Howdy Pardoner

Today is my last day at the factory.  I'll bet that you are glad, tired of hearing about it.  Have I told you I'm very weepy?  Really?  Huh.  I felt as though I had been fairly stoic.

Did I mention Ili?  Really?  Did I tell you she cancelled me?  I couldn't have since she only did it yesterday.  She made a final text and then blocked me.  Sure, you can wonder what I did to deserve it.  That's what people do.

Today is onerous, though. I will wait until everyone has gone before I write my final emails.  Then I will take the large framed prints off the walls (two 36" prints from my Lonesomeville days) and leave for the last time.   People will think about me when I am gone, at first, then less often, then one day they will realize that they haven't thought of me for a very long time.

And so will I.  But today. . . .

Saturday, actually, I am going to a party at my replacement's house, and Sunday, I am invited to a Super Bowl party to which I won't go because I always have dinner with my mother.  Super Bowl Monday, I will not be returning to work, and my new life will begin.

At least I can avoid people and their viruses.  Wait!  I'm supposed to go to a barbecue on Saturday with some Chinese guests who arrived just two days ago.  How do I get out of that?

My house is a mess and has been since Ili left and I began bringing stuff home from my office.  I will have to deal with that this weekend.  I am not so very good anymore, though, at doing things alone.  I am going to have to develop some of my old habits from the years of not having a girlfriend.

Wait!  No.  Those were the years when I let things get dilapidated and fall apart.

Soon, I think, all the sadness will fall away, and I'll realize I don't have to work.  I know that people at work are envious.  I haven't met anyone at the factory who didn't wish to quit working.  Maybe I will buy a fishing pole this weekend.  And CC has invited me to go out and throw rocks at cars.

Yea, this could be the start of something big.

I photographed these images from the t.v screen when Nixon resigned.  Like Nixon, Trump knows he will never go to jail for his crimes.  He, too, has a pardoner.

An Ending

I'm all kinds of hungover this morning.  After I got home last night, I fell asleep in my chair with a glass of red wine in my hand.  You know how that turned out.  Shirt, pants, and chair.  Red wine for fuck's sake.  Why?  I know better than that.

I guess I was drunk when I got home.  I don't get drunk, so it is a little surprising.  But the afternoon went into the night, and the whole thing was super emotional.

The "thing" was my "surprise" retirement party.  I did not want it.  I said I wouldn't go.  They planned it, anyway.  It would be another disappointment, I said, another paltry affair.  But it was not for me, I kept being told.  It was for those who wanted to do it.

So I went.

They knew I didn't want stale cookies and punch, so they held the event at a local bar.  When I got there, they had plastered the walls with pictures of me from my forty-four year career.  There were more scattered about on every table.  People I used to work with who had retired were there.  My former secretary brought her daughter and her family.  Other people brought their children who were no longer small.  The crowd was large and I had to pass through them trying to express what I felt.  It was all very difficult for me for a variety of reasons that I am too hung over to explain.  

After awhile, my boss got up to read a tribute he had written, but he was moved to tears many, many times.  Then my secretary began to wail, and then the general waterworks began.  And, of course, I broke down, too.

Afterwards, when I thought everyone had done their duty and would leave. . . they didn't.

I won't try to relate the truly moving words that people spoke to me in private.  I am trying to report without self-aggrandizing which is difficult enough for me in mundane tales, so imagine my self-restraint now.

There was more drinking, and the party went on for five hours.

I sit in a room littered with gifts and cards and letters this morning in a chair with a red wine stain.  My head hurts.  I am almost through the pot of coffee.

After two days, the feral cat has shown up.  WTF?

I have two more days at the factory.  They will be short and go quickly.  I need to write one final email to say farewell.  The task is daunting.

My life is falling apart in about a hundred ways right now, but what does one do?  Most of my inspiration these days comes from Samuel Beckett, if that tells you anything.

"I can't go on like this."
"That's what you think."

"Did I ever leave you?"
"You let me go."

“Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little.”

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” 

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” 

Falling or Flying

I wrote a long, desultory post last night that I planned on posting today.  But I have changed my mind.  Much has changed since then.  I was weepy all day yesterday.  I would break down in convulsive sobs at little memories.  Then I drank too much and fell asleep on the couch.  When I woke up, I took a Xanax and went to bed.

This morning, I woke to several texts that startled me.  One was from Ili.  It was a jumbled thing that I couldn't quite grasp the purpose of sent late last night.  I have written often in my mind to her, but prudence prevailed, and I never wrote one actually.  I am not really the sort.  But I felt that I should respond to hers.  We have not spoken in over a month, not since the day she left.  My first response was to parse her text and correct all the faulty assumptions she put forth, but I deleted that one and wrote another that spoke only to my feelings in the gentlest and most conciliatory way.  When I finished, I thought it was well done.  I hit the return button and away it went.

Holy smokes.  The torrent I got in return was shocking.  No, really.  I was floored.  Let me say gently that my sentiments were not returned in kind.

Yesterday, I checked my work schedule, and I found that there is a meeting of administrators late in the afternoon--off campus at a bar close to the factory.  No, no. . . we never do this.  Of course, my worst fears were being confirmed.  Then this morning, my secretary wrote to tell me she wouldn't be in until after lunch.  Later, one of the people I supervise wrote asking me if I were going to wear my party dress.  Fuck, fuck, fuck!  I have told everyone I DO NOT WANT a farewell party.  There are many reasons for this, mostly selfish.  They are usually paltry things where you have to shake hands and talk to people to whom you are vaguely connected, and you obsess over who did not show up.  I do not like obligatory celebrations of any kind.

And. . . I know I will sob like a baby which I DO NOT want to do.  You see, they think I'm a cool, dangerous fellow.  But I'm afraid I won't be able to control myself.

HOWEVER, Ili's torrent this morning may help staunch all that.  Maybe she will have hardened my heart a bit.

I keep thinking about Henry the yardman, though.  He had never shown up again, and it makes me very sad.

And the cat has disappeared.  She didn't come for breakfast yesterday or for dinner last night.  She didn't show up this morning.  She has either been eaten by a coyote or she has been caught in a trap.

There is just too much loss.

I tried hard to pull myself out of my funk yesterday.  I took my camera out, went to the big city downtown, looked around.  Man, the streets were dead.  Everywhere.  Everything looked ugly to me anyway like things looked in the 1970s.  We are living in bad times that may be getting worse.  Trump's unnatural color and the way he wears his bangs are surely only to mask the Mark of the Beast.  These have to be End Times.

But I stray.  The photograph I post today was the best of the lot.  Pathetic.  I am pathetic.

I have three more days at the factory, then they pull the plug, and my days will be filled with some horrible existential void.  I feel like I'm stepping into an empty elevator shaft.  I can only hope that, as the song goes, falling might feel like flying.

For a little while.

Some Kind of Mania

You'll have to look closely at this one to see that it was Smith's Store with a cool Coca Cola sign above.  What a world we've lost.

