New Routine

Yes, this is what you will get for awhile.  My days are not my own.  No more languorous wasting of hours contemplating artistic greatness.  No more thoughts of pursuing artistic goals.  Hell, I don't even have time for email.  So I take my camera with me on my walks around my "new" neighborhood.  Soon, these will be just as oppressive as the Covid photography I practiced during lockdown.  Selavy.  It is just how we are going to roll.  

I don't know how I managed to manage my part of the factory floor and manage my studio, too.  Where were the hours in the day?  Where have they gone?  

My mother is a zombie half the time.  The other half, she issues forth moans with each exhalation.  I try not to be maddened, but for one so accustomed to quietude and silence, this, in combo with the hours and hours of commercial t.v. . . well, my thoughts are scrambled.  

And my diet is a mess.  We've had plenty of comfort food.  Today, I think, we will need to realign.  

My mother's neighbors brought over dinner last night--chicken and dumplings with cornbread and apple pie.  They are very sweet.  They stayed for awhile, of course, and chatted.  You know how such things go. Oh, they don't watch anything but OANN and Newsmax.  They are big law and order people.  Mom's neighborhood and the nice people who look after her.  I smiled and sweated.  

Mother just woke up.  The t.v. comes on.  Local news.  Local weather.  Those jolting, weird broadcast voices.  The excruciatingly long, horrendous commercials.  Babysitters of the aged.  I believe one day they will discover that commercial television contributes to old age dementia.  They probably already have, but like Global Warming, there is too much money involved to do anything about it.  I feel I am already being affected.  

The funny thing about today's photo is that you never see any children at play.  They are all, I suppose, stuck to a computer screen.  Nobody lets kids go outside now.  Not on their own.  The sign is a relic of days gone by.  

I am going to suggest they put a pay phone next to it.  

Rant

 O.K.  I'm about to go on a rampage rant about the state of health care in the U.S.  Nobody wants to hear it.  Everybody knows it.  And yet, every time you are subjected to it, you just want to do bad things to those who have created the mess.  All of them.  You know, the ones who don't need to suffer like the hoi-poloi.  

I called the orthopedist's office yesterday.  The one the ER said to call.  Each time I called, I got a recording.  Leave your name and number.  So, the office is understaffed and cannot answer the phone? Sure.  Why?  Because doctors have been forced to give up and give in.  They are all paid employees of the big medical corporation.  They can't be both a doctor and a business manager any longer.  Too many forms.  Too many regulations.  Who caused this?  The Industrial/Government cabal.  Oh, yes. . . insurance companies determine who gets elected and who they appoint.  

Nobody calls back.  I keep calling.  Finally, in the early afternoon, I get a person.  Not the right person, of course.  She takes my information and says somebody will call me back.  And sure enough, hours later, somebody does.  I get an appointment set up.  For Friday.  One week after my mother has broken her shoulder.  She worries, of course.  Her arm is black and blue and green and three times the size of the other one. 

But the lady on the phone can only make the appointment.  Somebody else will have to deal with the prescription meds.  Government regulations say that ER docs can only give 3 days worth of meds.  Why?  Oh, you know.  They have been in the practice before people with better education curbed their activities of providing a lifetime supply of heroin to the broken population.  

I still haven't been able to talk to anyone about the meds.  

It turns out my mother is seeing the same doctor who put the metal plates and screws into her other shoulder three years ago.  Back then, the practice had a serious name.  But the corporation has rebranded it now.  

"The Fracture Doctors."  

Really?  WTF?  It is like going to a surgeon and finding out he works at "The Cutting Room."  No.  I can't stand it. 

That and fixing meals and cleaning up and trying to keep my mother happy. . . .  Oy!

Poor me.  Is that what I am saying?  I don't have to go to work, and I'm not the one injured, and I'm saying what?  Poor me?

Don't judge me!  

I did take a little break yesterday.  I met with my replacement at the factory at my house.  I had gone to feed the feral cat.  Her bowl already had food of a different color.  My neighbor is helping out.  

My replacement has chickens, and he brought over a dozen farm fresh eggs and some delicious oatmeal cookies with all sorts of yummy fruit inside.  And an expensive bottle of scotch.  And we hurt that shit, talked things over.  By the time I got back to my mother's house to make dinner, she had already eaten something.  A neighbor had come over to see her.  I had chatted too long.  I was a bad caretaker.  

Tonight, a neighbor is making us dinner.  Fried chicken and cornbread and what all.  My mother has great neighbors.  By and large, anyway.  

I made myself a sandwich for dinner and had more scotch.  Mom finally finished watching her chosen shows which are all old and on what might be called the Medicare Chanel (they have about seventeen minutes of commercials targeting the aged in a half hour show), and so we turned on commercial free t.v.  

I stayed up until midnight.  I hate that I did that.  I am an early to bed guy.  I feel like poop this morning.  

But care doesn't take a vacation.  Busy opening pill bottles and making food, etc.  

Did I say poor me?  I don't mean it.  I am fine.  I just can't stay up with my mother any more.  Like most old people, she is a night owl.  I like my beauty rest.  

O.K.  I'll try to talk about something else tomorrow.  But I'm glad we got to have this chat.  

What I'm Gonna Did for Summer Vacay

 Mom's asleep in a recliner in the t.v. room.  When I got up, she said she slept straight through the night.  I guess so.  I think she's eaten through her Percocets and muscle relaxers and has thrown in some other things besides.  I call an ortho today to make an appointment and to get her more drugs.  That is what she hopes.  

A neighbor came over yesterday to visit, so while someone was here, I took the opportunity to get out for a walk.  I put on my ugly gym outfit and lighted out.  My hips and back are killing me, so it was a bit slow, that walk, but I managed to get in some miles.  On my way back to my mother's on one of those well travelled suburban trails they've built everywhere, some young kids riding bikes came toward me, jumped the grass median that separates bikers and pedestrians, and were coming fast like screaming Comanches.  I know, I know. . . you can't say such things.  But just as they got to a tree in front of me, they hit the breaks.  A little towhead yelled, "Speed record.  We tied.  Can I go first this time?"  

It is unusual to see kids this age out on their own.  Didn't they have parents?

I walked on up the trail, and there were some other kids on bikes stopped in the middle of the bike path looking back.  Further ahead, there was a group of women standing around a bike that lay on the ground attached to one of those bike baby carriage things made for two.  As I got closer, I could hear one of the women on her phone.  She was telling someone where they were and wanted them to come.  As I came abreast of them, a tall woman turned toward me and gave me a look.  Oh. . . I knew her from long ago.  She said hello, came over, and gave me a hug.  

"Hi, you." 

Yes, I had known her.  Biblically.  She was the hot, young sushi waitress who lived with the writer, a six foot beauty with some of the first girl tats in town.  They were quite a couple, royalty among the hip, and intimates of the fellow who owned the famous clubs where House Music was born.  She was a mere girl then, I. . . not so much.  Now we stood facing one another, she maybe thirty nine, me in my late ancients.  She told me that they had a little incident, that a bike almost ran over her dog (unleashed and bounding around on its own) and there was a bit of an accident.  

"Probably those little sonofabitches on their bikes up there," I said indicating the direction from which I had come.  

"Yea, well, some of those are mine." 

Oops.  

She had more tats now, an indication of how her life had progressed.  She had married the writer when he got a job writing for a major magazine in NYC.  They bought a place in Brooklyn.  She attended the famous Culinary Institute where Bourdain had studied.  They had a kid.  Then she left them both to go live with a former girlfriend she had by chance run into in a Manhattan club.  From there, it is a long story.  But here she stood in front of me now, her still quite attractive, me looking like a sack of potatoes wearing a goofy gym outfit.  

We chatted briefly before she had to turn her attention back to the situation at hand.  She told me where she lived now, not far from my mother.  Kids.  A house in a middle class neighborhood.  Hmm.  There's a story there.  

That is, of course, as I've come to find out, the trouble with having dated women much younger than myself.  They are all still relatively young, have experienced success in some ways and are still aspiring in others.  And there I stand, knocking on heaven's door so to speak.  Well. . . the wages of sin, I guess.  

