Mind Numbers

Fucking Tumblr.  The people who use it never give anyone credit for their works.  So when I saw this photo in black and white, I assumed it was old.  Ellen Rogers set me straight, and I am embarrassed.  The photo is by Chad Michael Ward.  The model is Katie West.  Let us get that straight here and now.

I wrote to Mr. Ward apologizing for using his image unwittingly.  He wrote back graciously.  I will write to Ms. West as well.  We shall see.

I will be exhausted tonight, perhaps too tired to sleep well.  Nightmares of the very real kind.  Too much projection/imagination creating an apocalypse of the mind.  Impossible to deal with in the dark.

Never take advice from ex-girlfriend's about dating.  Best never to date at all if you can avoid it.  Your date will be exciting for everyone but you (and, of course, your date).  Spend your time more productively.

Tonight is Friday night and all I want is a handful of painkillers/mind numbers.  Funny.  Numbers--something that anesthetizes thought.  I will have to tell my math friends.

Trepidation

"Lonesomeville" is finished.  Done.  Complete.

I think.  I wrestle with it.  It has been fun for me, and difficult, too.  You can't do this if you have a conscience (consciousness) and not suffer from the ridicule and tribulations and self-doubt. I could have taken on the less dangerous, popular photo projects of the times.  I know how to photograph the blank, empty spaces of America.  I've done it.  And I've engaged people in street projects as well.  It is all thrilling.  But being a certified white male girly-show photographer is a different thing.  "Bonerville" my feminist friend Q deemed it.  "Hooterville," and "Cooterville," . . . it's been hailed a lot of things.

And it has been nothing but hard and constant work.  The girls show up.  I don't know them.  We chat.  I show them some of the many things I do.  You do not see them here.  I have no way to show the encaustic and transfer pieces.  I print on transparencies and glass.  I print on a variety of papers with different coatings.  It all takes time.  Some work, some don't.  The models usually have not seen works like this before, so we talk about how I do things.  I show them where we will shoot and pose for them.  They show me the wardrobe they've brought, then they get ready while I check lights and exposures.  Then we shoot.  I am, of course, nervous the entire time.  It is work and I sweat through my clothing.  When the model leaves, I work another hour or so in the studio.  Then the labor begins.  Weeks later, I have some images to show to them.  Meanwhile, I've shot again.  Or again and again.  And this is not my life.  I get up, go to the factory, come home, work again on photos, and collapse.

And then I post the pictures here on my site.  Sometimes people like them.  It is thrilling.  And sometimes people tell me that they don't.  After spending minutes looking at them over a long period, they are tired of them.  Bored.  And I am wrecked.

I tell myself it doesn't matter, of course.  I have a vision and in the end it will prevail.  And then I think, "all you've done is a bunch of pictures of naked women."  And I despair.

If, though, the only reward was to meet and talk with the women I've worked with, it would be enough.  I've learned more than I knew about the variety of life from them.  The thing that I sometimes think about is how little they have learned from me.  I ask them questions and am truly enthralled to hear them talk about themselves, their families, their pasts and their futures.  They rarely ask about me (for which I am greatly thankful).

And now. . . I am left with this.  You all have seen it much.  Now I want to spring it upon an unsuspecting audience.  I think.

It could be awful.  I am afraid that I will be reviled and eschewed, driven from decent society like an oddly shaped dog seen in the distance.

O.K.  I'm melodramatic.  Trying to make a point.

Though I have many more images from the series, I don't know that I am going to show them here any longer.  Trouble is. . . what next?   Until I get my Frankencamera back from John Minnicks, I'm not sure.  And so there may be more of these, just not so often.

Who knows.  I'm not a good judge.  I like the Black Keys more than the White Stripes.  I'm sure I'll be embarrassed by that some time in the future.  It is the way I roll.

Worldwide Influence

I wrote a political satire for today's post, but in the end sent it only as a private email to some friends.  They are special people who will not be shocked or surprised by it.  I'm afraid, though, that the photo alone would drive people away from this blog and bring down unwanted attention from the secret police of many countries.  I don't wish to end up like Wikileaks.

In writing it, I also deleted the post I had written the night before, a fluff piece of adolescent emoting.

I don't know who took the photo I posted today.  It is an image I found on some tumblr post and you know those people.  They never credit anything.  But as you see, I am having a major impact on the world of photography.

I spent last night following some music hints that the Prodigal Girl sent to me along with some dating advice.  Jesus Christ, it has come to that.  But here is something I found that I liked well enough.  It is a better cover of Cohen (whose greatness is untouchable) than I've heard, and they bring something else to the song.  If you like it, you might like this one, too.

Beats being chased by Iranian gunboats off the coast of New Jersey.

Zumba, a multiracial transexual, caused a stir at the Berkeley Bake Sale when organizers couldn't agree on how much she would be charged for a cupcake.  In the end, however, she was given the cupcake for free as Native Americans were to be charged a quarter but women were to receive a twenty-five cent discount regardless of race.

"We are not trying to put people at an economic disadvantage," said one the organizer, "only to bring attention to the disparities in the way people are charged for an education here in the state of California."

Some students disagreed, however.  One woman of color claimed to be "appalled" by the "trivialization" of "the struggles that people have been through and their histories [sic]."

I made up the first part.  Sort of.  I'm taking this next part directly from CNN:

"Loomba, Berkeley's student government president, said she is concerned about students potentially feeling ostracized due to the bake sale.


"Berkeley's student government held an emergency senate meeting Sunday to discuss the issue and passed a resolution that, in part, "condemns the use of discrimination whether it is in satire or in seriousness by any student group."

This shit is serious, (insert "Jackson" or "Honky" or "Homey" or whatever soft epithet you prefer).  The student government is considering a ban on both John Stewart and Stephen Colbert's television shows.  Under consideration are the works of Dryden, Pope, and Swift.  And none too soon.  That is some awful stuff.

I love students to death, and I can't wait to see how this is resolved so I will know on which side of this issue to fall.  William F. Buckley once pointed out when speaking at Harvard that a straw poll showed over ninety percent of the students had voted for McGovern against Nixon.  "Clearly," he said, "McGovern was the choice of the partially educated."

I have marched at Berkeley, by the way, and was treated as roughly by shithead cops as the protesters in New York's Financial District.  Eat the Rich.  Ban the Greedheads.

Oh.  And the Iranian government is making an ideological point, too, in sending a naval fleet to patrol off the east coast of the U.S.  I can't wait to hear from Zumba on this one.

