I listened to music last night and thought about people's objections to A.I.  Amplifiers, then reverb and distortion peddles, then synthesizers, digital sounds, raves. . . none of those sounds human or natural.  A.I. music is just a further reach.  You'll see.  One day, that is all there will be.  Nobody but old drunks will go to bars to hear some tone deaf fool with a guitar and a mike playing Jimmy Buffet tunes.  

If you had just a minute to breathe
They granted you one final wish
Would you ask for something like another chance?
Or something similar to this?
Don't worry it's alright, it'll happen to you
As sure as your sorrows are joys

For those of you who missed 1971.  

 

Time

Things have just gone wrong.  I can't do it alone any longer.  There isn't a shred of levity left.  Things will have to change.  

There is nothing else to say.  I've got to figure something out. 

Life Ain't No Cabaret

Little time to write this morning.  I dicked around too long making a cabaret video that is hurried and not what I desired.  Still. . . having spent the morning. . . I'll post it here.  

Things are swell.  Spent most of yesterday toting my mother to and from doctors and pharmacies and grocery stores. Today, I have to be home by noon to do a walk around with the painter.  

It is supernaturally cold.  Temps will fall into the 20s for a week.  That is unheard of here.  But the sun will shine, so there is that.  

Plans for today?  I will develop Holga film.  Maybe I'll even make new pictures.  TBD.  

And still, everything makes me nervous.  I haven't read the news today.  Have I missed much?  

No time, though.  Watch the video, and. . . hate me if you will.  

No, No, Quasimodo

I'm going back to using a Holga camera for a bit.  It is so unserious I'll take photos of anything.  No pressure.  I'll develop the film myself unless it is color.  I might do color, too, but there is a quick lab her in town for it now, so. . . . 

I am going to go back to Dry January this week, I think.  Damp turned to wet very quickly.  I want too much to celebrate "life," to have some fun, but I have fallen back into the same old pattern of feeling deprived of life and sitting on my mother's couch knocking back too many whiskeys before bed.  It is that which I had intended to slow down.  

"Whoa Nellie!"

The thing is, I had lost some of this monstrous belly, and now it is creeping back on.  I am limping badly now as the shots no longer help my knee.  I lean when I walk.  Bad back, the typical gait of old men.  I'm tired of feeling like Quasimodo, and I felt I was gaining a fresher face not as screwed up in pain.  

Women pull their children close to them when I walk by.  Fathers stare threateningly.  

Do I exagerate?  Well. . . this is not a news report.  

News report?  You can see whatever "news" you choose to believe anymore.  Since we admitted long ago that there is no truly neutral pov, what the hell, right?  Objectivity is impossible, even in A.I.  

In a postmodern world, everything is equal in its unreliability.  We live in a world with facts devoid of truth.  

Other than personal.

There are clouds and potential rain today.  I am not psychologically fit for such weather.  It depresses and yes, even scares me.  Heaven is sunny weather.  Hell is whatever is happening in Ohio.  

Brighter notes.  I put my deck back together yesterday.  Small start.  There is much to do, but I don't seem to be able to do more than an hour at a time.  That's o.k  I don't want to spend my days working manual labor.  Small bits, but not days.  I am going to buy granite rocks to place on the ground around the house where the work has occurred and then decide if I want to buy bags of rock or have it delivered for the driveways.  I'll have to ask T about this one.  But today I plan to develop some old film from my Holga camera along with the roll I shot yesterday.  I don't expect anything to be marvelous, and that is the bonus.  I want to get back to making some tangible images, too, using my new laser printer, Japanese paper, transfers, tape, fire. . . whatever.  

Photography Selavy.  If you want to get weird. . . I'm your boy!

Thank you. . . and goodnight.  

A Moment Home

The world is a scary place.  Gaza, Iran, Minneapolis, and weekend nights in Downtown Gotham, just a few minutes away.  People are jacked and crazed.  WTF happened?  

Dana White, TRT, MMA, muscle crazes MAGA, and--TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP!!!!

I'm guessing they give testosterone injections to ICE and Border Patrol agents.  They just don't act right.  But the protesters I've seen in the million videos from Minnesota are not the peaceful protesters of before.  They are not part of the Thoureauvian/Ghandi/Martin Luther King protests.  Today's protests look nothing like that.  No sit-ins.  No hunger strikes.  