But I still aspire.  Sitting in my mother's living room, I look through old photo books I left here the last time I was staying here when I was recovering from the scooter accident.  Incident.  Two of the books were on Disfarmer (link).  I'm a big fan, and as I did with Bellocq, I would like to riff on Disfarmer's portraits. Yesterday, looking at those big lovely images, so strained and strange, it occurred to me what I should do. It was one of those Eureka moments.  I will need to grow a set of pumpkins, of course, but it could be really something.  

But not for awhile, eh?  I will be staying at my mother's house for at least the next two months if not three.  You know those plans I was fretting over?  I need fret no more.  I now know what I'm gonna did for my summer vacation.  

Tough

 I'm at my mother's.  Again.  For awhile.  Yesterday, mid-morning, I got a call from her.  She had fallen, she said.  She thought she had broken her shoulder.  The other one.  I jumped in my car and went right over.  When I got there, she was covered in a towel.  She had just finished swimming in the neighbor's pool and had gone into her own back yard to get a garbage can.  She had tripped on a stepping stone and gone down.  She is 89, now with one broken shoulder and one that has more metal than bone. And she got up.  Went into the house.  Took off her wet bathing suit.  And called me.  I wrapped her in a robe.  I was going to drive her to the hospital, but I decided trying to get her up in my Xterra was not going to work.  I called 911.  They sent an ambulance.  I told her I would meet her at the hospital.  Of course, the ambulance and the fire truck in front of the house had attracted the neighbors.  I told them what had happened.  

When I got to the emergency room, they gave me a badge with my picture on it and let me walk back to her holding room.  I was surprised that they were so loose in the time of Covid.  I got to the room just as she was being wheeled in, at the same time as the doctor.  We stood in the hallway and I explained what had happened.  He looked her over and ordered X-rays.  They had given her a shot of narcotics, so she was in less pain than she might have been.  

Then the long wait.  After an hour, they wheeled her down the hallway.  An hour and a half later, they wheeled her back.  She said that the techs moving her arm for X-rays had been brutal.  An hour later, the doctor came in and said her shoulder was broken in the ball of the ball and socket.  He didn't think it would require surgery, but she would be seeing an orthopedic doctor in the coming week and they would decide.  He wrote her prescriptions for Percocet and Flexeril and some Lidocaine patches.  They put her arm in a sling and patched up the wound on her knee, gave her her first Percocet, and then we waited for half an hour to see if she would have a reaction.  Then they discharged her.  I ran to get my car.  When I got back to pick her up, she was sitting in a wheelchair in a robe among a bunch of rowdy what I could only guess to be drug addicts.  Not a hospital worker in site.  

"What the fuck?  They just sat you on the sidewalk and left you?"  I was left trying to get her up into the truck on my own.  

We stopped at the drugstore to pick up her prescriptions on the way to her house.  After a lot of computer work, the pharmacist said that insurance would pay for the Percocet but would not pay for the Flexeril or the Lidocaine.  The patches, she said, would cost $300, the Flexeril $26.  She said that the Lidocaine patches were 5mg, but on the shelves they had over the counter patches with 4mg for much less.  She could have it all ready in fifteen minutes.  

WTF?  How does an insurance program determine they won't pay for prescribed drugs?  Medicare and a good prescription package from AARP.  How the fuck?  There is something very wrong with medical coverage in the U.S.  Very, very wrong.  

"How much do you think today cost?" I asked my mother.  We guessed around $15,000, but we may be low.  We'll see soon enough.  They ran every test they could while she was in the hospital, took X-rays of everything on her left side.  Precautions, sure, but they are also doing what they can to pay for the machinery of the place.  Good and bad.  

I got my mother set up at her house and then ran back to mine to gather my things.  I will be at my mother's once again for quite awhile.  I've spent much time here in the past few years.  A lot of broken bones between us.  

I hadn't eaten or even had a drink of water all day.  I stopped and picked up that seafood pasta dish I had been thinking about, a bottle of wine, and a bottle of scotch.  I had the essentials now--coffee and alcohol, my phone and my laptop.  I picked up some comfort food, too.  My mother said she wasn't hungry, but I knew she would need something.  She enjoyed the comfort food as much as she could enjoy anything. She called relatives to let them know.  She took her pills.  I made her laugh.  She would be fine, I said, but not for weeks.  She was displeased.  She had just started swimming again.  Her 96 year old neighbor, a woman who lives alone, had invited my mother to use her pool any time.  Well, I said, she would be back in it in a few months.  Now she just had to heal.  The intense pain would subside little by little, and in a week or two, walking with the sling wouldn't be as painful.  We would take walks until she could use her arm again.  

Fortunately, I have a Firestick on my mother's television.  She never uses it, but I wasn't going to be watching commercial television.  I brought up Netflix and we scrolled through trying to find something to watch.  "Blacklist."  Seven seasons.  Maybe we might both find something of interest in it.  We tried the first episode.  Neither of us loved it, but what the hell.  We watched a couple more.  By eleven, I was ready for bed.  When I woke up, my mother was sleeping in a recliner, the same one I slept in for months after getting run over.  

It is Sunday.  Everything is familiar.  Everything is strange.  I have coffee.  I've read the news, such as it is.  And now, I've made my post.  My mother is still dozing.  Little rain is forecast today.  I wait to see what the day will bring.  

The Days of the Week

I'm getting closer.  I mean, at least it's alive.  Organic, you know.  Next--maybe dogs.  No, that might be too great a leap.  I can't go from fungus to mammals.  Lizards, maybe.  I have hundreds of lizards in my yard.  But perhaps I should start with flowers and then move on to some invertebrates.  Maybe that's my project--"Photographing the Phylums: How Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny."

It's an idea, 

I had lunch with my travel/art buddy yesterday at a good Italian restaurant.  We sat at the bar, of course.  I just copied his order, calamari in white wine sauce with fresh plum tomatoes,  an order of bruschetta, and luncheon beers.  Two retirees trying to remember the day of the week.  You know the joke?

"How many retirees does it take to change a light bulb?  It only takes one.  But it takes all day."  

I'm finding it is true.  I got up at seven, but I still had to hurry to make our noon date.  I told another friend the other day (trying to be specific here) that I wondered why the op-eds in the N.Y. Times were getting so long.  Now I just read the first paragraph and then skip to the last to see if I want to read the rest.  Now that I'm retired, I just don't have time to read all that.  

Etc.  

Hence, the mushroom, maybe.  Alright, alright, alright.  Toad stool.  I think.  I majored in zoology.  Funguses, bacteria, and viruses were not so much my realm of study.  

Oh, what was I saying?  We sat at the bar and told stories.  We were heroes, of course.  Tales of adventure and daring.  I don't eat calamari very often.  Hardly ever.  On trips to South American countries with Atlantic coastlines, however, I ate a lot of it.  The squid reminded me of Peru and Ecuador, hence the tales.  I don't usually do the seafood at this restaurant, though I've had the mussels which were great.  I've been looking back over the menu and think maybe I'll try the clams sautéed in virgin olive oil served over pasta with a wine sauce.  Maybe takeout tonight.  

Mollusca.  Yes, maybe I should photograph them.  Did you know they were the second largest phylum of animals?  Only arthropods outnumber them.  Quite diverse in form and much tastier than insects.  I used to eat a lot of conch back in the Key West days, long before the cruise ships and air conditioned condos.  That was after they banned turtle meat.  Conchs reproduce like flies.  Well, that was before we started killing the oceans.  They are having a little trouble now.  

But that is all the Mollusca I have in me today.  There are mushrooms and toad stools everywhere now that it is warm and moist outside.  Beware the spores.  Which reminds me.  I used mushrooms in my roasted vegetable meal the other night and put half the package in the refrigerator.  I've forgotten about them.  They must be mushroom juice by now.  I guess I'll need to clean the fridge.  

"How many retirees does it take to clean a refrigerator?"  

Silly

  

This is just to say

                                things are going swimmingly.  

I mean, yesterday was o.k.

                                by and large.  

So I thought to start today with a little silliness. I am, by many accounts, a silly guy. All those desultory documentaries I watch and the literature of emptiness I read don't effect that. I have the antidote. I counter it all with sweet, inconsequential things. 