But I'm feeling like things might get better.  I did what I intended to do today, all of it.  First, I got up at five.  I can't help it.  I even took a sleeping pill when I went to bed, but bad thoughts drive me up, out of the darkness and into the arms of comforting coffee and the little Xenon light of the computer screen.  Later, when the sun came up, I did a little more straightening up before I got dressed and headed for the gym.  When I came home, I drank some Emergen-C and collagen water, took Resveratrol and herbs and enzymes and turmeric (that isn't an herb, right?), and called AARP to get my supplemental insurance set up, all the while scanning old negatives (efficient).  Showered and dressed and made a salmon salad that I ate on the deck with a glass of wine.  THEN, I did the harder thing.  I went to Charles Schwab to set up an account for my retirement payout which is a good chunk of change.  I wore my hippie jeans worn through on each thigh and at the corners of my back pockets where my bare ass might be seen, flip flops, and a wrinkled seersucker linen shirt.  Fuck yea, baby, I looked like Hollywood, hip, confident, and full o' money.

O.K.  I'm way overstating it, but you see, I've never had any money in my life.  I've always been two months away from the poorhouse, and though I've been making a decent living these past years, I've spent it like a drunken sailor, as the cliche goes, or, perhaps, like a drunken hippie who never felt he had enough money to save.  I should have.  Saved money, that is.  But who thinks they will ever get old?

The receptionist smiled at me when I walked into the lobby like she knew I was Hollywood, like she knew I hung out with Brad Pitt and had a mansion in Malibu.  Or, maybe. . . just maybe. . . the way they paid her to smile at people coming through the door.  But people who look like me don't just come in off the street, not into this fancy brass and glass place with its hugely high ceilings and marble floors.

Maybe not marble.

When I told her I needed to see a broker, she smiled and said, well, technically we don't have brokers.  They are consultants, she said, smiling.

Okey dokey.

In about five minutes, a woman who was not a broker came out, smiled that same dental smile, shook my hand, and took me into her office like I was money.  And when we were seated and she had asked me, "How can I help you," I explained to her my situation which was that I didn't know shit about money but was getting some, and I needed someone to help me.  I handed her some paperwork that explained things.

She took out a pen and a notebook and started asking me questions to which I didn't know the answers.  "I'm an economic feeb," I said.  "F-E-E-B, as in feeble.  Maybe its feab, I don't really know."

"That's o.k.  We'll figure this out.  Now how much money do you think you will need a month to get by?"

"I don't know.  I mean I can drink cheaper wines.  I guess I'll have to.  And maybe Chevis Regal instead of good scotch.  I can cut out some of my subscriptions, try to cut back.  I don't know."

We went through all my various accounts about which I knew little.

"How much debt do you have?"

"Well. . . I am going to pay off my house.  After that, I don't think I have any."

"Car payment?"

"No."

"Credit card debt?"

"None."

"Well."

"Jesus, you know more about me in a few minutes than any girl I have ever dated has."

We went through my pension and social security earnings, then she started to explain the different investment options.  I stopped her.

"When you talk like that, I'm like a dog that only hears his name.  Blah blah blah Fido.  Blah blah blah Fido."  I think I amused her.

"We don't need to go through everything today," she said, and then she set up an account for me and said I could call her when I wanted to talk again.

For free.  No fees.  You see, she was not a broker.  She was a consultant.

I learned more about finances today than I have learned in a lifetime.

As she walked me out of her office, she told me to come back anytime.

"Oh," I said, "I'll be here every day drinking the free coffee and hanging around the lobby.  That's what retired people do, right?"

I imagined her watching my bare ass as I sauntered through the door and into what had suddenly become a perfectly beautiful day.

*.  *.  *.  

Later.  I cooked a fabulously skanky dinner and ate it with relish.  I called my mother to tell her so.  And then, . . what?  For some reason, I can no longer watch television.  I wrote some messages with friends and then read.  I've been reading much lately.  I re-re-read Hemingway's short stories.  Tonight I re-read Jim Harrison's "The Man Who Gave Up His Name."  It is fairly fabulous.  And then I put on some music, too drunk to do much else.  And for the first time in months, I began to dance.  I dance silly, a combination of Laura Petri from "The Dick Van Dyke Show," and women in dance shows from the 1950s, those tight little semi-erotic without being obvious moves.  But I can't dance like I used to before the accident, and maybe I haven't danced since, maybe only once, and Ili always loved watching me move that way, or so she said, and suddenly, I just began to cry.  Not little sobs, but giant, convulsive weeping.  It only lasted a short while, and then I read some more.  But around nine, a time I might often go to bed, I was restless and decided to take a walk.  There is not much happening on a Monday night.  There is quiet and a little bit of light coming from the houses.  My neighbor was watching television.  Around the corner, a woman sat hunched at her dining room table.  The lake was quiet as were the streets.  I kept walking.  I saw the CEO of everything edible walking through his Italian-style house, his shirt neatly tucked into his belted jeans, and I wondered if he might sleep that way as well.  Further, I turned up a street away from the lake and walked by the house where my friends, the twin,' live.  They were sitting at the dining room table.  They alway eat late, and the one who does the cooking is a bit of a gourmand.  I could smell their meal from the sidewalk.   Then I turned homeward thinking that something was changing in me, that I wanted to be out, not anywhere especially, but out looking in.  I thought of throwing a sleeping bag and a cooler into the Xterra and going someplace, of sleeping in the car, of making coffee in the morning on a one burner stove and washing with the water that I carried with me, of writing in the morning, of walking and looking at something new.  

Now I am back in the house, but I am not sleepy, not ready for bed.  I think I am ready for something.  

But man. . . I really can't dance.

*.  *.  *.  

I did not go to bed until after midnight, and I slept terribly.  Still, I woke at six.  I feel like shit.  Whatever mania gripped me last night is gone.

Today is my father's birthday.  He would have been one hundred.  

The Past Is My Future

This is what my future looks like, I think.  It is how I feel today, anyway.  I shot this in 1974 somewhere between Gainesville and Cedar Key.  The fellow was sitting on his porch smoking his pipe.

I can't remember if we spoke or if I just got out of my car and started taking pictures.  That, however, would be difficult to imagine.  God only knows, though.  Young boys are rash.

You can't help but wonder about his life.

I love the details now, the worn, dirty shirt, the clothes hanging on a wire in the humid air never to completely dry (though an iron will finish the job), the worn and torn chair he sits in and the rocking chair with the sweat stain where a back would rest.  This was the world that surrounded the university.

It is mid-afternoon on Sunday.  I woke at four-thirty and got up at five.  I made coffee, etc.  But I haven't left the house.  I haven't talked to anyone for days.  Something is wrong, of course.  For two days, I've been going through my photographs, sorting, scanning, discarding.  I've thrown away old prints and negatives I no longer care for.  I am drowning in photographs, negatives, images.  And books.  I've been throwing those away, too.  I feel I have to get out from under things, get organized, get. . . I don't know. . . lighter.