As I've heard so many times about the conflict in the Middle East, "a curse on both your houses."

I am tempted to post a Christopher Hitchens piece here, but I'll leave it to you to search for his views on Islam and the Koran.  I'm afraid I see echoes of this in the conflict in Minnesota.  

To wit, the little portrait I post today.  Oh for gentle peace and quietude.  A hot beverage, the space to make things away from the ravages of circumstance.  

I went to my own home yesterday.  For the first time in forever, there were no workers there.  The carpentry and the siding and the roofing and the painting are all done. The house was imbued with a lovely peace and beauty.  The house and the apartment and the space between.  Everyone had done a wonderful job.  There is still much to do, but it is all stuff that I can do by myself.  There is the mulching and re-rocking of the drives, the pressure washing and filling in the gaps between bricks with a polymeric sand on the patio off the bedroom, the taking up the walkway from the driveway to the deck that has been uprooted by the camphor tree and the levelling of the path with soil, replacing the stones and planting mondo grass around and between, the tearing up of the garden gone wild and figuring out what to replant. . . oh, there is plenty of work to be done, but it is grunt work that I can do alone.  

I decided to cook my mother's dinner at my house.  I haven't cooked there for nearly a year.  Small red beans and pork in the Instapot.  Yellow onions, salt, pepper, red pepper, and 3/4s bottle of a cheap red wine.  I went to the grocers and got it all, then, setting it to pressure cook, I took a long walk for the second day in a row, the only exercise I was confident in since getting the bad vertigo.  

When I walked on Friday, as usual, I cut across the campus of the Country Club College.  Do you remember what a Friday afternoon on a college campus is like?  The joy is palpable.  And seemingly on this afternoon, Country Club was a women's college.  They were everywhere, tall and thin and athletic, relaxed and laughing and smelling of recent showers and sundries.  The sun was shining and the air was perfect.  Good God, it was a day to be alive.  

On Saturday, though, it was a different scene, something out of Girls Gone Wild.  I don't know the reason why, but scantily clad girls roamed around in thong bikinis, some carrying towels, others just straight up cruising.  As pleasant as it might have been, I was feeling myself an intruder and kept my eyes averted not wanting to look like. . . well, anyway. . . . 

Across campus and onto the Avenue of Mansions bordering the lake.  A hundred walkers on the sidewalk, throngs of people headed for the famous Boat Tour.  On to the golf course, cutting through the grounds of Casa Feliz, designed by James Gamble Rogers in 1932, and on to the Boulevard.  

It was jammed.  Across the park in the pasture, the Farmer's Market was still alive.  Long lines formed in front of a breakfast restaurant, something I have never understood.  The sidewalks bustled while many of the weekend hoi-polloi picnicked in the park.  I heard a voice call my name--"Hey professor!"  It was Black Sheep, tall and shining and casually preppy as is his natural state.  Small talk, then onward.  I decided to avoid crossing the campus once again.  

Back home, I smelled the cooking meal.  I dropped half a carton of Epsom Salts into the tub and turned on the hot water.  I poured a Lagunitas IPA I had picked up at the grocers and sank into the hot tub.  Oy.  

A soak, a shower and shampoo.  I was limp as I dried and put on my clothes.  Dinner was made.  I needn't hurry.  I took the rest of my beer to the deck to sit as I used to oh-so long ago.  I watched the squirrels and birds and thought about the missing cats that used to come and loll about together for my amusement, now gone.  

I thought about taking a phone pic of my beer as I used to make pictures of my drinks and send them to friends.  I realized I really didn't have anybody to send them to now.  Life had changed radically in the past year.  Where had it gone?  Where had my life gone?

And then something occurred to me.  I was thinking things that I don't think at my mother's.  The entire process was different.  Different synapse were firing, or so it felt.  I was relaxed.  I wanted to sit and watch the sun sink, watch the sky turn flamingo with the dying light, eat my dinner before the television sitting on my big leather couch, then decide how to spend my evening.  

Yes, I remembered how it used to be.  

But I had to get the Instapot to my mother's house.  Her cleaning lady had been there.  It would feel fresh.  As I began to drive away, the tenant pulled into her driveway.  She walked to the car.  