Sea of Love

(I've included a song at the end of this that you can click and play as you read along)

On Sunday night, I DVRd ABC's "Pan Am" because of an ad I saw on the internet.  The show was as commercial as you might expect, but the sets and the women were pretty.  I heard Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife" on the show and hijacked it immediately following, but "Beyond the Sea" may be a better song, so I've included it here.

The photo is from the Prodigal Girl.  She was in Sweden for some fashion "thing."  I can't make heads nor tales of such things, but she said it was like going to camp.  She made lasting relationships, she said.  Oh, my. . . .

Yesterday a bold, pretty young woman took my phone number and gave me hers.  Lunch, she said.  I think this gives me permission.  I mean, I've never asked a woman out, as I've said, so calling her wouldn't actually be the first move, would it?  Besides, she's from another country in Eastern Europe.  I don't know.

Drug Skinny has bailed on me. . . thank god.  It was exciting to think about, but I was afraid of it, truly.

Tomorrow I must look right.  I get a longevity award in front of a congress of the factory.

"How'd you do it?" they'll ask.

"Sloth," I will tell them.

A crisp white shirt untucked, newish jeans, a crocodile belt (which no one will see) and shoes, and a linen jacket, I think.  If I only had that unlined silk/wool jacket from Canali. . . . Well. . . I'm just trying to keep up.  The Prodigal Girl would laugh.  I'll tell you why some day.  

Life continues in such strange and fantastic ways.  For awhile, anyway.  

 

Negative Zero

I like the bake sale idea at Berkeley.  I know I can get into hot water for saying this, but it is two things:  funny and stimulating.  It makes liberals turn violent.  They say they will turn over the table, throw cupcakes, etc.  Scary stuff.  Now some students at Berkeley are saying that they don't feel welcomed.  Why?  They'll take the tuition but not the cupcake?  I don't know. . . I just think the metaphor makes people think about things in a way they wish not to.  Some of them.

And I'll go out on a limb and say that Lady Gaga is stupid or at least when she talks she plays a stupid person.  It could just be part of the act.

And I'm still sticking with my prediction of a Perry America.  I'm not ruling Palin out.  But a Perry/Palin America would be the ticket.

I'm shocked that there is already trouble in Libya.  There seems to be tribal animosities.  I wouldn't have guessed that.

Parts of Spain have outlawed bullfighting.  Yesterday was the last bullfight in Barcelona.  I watched a bullfight in that stadium years ago when bullfighters were like rock stars.  Leather and meat, though, are still in with the people.

Putin has decided to be Godfather of Russia again.  He has been, but he wants the title back.

Google is contributing to conservative republicans.  Apple has done something for Christians who hate gays.

At my high school reunion, I told a true story about race in our times.  We had no minorities in our neighborhoods, so to speak.  Wally was a friend of mine from elementary school.  He was a Cherokee Indian.  So he said.  We had no experience with such things.  In high school one night, we were at a football game.  Someone from the other school called Wally a nigger.  Wally beat the hell out of the guy.  We all looked at one another somewhat aghast.  "Is Wally a nigger?"

Every one of the people to whom I told the story looked uncomfortable.  No one responded and the conversation took another direction.  Later in the night, the same group of men were disparaging the minorities that had taken over our old neighborhood.  None of them used the word "nigger."  And I realized that is what some people have learned. Don't say the "N word."  It is O.K. to dislike minorities and discriminate as long as you don't use disparaging language.  I am certain that I was the only one in that crowd who has ever marched for civil rights and I'm pretty sure that the ethnic mix of my friends was greater than those I heard speaking.  But they were embarrassed that I had used the N word.

I thought we had become "post-racial," but I find out every day how wrong I am.  We are racial on both the left and the right.  Neither will let it go.

There is a theme in this entry, though it is not the obvious one.  I am in a rancor and it seems indirection is best.  I am falling ever falling into deeper and deeper shit.

Dick Diver/Donald Draper and the Descent

I'm worried, but what good does worry do?  Worry comes from thinking.  There is no need to think when you feel badly.  It is time to do.

Doing is complicated, though, if you have gotten out of practice.  I am out of practice.  But for a few things that I do over and over, I've done little.  There is much that I don't want to do that needs to be done, and if I think about that, I worry. I'll simply change my mind, I tell myself.  But it is more.  I have forgotten how to do the things I don't wish to do.  Or rather, how to start them.  Once I am doing them, I'm certain I'll remember.  And after a while they will be done.

This is true of the things I used to want to do as well.  I find myself not doing them because I've forgotten how to start or only remember the trouble and what can go wrong.  Again, however, it is a matter of beginning.  Once into the thing, there is an automatic response that keeps a clever person going.

That has been the difference between my life and the lives of many I have known.  They have been able to do the things that need to be done and to eschew the things that are frivolous extras.  My life has been the reverse of that.  And now I have no money but a lifetime of things that others refuse to believe.  They wish to leave me with nothing.

Yesterday I went to the one remaining bookstore in town and found some nice surprises.  There is a new book of Hemingway's early letters.  I read through a few and most of them are too early, but there are more than a handful of letters that provide some insight into the mind that shaped the craft.   And on another table, I saw a paperback entitled "F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Short Autobiography."  It has a goofy cover and appeared to me to be some Reader's Digest style biography for kids and dolts, but then I saw that it was edited, so I opened it.  It was a collection of personal essays.  I bought it immediately.  Having read but a few so far, I can only hope that the rest are as fertile a ground.  The essays are witty, and much of what he does and how he is doing it is immediately apparent.  It seems a style guide to writing with wit.  The essays span twenty years of his short writing career, so I am anxious to watch his style and technique evolve.  It will be sad, I'm sure, like studying Dick Diver's descent.

And while I'm rambling. . . Donald Draper/Dick Whitman's descent, I'm certain, is based partly on the knowledge of that.

And my own?  Oh. . . I have based it upon them all.

Reunion

I have had trouble deciding whether or not to confess this.  Last night, the night of the autumnal equinox, I went to a high school reunion.  I didn't pick one at random.  I knew the people.  I graduated with them a long time ago.  I didn't want to go but I had a morbid curiosity to peep through the keyhole.  I have nothing to do with any of these people but one who works with me at the factory, and he and I only cross paths on occasion, but we are both trouble makers and so we conspire from time to time.

I got there before him and waited in the parking lot until he arrived not wishing to walk in alone and try to make small talk.

"What do you think, man?"

"This is a mistake.  I doubt that anyone will be here.  I feel stupid."

We walked through the lobby of a big hotel and followed the signs to a banquet room.  There were tables set up at the door with a sign up sheet and name badges that had people's graduation pictures on them.  You had to find yours by name if you were a boy because all the photos looked the alike, everyone with the same haircut and smooth skin and goofy fucking high school smiles.  I didn't recognize the women at the table.