But I don't seem to be making progress.  This is going to take months.  I want to rent a storage unit and just shove it all in there.  I'll pay a couple years rent and give someone the key, and in a few years when I'm gone. . . .

It can all go in the trash.

Going through it all, I am experiencing nostalgia porn.  I don't mean that in any good way.

I have to get out from under this mountain of past, however, to move into the future.

Of course, there is the other thing that is slowing me down.  Two other things.

I'm sure that cleaning up my past is my way of just not dealing with the present.  Nostalgia porn distraction.  I've been bothering my friends with it shamelessly.  I've gotten some texts wondering what the hell I'm doing.  Well, it was like someone who sat in the house doing drugs for days alone.  You lose your perspective a bit.  Or more.

*.  *.  *.  

Woke before five once again.  Stayed in bed until that magic hour, though.  I went to my mother's house for dinner last night.  She's worried about me, wants to take care of me, and she also wants some company.  I turned her television off "Branded" and onto the news, but that was useless, for all stations went on endlessly about Kobe Bryant.  What a great man said an seemingly endless stream of NBA players and broadcasters.

"He was a rapist," I said.  "He paid a woman a kajillion dollars to drop the case."

I'm glad I didn't write that.  Here's what happened to a reporter who did.



Washington Post journalist is suspended after tweeting a link to a 2016 story about Kobe Bryant's rape case just hours after he died in helicopter crash

•Felicia Sonmez is a national political reporter for The Washington Post

•She was suspended by the newspaper on Sunday after controversial tweet

•Sonmez was roasted for a post hours after Kobe Bryant died in helicopter crash

•She tweeted link to a 2016 story about the 2003 rape allegations against Bryant

•Twitter users blasted Sonmez for the timing of the post, which she then deleted

•Sonmez replied that 10,000 people sent her 'abuse and death threats'

•In 2003, a 19-year-old woman alleged that Bryant raped her in Colorado hotel

•The charges were dropped and the two sides settled a civil lawsuit

Again. . . why am I so cynical?  I have to stop it.  It has cost me too much, I'm certain.  

I think I'll put up another post after this one, a happier one that will make people feel good.  Yup.  That's what I'll do.  

The Fire

Back to Edie.  That was not her name, but as I've said, I can't remember it.  It will come to me someday.  I hope.  She was unlike anything I'd ever been around.  I was a beast just coming from the wilderness.  I guess I had unreasonable confidence, or, perhaps, cockiness would be a better word, for I believed" my people" could crush "her people" just the way I'd always thought our dads could beat up their's.

But I was hideous.

Edie was into fashion, and she asked me to come take some pictures of her.  She had her own ideas.  These were not mine.  She set up lights and told me what to do.  Most of the pictures were too high key for me, but I was just happy to be hanging around with her.  About half the time I was there, she was talking on the phone.  She talked like an adult, like one of those movie martini moms.  That is the closest I had gotten to anything like that, anyway.

She had her own apartment.  I should mention that.  She did not live in a dorm.  She did not share a place.  She had her own apartment.  And a nice car.  A Saab, if I remember correctly.  I was trying to be a hippie.  She was already Boho chic.

As with everyone,  I wonder how her life turned out.

Today was one of those beautiful, crystal clear, blue sky, diamond-lighted days for which this place is famous.

I stayed inside.  Yup.  I sat at the computer and scanned all day.  I thought to myself, "It is a beautiful day.  You should go out.  You should even take pictures."

But I didn't have it in me.  I dawdled.  I didn't eat.  I didn't drink.  I just sat at my desk looking through old proof sheets and negatives, and I scanned.

Now I have eaten a dinner of shite and have drunk some wine, and I have moved on to "the whiskey."

I will watch some television, perhaps, or I will read a book, and I will probably go to an early bed.  And as has been my practice recently, I will wake in the dark and get out of bed at five.  So I predict.

I need a muse more than anything now.  I need someone to make me want to do something.  I need an Edie or any of the others, someone to make me aspire.  Oh Sweet Jesus, send me some inspiration.  I want to feel that fire one more time.

*.    *.    *.    *.   *

I was right.  Early to bed, up at five.  I need to be more mindful, I think.  I need to meditate, to recalibrate and recenter.  I need to get my mind right.  Isn't that what Boss said in "Cool Hand Luke"?  I've been up for over an hour, read the news, texted everyone I know, waiting for the light.  Nobody has responded, of course.  They are comfortable in their beds on a cold Sunday morning.  They will get up to breakfasts and mimosas with girlfriends and boyfriends, husbands and wives.  They will put on gentle music and wonder how best to spend their day.

They are not like us.  They are normal and comfortable.  They've already gotten their minds right.

A Bad Day, A Worse Night

I am utterly destroyed tonight.  Utterly.  I went to work today to finish up unfinished business.  I needed to correct some payroll issues so that people could get paid, write some employee evaluations, see HR about what I must do on my way out the door, go to accounting and turn in my company corporate credit cards, and then, all alone in the building in the late afternoon, continue throwing away everything in my office.  I just can't deal any more.

My boss was gone before I got there, and I ate lunch with his secretary, my secretary, and my replacement.  I could barely function.  After lunch, my boss's secretary left, then my replacement.  By mid-afternoon, I told my secretary to go, too.  We can't look at one another right now without tearing up.

And that is what I did as I walked down corridors, between offices, knowing I have one official week remaining.

Fuck. . . I am sad.

When I left in the late afternoon, I teared up again.  And driving home.  Twice.

When I got home, the cat was there to greet me.  She is getting more friendly all the time.  Her boyfriend is the domestic cat next door.  He comes to look in the bottom panes of my kitchen door, and she has begun to copy him.  Now she is jealous and doesn't like him to come to the door.  She bullies him away and then looks in.  I have begun to feed them both.  I can't not.

After work, I thought about stopping into a once favorite bar to have a drink, but sitting alone at a bar on a Friday seemed pathetic, so I ditched the idea and came straight home.  Sitting on the deck with the two cats and a scotch, I was feeling lonely and thinking sad thoughts about both the past and the future.  I didn't want to cook.  I am tired to death of cooking for one.  I decided to go out for sushi.

It was depressing sitting at the counter eating alone.  Nobody else was alone.  It has never bothered me in my life to be out alone, but just now it does.  It pisses me off, but it is true.  It does.

I had forgotten to take my phone, and when I got home, I had a text from a woman I work with.  She is not in my department, but we have become good friends.  She is a kid, as they say, or was when she started working there, and we became close.  Over the years, she has married and had a baby, but she is really still a kid.

Her text set me off.  She said that she was sitting in her office thinking that I only had one more week left at the factory, and she was crying. Yeah, I wailed like a baby at that.  I really have a big soft heart when it comes to me.  Sarcasm.  I know what I'm saying.