"Smell that?" I said as she stuck her head inside.  "You want to come have dinner at my mother's?"

I made the jasmine rice and opened a bottle of wine.  The tenant showed up in half an hour.  I put on some music and we ate and talked, the three of us, until eight.  I poured a scotch.  

And then the night became what it has been this past year.  My thoughts turned.  I prepared my mother's meds.  I sat on the couch and turned on the television.  

"Your a good son.  She's lucky to have you."

By nine-thirty I was bored and exhausted and began to get ready for bed.  

I'd like to spend my days with that lady in the atelier.  And nights.  I would cook good meals and there would be beer and wine and whiskey, and the days would be pleasant and lovely, and. . . . 

. . . turn it down low and grab a book. . . it is liquid, not solid, a new kind of Muzak that won't get in the way, won't intrude, requires nothing. . .  

Everybody's Got Something

 

I had a better day yesterday. I was able to take a walk. The painters are very close to finishing up. After my long limp, I soaked in the tub and decided to go for sushi before going home to feed my mother. T called. The gymroids and others were meeting at a bar I don't like for Happy Hour. He said he would pick me up.

"Oh no," I said.  "I'm not up for that.  I still need quiet and gentle.  I'm going to go get sushi at five, then I have to get home to feed my mother."

"I'll meet you for sushi," he said.  

Man. . . I love sushi.  Tuna kobachi, miso, steamed edamame, and lots of hot sake.  I have to admit my taste for sake is for the cheap stuff that they serve hot.  I've had expensive sake, unfiltered and filtered, cold, and I prefer the cheap stuff.  I guess it is like preferring chicken chow mein at a cheap Chinese restaurant with a bowl of the crunchy noodles you put on top.  That is where my parents would take me on vacation.  If you know, you know.  Green tea was exotic.  

I like the cheap hot sake.  

After dinner, though, the night went to shit. I won't report on it. No need. 

"Ain't nobody got time for that!"

But, as a result, I didn't get up until eight.  My mother's house cleaner comes in a bit, so I need to hustle and get things ready.  

The sky is overcast, but it will not rain.  I cannot complain.  My conservative friend in North Carolina wrote, "You have hurricanes.  We have ice storms.  We are waiting with hot cups of coffee."

Everybody's got something.  So it seems.  

Tremors and Time

I sat still all day in a chair.  It seemed to help. I could walk a straight line as long as I didn't turn my head quickly.  No sudden movements.  O.K.  

"Hey ma, I feel a little better.  I'll go get your meds and some things for dinner.  I'll be back."

I was fine driving to the drugstore.  Waited behind another car at the pickup window for a long time.  My turn.  No, said the voice in the speaker, there were no prescriptions for her. 

"She said the store called for her to pickup a prescription."

After a long while, the voice came back to tell me her Percocet couldn't go out until the 27th.  Nothing to be done. 

Down the road a few blocks to the grocers.  I got out of the car, grabbed a cart, and felt fine.  Inside, I ran into one of the twins I've known for decades but haven't seen much since Covid.  Something happened to the two of them and they don't go out or have anyone in any longer.  They live a hermetic life now.  But here, in the store, we talk.  I'm doing fine, then I laugh and shake my head.  Mistake.  The ground shifts beneath my feet.  

I finish shopping and go home to make dinner.  I start the jasmine rice and broccoli and cut up the chicken and put it in a bowl with bbq sauce.  I wash my hands and go out to sit with my mother in the open garage.  It is a pleasant late afternoon.  

"Look at this weather," I say.  I'm thinking of the weather everywhere north of us.  Late afternoon sun, 70 degrees.  

The pretty woman with the two big dogs is walking across the street.  She waves and crosses over to see us.  One would never guess her age, but it is beginning to show as it will.  We talk about many things.  She works for a bank, and has worked from home for years.  Now they want her back in the office a few days a week.  She doesn't like it.  

"Sure, who wants to get dressed?" I laugh.  "I worry about that.  I don't think any of my dress up clothes still fit."

She says she had the same problem.  

"This butt isn't going to fit into these anymore," she laughs sardonically about trying on her old clothes.  Indeed, that is where she is "aging."  Not much, but noticeably.  My gut, her butt.  