"Hi!"

"Uh, hi.  Do we fill these out?"

I hadn't brought my glasses and the lighting was terrible, so I began filling out the form in the order I thought things might be asked and by the size of the line.

"What's my maiden name?" I asked my buddy.

Inside it looked like we had come to an Amway convention.  I mean, people just looked normal.  There was nothing to distinguish them from any other crowd.  My buddy and I looked at one another helplessly.

"Where's the bar?"

My friend had brought his new wife along and the three of us found an empty table.

"I told her we would probably spend the evening at a table talking to one another," he said.  But just then someone came up and squinted at his name tag, said his name, and extended a hand.  He stood up and began talking and soon was dragged away to meet someone else.

I was ready to leave, though I knew it would be impolite, when a big fellow with a wild beard came over and said, "Whatever happened to those pictures of Carol Reid?"

Now this was the craziest thing that could have happened to begin the evening.  What he was referring to was a photo booth set four pictures from junior high school that showed a girl named Carol stripping.  I hadn't thought of those photos. . . well, I don't know.

"I don't know.  How did you know about them?"

"You showed them to me," he said.

"How did I get them?"

He didn't know.  And as I remembered, I think her boyfriend of the time gave them to me when they broke up.  She was one of the prettiest girls in our school, a cheerleader, a society girl (if such could be said of our pitiful crowd).  The fellow who had given them to me was a good looking kid who was a devil with girls.  He got several pregnant before we graduated, or before I did.  I think he dropped out in our senior year.

When he was gone, my buddy's girlfriend turned to me and said, "I guess that's where you got your interest in photography."

I thought about that for a minute.

"You're probably right," I said wondering where that photo strip might be.

And that's all I care to tell you about the night, really.  The reunion goes on for another two days.  Tonight there is a dinner and a dance.  And I made a terrible mistake.  When asked if I was coming, I said no.  I had never intended to go, but I should have said yes so as not to see the look in the eyes of the group of people I was standing with.

"Why?  What are you doing tomorrow night?"

"Oh," I should have lied, "I have to leave for a conference in Portland in the morning."

Anything other than what I said.

As I was trying to get out the door, a fellow I'd gone to school with from the first grade on, a guy who played on my first baseball team and whose father knew mine, grabbed me in a hug and began a sort of low weeping.

"I love you, man.  I think about you a lot."

What do you say to something like that.  I don't see him, haven't seen him in twenty years.

"Oh, me too, man.  Great to see you."

Really.  The fellow was unhinged.

Driving home, I called my buddy.  He, too, was in his car.

"What the fuck?"

"I know, I know. . . it was awful."

"O.K. then.  I guess I'll see you at the dinner tomorrow night, eh?"

"Oh, you bet."

Transcendental Equinox

Thursday afternoon on a rainy day.  My small slit of a window reveals to me the same view I've seen forever, it seems.  It is late and almost everyone is gone now.  There is only the sound of the fan and Billie Holiday singing "Blue Moon" while I work and think.  Mostly think.  I remember you when you first walked in my door, just when I needed you.  Hope.  Later, in despair, I looked through that same window listening to the same music.  Life changes, but some moods do not.  Some things are eternal for awhile.  Profane transcendence.

Today I walked into a fine arts theater filled with young female choral groups.  My friend warned me not to go saying it smelled of lilacs and bubblegum.  I did not go until late afternoon.  It smelled horribly like sweat and a first menstrual cycle.  By then tired and bored adolescent girls were sliding down banisters and pulling up dresses.  As I walked through, the prettiest of them looked me dead in the eye waiting for a reaction.  "Am I pretty?" their eyes despaired with tremulous ferocity.  To let them know would be sudden and certain doom.  Male chorus directors talked with groups of young girls nervously, eyes furtively jumping about the room from their familiar adolescent charges to the mothers who had come as well.  Stereotypes don't come out of nothing.  These pale, pudgy, nervous men spoke in a teenage dialect that was not natural.  They were scared, tired, and hideous.

Rather than go to the gym, I worked late so that I would not be tempted.  My shoulder is beginning to feel better with rest, and now I think I could rest forever.  I will have to make myself go from now on.  I could forego it now easily forever.

And so to the liquor store and the grocery store, driving through rain.  The night before the equinox.  Autumn.

*     *     *     *     *     

Rainy autumn morning, the first of the year.  Where I live, it is not April that mixes memory with desire.  Autumn is strong and powerful in memories.  We'll walk down that path once again.  Eternally.

These Are Not Romantic Times

There is a movement underfoot at the factory to oust me.  The first wave, of course, came from above.  I'm a mouthy son of a bitch and very pro-worker.  I have stuck my neck out too many times and was finally told in the last reorganization that my job had changed, and while I was an important and vocal advocate for workers, that was no longer my role.

That is why the second wave of dissent caught me so much by surprise.  A group of workers whom I supervise complained about the schedules I assigned to them.  I work very hard to give fair schedules to everyone, but some thought they should be given more favor because they had seniority.  Not by much, but some.  I did not learn of the complaint until I was called in by H.R.  I hope you don't know what that means or how that goes.

But that is the preamble, not the story.  The story is an internal one.  It is about the effect on the human psyche of one who believed in all the old stories and movies about heroes. . . blah, blah, blah.  None of it was true, of course, but propaganda works.  I have told myself that I must live by those liberal heroic ideals.  But you can tell yourself anything you want.  You can tell yourself the other just as well.  Or, rather, have someone else tell it to you.  It begins, perhaps, with bedtime stories.  Right there, young, on the verge of unconsciousness, we practice a form of hypnotism to inculcate the shapeable mind with values.  What they read to me was not the same as what is read to kids today.  If anyone still reads to kids.

Just take a look back to the early days of television and the tale that it told.  We could be extensive, but for the sake of brevity, just take a look at westerns.  Someone was wronged by people in authority, so the hero set about to right that wrong.  O.K.  Maybe I should have considered something else.  They didn't all end up winners.  Still, the idea wasn't that you won, it was that you were a hero who did the right thing.

That and all the rest has ruined me for the modern world.  That ideology is idiotic today.  Postmodernism has destroyed the idea of "the right thing" along with such goofy ideals as eternal verities and heroism.  My two closest friends at work have taken beatings worse than I, both of whom have been avid worker advocates.  The workers response to the beatings was tepid enough that it didn't matter in the end.  Now, they pretty much are on their own.

It is nobody's fault.  We also must remember the other lesson we learned.  You get what you get.  I should have been watching the reality television shows instead of deriding them.  I was stupid and didn't keep up.  One day you're up, the next day you're off the island.  The world is not a hippie commune.  It is Donald Trump Land.  I thought he was funny, a goof.  I was wrong.

