The Beast

I am cursed I am beginning to believe in earnest.  Who do that voodoo?  I know who thinks they do.  As I become more mystical, I may begin to believe so, too.  Maybe I should rethink fooling with the number "13."  I live at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.  O.K.  I made up the street, but 1313 is correct.  My mother warned me.  But in this case, it is the Black Cat, the #13 AeroEktar Liberator camera.  John completely overhauled my camera.  The focussing is bright as the sun.  I had a loop to help with focus.  I wore glasses.  There can be no excuse.  He is out of focus.  If you look closely, the grass in front of him is sharp.  WTF?  

Yesterday, I took the camera out to shoot.  The mirror continued to stick so that the shutter could not fire.  I called John.  The fix?  A rubber band.  The camera now has a rubber band attached to the mirror release lever that stretches to a knob on the front of the camera.  I needed that to go with the baling wire holding my muffler on the Xterra, just to make sure people know the hillbilly I really am.  

I took a couple more photos yesterday.  I will scan them later to see if they are in focus.  

But wait--I'm not done yet.  When I loaded the film into the developing tank, I loaded the two sheets of John into the same slot.  Fortunately, they were not emulsion to emulsion or I would not have gotten anything.  But the one above was over the emulsion of the one behind . 

You can laugh at my ineptitude.  It is o.k.  One of us needs to get a kick out of this.  I am, to understate the case, dismayed.  I am incompetent.  I am, as my uncle used to say, as useful a cub bear playing with his pecker.  I want to make pictures with this camera so, so very badly.  I'll try a bit more, but if I keep f'ing things up, I am going to be forced to sell it.  Which might not be a bad idea since I should reap around $8,000 or so.  Maybe there is some other fool for the number "13" out there.

You can see, though, that the camera makes startling images, that the subject just "floats" in the photo.  I'd rather "follow my dream" than sell the camera.  I am, despite all things, still aspirational.  I'll be out with the beast today.  

I also need to get a new flatbed scanner.  And printer.  You don't want to know the cost.  Where is my benefactress?  With a little money and a couple porters, I'd take that camera all around the world.  

Selavy.  God gives to those who. . . something.  I can't remember.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't those who "desire."

I got a few kudos for yesterday's long assed post.  It seems I do better when I have a story to tell.  And maybe I will.  Have more stories, I mean.  Experiences outside my house and head.  I've let isolation stultify me.  I've had no end to chiding for that.  People want me "out there" as I once was, "a man of the world." 

Person, I mean.  I'm not sure what I can say now that DeSantis is out of the race.  He will probably come back to his home state as a devil dervish.  But he will make the wrong people pay.  It is MAGA who defeated him.  He was, in their eyes, an apostate.  He will have to try to ingratiate himself back into the fold.  Either that or finally come out as gay.  We all know he is.  He's an angry, closeted man, and hell hath no fury like. . . . 

But. . . yea.  I want to bumble about "out there" once again, garnering experiences I just can't get in my 'hood.  If my day trip to the north taught me anything, it was that people will still speak to me, and that is sure as shittin' the beginning of a story.  I am a very persuasive listener.  People tell me things.  It is my super power.  

😃

It is still cold here, but if you can trust the weatherpeople, the sunny days are over.  It will begin to warm to unseasonable temperatures.  I asked some of my conservative friends, and it seems nobody knows why.  It is a complete mystery and maybe just an aberration.  Things like this have happened in the past, they tell me.  The government is just trying to control us with all this talk of "climate change."  We are only told what the scientist on the government dole are saying.  Somehow, the conservative friends have access to documents that the rest of us never see.  The government, they say, is trying to bury them.  

So maybe next year. . . . 

My Apple Music was playing a bunch of music that made me think of Manhattan yesterday as I stood at the sink developing film.  Q and I are going to rent a suite at the Carlyle and sit in the bar nights without end listening to Bobbie Short.  Yea, I know. . . I missed that one.  But surely there is someone there with throwback sophistication.