The dogs want love, give kisses.  After a long while, she takes her leave.  

"I'm glad she stopped," my mother says.  "She's a nice lady."

I go inside.  The rice and broccoli are ready.  I put on the chicken.  Six, seven minutes.  The small pieces cook quickly.  

Six o'clock. We watch the BBC news as we eat.  The world, it seems, has not improved since yesterday.

We finish dinner.  I put on the Evening News from one of the networks.  News delivered in a fever pitch.  It is much different than on BBC.  They are, it is obvious, pitching to a different audience.  Everything is repeated at least three times.  First they show and tell you what they are going to show and tell you in the opener.  Then they show and tell you briefly before each story as introduction.  Then a frenetic reporter in the field shows and tells you as quickly as possible knowing they have under a minute to get it all in.  Breathless.  That it is made for a dumb commercial audience is obvious.  As are the commercials.  

I clean the kitchen and leave the t.v. for my mother.  In another room, I go to my computer.  I did not go to my house this day, so I text the tenant to see if the painters had finished up.  They hadn't.  Wow, I say.  That's a lot of work.  

My mother goes to bed early.  I watch t.v. for a bit, the new Frankenstein movie.  I'd watched the first half the night before, but now it bores me.  I start to get ready for bed before ten.  I sleep through the night.  

A new day.  Seems just a continuum.  "Lives of quiet desperation," I think.  Where does that come from?  I can't remember.  I think of all the people I am losing contact with as I sequester with my mother.  People just dissolve into the ether.  The months slip by without a trace.  Sometimes I reach out.  Sometimes someone else does.  The inside of my mother's house is a time capsule where it barely seems to move.  There are necessary routines, the meds, the meals, the news. . . .  

As I write, I feel little tremors.  The walls and floor shift slightly.  It is not over yet.  Another day of stillness, I guess.  One day it will all be stillness.  There will be no routine, no meals, no news.  Nothing will move, nothing at all.  

Vertigo

I'm not doing so well this morning.  I've had terrible vertigo for about the last 21 hours.  I was at the gym.  I lay back on a platform to do some crunches and the world began to spin.  This happened about a month ago at the outdoor gym when I lay back to do hanging rows.  Tipping my head back caused the crystals in my inner ear to move out of place, I guess.  As before, yesterday I could not walk straight.  I was in a panic and sat still for a very long time.  Then I staggered slowly out the door and to my car.  Should I drive?  Of course not.  Did I?  Of course.  On every curve and over every bump, I felt the world begin to twirl.  I made it home.  I went in and lay on the bed and tried doing the Epley Maneuver.  Then I lay back with my head elevated and fell asleep.  When I woke, I was still off kilter.  O.K.  What to do?  I called the Ear, Nose, and Throat clinic I take my mother to.  They could see me for an evaluation--in a week.  I was guessing that within the week, this would have all straightened itself out.  I was not fearful.  I was sick, but not dying.  It was not like getting a pain in the gut.  Then I think I am dying for sure.  No, I've had this before, and eventually it goes away.  Why?  I think the crystal dissolves over time.  Didn't I read that?  I think I did.  I've had this problem off and on ever since I got knocked through the air on my Vespa.  Something happened then.  

So now. . . I'm just trying to live through it.  

When I was at my house, I called my mother to tell her what was going on.  "I may have to go to an E.R." I said, just to let her know.  

My mother was in a panic.  

"What about my pills?"

I can't miss more than a couple hours, you see.  She cannot take care of herself in any way.  She is 100% dependent upon my care.  She worries I might go to the hospital in terms of what would happen to her.  

And so. . . . 

There's a big shit storm about the "sexualized" images produced on X.  Oh, people. . . who are you?  

I fear most the Moral Majority.  

And, of course, the Libertines run a close second.  Maybe not too close, though.  

As always, I want to live in Leave It to Beaverland and go to visit the weird from time to time.  I like the weird, of course, and not only because it breaks the "I before E" rule.  But I never enjoy enjoy the other.  I'm like Ozzie and Harriet.  They raised Little Ricky, if you catch my drift.  