Fortunately, I did pay attention to some other things as I grew up.  There is always Meursault, the protagonist of Camus's "The Stranger."  There are lessons to be learned there.

I have friends who are not like me, who like me but have argued with me and derided me for years for all my hippie ideals.  They are mostly very successful business men now with great holdings and lives of leisure.  I could not have done what they did, of course.  We all have our talents.  But they were not wrong.  Nope, they live good and happy lives that mimic the ideals of The Tea Party's America.  They are solid.

Memories are short, especially where favors are concerned.  "What have you done for me today," is no joke.  The old woman who saved the snake from the mob of children beating it to death, who took it home and brought it back to life--she was silly.  You can't blame a snake for being a snake and there is no profit in doing otherwise.  The crowd is always the crowd, and to idealize it is romantic, and we all know the future of that.

Q is trying to help me understand all of this, and thusly is the best friend I could have.  Do not let your guard down, he tells me.  I will make you suffer.

Viscous attacks are probably the best lessons one can teach.

*     *     *     *     *     

The world is full o' complainers. An' the fact is, nothin' comes with a guarantee. Now I don't care if you're the pope of Rome, President of the United States or Man of the Year; somethin' can all go wrong. Now go on ahead, y'know, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help, 'n watch him fly. Now, in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else... that's the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas, an' down here... you're on your own.  (Opening lines to "Blood Simple")

Goethe

It is late night and I should be in bed, but sleep does not come to me much now and does not seem to want my company tonight, so I pour another scotch and sit to write for I can think of nothing else.  

Life is interesting from time to time, though it gets more disappointing, too.  Happiness and sorrow no longer come in equal portions, nor are they as strong as once they were, either.  But as I say, life is still surprising.  

I spoke with one of the men at the factory today who works "for" me.  He is older than I and needs not work, but I have convinced him that he is important to what we do and he is pleased enough to come back and lend his considerable talents.  He has recently fallen and damaged his leg, and he is in despair, a bit, because he has always been an athlete and a runner.  And though he is beyond the age where most of us retire, he had begun to run once more and now it is possible that he won't again in his lifetime.  He is taking it as one might expect.  We talked.  Many people have it bad, I told him as if he needed to be told which he didn't, and indeed it is only my position, perhaps, that lets him smile at my presumptuousness though I know he likes me, too.  There is that and there is what both he and I believe and stand for, a sincere and deep conviction of the profound goodness of life and one man's or woman's attempts to make it better.  We talked about diminishing pleasures and the greatness that small pleasures carry, qualities overlooked by each of us in our youth.  A cup of tea, we agreed, and the contemplative happiness it can bring, loom larger than it once did.  And such a thing as that can become enough.  He is a great and grand fellow.  

So there was that and there was this.  A young woman who works in another part of the factory, a new hire known for her intelligence and beauty, told me  in front of an audience that she needed my telephone number.  Eye rolls and catcall made her blush a little but not flinch.  I will give it to her, perhaps, though it matters little now.  It was the public showing that mattered most, the reaffirmation of something I thought might be gone.  

Tonight I shot with a model who once stood me up.  Fortunately, I never see the profit in punitive behavior, and tonight she was more than a delight.  She was lovely in every way imaginable.  The photos were good, but it was more than that.  

And when I got home late after the shoot, there were messages waiting for me that rarely come.  The woman from Korea had invited me to come to see her this spring.  It is lovely, she says, and the food will be wonderful.  She spoke at length of the good things we'd eat, sashimis and sushis and rich, fresh vegetables.  I can't imagine why I wouldn't go.  

And there were others I can't tell right now, lovely things from people who worry about me because of what I write.  This blog is an internal weather report, of course, and just now it is cloudy.  And I feel rich from the concerns that I never imagine exist for me.  It is more than I can say.  

Even the long-gone Manhattan girl managed to drop me a line.  No, more than a line which is highly unusual.  It makes me believe in astrology.

*     *     *     *     *     

And with that, I went to bed and slept like a dead animal for a few hours.  I read back on what I wrote this morning and wonder if maybe the model from last night didn't slip me some of that legal ecstasy you can buy in smoke shops and on the internet.  I sound like I was having an emotional orgy.  

But the dawn breaks flamingo pink beneath a blanket of clouds, and maybe all of last night's emotional energy will remain.  Two days until the equinox (though I've not checked with my astrologer who I suspect will refute this) and I feel. . . swollen with excitement.  

Feel free to take the bait.  

Sleepless Bushisms

I've been both exhausted and unable to sleep.  It has become worrisome and anxiety producing.  I walk around in a coma.  I worked out both morning and evening yesterday and thought I'd be ready for a good night's sleep.  Woke at two.  Woke at four.  Four-ten.  Four-twenty.  I decided to get up at five, but fell back to sleep just then.  Woke at seven-thirty.  I am not sure how much sleep I've had or if it is "good" sleep.  I do know that I have butterflies in my stomach at the thought of the day.

I haven't my usual time to write this post.  My mind is unfocussed, my body a mess.  I am full of feelings, though, and they do not run the rails of what is popular on either the left or the right.  I am no centrist, believe me, but it seems that the lines have been drawn all wrong.  I am feeling quite freakishly alone.

I must rush now for I have to leave the factory promptly today in order to meet a model for an early shoot tonight who once cancelled on me in a bad way.  Fool me once, shame on you, fool me. . . you can't get fooled again.

Nothing in Mind

A boy walks out of the woods in Germany claiming to have lived there for the past four or five years.  It reminds people of the "Piano Man," the fellow who washed ashore in England in a wet tux and who sat down to a piano and played beautifully.  From CNN.  Your total news source.

I had not received a bill from the rental car company for the busted up Taurus I returned to them last month.  As time went by, I believed something wonderful had happened, that they had somehow messed up the paperwork and I would hear no more about it.  My mother told me I was an idiot, that they wouldn't forget.  She was right.  I got a bill just Saturday.  $1,700 in repairs for backing into a pillar in a parking garage.  I want to sue the Ford company.  How can they be allowed to make a car that will cost that much to repair if you back into something?  I will write them a letter at least.

I ate a can of Fish Steaks in Louisiana Hot Sauce for lunch yesterday.  I left some in the can for the cat.  To my surprise, she ate it and then lapped up the hot sauce.

The liquid diet consisted mostly of wine and whiskey.  It was not what I intended.  I was not capable of five hours of aerobic exercise, either.  I don't think I'll make twenty-five again.

Finally, the astrologer/astronomer Q has reported the Hunter's Moon.  I'm sure he has his sources.

