Abandoned

Originally Posted Friday, November 8, 2013

I went for sushi alone last night after the gym.  I haven't been there for a long while and not much at all this year.  Things have changed.  I still knew some of the staff, but not all of them, and of the ones I knew longest and best, only one remains.  The name has changed and the veranda has been redone.  It is all pretty much the same, but not the same.  And for a Thursday night, it was remarkably empty.  I sat in the darkness alone at a table looking out at the sidewalk that used to be busy but was now hollow and empty.  The night seemed sad and lonely. . . abandoned. 

I used to go and sit and write in a little black Moleskine notebook, observe people and make up stories and write furiously over dinner.  I don't carry that notebook any more.  When did that happen?  I can't remember.  I always had two cameras, too, a little Olympus XA film camera that is the size of a pack of cigarettes, and an even smaller Leica digital, the D-lux.  Where did they go? 

I am a different person than I was a year ago, I realized.  Much different.  The realization was sad.  I miss that other fellow.  He was so melancholy and sage and sexy good fun.  He used to leave the house and make observations.  It was a vocation, and it was good and true. 

I will find the Moleskine and the cameras.  They will go back into the bag that I will carry.  Perhaps I'll look for a new bag this weekend.  That might get me started.  Something fresh.  After that, I'll try talking to people again.  Or listening and watching.  It is the cat, of course, that is to blame.  She guilts me for not being home, just as she guilts me now, biting and licking my feet in frustration because I am paying no attention to her.  She keeps me home.  I don't even travel any more.  Yes. . . it is the cat. 

But I can't blame her.  She is a crutch that I lean my excuses on.  The holiday season is upon me.  I should have more time (though it seems to me somehow to be less) now that I am not scheduling models into the studio.  There are only about six short weeks of holiday stuff left, six weekends, really, which become in essence twelve days or fewer.  And, of course, there is sleeping.  Cut those hours in half and we come up with six.  Jesus Christ, less than a week before it is all over.  I'd best get busy. 

At the least I should make a new picture.