I received a text from T last night (except after "C", you know--it may take you awhile to get this one).  He said that the clothing company to which he sent my photos are forwarding them to corporate headquarters for final approval.  They won't be using my photos, of course.  If they like him well enough, they will fly T to L.A. for a photoshoot.  My images will go into the Lost and Found bin like everything else I do.  

Selavy.  

And that, I've decided, will be the name on my "business" card.  And on my website if I can ever manage to put one together.  I just can't decide if it should be "Selavy Photography" or "Photography Selavy."  I'm leaning toward the latter.  

Just a quick (very) mock up of a flyer I would paste in some of the stranger places around town.  Needs a lot of work.  I just haven't had time.  But. . . would I get responses?  Oh--I guess I would need some contact info, huh?  I'll set up an internet phone line if I can figure out how to do that.  Chat can probably tell me.  It can also help me design a better flyer.  It is often smarter than I.  

I couldn't make dinner last night, couldn't go grocery shopping and didn't feel I could cook, so I got us take out.  But now there is not breakfast material in the house, either.  I will have to do something about that.  But the world is still spinning if I look up or look down or turn my head to the right or to the left.  It spins a bit other than that, too.  

What to do?  I may just sleep the day away and hope to get better.  And so. . . .

"Rumble"

I just spent the morning creating a formal portrait of J.D. and Usha Vance in A.I.  Had to try over and over as it couldn't quite get his face right.  When I had something I could use, I posted it and spent part of the morning writing a piece about her pregnancy.  It got to be too. . . much. . . so I deleted it.  

Prudence is the better part of valor today, I think.  My mind is a waste disposal system lately.  

And so. . . I'll stick with the shot of a woman eating meat on a stick.  Nice. 

Still. . . .

What do I have to report?  I think the painters are doing a great job on my house.  I can see why no one painter wanted to take it on.  If I had done it myself. . . well. . . it wouldn't be right.  There has been a crew working on my house for days, caulking, sanding, repairing, priming.  Five women are doing the detail work.  They are all over, way up on ladders, standing on one roof to reach the higher parts of the house.  The crew is all Mexican, and they are lovely.  Now all the windows are covered in plastic.  My walls are mostly windows.  Yesterday while I was there, I opened the shutters and the light that filtered through the plastic was diffused, soft, and lovely.  Hmm.  

Today they begin painting the house color, I think.  This is the men's work I take it.  There were two guys doing some of the small spraying jobs yesterday.  Maybe seven people working in all for five days.  Yea. . . I can see why no painter wanted to take this on.  I'm super happy I didn't try to do it myself.  

I was there when the house cleaners came.  The jefe said they could just skip cleaning this week, so I gave her fifty dollars to go to lunch.  She has only been taking 2/3ds of the money each week since I haven't bee living there, and when she was gone, I thought, "Man oh man alive. . . I should have given her a hundred."  It has been eating at me since.  

Every day now, I see article after article about how to exercise to stay young and live forever.  There is dietary advice, too.  And now, supplements.  Not just vitamins and minerals and plant extracts.  Nope.  Even at the Club Y where plastic surgeries abound, people are turning to peptide chains.  Hardly any real research on this stuff, but anecdotal evidence shows immediate gains in muscularity and big reductions in fat.  All the boys are already doing testosterone replacement therapies, and the women those combined estrogen/progesterone/ testosterone bundles.  

The thing is, once you are on, you can't get off without resuming your lesser self.  And eventually, when problems begin to arise, and they will. . . . 

There is no staying young forever.  Ask any old person other than those freaks selling product.  I'm allowing my body to run on estrogen the way god intended.  

The other trend is more viscous.  Everybody is learning to fight.  There are fighting gyms everywhere and parents are putting their kids into classes.  I'm sure most kids could kill me now.  My fighter buddy sends me videos all the time.  Cool.  But I think once you get hit upside the head with an iron pipe, all that shit goes out the window.  I don't think most criminals are going to say, "Come on, buddy. . . put up your dukes."  

"Ju-jitsu is good for your brain," one video opined.  I said I would be willing to play brain bowl against him.  

It's a dangerous world, my friends.  I just live in it.  Kind of.  

If you like the weather, vote Republican.  

I'm just saying.  

And so. . . I wonder if the Vance's fourth child will look anything like J.D.  None of the others do.  