Guiding Lights

I have done nothing but work in the studio these past two days.  No weekend to speak of.  And now Sunday arrives and I feel the gloom of that day before returning to work.  I struggle.  Life is a misery.

Thank God, CNN online has provided this guide to suffering and why.  It is the quality journalism I've come to expect of them.  It is the lead story.  And it ties in nicely to yesterday's post about planning for the future, too.  I know many of you think I spend my early mornings surfing porn sites trying to find sleazy smut, but truly, I am researching all the time--for you.

I will begin a new physical regimen today.  The goal is to be twenty-five again.  In addition to five hours of aerobic exercise each day, I will drink mother's milk to help regenerate my collagen and cartilage.  My diet will be mostly liquid and eschew all liquors.  I am going to the Dominican Republic to have some much needed genetic repair performed in a medical facility there.  The rest will be positive thinking.

Wish me luck!  I'll settle for less, of course.  I'll settle for not being miserable.  I'm hoping CNN will provide more guiding lights.

Remittance

We are taught to plan for the future.  In school, we learn about the little ant who works all summer storing away food for winter.  Or was that a squirrel?  The grasshopper, on the other hand, fiddled away his days so that when winter came, he had nothing.  It depends on your personality, I guess.  I am attracted to grasshoppers.  But I know better.  I want my girlfriends to be the other.  I would be that grasshopper with an ant/squirrel for a caretaker.  But I have no caretaker, and now I worry.  Winter's coming on.  All the ant/squirrels will tell me I reap what I sow.  But it doesn't always turn out that way.  I've known people who have lived for a future that never came, lives ended just as they were to reap what they'd sown.  I've known others, grasshoppers, who suddenly come into everything.  It is unpredictable.  But not completely.  And I would have to guess that observation has led people to go with the odds.

But it occurs to me that people who have saved their money, who have squirreled it away for leaner times, whether they ever enjoy the fruits of their labor, had happiness and joy all along.  They enjoyed scrimping and saving, enjoyed cutting coupons and trying to get things for cheap or for free at every turn.  I once had a factory supervisor who had been an egg farmer (?) for years and made a ton of money.  Then he sold the business and came to the factory as a boss with connections.  He was a decent fellow.  His joy came from saving money.

When he retired, he and his wife were going to begin the life they'd saved for.  First thing they did was take a cruise to Hawaii.  You know what happened.  He didn't last much longer.  He was eaten from the inside.  The probable cause was the chemicals used in chicken farming.

I didn't know his wife, but I've always wondered if the following years made up for a lifetime of privation.

The families surrounding me in my neighborhood are made safe by money.  There are many doctors and dentists and a good number of successful lawyers.  And then there are a slew of trust funders.  Their houses and lawns are well-kempt and they drive new cars and go on expensive vacations.  Their children grow up privileged and go away to good colleges and come home doctors and lawyers.  And these are the people who convince factory workers they must save for the future.

Save what?  For most people right now, there is nothing left at the end of the day.  To save, they must eat the foods that are always on special, high fat foods full of corn syrup.  Cheetos and Little Debbie Cakes.  McDonalds.  Their cars are beaters.  They haven't been on a real vacation for years, just trips out of town to stay with relatives.  And then, deprived and pissed off, they succor themselves by purchasing an iPhone--a necessity.  Everybody needs something.

I think that is what has shaped me having grown up a factory worker's child.  I watched my parents and thought, "No.  I want extremes."

But I don't, really.  I want a governor.  A caretaker who will dole out the money in small sums that I will spend foolishly right away to wait in deprivation until the next allotment arrives.

"I say, might you consider lending me five dollars.  I am waiting on a check and will surely pay you back next Thursday. . . . "

Enchantment

"Somehow" an ink pen got into the dryer with the whites.  Everything is spotted blue.  Will the next batch of laundry that goes through the dryer be blue, too?  I check with cheap towels.  I'll know in a bit.  What a mess.

I am the mess, really.  Stomach pains last night.  Sushi or too many nights succoring my dying soul?  My head won't clear.  The muzziness is throughout.  My body is wounded.  But nothing goes away.  There is everything still to do.

Already I yearn for the day to be over, for night to come and find me lying on my couch.  In case you wonder, this is a bad sign.  I want to suffer alone.  But I have a shoot tonight with an eager model and one early the next morning, too.  I tell myself no, it is over, but I have obligations and don't know what else to do.

I've shown today's image to a few people and their individual reactions to it were similar to mine.  "Oh--that's lovely."  You can substitute other words, but that is it in general.  I look at it and wonder why.  It is both relaxed and stilted.  An unwilling willingness.  Or vice versa.

But it is no good for me to talk of my own work.  It rubs wrongly.  It just doesn't seem like something that belongs to me, though.  I want to marvel.  I love these women and the work we've done.  Look what they have made of me.

And yet their lives are so complex.  The stories they tell are worth many novels.  Do we do this or is it done?  The moments when we work together, when the music plays and the conversation flows along with the wine, things seem perfect.  That is the wonder of it.  The moments are elegant and we laugh and clap our hands at the Polaroids that fall from the camera and there is a friendly warmth in the air that you want never to end.

But it does.  And they pack up and we go back to our imperfect lives.  I begin to list the details in toto, then change my mind for it sounds sordid and awful and too, too true.  These are the normal people that you see every day.  They cut your hair and serve you drinks.  They answer your calls when your cable goes on the fritz.  Their children play with yours on jungle gyms in parks on Sundays.  They, like all of us, dream of a better life.

And for a few minutes together, we are able to turn that into this.  And I am. . . enchanted.  

Depressingly Normal

Shoulder worsens.  Anxieties deepen.  Drug Skinny is coming back to town for a few days and wants to shoot.  Me, too.  But it will be more complicated than that.  I've come to enjoy and depend upon the hermetic quiet of my life.  Why do I expect her to disrupt that?

This morning I got an email from the woman in Korea I met a couple years ago in NYC.  For a long while, she would send long emails about her life.  It was difficult for her as she was not fluent in English.  But the glimpse into her internal life was always a great and wonderful surprise.  Korean culture is changing rapidly, youth born into the global world trapped into a patriarchal tradition of obligation and work.  I have not heard from her for many, many months.  Her email today was heartbreakingly normal.  She has played heart games with her ex-boyfriend for the past year.  We all know how that turns out.  He was a dream, she says, a dream of travel and adventure, a dream of escape.  Now, she declares, she has emptied her heart of him.  She is ready to move on.

We understand what such declarations mean, too.

I will encourage her to live unconventionally, of course, and help her on her way down the road to ruin.