Later, she texted me again.  She was having drinks with a girlfriend.  She asked me if I remembered a girl by name.  Oh, did I!  She was a girl who used to come and sit in my office in the mornings before. . . oh, shit. . . I need to reveal something to tell this story, and I don't know how to get around it.  Oh, fuck. . . I can't do the reveal just yet.  Can this story keep its impact?  Shit, shit, shit.  This girl was very special to me.  She was beautiful, so beautiful she needn't be anything else.  But she could be.  And my job, as I saw it, was to inspire her to be so.  And it was working.  She would come into my office in sweat pants, her dirty blonde hair pulled up in a sloppy bun, and she would drink her coffee and tell me about what she had done or what she thought about doing in the subdued light by the slim office window.  And she would ask me succinct questions about the things she was reading, insightful, really, and it was hard to believe that someone so beautiful would put the effort into that.  I had a beautiful girlfriend at the time with whom I was terribly in love, so there was a Damocles Sword between us, but there was something else, too.  She was in every way spectacular.

One day, I was sitting in my office when the phone rang.  That's the way they say it in the old detective novels.  It was "the girl."

"Hi," I said eagerly.  "What are you doing?"

"Oh, I'm just lying in bed while my brother gives me a bath."

I was startled.

"What?"

"I have a halo on."

"What?"

She had been in a car wreck and her neck was broken.  She was all kinds of messed up.  My heart stopped, then started and fell.  I said the things I felt and the things I needed to say, but you know how that goes.  When we hung up the phone, I was wrecked myself.

In the following days, I began to get letters from her.  Many.  And when she got better, she came back to town and rented a place on the same street where I lived.  I would stop in and see her.  She was frail, not as she was before.  And she wasn't going to school.  She was a bartender now, and she was dating a guy I knew from playing in a band.  He was a musician and a druggy, and now she was, too.

Since I was living with my girlfriend, I couldn't stop in as much as maybe I could have or should have.

And then she was gone.

Cleaning out my office these past weeks, I came upon her letters.  I'd kept them all this time--more than thirty years.  It was still a thrill to hold them in my hand.

Of course, they came home with me and are in my desk drawer at home now.

So tonight, when my friend mentioned her name, I was happy.  I was very special to her, my friend's friend confided.  She talked to her about me all the time.

My friend texted me a picture of her from her work website.  It is not the same girl I remember, of course, but she is doing well.  After she cleaned up from her rough spell, she graduated from a good college and everything began to click.  She never married, I was told, and lives in Santa Barbara.  Her friend reports that her life is fabulous.

Well.  What can I say.  "Tell her I am a cripple and retired and a recluse.  That should make her chuckle."

The excitement of that is over now, and I have had too much to drink and my head is beginning to throb.  I'll probably be tearing up again in a bit.  And here I live in a state without marijuana dispensaries.  WTF?

Oh. . . the picture.  That is my "it" girl from 1975, my Edie Sedgwick.  I was going to write a post about her, and started to, but the text came in while I was writing and my attention shifted immediately.  I will write about her tomorrow, I think.  I have other photographs.  They can wait until then.

*.  *.  *.  *.  *

Update: my traveler/art collector friend said he knew a girl by that name.  She used to date one of his friends, someone I know, too, a very good artist.  She used to be around his studio and at the art openings all the time.  I texted back and asked my friend if it was the same girl.  It was.  Holy shit, what strange small circles.

For unknown reasons, I felt smaller.

Sarcastically, my buddy texted, "She probably thinks about you all the time."

My dead ex-friend, Marlon told me once, "The trouble with you is that you want a woman to think about you all the time.  Fuck, you are lucky if she is thinking about you when she's with you."

We know that's true.  It's good to have friends to keep you grounded.

Zip Code

This photo is the result of my one day tour out of my zip code in search of something old or exotic.  No good?  I know.  It is much too literal.  There must be a way to make it more interesting, but I haven't found one, yet.  I have some ideas, but for now. . . .

I could go with this from years ago.  $29 nice clean rooms and a Wendy's next door.

Or there's De Anza motor lodge from the same stretch of highway.

I give up.  Better to look at this.

I sent this to several of my buddies this morning.  Q told me not to watch it any longer.   He said he loved her.  But she is my type, the kind to whom I've been attracted all my life, women from wealthy families who are much more sophisticated than I.  I don't want someone like me.  Nope.

I told Q that she surely was not alone, and his reply was classic. "Do you think young women like that have ever been alone?"

Not for a second.

What she needs is a good dose of cynicism, I said.  Yes, he said, that will set her straight.  How has that worked out so far?

I haven't bothered to look up the price of that rig.  She was sleeping in her Xterra before this.  I have an Xterra.  That is the video I need to watch.

I'm trying to write this in the hipster coffee shop that I said I'd never come to again.  It is impossible. CC keeps texting me bogus information about Medicare.  The two of us talking about anything practical is like a fucking Abbot and Costello skit.  It's like Vladimir asking Estragon which way to go.  It is hopeless.

I'm leaving this place.  I'll go home and scan more photos from the '70s.

The Cosmic Scheme

I didn't go away to college right after high school.  Hell, there was no expectation that I would go to college at all.  That was nowhere in the family tree.  So when I stumbled into enrolling in the local community college, it was an unanticipated novelty in my family.

"Well," my father said, "No one can take that away from you."  He was correct, of course.  Nobody wanted to.

After two years of going to college in my own hometown, however, I matriculated to the largest and most prestigious state college. . . well, in the state.  Nothing in my life to that point had prepared me for what would happen next.

It was intimidating to be in a town whose population was dominated by people my own age.  Everywhere I looked, there were kids cooler and more educated than I.  I had never been a cool kid, and though I was smart, I'd missed 180 days of high school and had never been introduced to any of the finer ideas in life.  My high school was meant for miscreants and dolts, sons and daughters of cracker and hillbilly families, or partial families, semi-employed or working manual labor.  Education was not a priority, at least for the majority of us.  Management was.  They just tried to keep us from committing major crimes.

My friends were all high school dropouts and thugs.  A college town was not their kind of place.

When I got there, however, I went in balls deep, as they say.  It was lovely in every way.  The skies were bluer and the air more temperate, and everywhere you went something magical was occurring.  It was a mythical town in the middle of the cracker south.  Anything could happen.

Blah blah blah.  Skip ahead, skip ahead.

Somehow I was invited to a party thrown by a lesbian couple who lived on a farm outside of town.  At the time, I was in a photography class and had decided to be THE ONE who learned to work a large format viewfinder camera.  A 4x5, to be exact.  Well, not exact because I don't remember the brand of the camera or the lens.  But I was enamored with the Daybooks of Edward Weston, and  I wanted to be like him.  I was supposed to bring my camera to the party.  I took the 4x5.  When I think back, I wish I'd taken my 35mm, too.

I remember being a little freaked out by everything when I arrived.  I was, perhaps, taken by surprise.  Many people were naked, and many people were openly gay.  There were no gay people where I came from, only "queers" who had to hide their "pervertedness" one way or another.  I had never encountered happy homosexuals.  But people were happy.  There was beer and marijuana and some LSD, too.  We had all that where I came from, but not so much in the daylight.  Everything was in the daylight here, though.  I had entered a different world.

