Depravity and Grace

  

More pictures from The Covid Diaries.  People-less faces of buildings and things.  What can I do?  I have no one to frame, no one to lens.  Still, I learn.  I've been working on color grading in post production and now in camera with the new Fuji.  I figure this could be the opening shot in a movie.  Unexciting but serviceable.  

Just more of my neighborhood discoveries trying to compete with those more adventurous who are out there on the highway in search of the "exotic."  

Vs. my mundane.  

Re: Q.  He is on the road, another trip, another vacation, yet his missives are filled with pictures of pools and dogs.  WTF, dude?  Where are the leggy women and decrepit gas stations?  

I'm kidding.  He's a family man, a father, a pet owner.  That shit I just described is flotsam from a time gone by, something from the bad old past when people liked titillation.  The old Soviet Union taught us about art.  It should serve the good of the common cause.  Art should be Ideologically Correct, not a revelation of some depraved artist's dreams and desires.  Fuck Picasso, that old misogynist.  Fuck Modigliani.  Fuck Matisse.  Fuck 'em all.  

Better off with kids and dogs.  

And the facades of buildings.  

You have nothing to fear from either Q nor I.  We are going to serve up a happy dance of color and fun.  While he focuses on the family, I will show you the architecture of our time.  

But wait, you say!  I thought Billy Monk was a cultural hero representing the unrepresented, a changer of social norms, a freedom fighter for the oppressed and marginalized?  

Well, you know, times being what they are. . . .   This is no Weimar Republic of depravity.  We are not Q.  Sorry, I mean QAnon.  How can they steal a whole letter of the alphabet?  It seems wrong, but everything about those Russian trolls is.  

Still, you have to admire them.  It is a lot easier than science.  

To spice up my life in these dreadful times, I decided to take a chance on sushi.  Oh, god, holy fuck. . . it was delicious.  Miso soup, garlic lime edamame, and tuna nigiri.  I brought it home and ate it on the deck with the cats.  But I had to wait for my order outside at a sidewalk table.  The music was playing, the sun was softly setting while couples sat elegantly at white clothed tables looking around and staring into one another's eyes.  People held hands and giggled as they walked by on the sidewalk.  

It made me very sad.  It has been so long since I've done such a thing.  I am suddenly that lone old guy watching passersby, mouth agape, eyes pleading.  It happened so quickly.  One moment I was on top of the mountain looking out, the next at the bottom of the glen flailing.  

Maybe it is better than the slow decline.  Who knows.  

I will need to recover some grace.  Grace, in the end, is probably all we can hope for and maybe all we have.  If we are lucky.  I will work on grace, having lost hope and now accepting charity.  

That is what I have learned so far here in the Time of Covid.