To wit: yesterday, I got blonder.  My hair was looking too natural.  My mother liked it.  A woman in the salon liked it.  My beautician even liked it.  But, she said, maybe she should brighten it up a bit.  Yes, I said.  Make me bright.  And oh, boy, did she.  I'm bright like the sun now, a ray of sunshine in this cloudy land.  She was afraid that maybe she had made it too blond and was going to tone it down, but when she rinsed it out, she changed her mind.  

"It is a beautiful color," she said.  "I think you are going to like it."  

Oh, yes. . . I feel like the cover of a fashion magazine.  

When I got to my mother's house, it was later than usual.  

"Wow, you sure are blond now," she said.  

"Is it a lot lighter?"

"Oh, yes." 

I felt it was too late to cook a meal, so while we chatted, I ordered takeout sushi.  

When I got to the restaurant on the Boulevard and exited the car, I heard a voice call my name from across the street.  A female voice.  I turned in anticipation.  There was a woman calling to me and waving.  "Come over and see me after you pick up your food," she said.  Then I recognized her.  It was the woman who used to manage the sushi restaurant.  I went in to pick up my food, and they knew who I was right away.  One of the kid waiters asked me, "Are you Peter's father?"  For some reason I said, "Who?"  Why would I ask that?  It mattered not.  I mean, no matter what the name, the answer was the same.  My response still puzzles me.  Was I really curious to know whose father I wasn't?  

When I left the restaurant, I walked across the street.  The woman gave me a big hug and said, "I saw your hair. . . ."  

Yes, the hair.  Famously blond.  Again.  

She was now managing a new restaurant right across the street, an Italian joint.  She knew the family, she said.  Right out of somewhere in New York like that meant Italian.  Old family recipes.  Yada yada yada.  

"Well, if I ever get a date, I might come for dinner," I said holding up my takeout.  "Right now, this is all I have."  

The hair is one thing, but a date is another matter altogether.  

When I got home, it started raining, so I set up dinner in front of the television.  I tried the news, but Erin Burnett is impossible to watch without derision, so I hit a button on the remote.  It was the wrong button.  It took me to HBO.  I have been paying for HBO for years, but I don't seem to watch it anymore and I keep meaning to cancel it.  Since it was purchased by somebody new, the content is more like commercial television than the arty stuff they used to produce, things like "Deadwood" and "The Wire."  I landed on a movie and left it on for a minute. Then another.  Then I was in.  "This Is 40," it was called.  A romcom.  I haven't watched a silly movie like this for many, many years.  But I was hooked.  It was Judd Aptow's wife Leslie Mann that did it.  I couldn't look away.  I'd never seen her before.  Was she a real movie star?  She didn't look like a movie star, but she was good.  I looked around to make sure nobody could see me watching.  I mean, it felt fairly shameful.  There were times I laughed out loud, again, looking around like someone would catch me.  I was having fun.  A guilty pleasure, you know, one I wouldn't tell anyone about.  Sushi, romcom, wine, and whiskey, all the while shining like cover of a glamor magazine.  

I needed this.  I really did.  

There were hiccups in the day, of course.  Driving to the beauty parlor in a terrible tropical downpour, my driver's side windshield wiper came off.  It just came off the arm and fell in the valley between the hood and the windshield.  These are the ones I wasn't sure how to put on, the ones I asked the mechanic to check, the ones I had left the wiper covers on for months.  I immediately turned off the wipers to keep the metal from scratching the glass.  But I was on a busy four lane highway and couldn't see shit.  I slowed down and tried to stay between the lane lines, slower and slower as I saw brake lights ahead.  I looked in the rear view mirror and for god's sake there was a cop behind me.  This was bad.  I bent my head to the bottom corner of the windshield trying to get some unsmeared version of the world, my heart racing, adrenaline flowing.  I made it to the stop light where I had to make a turn onto a busier six lane highway.  Fuck me, fuck me.  That was my mantra.  I had about a mile to go.  Get into the right hand lane, I thought, and just go slowly.  

I was a mess by the time I walked into the salon.  Excuse me.  Beauty parlor.  But by the time I left. . . . 

I have two glass plates sitting in a tank of developer right now.  One hour stand development.  I am expecting nothing.  I have not had luck with this in the past.  I didn't try anything cool or artsy.  I just shot some things outside the house, just tried to get the proper exposures for this ultra slow glass plate emulsion.  I probably didn't.  But I'll know in about half an hour.  

And tomorrow, you will, too.  

A Week of Weird Documentaries and Photo Experimentation

 I'll show you the result of my Black Cat Liberator camera work in a minute.  I don't want to put it at the top of the post.  As you will see--meh.  After working for hours to make the picture, I just don't know what the attraction is.  I mean I do, but I don't.  This flag photo is from my Leica Monochrom.  It didn't take hours, and the images that come from that original Monochrom look pretty filmic.  As I looked at the most recent photos I took with it, I wondered why I didn't use it more.  But I remember now.  Printing black and white on an inkjet printer doesn't work out that well.  They don't pop, not unless you set up a printer with special black and white inks made by John Cone, and they are hard to use and very expensive.  So if you want to display the images, the options are set up a special printer or send the digital files out to a lab that can print digital photos on photographic paper in a darkroom.  

But I know why I want to use the large format cameras.  They have a "look" that you can't duplicate with a smaller format camera.  For me, the question now is, "Is it worth it"?  I have a bunch of large format film and glass plates that I will shoot in the coming days before I decide to sell or keep the camera.  But I know I will keep the old Monochrom.  And I may set up a printer with special inks to print the images.  

Yesterday, I gave a photogravure print to my travel/art buddy for his birthday.  It was a photo I took of the San Francisco of Assisi Mission Church in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico.  An image search with Google will show you a hundred pictures of the church that all look pretty much the same, give or take the sky and angle from which it was photographed.  I mean, it is famous, so. . . .  But my photogravure, I feel, is another thing.  This is an old process involving the making of a photographic plate that is inked and run with select paper through a printing press.  Each image must be made by re-inking the plate and doing the process over again.  I chose to print the church image with a brown ink to capture the color of the clay.  I think it is a nice image.  I made only two, and I'm keeping one for myself.  

The reason for mentioning this is that monochromatic prints run through an inkjet printer look better if they are tinted a bit like a duotone.  I may do some experimenting with that today, but I think I need to set up a printer for only black and white.  

What?  What was that you asked?  Oh. . . "Halston."  I watched "Halston" on Amazon last night.  I'd already seen the movie.  This is a documentary that covers the same territory.  I don't know why I watched it.  Halston represented just about everything I despised about the seventies.  I can't muster up a bit of sympathy for the fellow.  But there was a bit of music I liked in the doc.  And I'll share it here. 

It pretty much captures the era in sound.  However. . . . 

There is just something very appealing about the early sixties.

Let's review what I've watched in the past week or so.  Bukowski, Crumb, Incels, a pornographic cartoonist, a nude go-go club, a schizophrenic writer, and a gay megalomaniac who died of AIDS.  It's been a hell of a week.  

Oh. . . here's that photo from the Liberator.  

I wasn't going for interesting.  I was just testing the exposure settings, the focus and that particular method of development.  The negative is streaked and otherwise marked for some reason.  Maybe I'd feel better if I took a photo of something more interesting.  I am going to run some glass plate tests today and see how they turn out.  I've had nothing but trouble with them in the past, but I have several boxes of them and they were expensive, so. . . . If I keep at it, I should know in a few weeks if I really want to use the Liberator or sell it.  If I sell it, I will be 1/5 of the way toward the money I would need for that digital Hasselblad with a lens.  

O.K. Busy day.  I need to do my photo stuff and exercise before I go to get beautified this afternoon.  I'm demanding that she makes me blonder today.  And I'll go on my summer diet.  It is too hot to eat a lot of meat.  It is time to become ropey and svelte.  I will lose twenty pounds and look as lovely as a. . . oh, you know.  

I Must Get Out

 O.K.  Just need to keep you informed of my television nights.  Need to.  Because I have relatively little else.  But Holy Moses! (as young, hip medievals used to say), you gotta see this one!

(link)

And the trailer doesn't do it justice.  I can't believe I haven't seen or heard about this until now.  Have you?  I thought I had my finger on the pulse or something, but this one got all the way by me.  

