Last night was the Full Pink Moon. A Barbie Moon, if you will--or perhaps Ken. Jesus. No wonder I felt like shit all day. I did, and I knew I was nearing death, so I turned down an invitation to the good sushi place from Tennessee. Rather, I went to see my mother and came home to work on the mess in the living room that was once ensconced willy nilly in the office closet. I needed a healthful night, so it was sautéed vegetables and a spicy tofu mix for dinner. And a Guiness 0. Two of them. No alcohol. Then my gourmet Milk Oolong Tea and, later, coconut water. I was on the path. I meditated for a bit and then got to sorting through all those boxes of old photos.
That about did me in.
I sat in the living room looking at the mess of photos that had become randomized by the spill, one by one, putting them into categories that made sense at the time but probably wouldn't in the days to come. It was like watching your life pass before your eyes. Feeling death close at hand, it made me very sad.
I took a Xanax. That seemed to help.
And of course, the music. I don't mean that it helped. It was just the soundtrack of lost and lovely times and of a lonely night of solitude. And yet, Christ, it was all so lovely, too. Proust, who I can't read, may have been onto something.
I was overwhelmed. Where would I find the time to immortalize all of this. I would die and one day these photos would all go into the trash or, were I luckier, to some antique store.
"Look at this photo, Mackenzie. Look at these people. Hillbilly Beach, it seems."
"Put those back, Mason. You're not buying those."
"They'd be great in my collage series."
"You've got enough already. C'mon."
But I thought to scan them and tell a story about each. Short. Concise. My fear, however, is that it would bore you even more than my daily blabber. I don't know. You may not realize this but scanning and fixing the scan takes a lot of time. And I could never, ever get them into a chronological order. It would be totally postmodern/disruptive marginalia.
The sad realization that so much of life is lost.
And the moon rose.
By the time I went to bed, I was feeling better. I was hydrated and t.v. and liquor free. And I was Xanied. Zannied? I took an Advil PM just for good measure and slept through the night except for relieving myself of Guinness and tea and coconut water and a glass of Emergen-C.
I feel SOOOO much better today.
I also scanned the surf project through the day and the night and managed to cook some up on the other computer as well. I've learned so much doing them that I think I know better how to process them now and need to start over from scratch. That's just throwing away all the hours I have spent cooking them up so far, but it is not really throwing them away anymore than going to class to learn how to do something is time wasted. No, those hours taught me something. I should start over again. Sometimes, as Edward Albee so famously said, you have to go a long way around to come back right.
I will continue on my righteous path today, trying to regain my Positive Mental Attitude, eating that healthy hippie diet, drinking purifying fluids and being gentle with myself and others. I'll burn essential oils. . . etc.
But those photos took me from one love to another right up to the last one which ended all sorts of wrong. It was never what I did, I think, that was the problem, but what I didn't do. Isn't that something?
I could be wrong. I could tell the story another way 'round, but I'd rather be mea culpa and generous. I think that has always been my M.O.
My music algorithms are all over the place, from emo folk to hillbilly to. . . old music. There were photos of my mother and father young and traveling. And then this played. My parents music. . . sort of. I was transported to a time when people played cards and ate sandwiches and listened to small radios. I can still feel that happiness somewhere down in my bones.
Yea, yea. . . I'm a romantic fool. Especially under a Full Pink Moon.
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