That's it.  I'm done.  I'll leave you with a little ditty that I think I can get A.I. to make better.  The world just keeps getting cooler.  

Just a Rant

 

No president has ever profited from being elected president like Trump.  MAGA, baby.  The others were just stupid.  Maybe not Clinton.  He was probably second.  He and Trump were buddies for a long while, you know, when they were partying at Epstein's place.  Now. . . not so much.  

Demolition Man

We have all been complicit, I guess, in the deconstruction of a nation, both left and right--if such opposition truly exists in a postmodern world.  

"Look at the hierarchy, find the assumption, then turn it on it's head."

That was fun in the '90s.  Remember?  Oh, it started in the 60s, but the conservative right didn't grab hold until then.  After that. . . whoa Nellie!  It was a good tool for me, though, in meetings at the factory.  Identifying the assumption.  There is always an assumption in every argument.  

I think.  I haven't been in a meeting for a very long time now.  I don't really use my noggin much anymore.  My role in the world is not to argue now but to caretake.  

"The Brown's called to check up on me from Utah.  They said I was lucky, that I had a really good son."

Yea, yea, yea. .  . it's all luck.  

The painters are working on the house readying it for painting.  That's my other role now, paying people to fix my stuff.  They are making bank, as the kids used to say.  They are doing really well.  It's my zip code.  It basically doubles prices on any home improvement or repair.  I have always believed my fortune was in my house.  Recently, though, I asked A.I., "If you bought a home in the 1980s for $400,000 on a 30 year 4% mortgage, how much interest would you pay?"  It was around $240,000.  Add in repairs over those 30 years.  Your profit margin really begins to shrink.  

My mother has been up for an hour now, and has not quit pushing her walker back and forth from the kitchen to her bedroom.  Back and forth.  She says her mind is gone, that she can't control it.  And so she rambles, paces like a wounded sloth.  She will be better when the sun comes up, I think.  Usually.  But pain and confusion are her constants.  

"They say you're a really good son."

I don't know.  I really don't know.  

I just spent half an hour working with A.I. to compose a piece of music that would score the photo of the little girl.  I did it, but it sucked.  I'll keep trying and maybe some day I'll be able to post it here.  For now. . . 

I made The Donald's portrait, too!

Made Up Redux

I have no time to write today.  My mother has a doctor's appointment this morning.  That's o.k. Nothing happened yesterday in the mundane life of a boring caretaker.  I watched yesterday's NFL playoff games with my mother.  She enjoyed the snows.  Both came down to the wire, so it was o.k. for me, too.  

If you have been coming here for decades, you may remember that I started my own faux-anthropology series in which I problematized (that's the kind of language we used back then) the concept of early anthropological photography saying that those photos were invented and unreliable as scientific documents.  So I made up primitive cultures, too.  

Just like Tiki Culture, in essence.  I'd like to do it again. 

Then I got sidetracked with Lonesomeville, another faux project.  

But I've been inspired to delve into fantasy once more, right from a chair in my mother's living room.  It's as far as I can go.  It is all I can do.  So. . . here, before I load my mother into the car. . . enjoy. 

Tiki Lives

I would let this go, but. . . yesterday driving I turned the radio on, tuned to the university jazz channel, and a song began to play that sounded like a Martin Deny tune. I looked at the display and read "Watiki 7." That was the band. A bit unnerved by that.

Tiki culture survives!

And so.  

I had to make my own pre-missionary hula dancer in Chat.  She is pretty European, though.  Someone was dallying with the natives.  

That's about "all I got."  Other than the pho I made last night.  Delicious.  Made with the bone broth from the Vietnamese restaurant.  The jalapenos were hot, though, and my mother couldn't eat it.  Said her mouth was on fire.  

I wish I had more to offer, but nothing interesting really happens here in my mother's house.  Am I tired of spending every Friday and Saturday night here with mom?  Spending every single night never going out?  

I don't think I can watch any more television.  I'm nervous, anxious, and, frankly. . . scared.  

"I'm not the man I used to be."

Sure, sure. . . and that may be a good thing.  

And so. . . I'll leave you with music--a live performance of "Adventures in Paradise" by the Watiki 7.  Enjoy.  