No I won't.  I will ask her to tell me stories, to describe her dilemmas and how she copes.  I have no advice for anyone.  I used to have one bit.

No Regrets.

Guilt and regret are the least useful, most destructive things we can cling to.

But I don't even have that advice any longer.

The pain in my shoulder is distracting.  Worse.  It does not like the writing at the computer position.  The pain is making me dour and (more) depressed.  The anxiety is due to something else.  I can't quite pin that down, but that is the way of anxiety.  It is nebulous.

Today's picture seems to me to capture both.

Desert Places

My friend Q has switched from astrology to astronomy.  And just as I wrote this, he called to fill me with terror.  He will attack me viscously, he says, both my science and my grammar.  He is a threatening bully and a brute.  He can have science and grammar, I say.  I'll stick with the Farmer's Almanac.  He can be Monsato Corp. to my Drucker's General Store.  The Rolex to my Timex.  Etc.  Strive for accuracy if you will.  My truths are sad and sweet.

Do not doubt, though, the bond between us.  We are much alike.  Neither of us has a tattoo.  And that is a true and grave compact in a world gone mad.

But I can't afford to argue with anyone now.  I face nothing but tribulation and ignominy everywhere I turn.  I grieve profoundly for the time when my stars were correctly aligned.  I grieve for all of you, too, for those were better days all around.  But it is, in part, my fault.  I never learned the First Rule of the American Playground: "Don't speak unless you're certain everyone agrees."

What is "science" anyway?

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces,
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home,
To scare myself with my own desert places.

(Robert Frost, from "Desert Places")

One More Harvest Moon

It's time for the astrologer Q of the Golden Dawn and I to argue about the full moon.  Last night was the Harvest Moon though Q will tell you that it was the evening before.  But here is a link to ABC News that will support me.

So. . . I went out for the obligatory viewing.  The sky was clear and the moon was lovely.

And I felt so little.

I am ashamed.

It seems that romance has abandoned me, or I it.  But no matter--we two are out of sorts.  What can have happened, I wonder in a dead despair?  Where is Queen Mab?  Puck?  The faeries and pixies and sprites? I did not even hear an owl call out.  Somewhere young lovers found inspiration at the sight.

Back inside, I turned my shoulder wrong somehow.  There was a sharp and sudden pain that got no better.  Something out of whack.  The ball does not sit in the joint.  Maybe a tendon is twisted.  Something is out of its groove.  But the pain was hideous and constant.

That is what I had.  A harsh and painful Harvest Moon, cold and lonesome and distant like some old and useless lover.

Here's a song I've posted for many Harvest Moons.  Once more. . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIKHQdQq78s

*     *     *     *     *     

Postscript: I slept long and well last night.  There were no moon-jitters.  The only thing that disturbs me this morning is remembered dreams of the cat.

By the Dawn's Dirty Light

I almost went mad yesterday, I think.  I did some things, showed the signs.  I knew that I had begun to lose control and needed to get it back, so I went for a run.  When I got home, I showered and began cleaning up the house, throwing (more) things away.  I began organizing an office that was piled high with miscellaneous uncut negatives in every format, random Polaroids and prints.  And after that, I went shopping for what I've really needed, practical things, not luxuries.  Still trembling, I went to the gym and then to the grocery store to get the ingredients for the evening's dinner with mother.  Then it was time to cook.  It was all I knew to do, really, just to stay busy.  It is a madness brought on by frustration, I think.  Events have taken new twists at the factory so that I am in more danger than ever before, and I see no way out of taking the beatings I've avoided until now.  I can't find a way around this one.  I've been wanting to change creative directions but find myself unable to begin.  Done with one project, I've not started another.  The studio sits useless, a money hole unless I spend a small fortune on a big Epson 44" printer.  I can feel the dollars being sucked from my bank account.  My camera repair genius has given up on Frankencamera, so yesterday I packed off the Graflex RB and the Kodak Aerostar and all the fixings to the one man in America who can make it happen.  Along with a check.  When I informed him that it would be there Wednesday and that I felt like a kid waiting on Christmas, he told me not to get too excited, that he has a couple of other projects going on just now and that he needs to find his inspiration.

Too much is out of my control, it seems.  That is all I can make of this.  I could close the studio, forget about the camera, go back to working on the factory floor, and let my new creative adventures be painting the house, landscaping, and cleaning.  Sell the cameras and supplies.  The monthly savings would be. . . a lot.

Dinner with mother, however, was a tremendous success.  I pressure cooked a chicken with onions and carrots and wine, salt, pepper, both red and black, and served it over jasmine rice with asparagus, a mixed spring salad covered in avocado and garlic with some crispy vinegar marinated cucumbers on the side. Grolsch for mother and a Sav Blanc for me.

But the madness was still with me, and when she left, I tried to quell the demons.  I began too early and tried too hard.  This morning, the madness is still there.  No matter how much I purge and clean, nothing looks different.  Everything is worn, dated, a crumbling chaos.  Dump it all, I think, until there is only a shell, and begin again.  Cut to the bone.  I have not succeeded. Time to run.

Rather, though, I will take a shower, put on my uniform, go to work, keep my mouth shut and take whatever comes.  You know what I mean.  You've done it, too.

And the world appears. . . in the dawn's dirty light.

The Beast

music

This is a young Aleister Crowley.  Here he is. . . older.

What the fuck happened?  

But I know too well.  It happens.  

Crowley, known as "the wickedest man alive," was also referred to as "the Beast."  He seems to have been born twisted.  At an early age, he tortured the house cat to test the "nine lives" theory.  He was addicted to everything--sex, drugs, mysticism, heroin, and cocaine.  Eventually he died alone.  His last words were reported to be, "I'm perplexed," but since he was alone. . . .  

Tremble

music

Was I drinking?  Was I drunk?  Somehow I deleted the entire entry I had written last night.  Like the images on a lost roll of film, the lost words of that post were magical, the best I've ever written.  I have a vague memory of hitting some button or key too many times, trying to bring it back. . . gone. . . all gone.  

I was tempted to go out last night.  I remember that.  To my buddy's lounge upstairs downtown.  All the best people, I'm assured.  I had intentions, then it was late.  Not late, but later, too late.  I'd been hijacking music.  You know the devil is in music, more in certain instruments, some songs.  

And then I went to bed?  When I got up this morning, the computer was still on.  Silver foil from an expensive chocolate sat on the table beside it.  The cat did not come to me as she usually does, scurrying under my feet wanting to be pet and fed.  

All that is left is the title of the post: "Tremble."  To what did this refer?  