The lesbian couple wanted me to photograph them in their hay barn.  They were drunk and fucked up, but they were cool, happy, and fun.  I wanted make pictures that would please them.  I guess I desired their approbation.

I didn't do a very good job.  I am surprised, looking back at these negatives, that I was able to get images at all.  I still have a difficult time with large format equipment, but most of the exposures I made back then were right on.

Back then was 1975, but you know that by the grooming.

By late afternoon, people were really fucked up, and since I was neither drinking nor smoking, I was ready to leave.  I'm sure the party went on all night.

As you can see, I was no Edward Weston, but I am impressed that I even tried to be.  There is a kind of jolly elegance and innocence in the lesbian couple, and though I don't imagine that they spent a life together, perhaps they did.  Those were turbulent times, but maybe somehow they made it through together.  We can only hope.

Have you ever seen the movie, "Fritz the Cat"?  When it came out, I saw it and went, "Yes, that is it!  That has been my experience here."

These women were older than I at the time, so they would be close to seventy or more now.  I wonder how their lives played out?  I wonder if they remained happy, together or individually?  I'm sure that day had a significant effect on my psyche.  That day, I encountered people who were wiser and more experienced than I.  I was there.  I produced.  I felt I was something in the cosmic scheme of things.

I doubt, though, that they have ever wondered what happened to me.  I mean. . . you know. . . in the "cosmic scheme of things."

The Bachelor Life

I can't sleep any more.  I was sleeping fine, then suddenly, I wasn't.  I am not sure I really sleep at all. It feels more like thinking thoughts that I don't control.  The dreams, things I never used to remember, are becoming more disturbing.  Why, for instance, was I dreaming of Michael Jackson last night.  I woke with a sore throat at 12:30, got up and took some Umka.  Then at 3:30, I got up and drank more water.  At 4:30, I took two Tylenol and more water.  I got up at 5:00.  Each time, I remembered what I was thinking/dreaming.  Much of it is about the future.  My future, to be more precise, or to hone in more, what little future I may have.

Maybe I should get a night job.

When I got up, the house was cold and dry.  It is near freezing outside, and my old wooden house leaks like a sieve.  The heater has been running since I got up and turned up the heat, but the house is not warming.  These old cracker bungalows were not built for the cold.

Yesterday I did some shopping for things I need.  I washed the shower curtain liner.  A man came and cleaned the drier vents in both the house and the apartment.  It is different doing chores alone and doing chores as a couple.  I don't know.  I felt an accomplishment somehow.  I made a list and everything.  Went to several stores.  Even bought an accoutrement the I've needed.

And to top it off, I got more of my welfare taken care of.  Next thing you know, I'll be filing my taxes on time.

But there is still much to do.

One chore that is more difficult now is preparing meals.  Cooking for one is a drag.  There is something satisfying about consensual cooking and cleaning.  Drinking wine while making preparations.  Sitting down together and moaning with culinary pleasure.  Making quicker work of a messy kitchen.  Pouring the after dinner drinks.

Last night, I ate the leftovers from the Sunday dinner I made for my mother for a second time.  Three meals of rice and beans in three days.  I am throwing the rest away.  I can't face it again.

Q sent me a link to Paris Hilton's YouTube cooking show.  I watched it last night.  There is something wrong with her neck.  When she talks, her head tilts always to the right.  Watch it and see.  It will drive you crazy.  It is important, people, to keep a straight neck if you want to be taken seriously.  Imagine Obama doing something like that.

Afterwards, I watched a promo for her upcoming YouTube for pay documentary.  It is about the trials and tribulations of Paris.  People don't know what she has been through, but they will.  She is not that character she plays on t.v., she contends.  She is a serious and successful person.

Well, who can argue with that?

Afterwards, I watched a few of her sex tapes.  It didn't look like she was being serious.

Later, I watched the first episode of the new season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm."  It was Larry David's take on the #MeToo movement.  Let me know if you were entertained or got pissed off.  There seems to be no middle ground any longer.

I watched the Impeachment for a bit.  They were saying the same things they've said on all the opinion news shows.  Without witnesses, this should only take about an hour, but they will stretch it out to get some airtime.

I turned it off and read.

And that is the exciting life of a new old bachelor.  All I've left out is my interaction with the cat.  Poor thing.  But she is fat enough to withstand this cold spell.  A fat, feral cat with a domestic cat for a boyfriend.  Things are just weird.  I'm not making that up.

Not Quite an Adventure

I've really done it.  I've killed the blog.  There are about ten of us coming here now, down from what used to be. . . well, a thousand a month.  There are no holidays to blame, no special events.  I've just whined my way into obscurity.  To think that I can just write or photograph my way out of it is just ludicrous.  Unless I want to do "marginal things." As Beckett so famously said, however, "I can't go on.  I'll go on."  He was a genius, that fellow.  He wrote hideous works, but there was hardly a time when he didn't nail it.

I realize I am on RPT now.  Oh. . . Retired People Time.  The days are long, but I don't do very much.  I do something, but not much.  This morning was cold, so I did not go out.  I worked on the computer most of the morning.  On old photographs.  I'm trying to learn new post-production styles, learning to use new tools.  But the day drew on, and it warmed, and I went to the gym.  Then a shower.  Then a lunch.  And wine.  And then the lethargy that I know could become permanent, so I decided to take my cameras on a tour.

It was highly unsuccessful.  I should say it was unsuccessful in terms of production.  In other ways, though. . . it was a lesson learned.  I didn't want to go.  I should follow my instincts.  There is no end to traffic halts in this town.  No, not town.  In this and the surrounding counties.  It is insane to try to go anywhere unless you have a lot of good music and a flask.  I couldn't wait to get home to have a drink.

Which is exactly what I did.  And am still.

I don't know why I chose to post the first photo, and I am less certain about this one.  It is just that I have been working on photographs that I haven't really looked at for a long time, and I now have a ton of them.  There was no time in the last five years to do any photography.  Now, perhaps, I will begin to progress again.  Maybe.  Though I have my doubts.

It must be awfully cold where you are now because it is cold here.  The heater keeps running and I worry about my little feral cat, though she is so fat now that I don't think she will have any trouble keeping warm.  If it were freezing, which it is almost, I would put out a little heater for her.  I swear I would.  But god knows what sort of animals I might attract.  It could be like Noah's Arc in the morning.  I know she will be fine.

I think I have two photos from today's travels.  Maybe.  But they don't have to be great for me to show them here.  I am pretty certain they will be coming.

OH YEA!  I almost forgot.  My great traveler friend sent me this photo today.

When I said I'd be staying at "The Wagon Wheel," I thought I'd made that stuff up, but he had stayed in one in Idaho.  Hell fire, there is a whole lot of things to get out and see.

I have no hope of bringing back readers and viewers, really.  But I'll try not to whine so much any more.  Actually--fuck anybody who doesn't appreciate and understand.