Interesting to those of you who are Anthony Bourdain fans, it might have been this movie that killed him in that Asia Argento, who made a film based on one of the novels, had her affair with the teenage boy on the set which ended in Bourdain paying half his fortune to the fellow so silence him.  

(link)

Etc.

All I know is that life is a lot weirder than I imagine, and I imagine it to be weird a lot.  

Stay tuned to see what I might watch next. 

Yesterday, I decided I had to do something.  I can't continue to sit and wither and whine.  Can I?  I probably could, and maybe should. . . and probably will.  Whatever to that.  But yesterday I decided I would try to use my big old Black Cat Liberator camera once again.  I've never been very successful with it, and it takes a lot of time and energy to shoot with it, develop the few sheets of 4x5 film I expose, unload and load the film holders, and then see that I got basically nothing.  But I had an idea.  I wanted to try stand developing the film.  It was sure to work, sure to give me better results, so I spent an hour reviewing the camera's operation just to make certain I had it down.  It is definitely not a point and shoot camera.  But yea, I remembered all the moves, so I went to the garage and loaded some film and came back to the house, set the camera on a tripod, did some metering, and shot four sheets--two indoors with very low light, and two outdoors where it was bright.  All I had to do on the exposures was guesstimate, I figured, as stand developing would compensate for any mistakes.  That is what I read.  After that, I had to mix the developer, Rodinal, in a very dilute form.  When that was done, I let everything sit.  I had things to do.  It wasn't until I got home from visiting my mother that I developed the film.  You just let it sit in the dilute soup for an hour, rinse, fix, rinse--done.  

Of the four sheets of film, two came out.  Curiously, they were both from the long exposure indoor shots.  Neither of the ones I shot outside had an image.  WTF?  I can't figure that one out.  I left the negatives to dry over night.  I will scan what I have today and see if they are in focus.  If not, I am sending the camera back to its maker, John Minnicks, and telling him to sell it.  If they are, I will load up more film and try again.  

Hours of work for two images.  Why?  After I hung up the negatives to dry, I started looking at the digital medium format Hasselblads again.  I think I could get a camera and one lens for around $10,000.  That seems fair, right?  

Sure, there's something wrong with me.  But wait 'til you've watched all the documentaries I've been posting about for the last week before you judge.  There are a lot of fucked up stories in the world.  Mine's just one of them.  

We have hit the rainy season here.  Every afternoon, if things work out.  If not, we will bake.  Everything will turn brown.  And then. . . hurricanes.  

I will take more photos today.  It surprises me how long it has been since I've taken any.  In the beginning of the pandemic, I walked with cameras every day.  But I started to feel a vast nothingness in looking at the people-less images day after day after day.  No shit.  I got spooked.  I felt a vague nausea and had to quit taking them.  I couldn't stand to look at them.  I still feel that way.  But the urge to shoot is beginning to overwhelm me.  Still. . . the streets scare me.  I don't know that I will be able to approach people like I used to.  The hordes are in arms, angry and mean and criminally motivated.  I get yelled at just for carrying a camera let alone pointing it at people.  In the old days I wouldn't worry, but I couldn't take a beating now.  The old confidence is gone.  I can't give people the crazy eye now, the one that used to save me.  Yesterday, though, I had the idea of dressing up in drag to go out and shoot.  People don't yell at a woman with a camera as much.  But I would have to get a wardrobe and drive to distant towns.  The writer William T. Vollman did that.  And he liked it.  And now, by and large, he lives his life in drag.  

I probably won't chance it.  

Dept. of Mental Health

Dr. Mo, head of psychiatry at the Department of Mental Health.  Apparently.  

Last night, as I prepared my evening meal, I pulled a fork out of the drawer and brought it outside to the grill.  Then I glimpsed something, words engraved on the fork's handle.  What was it?  I had to go inside to get my glasses.  When I returned, a shockwave ran through me.  WTF?

Was I seeing right?  What?!?

This was a joke.  But how?  Where in the hell had this thing come from?  My mind raced.  Did one of the maid's crew leave it by accident?  Who else had been in my house lately?  Mr. Fixit?  He was a little nuts and he was here every day for a long while.  The guy who serviced my a.c. unit?  He is definitely nuts.  

Or was it Ili?  Did she leave this?  

It was a mystery that I couldn't solve.  I was flummoxed.  

I got my phone and took pictures.  I sent them to all my friends.  

"I shit you not!  I pulled this out of the fork drawer tonight.  I’ve NEVER seen this before WTF?!?"

Replies started rolling in.  

"Message from your past for your future."

"Damn. That's from back in the days when they still used metal forks at the insane asylum!"

"Ili left it."

"Maybe it was a message from Ili."

"What the hell?"

"Stop it."

Then I got a message from my art dealer.

"Dork.  

I sent it to u."

Oh, boy. . . she thought that was really funny.  

"Fuck.  I just sent that message out to everyone."

Well. . . mystery solved.  All that is left is to find out if they do have metal forks in the asylum.  And to issue an apology to Ili, of course.  I don't think she was ever actually institutionalized.  

After dinner, a cheroot, and a scotch (or two), I settled down.  Except for watching the news, which I barely do any more, I don't turn on the television until eight o'clock or later, and I try to be in bed a bit after ten.  I try to watch educational things and, of course, whatever camera porn I can find.  Last night, I watched something on Wittgenstein's theory of communication and then one of those YouTube photography guys who compared two different scanners.  But I was anxious to finish watching "Boiled Angel," a doc about the only artist ever jailed for creating pornography--right here in my own home state. I had never heard of him, so the documentary's ending was a surprise.  He's become quite well-known and has major shows and representation in The Big Apple.  It was a difficult doc, however, for his comics are really disturbing.  Nobody outside of a few hundred people, however, would ever have seen them if the state hadn't decided to prosecute him and bring him national attention.  Deciding how to react to that. . . well. . . I still haven't completely.  It is a difficult moral test.  

After that was over, it was too early for bed, so I queued up another, this one called "Red Dog," a tale about the life of the dancers who worked in Oklahoma City's infamous Red Dog Saloon.  I made it about forty minutes before I decided to go to bed.  

I need to quit watching all these things before going to bed, though.  I didn't sleep worth shit last night.  What happened?  I had cut my drinking, started reading and meditating prior to going to sleep.  I guess I got turned around when I started going out with friends again.  Maybe that.  Maybe not.  When I woke at four this morning, though, I lay in bed and thought I need to begin a regimen of self care.  My climbing buddy gifted me a massage session that I need to use.  I will get a facial.  I will spend evenings drinking herbal tea and putting exotic lotions on my body.  Thursday I see the beautician.  I will pamper myself for awhile.  

That is what I thought at four o'clock in the morning.  But it is what happens at four o'clock in the afternoon that will really matter.  That is when the party usually begins.  

The Madding Crowd

  

I used to like to go out so that people could see me.  Now I stay hone so that they don't.  Maybe I can eat my way into a new diet.  I'll just eat all I can of fruits and grains and vegetables, try to stuff myself and never go hungry.  That way, maybe, I'll just lose my appetite or grow tired of eating.  More likely, however, I'll just waddle down the same path I've been traveling for a while now.  

I finished "TFW No GF" (link).  I don't recommend you watch it unless you want to know how people get so fucked up.  No, that's not correct.  You won't learn how.  Yes you will.  No you won't.  

This shit just gets in your head.  You probably shouldn't watch it.  What you don't know will probably kill you.  

"Stop it!"

O.K.  Yesterday I watched a debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault.  Foucault's panache rather ran over Chomsky.  They tried to agree with one another while working from different paradigms.  It was the collision of old and new ways of thinking.  More like a sideswipe, really.  They just talked past one another.  Most notable for me, however, was Chomsky's belief in "better" and "right."  He works from a certain moral order.  So does Foucault, but he makes less of a claim that it is moral.  

After watching that, I went to my mother's for dinner and a couple hours of "Naked and Afraid" (link).  I must admit that I am astonished that nobody I know has ever seen the show.  It has been a mainstay of my mother's and my Sundays for years.  It is where I catch up on my commercials.  While they were playing at some point, I asked my mother how church was that day.  She hadn't gone for over a year and has just recently been able to return.  