"And if I die before I wake. . . "

Exotica

Late Friday afternoon.  The house has been pressure washed.  I've hooked up the new color laser printer and run some tests, then made sheets of small images for transferring to my new notebook starting in January 2020.  I have a little time before I need to go back to mother's, so I pack up my new art materials and head for the cafe.  I order a cafe con leche, then sit down to begin.  I'm no good at it.  My effort is terribly jejune.  Not even adolescent.  I need the help and advice of a teenage girl.  By and large (to generalize) they have panache for such things.  Even my writing there is clumsier than usual.  But I work at it knowing that is the only way to improve.  

Then it is time to go.  I don't call my mother to ask what she wants for dinner.  She never knows.  She barely eats dinner now.  She snacks.  What I really want to do is go for sushi, but. . . .   What then?  Not pizza.  I decide on Mexican.  There is a little place up the street from my mother's house I've never tried that has been there forever.  When I get to her house, I ask her.  She shrugs.  I go.  I buy two dinners and three tacos.  It is WAY too much food, but that is my M.O.  I am back in a flash and lay the food out on the table.  Nothing is good.  Everything sucks.  I throw over half of it in the garbage.  

Selavy.  Just another Friday night with mom.  

I am anxious.  I have many concerns.  The house.  My health.  My mother's health.  But mostly I worry about my health and the draining away of whatever life I have left sitting on my mother's couch.  I want to drink the night away.  I am more than tempted.  I decide to take a Xanax, for I feel myself going.  I take it with one small sip of whiskey.  Fuck, that is good.  But no.  I sit on the couch and wait for the drug to relieve my death spiral.  

It takes awhile.  

I make a cup of good jasmine tea from the little pearled leaves.  I drink four cups over the next hour.  Some calm descends.  I turn to YouTube.  I go down a rabbit hole of Tiki culture.  Fascinating.  Totally fabricated, totally Hollywood.  A mishmash of "exotica" goes into creating the alternate reality that takes over the imagination of Americans after WWII.  I am taken to museums to look at masks from Polynesia, Melanesia, South America, Africa.  There are similarities.  The appeal is the "primitive" which is associated with a freedom of the libido.  I search for old films of Hawaiian dancers before the Hula was corrupted by Christian missionaries.  Couldn't find any.  But I am enamored of the cult of Tiki, especially because it is a fabrication that never existed but in the imagination.  It is an escape from actuality.  I want to escape actuality so very badly just now.  

We visit the famous old Tiki bars.  The drinks were invented by one man, Beachcomber Don.  He was Filipino.  The drinks were mostly rum drinks from the Caribbean with many added ingredients,  mostly sweet.  But lots of rum.  The Zombie.  The Mai Tai.  The Beachcomber.  The Singapore Sling.  The Pain Killer.  The Missionary's Downfall.  

Tiki was a perfect antidote to the life of the typical American businessman in the 1950s.  On Friday afternoon, he could drift away to an imaginary foreign land where barely clothed women brought him strong drinks and did a little dance.  

I'm a fool for make believe.  

I stuck with tea.  

When I had friends in Key West before the condos and cruise ships came, there was a place just outside of town where the locals went to eat but mostly drink called the Hukilau.  You would bring your own fish and they would cook it.  They made a drink called The Hurricane, and customers were limited to one.  No one knew exactly what was in it other than eight shots of rum, but reportedly (I never had one) you couldn't taste it for all the liqueurs that were included.  I used to dance the hula and sing the Hukilau song for many years.  

"Hukilau lau lau lau, do the Hukilau lau lau lau lau."

Something like that.  

One of the oldest and most famous Tiki bars left in the U.S. is in Ft. Lauderdale called the Mai-Kai (link).  When Dry January is over, and if my hillbilly cousin ever comes, I want to go there for a drink.  I'll call my Miami friend to come meet me.  

One of the most famous Tiki bars is at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco called The Tonga Room.  I've meant to go many times, but I never have.  If San Francisco ever recovers, I want to go.  I can't believe I never did.  

And so. . . that was my night--bad Mexican, Xanax, a tongue full of whiskey, and the history of Tiki.  

Tell me now--does life get any better than this?

I took another Xanax before bed, just to be sure.  And so, with the sound of Martin Deny and "Bali Hai" echoing in my ear and imagined scenes from "Adventures in Paradise" in my head. . . .