The Road

Emblematic. Anyone can take the photo and many have.  It is just a road.  But. . . you know. . . metaphoricity and all that.  Didn't the genius Cormac McCarthy write a novel with that title?  I tried to read it.  I read everything else he wrote, but I couldn't finish that.  And, of course, it became his best seller, I think.

No it didn't.  I just looked it up.  His best, "Blood Meridian" is his best seller.  Now THAT is difficult to believe.  I mean, man, that book is complex.

I think I will re-read it this week, for these are apocryphal times.

 My life is less so.  I have good days and bad ones, but I have not really good ones.  I bought an atlas of the U.S. and am looking at places to go.  I choose the ones that scare me.  Back roads of Georgia, etc.  I might just as well end up on one hundred miles of bad Georgia highway as anywhere else, I guess.  It might be the closest thing to an afterlife that I am likely to find.

I spent a lot of the day with my mother.  I took back some presents from Christmas that she did not want, and she went with me.  Later, I made little red beans and pork and rice and had her to dinner.  She is my champion.

In between, I went to Home Goods and bought some things that Ili took with her when she left.  It felt good.  Later, I took down her pictures that littered the house.

Now, alone on a Sunday evening, I sort of watch football.  I am not as interested as I was last week, and I come and go checking the score and the highlights.  In between, I sit out under the clouds and smoke a cigar and drink some whiskey and talk to the cat the comes around often now when I sit outside.  I've decided to change her name since Ili left.  I hated the name we gave her.  She doesn't know her name anyway.

Ili, I mean.

As I sit and smoke and drink, I think about the outdoors and adventure.  I have been housebound, by and large, for over a year.  I have travelled, but it has not been outdoor adventure travel.  I have not slept out under the stars.  I am a wreck physically, but I think I can sleep outside as well as anywhere now.  I could sleep on a sailboat or I could sleep in a tent.  I think.  But the first step is to get out the door.  I am trying to get out the door.

I am about to take a 40% reduction in income.  There will probably be no more Breakers or Four Seasons for me.  The Wagon Wheel is more likely, though there are fewer of those than there used to be.  I am thinking of driving two hours north to my old Alma Mater and traveling some old roads from there.  Even that, two or four hours from home alone seems challenging just now.  But it will be fine.  It is psychological at this point.  Once I get on the road, it will all be fine.

I think.

If the old car doesn't break down.

Tomorrow is a holiday, MLK day.  I am thinking of getting out of my zip code for part of the day, just an hour away, just to make some photographs.

I will try to leave--one hour at a time.

Hunger

I've regained my appetite, and I guess that is a good sign, but it is not good.  I was losing weight.  Grief weight, I guess.  But I am getting hungry.  Maybe it is all the yard work I've been doing.  I've been weeding the yard which means doing hundreds--if not thousands--of weightless deadlifts and squats.  Today I went for a run.  I can't run anymore, but I can do the old man trot to a certain extent.  I almost made my first non-stop half mile since the accident today.  Next time, I will complete it.  I ended up running 1.5 miles and walking one.  So maybe that gave me some hunger, too.

After running and weeding and spreading the weed and feed and showering, I wanted huevos rancheros.  I Googled "huevos rancheros near me," and found a Mexican restaurant I don't like in a chi-chi part of town that served them all day.  What the hell.  It was only half a mile from my home.  So I ordered a margarita on the rocks and the huevos.  The margarita was ok, the rancheros not.  It was greasy and the eggs somehow were both under and over cooked.  I guess that is a feat in itself.  I ate the chips and salsa, too, though the salsa was only a notch above hideous.  But I ate and drank, then went home for a two hour nap.

When I got up, I went through my mail with a drink.  It was mid-afternoon, but again, what the hell, I thought, it is the weekend and I am almost retired.  I might as well do what I want.

I had stopped by the AAA a couple days ago and got maps and and an atlas.  I looked through them plotting out potential routes.  It was something like olden times.

Then I called Old Mom.  I decided to go over and visit with her.  We talked and laughed for about an hour.  Good for her, good for me.

And then I was hungry.  I was only going to make a small meal, but I went to the grocery store on my way home and went a little nuts.  I ended up making a full meal with beef and broccoli and rice.

And wine.

For now, I have switched over to G&Ts.  I don't know why.  I just have.

My buddy in Seattle sent me this.

Oh, yes.  Chocolate and scotch might be good tonight.  

I'm just telling you in my own way that I am feeling better today.  I don't know if there is hope, but there is possibility.  

But Jesus. . . if there IS hope, I hope that I don't start putting weight back on.  

I Should Have One

The new Leica M10 Monochrom was revealed today.  I want it.  It is only $8,300.00.  Just a tad over. It makes me happy thinking about owning it.  Oh, what a photographer I would be then.  And when I go on welfare in a month, that price would be what percent of my annual earnings?

How about a "Go Fund Me" page?  How much do you think I could get toward it?  The problem is that I don't have a social network.  I think you need that for "Go Fund Me."  It would just be us and my mother.

I fantasize about stealing one.  What is wrong with me?

I told Q that I was miserable and might resort to drugs, and he suggested Nepenthe.  What's that, I asked (link)?

Oh.  It is fictional.

I will search for Nepenthe, though.  She will make me forget.  I will settle down with her on an isle and no more will wander.

Until then. . . .

I went back into my files.  In 2015, I went to New Mexico and shot with my Canon camera.  I think it is still my favorite in many ways.  I love the images it makes, and I love the lenses.  The only problem is the size.  It is huge compared to new non-DSLRs.  But you can't beat it.  I am thinking that I want to shoot with it again.  It's a true beaut.

But that new Monochrom. . . that's a horse of a different color.  And it's only $8,300.00.  And some change.

*.   *.   *.   

It is morning now.  I slept until five.  I decided it was better to get up than to roll around thinking.  I worked at getting my new iMac working the way I want it which is merely working.  I have spent lots of money on converters and cabling trying to get it to do what the old iMac did.  Some apps are not functioning properly.  They do and then they don't.  I don't know what's wrong most of the time, so I try help lines from different companies.  I've told you of my problems with my Google account.  I can't comment on my or anyone else's blog. I just recently received a message that my blog is going to get cancelled because my payment method is invalid and that I need to sign in to my G Suite Admin account.  I have no idea how to do that.  I wrote and asked.  They wrote back and asked me a gazillion questions.  I responded to what I could and have not heard back from them.  I've probably given all my info to some hacker.

Trying and Failing

C.C. agreed that chocolate and scotch were a good combination, but he said this stuff is pretty darn good, too.  I am a scotch man, however, and will probably continue my path to obesity in my own way, but as a tribute to C.C., I'll give this a try, too.  I might as well travel every road to hell recommended.

O.K.  Nobody knows what the miseries of others are. . . unless that other has a blog.  And even then, there is only the vaguest of glimpses, especially from someone who hides behind the seven veils as I do.  Q can keep trying to turn me into Salome, but for now, there is still some coverage.