"Oh, fine," she said.  "They talked about forgiveness." 

I'm sure she mentioned that because I talk a lot about that.  I am a very forgiving person even though I have to vaporize people I don't like in my nightly meditations.  Having watched so much Hitchens lately, however, I blurted out, "Forgiveness!?!?  How can they talk about forgiveness in an institution that believes in Hell?!?!?  Where is the forgiveness in that?"

"Well. . . Hell is only for really bad people.  You have to ask God for forgiveness." 

"Come on.  Faced with eternal and everlasting punishment, who wouldn't say whoa, I'm sorry?"

Her vision seemed to turn inward, and I was sorry I said it.  What was gained by that?  What accomplished?  No, I definitely wanted forgiveness for that one.

We ate roast beef and drank a bottle of wine, and I was off.  I needed to get home to feed the cat.  She has not been much of a pal lately, however.  She eats and leaves.  She just doesn't appreciate.  

Scotch and a cheroot in the fading light of the summer solstice.  

Then it was back to join the Incels.  

I read the news today (oh boy).  It is all about the weather.  Have you heard?  Wow is it hot.  And the heat is driving people mad.  Those MAGA people are really going at it, and people with guns are really getting heated up.  But PRIDE is marching and the V.A. is planning on funding gender affirming surgeries.  Make America Great Again.  Oh, they won't like paying for that, either, though my inclination is to think that they pay less tax than others.  

I should probably be doing this in a chatroom rather than here.  I'd get many more "followers."  

And isn't that what everyone wants?  

Pod Life

  

Where do I begin?  Today is the longest day of the year, the first day of summer.  I'm sure there are plenty of QAnon devotees who would question that.  

"How do they know?  It can't be summer everywhere!  Is it the longest day in China?  When did they decide that?"

Of course, Bubba, you are right.  Today is the first day of winter in the Southern Hemisphere.  Shortest day. At the equator, of course, there is no difference at all.  Equal day and night all year long.  

You have to give to those QAnon scholars.  They do their homework.  

Yesterday while I was visiting my mother, my cousin called her to tell her a startling fact she had just found out about.  

"Did you know that the star of "The Rifleman" was Matt Dillon's brother?"

My mother had her on speaker phone.  

"No, that is not correct," I said.  "Robert Graves of "Mission Impossible" was James Arness's brother."

"Oh."  

Later.  "See, mom, that's just an example of how bad information spreads among the. . . well, just spreads."

My mother thinks that FaceBook and the news are the same.  She tells me incredible things.  I mean that literally.  Incredible.  

So summer comes to the not-so-sunny south, and we begin to live pod life.  It is too icky out to do anything, really.  People walk early in the morning, but the rest of the day is spent in air conditioned pods. Evenings are just too buggy.  

I wish I had a swimming pool, but those are sure to be outlawed soon.  There won't be enough water to go around.  

Last night I grilled a kabob and roasted some vegetables.  I was inspired by some recipes I saw online.  I have not grilled vegetables much, and I did a very poor job last night.  But at least it was a lot of work. 

When everything was ready to eat, I took my plate outside to dine with the cat, but the mosquitoes were hitting too hard, so I came into the house and sat in front of the television.  I looked at my list of saved film titles and chose "Bukowski: Born Into This." I paid $2.99 on Amazon, but you can watch a lower res version on YouTube for free (link).  I mean. . . if you want to.  Most of my friends have "grown" out of their "Bukowski Faze."  Indeed, Bukowski can get tiring, but not so much when you are young.  And as my friends have made more money, skid row bums have held less fascination for them.  And, of course, social values have changed, too, so Bukowski is another one who needs to be cancelled if you are into that.  But the documentary was really very well done with interviews by a strange assortment of people from Bono to Sean Penn to Tom Waits.  It even has one brief clip of Harry Dean Stanton reading a poem to the camera, weird as he never appears in the doc again.  But Bukowski certainly had a disgustingly horrendous existence.  Nobody, however, in American literature, anyway, has ever been so good at telling us why.  

After that was finished, I rented "TWF No GF" (link).  I didn't make it very far before I went to bed, but after watching Bukowski, it was even more interesting than it might have been.  If Bukowski had an internet crowd, who knows what he might have done.  Mass murderer?  QAnon hero?  Would he have fallen into chat rooms with this crowd?  I doubt it, but the juxtaposition of the two things was interesting.  I'll have to finish it tonight.  

Such films, however, do not make for good sleep.  My dreams were haunted by losers and miscreants and I was up and down all night.  I know I must be more selective about what I watch before bed if I want to sleep peacefully, but sometimes you just get sucked in.  

I can't see out of the windows.  They are fogged with condensation.  It is the time of mold and mildew.  The world is green and once again closing in as the vegetation grows lush.  I read a book once about an explorer in the South American jungles called "The Green Hell."  I've been in the jungles of South America, and while that is worse, this is close enough.  I should have made more money and had a retirement home in the mountains for a summer retreat.  

Half my friends do.  The other half. . . probably read too much Bukowski.  

Oh, yea. . . and Happy Father's Day.

"Do they have that in China?"

Juneteenth

 Today is Juneteenth.  Most Americans don't know what that is, I read.  Hmm.  Maybe it is the name that is confusing.  It is like the number "fleventh."  It is a linguistic trick.  If it were called something like "Emancipation Day," perhaps. . . .  Somehow, however, it has been connected to Critical Race Theory which most people don't understand, either.  Again, maybe if they simply called it "Institutional Racism," people would get it.  Not that they would like it, but they might know what the hell they were against.  

Half my friends are full of theory.  

The N.Y. Times often has "quizzes" you can take to see how much you know about such things.  The one quiz I haven't seen is "Test Your Global Knowledge:  Which Countries Do Not Have Institutional Racism?" 

Not "European countries."  Just "countries."  

It might make a lot of racists feel better.  

"Hell, boy, tell me where they have let the !Kung bushmen be in charge!"

O.K.  Maybe they wouldn't know what a !Kung bushman is, but you get my drift.  

There just seems to be no gentle way of telling people to think about things any more.  We have to put them into boxes and put the on the spot.  

Well, Siri just informed me that tomorrow is Father's Day.  I'll neither be giving nor receiving.  

It is not just "Days" we are interested in--National Pizza Day, etc.  We are into superlatives, too.  CNN, The NY Times, and The Weather Channel all have fooled me with "set a heat record" stats.  One "record" I saw was for Tuesdays.  I shit you not.  It was the hottest Tuesday on record.  So now when I look at a story that tells me 700 records of extreme heat were set. . . I just can't trust it.  The news outlets should never trick you. 

O.K.  There's the wisdom.  

I had beers with my California climbing buddy last night.  I haven't seen him in over a year.  Nothing's changed, of course, not between us.  It is like I saw him yesterday except for the updates on everything.  We drank beers and the waitress, a potential model for the new Victoria's Secret look, flirted, and we ate sandwiches and shot the breeze.  

When I got home, I uncorked a new bottle of scotch, turned on the television, and watched an hour of The Beatles videos.  Early Beatles.  They were a good band, but holy shit, they could not write a lyric.  I'll bet most songs had at most twenty words.  "Love, love me, do."  Really?  But it is fascinating to watch the girls screaming and tearing at their hair.  Those early sixties are excessively fascinating, that time of change just prior to the hippie revolution.  It didn't last long.  Just a minute or two.  A few years at most.  

When the Fabulous Mop Tops moved on to more "serious" things like Nehru jackets and LSD. . . they began to seem like Brian Wilson sitting in a sandbox.  They were still good, perhaps, but all the screaming and stomping was gone.  At some point, all that remained was Yoko screeching and Wings.  Things had become hideous.  

I turned off the t.v. when a video with Elton John, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr doing "As My Guitar Gently Weeps," came on.  

At four in the morning, I woke up.  "Baby's In Black" was playing in my head.  I had a drink of water, peed, and went back to bed.  

"Oh, dear, what can I do. . . ."

Party!

 I may be no more chatty today than I was yesterday.  I may have chatted myself out last night.  We'll see.  