Daylight is still some way off.  Q sent me this:

"I don't know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, 'Jesus Christ, now what?'" (Bukowski)

Abandon

Dusk comes and the world stands still.  All is metaphor, floating in the lushest air , untethered, unstable, free.  An anonymous post card through the mail slot. A phone call--"I love you"--from a married woman, half in jest.  It is like that now, sun falling behind the house, the horizon that you can see fading. . . .  Everything is still.  How many times, you wonder again.  There is no hurry.  Nothing is diminished.  You have all the time in the world.  What has changed?  What is different?

Even the cat sleeps elsewhere now.  A new morning rises like the last.

Every Day Struggle

I struggled to write yesterday.  I struggle this morning.  I'm afraid today's entry will sound like an incident report.  My life of balance and routine may not be working out.  I have the sniffles this morning.  Rhonda may be right.  My father used to tell a story about a man who had a goldfish.  He didn't care for it well, fed it too much, didn't change the water so that it was dirty and murky, but still the fish survived and finally it got too big for the little tank.  The man was impressed by the fish's tenacity, and he decided to get a bigger tank and to take better care of things.  You know the rest.  Within a few days of being introduced to the new environment with the filtration system and the crystal clear water, the fish was dead.  My father used this as a cautionary tale about changing your habits.  Good or bad.  Or his.

But that came from a barbaric generation who had no t.v., no internet, few phones, no Whole Food.  They lived like animals.  They ate white bread and bologna and liverwurst sandwiches and food from cans and worked fifty weeks a year.  They didn't take health supplements.  Sex was a dirty subject, so they told nasty jokes.  No wonder they smoked and drank.  They didn't think a long, healthy life was their birthright.  Perhaps not even desirable.

Summer is over they say.  Bob Dylan is a painter.  Frankencamera is no closer to being a reality.  I have no printer, and sunrise is gray with drizzle.  I move ever-closer to another day at the factory.

Like Riding a Bike

I decided one night to accept an offer to purchase Vanity Fair magazine again for only pennies a month.  What a deal.  Now they pile up like accusations, stacked neatly, unread.  So last night, after A.A. cocktails (cranberry, club soda, lime) and dinner (from the Whole Foods deli) and an episode of Mad Men, I allowed myself a nightcap of scotch and took the magazines to the bedroom.  If I maintain the habit of A.A. cocktails and a late nightcap, I'll probably become literary again.  Hell. . . who knows what might happen.

So I took the plastic wrappers off two of them and decided to flip through to see if anything caught my attention.  In the back of the latest edition is an article about the discovery of previously unknown Hemingway letters in Cuba at the Finca Vigia.

Earlier in the evening, I had gotten an email from Q who sent this quotation:

"If you're going to try, go all the way.  Otherwise, don't even start.  This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind.  It could mean not eating for three or four days.  It could mean freezing on a park bench.  It could mean jail.  It could mean derision.  It could mean mocker--isolation.  Isolation is the gift.  Al the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it.  And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds.  And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.  If you're going to try, go all the way.  There is no other feeling like that.  You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire.  You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.  It's the only good fight there is." _Bukowski, "Factotum"

To which I replied:

Remember what is engraved on his headstone?  

I forwarded the quote to C.C. who responded:

I know one thing about people with what Juvenal called: "the incurable disease of writing;" it does not necessarily lead to contentment.

"Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing, and it becomes chronic in their sick minds." 

I have been rereading the collected early letters of Hunter S. Thompson lately.  He had it.  The disease, that is.  And truly, it is pleasing.

I have been disappointed recently again (it is a lifelong disappointment) with attempts at corresponding with others.  It all begins fine, but too soon, they peter out and I end up writing to myself.  Maybe I always am.  And, of course, these are not even letters but simple emails.  The Prodigal Girl who told me she "does not give verbal" writes from time to time three or four lines of email.  This dwindles eventually to one line then a fragment.  I expect one day to receive a simple letter.  I mean one of the twenty-six in the alphabet.

"g"

The girl (woman. . . I know) with whom I had lunch on Sunday used to write me fairly regularly and substantially.  She, too, now writes infrequently.

Last night I received a promising email, but it comes from someone who begins well from time to time then falls off the planet not to be heard from for months or more, and then writes as if that were normal.  Which seems to be the culture.  I recently struck up a correspondence with someone exciting, but the wire went dead.  And a friend with whom I used to correspond and who wrote the longest missives of all has recently moved back to my own home town.  And now I hear nothing.

What is it?  Too many drugs?  Television?  Twitter?  Global exhaustion?

Of course, it could be me.  I imagine I go too far, say something unpalatable or worse, make writing more difficult if not distasteful.  Perhaps they've found other geniuses with whom to correspond, writing Proustian volumes rich and plentiful.

I have no wrap up to all of this other than to say that writing is good for you and like other things that are good for you are either to be avoided or done rabidly like Tantric sex or veganism.  But most people do neither.  Once in awhile they will get an urge to eat healthy foods, run, lose weight, go back to school, read more, etc.  But like a bad cold, this runs its course.

And really, it is probably the best thing.  I should think of writing like bicycle riding.  I like to ride once in awhile leisurely, but there are those closed societies of men and women who spend thousands of dollars getting lighter frames and precision gears and tight, gaudy spandex clothing, who talk about biking and buy the magazines.  And when I see them, I want to go elsewhere.  What is wrong with them, I wonder to myself.  They need to get a life.  They need to find some balance.

And with that. . . .

On the Dime

There are reasons for not buying better scotches or better wines.  Afterwards, you must either quit drinking or go broke.  The combination of days off and better whiskey was a bad one.  Not terrible, just bad.  With nothing to do, a three o'clock scotch is not out of the question.  I'm almost glad I am going back to work.  I'm feeling like Freddy Rumsen (1. . .2).

Now that I'm returning to the factory, though, I feel inspired to do all the things I didn't do this weekend.  Why do I have the creative urge now?  Why so enervated when time spilled out before me?

It is a matter of discipline.  I had it once, but time and circumstance. . . .  I won't bother to tell you what I had thought to do.  I won't bother you telling what. . . . .

It is cold and flu season here already.  People are sick.  One must be so careful these days.  It is a matter of proportions, surely.  There is a balance one must obtain.  A well-balanced life.

I don't know.  I'm beginning to feel like I'm living in a film produced by John Waters and directed by Ed Wood.  I was watching reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show trying to remember what normal is.  Was that it?  It, too, looked like a Wood/Waters production.  The Family YMCA seemed a tainted movie set.  I've got to calm down.

This week. . . we'll see.  I'm thinking "routine."  I'll write out a schedule, follow a plan.  Herbal teas and light meals and perhaps some yoga.  But everything on the dime.