I'm sitting in the hipster coffee shop drinking a green tea because I thought I'd had enough coffee today, but I am not a fan.  I try.  I really do.  I know it is supposed to be very good for you.  But it is more than bitter to my taste.  I'm going to get the baristas attention and order a cappuccino so I can write this with some semblance of pleasure.

I didn't go to the factory today.  A day can be a long thing.  I woke early, did the usual, then went to the gym.  When I came home, I decided I would begin to weed the yard.  Since it hasn't been cut for a month, and because the grass is dormant, the weeds are showing themselves.  Easy picking.  At least they are easy to see.  But after an hour of squatting and bending, I was done for the day.  I pulled a lot of weeds, though, and am probably just under half way through.  I've decided I will borrow somebody's lawn mower this week and do the mowing myself.  Just this once.  I am not sure I know anyone with a lawn mower, though.

After the yard work, I cleaned up.  For every two things I reached for, however, only one was there.  Ili took the beautiful objects she had brought to our home with her.  With each memory, I could feel my nose begin to swell, then my lips, then came the tortured face convulsions.  It was only noon, a long day still ahead.  I needed to eat, and there was nothing in the house, so I went to Whole Foods for some soup.

You wished you lived where I do now.  The day is gorgeous.  I sat at the Whole Foods counter facing the window eating soup and watching people come and go.  People can be hideous, and today they were.  They brought me no cheer, no pleasure, worldly or other.

Physically, I felt good, and I was not wanting to drink, not this early anyway.  I walked to the car and checked my camera for the first time in months.  I would drive to some obscure part of town and TRY to make a photograph, I imagined.  That's what I would do.  You betcha.

So I drove.  Slowly.  I was trying to sharpen my vision, to retrain my eye.

This was my first stop, the first photo.  We used to stop at one of these on our way home from the beach sometimes when I was a kid, the Sunday night treat--a three piece boxed chicken dinner with fries and slaw.  It was magnificent.

I still see a few of these places around.

This was just across the parking lot.

Down the street, this.

I grew up in a marginal place and know the drill.  Things are fairly safe unless you are doing something different, perhaps looking like a privileged old white guy taking pictures of buildings and tires.  Just looking like you don't belong.  YOU may not be one to feel it, but I know the danger in it, and just as I finished taking this picture, a guy pulled up in a pick up truck grinning one of those humorless grins of the walking dead.  He wanted to know if I wanted to buy a tire.  "No. . . no," I grinned like a fish on a hook, waving my camera at him.  "Just taking pictures."  His eyes narrowed to get a better look at me as he decided whether to keep me or throw me back.  I was still grinning and waving like when I got into my car and drove away.

Maybe you can get a sense of a place when they put bars on the windows and doors of the barber shop and plaster the place with "No Loitering" signs.  Curious enough, if you can read the sign in the window, this is also the place to have your taxes done, too.  This is a barber of many talents, I'd say.

Lousy photos edited on my phone.  It was the best I could do this day.  Bad.  Just bad.

Now I've had a cup of green tea and a cappuccino, and my temples are pounding.  It is not yet three o'clock.  Will all my future days be like this, me trying to find a purpose and failing, running away from thought and emotion,  sitting alone in coffee shops and cafes, longing only for darkness and sleep?

Of course not.  It is just too soon.  The wound is just too fresh.

Indeed.

*.   *.   *.  

That was yesterday afternoon.  The evening went no quicker.  I made a spaghetti dinner for one, drank wine, and watched television.  I put RAM cards in my computer, then upgraded the operating system.  I watched the last episode of "Fleabag" and cried like a baby.

Then I went to bed.

If I sleep a natural sleep, I seem to wake at three.  I did this morning, but was able to get back to sleep until five-thirty.  Ugly thoughts began to overwhelm me, so I got up.  And so far this morning, I've been sitting through the long darkness reading the news and listening to a Pandora Stan Getz station.  I am not sure that is cheering me up.

Now I've had all the coffee I can drink and all the news I can stand, and the sun still isn't up.  I have my doubts about everything both in the darkness and the daylight.  I need to find some refuge somehow.  I need to find relief.  It is not lost on me that I still have more than most, and I wonder how people less well set can carry on.  I've always relied on a sense of irony and humor, but those things are lost to me just now.

What refuge will I find?  The options seem limited and somewhat terrifying.

Waiting for the sun.

Another Thing

I wish I had some new good pictures for you.  I really do.  But I haven't touched a camera in a really long time now.  This is my dad with a lion.  It looks like I did on morphine in the hospital.  They must have really kept that thing drugged.  But fuck. . . it was the early '60s.  Hippies hadn't fucked everything up yet.

Good old dad.  He had me convinced that he was Tarzan.

Ili moved the rest of her stuff out today while I was at the factory.  I took a Xanax.  When I got home, she hadn't even left a note.  I've been cancelled as the kids say.

Q asks me if I deserved it.  If we all got what we deserved, I told him quoting William Muny, we'd all starve to death.  I guess that's true.  As we are probably told biblically, who among us is blameless?  I don't like to cast stones.

But where in the hell is H.S. Thompson when we need him?  What a fucking heyday he would have had with Trump.  There is nobody like him anywhere today.  No such Gonzo insight, no such prose.  We are stuck with literal assholes who tell us that Trump is bad.  No shit?  Where is the art in that?  Where is the genius?  We live in a prosaic society devoid of imagination, finding danger in sex and spouting righteousness.  They can only get away with it because there is no good Dr. Gonzo.

But as he said, the hogs are greased and out of the pen now.  Mitch McConnell will have his pound of Vaseline.

I'm in trouble tonight.  I found that chocolate goes very well with scotch.  You may find it unlikely, but it is true.  The two seem made for one another.

I will not be going to the factory again for awhile.  Maybe hardly ever.  I have done what I have needed to do, and now it is someone else's turn.  Now I need to find my way.  I wish I were whole, but don't we all.  Half a man is still a man, they say, and I will have to learn the truth of that.

As Hemingway so famously said, “It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”

To Sleep and Not to Dream

I didn't go to the factory today.  I went to the gym, had a brief soup lunch, and then went to get beautified.  Getting beautified takes a long time, and I usually get sleepy.  Indeed, I usually fall asleep on the beautician's couch in my foils while she colors somebody else's hair.  After that, I am not worth much.  But today, after the gym and only soup, I decided to have a scotch for company on the drive.  She gave me a glass of wine when I got there.  Boy was I sleepy.  She talked of her troubles and I talked of mine.  Everybody's got troubles sooner or later, that's for sure.

After the beauty treatment, I went to the grocery store where I ran into the fellow who will replace me at the factory.  I see him out at one of two places: the grocery store or the liquor store.  We chatted for about half an hour about how poor I will be and how much better off he will be and about my decline in general.  He knows about most things I'm going through.  It is nice to have an ear.

Then it was home to feed Feral the Cat and to pour a pick me up.  It will be difficult not to become an alcoholic when I am no longer working.