I met a group from the factory late yesterday afternoon for a birthday celebration.  This was the first time I'd seen many of the people in a year and a half and it was the largest group I've been around in that time as well.  We had a nice table on an outside porch, under cover, with nice temperatures and a gentle breeze. I wasn't sure how I would react to a group dynamic, but I was one of the first to arrive, so I got to start with just a few people.  And once I started, I couldn't stop.  And I started immediately.  I must be truly starved for attention.  I was funny.  I was outrageous.  I walked right up to the edge and then stepped over. 

Again, I was exhausted when I got home.  

Now I should note that this is, in the main, a group of younger than I progressives.  Not all of my ideas align with theirs and vice-versa.  When I started a story with, "I used to date the most beautiful woman in town," their eyes rolled and the moans began.  "No, no, it was well known.  She was famous.  When men walked by her, it was as if something went wrong with their middle ear.  They just sort of lost their balance for a moment, ran into poles and stuff."  Their faux-hostility increased.  I knew I was going to have a difficult time getting through to my point.  

They all seem to get some tract or talking points or something.  And I?  Oh, I said things like "you people" referring to the only Black person there.  She is my friend and knows what I am saying and why, but you could feel the table tremble when the sudden silence fell.  I don't know why I do it.  I just can't help it.  I had a professor once who said, "You really like to piss people off, don't you?"  I replied, "Not really. . . I just like to shake them out of their complacency."  The unholy thing, though, is that I can't.  Groupthink is a terrifying thing to go up against.  

All in all, however, it was a nonstop love fest.  And this group can really drink some cocktails.  Martini and coupe glasses littered the table.  

And then the bell sounded and everyone got up to leave.  

On my way home, a cop followed me for quite a way.  I was hoping I didn't have a tail light out.  I knew I smelled of tequila and hops.  When he finally turned off, I was aware of the adrenaline dump.  He had taken quite an edge off my buzz.

At home, of course, I recalled the afternoon, mostly my own truly fascinating tales.  I was sitting next to a woman who teaches yoga, now almost exclusively online, and she was trying to convince me to join her class.  Uh-uh, I said.  Not until I can bend over far enough to touch my knees.  I told her my recent meditation stories, about how I had a difficult time helping my enemies be in a happy place, and how I had to make them vanish into vapor instead.  I told her that when I sat on the floor, I had to have my back against the couch or I would fall on my back helplessly like a turtle.  She could help with that, she said.  

The thing is, I did yoga for years until it started breaking my lower back.  Too many vinyasas.  I did competitive yoga, I said.  One of the women at the table went with me sometimes to my practice and she verified that it was true.  

"I used to be able to turn mourned and see the trunk of my car," I quipped, performing a pantomime of an old man with a stiff back and a rigid neck using his jaw muscles to help him make a quarter turn much to everyone's delight.  

In truth, I told her, I haven't really done much of that since the accident, and the broken side of my body and the metal ribs take a lot of care when I am stretching.  She said that I would like her yoga bandini, whatever she called it, where you just lie on your back in a state between sleeping and wakefulness.  

O.K.  It was time to get serious.  I've done all that.  I used to lie on the floor and do the technique of relaxing your body from toe to head until you were in a semi-conscious state.  I relayed how I would seem to levitate, floating in circles higher and higher until I was flying above the city looking down.  I said at first it was scary and I would stop it with a start, but once I learned to enjoy it, it was really something.  All the acolytes at the table were nodding enthusiastically.  I told them I had a "girlfriend" in college that said she could do astral projection.  

"How pretty was she?" they sarcastically giggled.  

"If I told you, you would say I was lying.  She was a beautiful blonde vegetarian masseuse I met at the food coop.  In the woods behind her house, she had a massage table."

"A 'massage table,' eh?"

"That's what she called it.  Anyway, she told me she could come visit me at night.  I told her to climb into bed, then, and she said, no, I can't do that, silly, and I said well then, it isn't much good to me, is it?"

The table was a cacophony of groans.

"But when I started doing the floating thing, I thought I realized what she was referring to.  She eventually got a job as the official masseuse on an Eagles tour."

"The Philadelphia Eagles?"

"No.  The Eagles.  She would send me beautiful letters for ports unknown.  I would always know when I opened the mailbox that I had a letter from her.  It smelled of patchouli oil and lemongrass and other wonderful things.  Sadly, I never saw her again."

And then the table talk turned to factory politics of which I no longer had any part.  My part was done.  

The cop having killed my buzz, I poured a scotch and lit a cheroot and headed out to feed an impatient cat who has come to count on the assigned hour.  I was late tonight, but there was still plenty of light.  I was back now in my routine solitude, and the night would be no different than the 365 nights before it.  But what the hell, right?  The party can't go on forever.  

Jet Stream Extravaganza

I installed my bidet yesterday.  Instructions said 8 minutes.  Liars.  They didn't calculate my ineptitude, I guess.  But thirty-eight minutes later, I had everything connected and the floor mopped up.  Then for the test.  Holy shit (so to speak)!  I couldn't believe how accurate the thing is.  My eyes bugged out like a squeeze toy, I think.  It's a little weird, but it does what it says.  

I'll let you know when my handiwork floods the house.  

Maybe I shouldn't have led with this.  I can't seem to find my way to the next topic.  Don't even have one in mind.  

Which would recommend I stop here, I guess.  Probably so. 

The Kilt

 I met a fellow from the factory for lunch yesterday.  He was coming off an acid trip from the night before.  He'd just come back from a vacation trip to Las Vegas and to some mysterious town in Utah where he sought to unravel some of the questions he has about his childhood.  We had agreed to meet at a restaurant not far from the apartment where he lives, but as I was driving to meet him, he texted me and said the restaurant was closed.  "I kid you not--somebody plowed their car into it."  He was sitting at the bar at a nearby Irish bar, he said.  

When I got there, he was most of the way through his first margarita.  

"Hey bud, how you doing?"

"Good.  I'm sweating like a pig.  It feels like it is a hundred degrees in here."  

He knew it wasn't, of course, that he was still reeling a bit with last night's adventures.  The bartender stood in front of me with a beer in hand.  

"Is that for me?" I asked.  

"Do you like IPAs?"

"Sure."

"Then it's yours."  

That's what being clever will get you, I thought.  I brought the glass to my lips.  Fortunately, it wasn't bad. 

"Before you got here, she was talking to the guys to my right."  I looked over to see the standard fellows in their fifties, the sort you see at every restaurant bar like this in town, the sort who look like they play golf, vote republican, and tell jokes with a straight face. 

"One of them asked her if she went to school here.  'What do you mean?' she asked.  'Where did you go to school?'  She said she went to a private Catholic school and then to a state school at the upper region of the state where she graduated two years ago.  'I guess I've been wearing this same uniform most of my life,' she said."

I looked over at the bartender.  She was wearing a plaid kilt and a black leotard top.  She was more than a little striking.  Maybe it wasn't an Irish bar, I thought.  The Irish don't wear kilts.  No matter, though.  I was going to have to focus on not looking at her.  The short bar was filled with men who watched her move about her bartender duties with great enthusiasm.  Everything she did fascinated them.  Me, too, I must admit, but I am very conscious of not wanting to be "them."  Still, it was almost unavoidable.  

I took a look at the menu.  There was really nothing I wanted.  My friend ordered a margherita flatbread.  

"Do you feel on the spectrum?" I asked him. 

"What do you mean?"

"You only order things that are margarita."

"Oh.  I hadn't noticed." 

I ordered the shepherds pie.  

It was lunchtime, and the place was pretty busy.  I thought about the bar which I am sure never gets cleaned, about these republican men, some of whom surely have not had the vaccine.  It was the first time I'd been in a place this closed in.  There are more than just Covid germs, I thought.  We've sort of forgotten that we used to get ill pre-Covid.  The thought made me uncomfortable, but what could I do?  

"Were you alone last night?" I asked my friend.

"Yes."

"What did you learn?  Did you have fun or was it something else?"

He thought for a minute.  "It was fun," he said.  "But I came to a realization, too."

He stopped there, and I felt he was waiting for me to ask the obvious question, so I did.  

"I realized," he said, "that I have to quit narrating things in my head.  I narrate all the time, and I have to just let that go and just be in the moment."

It didn't sound like something one needed LSD to think about, but I wasn't judging.  