Sports Update

SPORTS UPDATE:  The team in blue was playing the bad guys who wore orange.  Several players were severely injured.  The fans disagreed with the officials all game long, but especially toward the end. The game was in doubt until the final whistle.  By all accounts, it was really something.

But I missed it.  I worked on pictures all morning and then went to lunch with the woman who cancelled our dinner plans on Friday night.  It was awkward, of course, for we have not seen one another in years.  Lunch here, coffee there.  I took her by my studio where we looked at what passes sometimes for art.  And the day wore on until it was time to drop her off and say goodbye, for I was cooking dinner for my mother that night.  Somehow, everything was rushed.  Mother arrived and I poured her a Peroni.  Salad, then a good, hearty meal and a movie.  When she said goodbye, I knew I was too late for the liquor store, but I would try.  Whiskey gone on a Sunday night before Labor Day.  I would drive.  And of course, I was a minute too late.  But I knew a restaurant that carries good liquors.  Only a few customers remained when I walked in.  Nothing cheap at all on those shelves, I got a fifteen year Glenfiddich.  I spent twenty dollars more than I would have if mother had left a few minutes earlier.  C'est la vie, though, eh?  My phone made a buzzing sound.  A text.

"I had a good time this afternoon."

I had already written something ribald to her email address.  I texted back to check that.

Home again, I opened the scotch.  Yes, the fifteen year was better than the twelve year after all.

She had reminded me of something, of course.  Not mother.  The other.  The writer she was dating when I met her is now well known.  Everyone is someone here in my own hometown.  Especially when they leave.  I have not.

Man, I love this scotch tonight as I write.  It smoothes out all the sharp edges.  I have told some secrets recently.  What am I after?

I will read Bukowski and some Hunter S. Thompson.  Labor Day.  I am free of the factory.  Workers rejoice.  We have a day.  Ain't it grand!

What Else Is There?

After my near outing, I've gone back to voluntary seclusion.  I've had four models cancel on me within hours of the shoot this past week.  I am tired of such things.  It is accepted now that people will send some electronic message moments before they don't do what they have committed to doing. I am as tired of that as I am people who do not read.  Which means I'm tired of most people.

Even the cat has pissed me off.  Literally.  She peed on my backpack for some reason.  Maybe it is because I had to buy a different litter for her cat box.  I don't know.  Nor care just now. Out the door with her.  That is where she can stay.  So I am more secluded than ever.

To bed at ten, up at four-thirty.  I can't even manage eight hours of sleep.  I'll nap.  I'll catch up.

I think, though, that I'll quit writing about myself for awhile.  It is sounding too pathetic.  An ex once told me that I tell too much.  People will seize on it and take advantage.

And she was right.

Maybe I'll write about sports.  Everywhere I go, people have televisions with sporting events.  Sometimes the volume is up and I hear the inane prattling of grown men about. . . I don't know what it is about.  They talk very loudly and become overly animated.  They insult one another with sarcasm.  And this will be about some college kid who plays football as if he might be the next coming.  I look at these men and try to imagine being around them for any length of time.  But they have friends and wives and children and money and people take them very seriously or at least don't treat them as if they are in serious need.

But having written that, I realize that opining is still writing about one's self.  How to get away from it?

The Reluctant Monk's Tale

Those of you who are regular readers will already have predicted what I am about to report.  It is as if I wrote the first part merely to set up the second.  Perhaps writing this way is a determiner that sets my course toward some self-fulfilling prophecy.  Or, perhaps, I've stepped into the cosmic dung so deeply there is little hope of getting out.  Who knows, and little does it matter, I guess.  It is just a tale as all lives are, and the art is in the telling.

And so my fear today, then, lies in not being able to tell it well and artfully.  It is true that I have been bumbling some at that.  Last night, I tried to write an email to someone I don't know and couldn't form an artful phrase to save me.  I used to believe that if I wrote seriously and well enough, I might raise the dead, or dead love at the minimum.  That never worked of course.  I could never break through the echo chamber of one girl's thoughts.  Too bad for her.  She went on to hideous success as they all do.  I couldn't hold her back with my impotent incantations.

Friday morning I was a wreck having stayed up late after watching that sappy movie that, for a moment, reified all those maudlin notions of the great mid-brow masses.  A guitar and a bottle of whiskey are terrible things after midnight in an house empty but for the terrified cat.  I was like a demon avatar in the X rated version of Second Life.  I woke in the morning thinking I would have to stay up late that night.  I was going to dinner.  I must be entertaining and attractive.

After coffee and internet, I looked at the pile of bills lying on the floor beneath the mail slot.  I had not touched them for over a month.  The pile was big and the cat had taken to pissing on it I found when I went over to shovel up the first armful.  I had to clean up, for the maids were coming in a while.

The mail was of two types, junk and envelopes with glassine windows.  I sorted it into two damp piles and threw the advertisements away.  It was still a big pile.  With shaky hands, I began ripping open the other.  It really had been awhile since I had paid my bills.  This was awful.

Just then the phone rang.  It was the girl with whom I had the dinner date.  Hello.  Hello.  

"It doesn't look like I'll be in town tonight," she said.  "The thing is, we only have a car when Drew's mother is at work, and I don't know the schedule."

She told me this in an oh-so sensual voice.  But suddenly she was yelling to another room.

"Drew.  DREW!!!  WHEN IS YOUR MOTHER GOING TO WORK.  DREW!!!!  WHEN. . . IS. . . YOUR. . . MOTHER. . . GOING. . . TO. . . WORK!"

It reminded me of something I didn't want to think about.  At least I wouldn't have to stay up that night I told myself with relief.

After work, I came home to take a run.  Two storms were brewing elsewhere, and they had drawn all the moist, hot air out to sea.  The afternoon felt like a sweet autumn day.  The sky was clear, the air dry, the light indescribable.

Later, on the veranda eating sushi alone, I could only chuckle.  It is better this way, I thought.  The other would have been a disaster.  They must have hopped a freight train to come to town.  Jesus Christ.

And so, my friends, I've remained chaste and pure, still ready if someone needs an emergency monk.

Just now the sun is rising, the sky a bright and brilliant red.  Sailor take warning.  I have three days before me without the need to put on long pants or shoes or do anything I don't want to do.  I have stacks of pictures to scan and work on and a couple models who can cancel at the last minute if they want.  I don't care so much.  I have a pile of unread books, a Netflix account, a pesky cat, a big couch, and a soon-to-be well-stocked pantry.  I will buy exotic foods today and at least three bunches of flowers.  I will attack the clutter and throw away many things today.  And I will finish paying the bills.  After that, I will be broke and want to contemplate the beauty of a simple life.

And that should take me through sunset.