I made an easy but healthy dinner and settled in for a night of watching the news, some YouTube, etc.  But as things seem to turn, I got a call from my buddy in Yosemite just as I did from one of my old friends the night before.  These are two of my closest friends, and how I wish they lived here now.  But the conversations with them were as they have always been, light and extremely witty, and they made me feel better than I felt before.  That, I guess, is what friends are for.  In my coming retirement, I will go to see each of them just as I have almost decided to go and see my friend in Thailand.  All my friends agree.  Exotic travel would be best for curing my state of mind.  Indeed, I suspect they are right.

Today's picture is a bit of exotica.  Look, these photos are akin to a confession.  Don't even ask.  It was a long time ago.  You wouldn't understand.

The Valiant was my aunt and uncle's car.  I remember it had push buttons on the dash for shifting gears and that the ignition was under the gas pedal.  You turned the key on and then pressed the accelerator down and it would start.  Weird car.  But a lot of things were strange.  My aunt smoked Raleigh cigarettes because they gave coupons.  The more she smoked, the more she earned.  I remember going through the coupon magazines with her.  After many cartons of cigarettes, she would get a lamp or some other household product.  She lived a fairly long life, though, and she didn't get lung cancer, so. . . .

I'll go to the factory tomorrow and listen to my secretary cry some more.  My replacement told me she cries every day.  She may be the only person crying for me in the world today.  I don't know if we will stay in touch.  I'm no good at that, but with her, I might.  More likely than most.

I wish I had a poem or something in me tonight, but I don't.  Ili comes tomorrow while I'm at work to get the rest of her things.  We don't talk, just text.  After tomorrow, I believe, we won't need to do that unless something comes up.  I'm thinking of taking a road trip south for a few days to spend some dollars.  Palm Beach.  Miami.  I've been thinking of making some videos for my YouTube channel which I haven't posted to for many years.  It would be something to do, and I think I could be good at it.  But it is just a thought.  Still. . . I need to get away for a bit to not think.  Not thinking might be nice.

The Shit

"I remember my grandfather telling me how each of us must live with a full measure of loneliness that is inescapable, and we must not destroy ourselves with our passion to escape the aloneness." - Jim Harrison

That's a quote sent to me by Q.  It resonates.  

I have a lot of confused things to write here tonight.  Don't know how to order them.  Let's see.  I got up this morning after bad dreams/thoughts all night.  Fear.  That dominates my emotions now.  But I did the usual, made the coffee, read CNN, got a second cup, then NYT, and then the blogs I read.  Then I wrote.  Emptiness and fear and the hollow feeling of many cups of coffee without food driving me, I got dressed to go to the gym.  On my way to take the garbage out, I saw my neighbor walking back from behind the apartment.  

"Hey. . . what's up?"  

He pointed to the trees and the roofline where approximately twenty buzzards were perched.  Big, ugly motherfuckers.  WTF?  There was a dead possum behind the garage, he said.  Well, now.  It was smelly. 

"I guess I'll let these fellows get rid of it."  

"How are you doing?" he asked.  

"Bad.  Ili moved out this weekend."

"Oh, man," he said.  There was a moment of awkwardness.  "Well, they come and go, I guess." 

He has been in a steady relationship for a long time now.  

"At my age, I think they only go," I said.  "Not much optimism about that."  

When I got back from the gym, the tenant called.  

"Are you home?"

"Yes."

"There's something dead behind the garage.  There are buzzards everywhere.  It looks like a monkey."  

"Well, it can't be a monkey.  It might be an infant."

"What?!?  Are you serious?"

"Well, it sure as hell ain't a monkey.  You'd better call the police."

"What?"

"You don't want to get involved in this.  You know it's not a monkey." 

While we were talking, she texted me a picture of it.

"It's definitely not a monkey.  Call the police."  

I let this go on for a bit before I told her it was a possum.  

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"I don't know.  Something wrong with me, I guess."

After a shower, I went to the factory.  I opened up my email while my secretary was in my office.  

"What's this "Surprise Party?"  

She turned chalk white.  It was for me.  

"I didn't take you off the list?"

"At least I know when not to go," I said.  I don't want one.  At least, however, it was at a local bar and not on campus.  She began to tear up.  

"I don't want you to leave," she said.  We are very close and have been through a lot including the death of her new husband and my accident.  But more than that, we are very close.  

"Don't do this," I said.  I was starting to tear up.  "I mean it.  I'll start crying." 

She left the room and began to really ball.  I had to go to see a buddy for a lunch date and left.  But I was still emotional.  When I got to the car, I thought I might break down during lunch.  My buddy works in the Middle East and he wanted to have lunch on Sunday, but I told him I couldn't be good company.  I had a Xanax and decided to take it.  Fuck me, I thought.  

When I got to the restaurant, he was already there.  I love K.K.  I helped his career a bit, and we have become true good friends.  K.K. is gay, and he tells his friends that I am "a friend of the gays."  

"I tell him things I don't tell you guys," he says.  And it's true.  He went to school to be a priest, and he came to see me after the accident often.  He is someone I would have at my bedside when knocking on heaven's door.  

I slid into the booth at the tiny restaurant where we used to go often when we worked together.  He wanted to talk about my imminent departure from work and about Ili's departure.  But I couldn't.  My eyes swelled and teared.  

"Fuck that.  Just tell me about what is going on with you."

We spent two hours talking.  He wants me to visit him in Thailand where he is living now for a couple weeks.  

"It will be good for you," he said.  

Maybe.  

Back at the office, I began to clear out more stuff.  People dropped by to express sadness.  And truly, it is almost more than I can bear.  K.K. said to be positive about it, to think about the love I have generated and how much I will be missed.  

My chest swells as do my eyes.  

I called the Social Security office to try to get my retirement shit fixed.  I got a very friendly man and he was very helpful.  Seems I will be o.k.  

At home after work, I put down my groceries, poured a scotch, and called my mother.  We talked about things, and I started to break down.  Tears, sobbing, but I tried to keep her from hearing.  I told her I had to go, and then the faucet began  But just then, my neighbor walked up, and I had to turn it off.  We talked about the cats, and then he was gone.  

I cooked a simple but incredibly good dinner while watching the news.  

Another scotch. And now you are all caught up.  

Except. . . I wanted to thank some people who have been reading the blog for many, many years.  I can't comment on my own blog or on others for some Google reason I cannot understand.  I have tried going into my account and looking at settings, but I can not figure it out.  

Anita sent this link tonight, saying she sent it seven years ago to the day.  It fits (link).  Some of you have been coming here for an eternity.  Soon, I will open up all of the old posts from the past.  Don't know if anyone will go back and read them, but they will be available.  

As Ricky Gervais said at the Golden Globes, "I just don't care any more."  

Oh. . . I almost forgot.  The photo is of a girl I went to school with in 1978.  I was doing grad work.  She was an undergraduate.  She is sitting on the floor of my apartment.  I think this might have been done for the photography class I was taking.  I will tell fascinating stories about her and her family soon.