"I don't know," I said.  "I think turning life into a narrative is a positive thing.  Most people just live randomly, their lives just a hodgepodge of events they never try to link together.  Once I started writing my life out, everything got more interesting.  Suddenly my life was a story, and each day I couldn't wait to see what would happen next."

"No, but I mean like I'll sit here right now and be narrating in my head and I'm not really experiencing the moment," he quarreled.  

O.K.  It sounded a bit like the LSD talking to me, but it didn't matter.  Such a thing was of no consequence to me.  I was writing stories about the bartender and enjoying them.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her bend down to pick up something off the floor.  My body convulsed involuntarily.  She was smiling and joking with the men who watched her like the Super Bowl.  She was working them with smiles and eye contact and a seeming interest in what they were saying.  She was putting more than pennies in the piggy bank.  

"She is really putting that college degree to work," I whispered to my friend.  

He laughed.  

Over lunch, he told me tales of his trip out west.  He is a writer of repute and tells a good tale.  Most of them today, however, had to do with his quest to the mysterious town in Utah.  There was a mystery he was trying to solve, a gap in his memory, or, perhaps, false memories of his childhood.

"Don't you ever wonder what made you be the way you are?" he asked.  "Don't you want to figure out how you became who you are?"

"No," I said.  That broke him up.  

"Really?"

"I don't see the point of it.  I have a hard enough time just trying to be me.  I'm not really sure what I've become, so trying to figure out how I got to this place I can't fully understand. . . well, no."

He sat quiet and thought about that for awhile.  I snuck a quick peak at the bartender.  She was a real pro.  It was almost disgusting, but not quite.  

Suddenly, a loud voice filled the room.  What the fuck was that?  It made no sense.  The music had gotten louder, and a young guy in the corner was singing the lyrics at the top of his voice.  He was sitting with a young woman, and the two were obvious friends of the bartender.  

"That guy makes me sick," I said.  "That is probably the bartender's boyfriend, or at least occasionally.  Have you ever seen the documentary 'Crumb'?" 

He hadn't, so I recounted the part where Crumb talks about high school and that he could never understand how the girls always went for the guys they did.  I said this was why I had trouble in groups, why I couldn't participate in social media.  

"What were you like in high school?" he asked.  

"I was an only child.  I was used to being alone.  Parties made me nervous.  When all the cool kids were having fun, I was the guy in the other room sitting with the potted palm and the girl with the lazy eye."

This made him laugh.  "Really?  I never would have guessed that.  Why?"

"You know, I don't get it.  But it's like that group text thing from the factory.  Everybody will be chatting away, people liking other people's comments, everyone seeming to try to show they like it more.  Then I'll post a comment, and the chat ends.  I've always been able to clear a room.  And like Crumb, I just don't get it.  So. . . whatever.  I try to be the first one in and the first one out whenever I can."

Lunch done, the bartender wanted to know if we wanted anything else.  

"Are you having anything?"  My friend had gone through several margaritas.  

"I am if you are."

"I'll have a scotch," I said, naming the brand.

"You want ice?"

"No, just a small splash."

"I'll have another margarita." 

When she brought the drinks and set them down and had moved down to take some orders, I pointed to my scotch.

"You see that?  She's flirting with me."

"I was going to comment.  That's a pretty hefty pour."

The glass was half full.  

"I didn't really want that much," I said.  For Christ's sake. . . that kilt was killing me.  I had thought she surely must be wearing boy shorts under it, but I had visual evidence that that wasn't the case.  At least, I thought,  I wasn't trying to chat her up.  That separated me from those laser stare others.  Or so I consoled myself.  

In a bit, I looked at my phone that had been blowing up with texts for some time.  It was a group chat. . . nothing.  But the time was surprising.  We'd been sitting at the bar now for over three hours.  

"I've got to go," I said.  "I need to visit with my mother."  

The bartender brought the checks.  I needed to leave an adequate tip for having taken up space at the bar for so long, but it had to be subtle, too.  You know, I wouldn't want to look like those fools.  There was a delicate balance here to be struck.  

On the sidewalk, we chatted a bit more.  It was good, we said.  We'd do it again.  

By the time I got to my mother's, the exhaustion had set in.  We sat outside in rockers with the garage doors open, the temperature cooled by rain, the breezes, the quiet of suburbia, the birds. . . . 

"Oh.  I guess I fell asleep for a minute," I said. 

"I saw.  Go inside and lie down."

"No, I've got to stop at the grocery store.  I'm going to go."

The day had worn me out.  I thought about the upcoming group meeting on Thursday.  God, I, thought, I don't have the strength.  Really. . . the first one in, the first one out. . . . 

Magoo

Are you anything like me, kids, astounded at the things you read that you've never heard of nor know anything about?  It is not like I am illiterate, not like I don't pay attention to what is going on in the world, but Jesus Marimba, I'm constantly reading taglines like this:

"Tremeus Jones Says He Supports TDC Study"

And I wonder--am I an idiot?  I have no idea who Tremeus Jones is nor what the fuck a TDC study might be.  And so I am stuck with a quandary.  Do I read the story so I can catch up with the rest of the world, or do I just skip it and face potential ridicule somewhere down the line?  

It's a 50/50 proposition.  I've learned to skip such stories from experience.  But I wonder, have I become the Average American?  If I do fall into the trap and read such stories, however, I find I am maybe the opposite of that.  Tremeus turns out to be a gay hip-hop/country rapper crossover sensation on TikTok and TDC refers to something to do with inter terrestrials.  

But today a story on teaching pornography to children caught my attention.  In the opening paragraphs:

[A] study found that more than 90 percent of boys and close to two-thirds of girls had viewed online pornography before turning 18, whether intentionally or involuntarily.

I’ve been interviewing teenagers about their attitudes and expectations of sex for over a decade. When talking to boys, in particular, I’ve never asked whether they’ve watched porn — that would shoot my credibility to hell. Instead, I ask when they first saw it. Most say right around the onset of puberty. They not only learned to masturbate in tandem with its images but also can’t conceive of doing it any other way. “I have a friend who was a legend among the crew team,” a high school senior told me. “He said that he’d stopped using porn completely. He said, ‘I just close my eyes and use my imagination.’ We were like, ‘Whoa! How does he do that?’” (link)

Now. . . I've been a little disingenuous.   It is an op ed piece, and it is not actually about teaching pornography to kids but about it.  If you read the piece, you will find that it has an agenda--to change porn.  What is needed is a lot more diversity.  Kids need not simply to know about heterosexual anal sex but the many other possibilities that are available.  Who can argue with that?  The author judges porn and finds it lacking.  How can a kid really know what it wants to grow up to be if it doesn't have the full menu?  

Personally, I have about as much interest in porn as I do in the Disney channel, which is not to say none, but I can only take about two minutes of it before I get bored.  For me, each is about as rooted in reality as "Gilligan's Island." 

"O.K., kids, we are going to have a little pop-writing assignment today.  The topic is, 'Who do you find sexier--Ginger or Mary Ann'?  Now remember, in writing this brief essay, you need not close your eyes."

I just don't think I'm dialed in to the mainstream.  Not that I ever was, but mainstream sure has changed.  More and more I feel like the least interesting character on "Gilligan's Island," The Professor.  Or maybe Grandpa on "The Waltons."  Was there a Grandpa character on that show?  I confess, I've never seen it.  It just seems to be the kind of show that would have a crusty, suspender-wearing grandpa character who from time to time doles out a widget of homespun wisdom.  

I don't own any suspenders.  Yet.  

Oh--I just Googled it.  Sure enough, there was a Grandpa character.  I must have seen that in the trailers.  

Q asked me the other day if I had read some philosopher.  I forget which one, but it doesn't matter.  I said no, I find it is like the poetry of Alan Ginsburg.  I get more pleasure in reading about it than reading the work itself.  I find  philosophy overly tedious in its arguments as they try to prove the impossible.  Anyone who has read "Being and Nothingness" and says they found it fascinating. . . .  To wit, last night I watched some YouTube videos on Spinoza.  One of them kept referring to Will Durant who wrote the crib notes to all philosophical thought.  There was another that actually went through some of "Ethics."  I'm not sure that what I took away from the evening is accurate.  But it doesn't matter really, does it?  I could spend a lot of time misreading his work or an hour or so listening to some other equally valid account.  

A better comparison of who I am becoming would probably be the character of Mr. Magoo.  Yes, that is who I am beginning to feel like, a nearsighted retiree who is mistaken for a lunatic by others.  If I could only manage to feel as cheerful about it as he.  

Sleepwalking, Sleepwriting

 I slept away most of Sunday.  WTF?  I am somnambulistic of late.  I had to rise at three in the afternoon to do some marketing, but I never felt awake.  My mother was coming at 4:30 for an Early Bird Special.  I was cooking ribs and beans and slaw.  Once again, it was to be my first meal of the day.  I've not had a great desire to eat of late.  It is probably the weather, the heat.  I have been thinking of fasting every other day to see how that feels.  I have never heard of such a thing, but I will Google it.  I'm sure it is something.  

Many days I have nothing to do but Google.  I Googled "Organic Milk" today.  It is better for you than regular milk.  By far.  Never drink low fat milk.  There is nothing good about that and much that is bad. I Googled "How Long Do Squirrels Live."  It depends on the species.  In general, though, squirrels in the wild have a much shorter lifespan.  Generally a year vs. twelve to twenty-four in captivity.  Living in captivity is much better for longevity, if that is what you seek.  

I wonder if my somnambulism isn't a result of solitude and the corresponding depression?  Perhaps, but there may be a horrific organic reason, too.  I find you think much more about how you feel when you are alone.  In a crowd, you forget about that.  There is a public performance that is demanded.  But those badass fuckers like Jeremiah Johnson didn't dwell on such things, I would think (link).  Nor did Hugh Glass (link), the subject of "The Revenant."

Curiously enough, both Robert Redford and Leonardo Di Caprio starred as Gatsby in block buster movies.  

* * *

Dinner with mother was good, but she left early in order not to drive home in the coming rain.  And finally, a rain did come.  The land has been parched here, the lakes drying up.  Summer, however, could bring flooding rains.  Still, this is the fastest growing state in the union, so no matter how much rain might come, the aquifers will continue to shrink, sink holes continue to grow.  We've paved over thirty percent of our water recharge areas.  I made that figure up.  It could be higher.  I don't know.  I DO know we do it along with pumping toxic water into deep aquifers that we would have depended on one day.  Meanwhile, we have granted access to our best spring waters to giant bottling companies like Nestle who sell millions of gallons of the water per year.  

I just Googled that.  They own fifty-one brands of bottled water and sell eight billion gallons per year.  

The ways of human greed.  

I drink tap water.  According to its reports, my own hometown has very good drinking water, probably because we lack both agriculture and industry.  I had a friend who tested water, and he told me that it was purer than the major brand of bottled water sold here.  I wonder how much money I save each year.  

I calculated this week how much money I spend on gas driving to my mother's house each day.  That little journey costs me about a thousand dollars a year.  A little more or less given the price of gas per gallon.  I was shocked.  

When I told my mother, I think she felt guilty.  She keeps wanting to pay for groceries now.  She even filled my tank when we went to Costco.  

I'll tell her I more than make up for that amount of money by not drinking bottled water.  

* * *

There's some piss-poor writing for you.  The juices aren't flowing.  This is the writing of a somnambulist.  Perhaps I shouldn't force myself to post something every day.  

No matter.  

Broke Down Tired

 I went to dinner yesterday with only the 4th person I have seen out since the pandemic began.  It was he I believed had given me Covid early on.  Now I'm not so sure.  He told me that he got Covid at Thanksgiving.  It was severe.  He ended up in a Remdesivir trial (for which he was paid $3,000).  So maybe it wasn't he who helped ruin my life after all.  

We met for the Early Bird Special, dinner at 4:30.  Well, drinks at 4:30, dinner at five.  I have fallen in love with the early dinner.  The woman I went to the museum with does as well, and she is not old.  I think Dinner at Four could be definitely cool.  Staying out late now is for perverts and decrepit drug addicts.  The beautiful people are all in bed by nine and up with the sun.  So I've read.  I've always been this way.  My motto has always been, "Nothing good happens after midnight."  But midnight is too late for good health and a beautiful, shapely figure.  All science shows that exercise and early bed are important for a healthful mind/body relationship.  That's what all the Hollywood stars do, now.  It is not that you can never have the occasional hit off the crack pipe or the odd snorting of heroin.  You just do it early.  Q recommends doing LSD first thing in the morning.  Otherwise, he says, you'll be up all night.  

Good advice.  

The problem is, however, now that it is chic to dine in daylight, you can't find an Early Bird Special, at least in my own hometown.  I should be saving a lot of retirement money right now, but from what I hear, I'd need to move to a retirement town where they still have such things.  Here, in the heart of a mundane middle class metropolis, "Fugit about it."  

I met my friend at the bar.  I don't really do sit down tables unless there is a large group.  I hadn't seen my friend in over a year.  There was a lot of catching up to do.  He is moving to the Middle East.  I think I've already mentioned this.  He has a three year contract, so I'll probably be dead by the time he comes back.  I mean, I probably won't see him again unless he returns for some holiday.  He probably will, but I prefer the melodramatic approach.  Why not?  

There were a lot of good specials on the menu, but I was boring.  Chianti Classico, Arugula salad, Spaghetti Carbonara with chicken, Sambuca, and a scotch.  We talked our way through several hours, so we tipped our barman well.  Within minutes, I was home.  

And exhausted.  I still feel socially awkward having little practice at conversations this year, and throughout the course of our meal, the restaurant became very crowded.  It made me a bit jumpy when some man would bellow or some woman cackle, and there was a sternly beautiful waitress, obviously disturbed by some great internal turmoil, with a crazy tattoo on one arm, a sort of Asia Argento type, who had to pass by us a hundred times.  Each time, my innards would contract, and though she wore a perpetual frown, I swear she was looking at me from the corner of her eye.  Oh, mock me if you will, but I know these things.  She probably was thinking she would like to stick a fork in my bicep for laughs, but I don't believe I am wrong about the glances.  Even if I am only imagining it, though, it sapped much of my energy during the meal.  Just nerves.  

When we left, she didn't say goodbye.  Not even an almost imperceivable wave.  Maybe she's just shy. 

When I got home, the cat was waiting on her own dinner, so I poured a scotch, lit a cheroot, and sat with her on the deck while she ate.  By eight, I was on the couch.  

Oh, the couch, that lovely, luxurious couch.  I've recently taken to lying on it while I read.  It is deep and wide, and the buttery leather cools or warms you depending on your need.  I propped myself up on two large pillows and settled in with more "Submission."  When I woke, it was midnight.  I must have put the novel down for a minute to think on a passage or to rest my eyes.  I didn't want to get up, but my neck was starting to kink.  I knew I had to.  With great trepidation, I made my nightly concoction of oral contraceptives, brushed my teeth, and took a "'Nite All" to assure I would make it through the night after my late, long nap.  

The bed was glorious.  Each time I woke, I was "strong like raging bull."  Was it my little Argento?  Or maybe the Sambuca had some hand in it.  No matter, each time I'd fall back into some dreamful sleep.  

I have never felt comfortable in crowds and have always felt a tension in social situations that is hard for me to explain, but now that has been exacerbated by isolation, age, and a physical brokenness.  I don't think I have a party in me any more.  Maybe.  Just for awhile.  And then the sweet collapse.  

I had better eat my wheat germ today, though, for I must party again tonight with my mother.  I am grilling a rack of baby back ribs I bought on our frenetic trip to Costco the other day.  Ribs and slaw and beans, I guess.  Early.  No late eating for us.  It is not that mom goes to bed early, however.  She is a night owl.  She often stays up until midnight.  So do her friends.  Whatever.  That generation has a different juice.  They are all around ninety and don't look like they are running out of voltage any time soon.  My generation is already in decline.  Too many chemicals in our youth.  Too much plastic.  Too much Monsanto.  It is probably Monsanto that has me on the couch.  That lovely couch, soft and so deep.  I have plans for a good afternoon read today while the brutal sun mercilessly bakes the dying lawns and wilted shrubs.  AC, a cool couch, and. . . zzzzz.