What I'd Like

I'm feeling better.  I am at the point where I hate to say such a thing.  I don't want to jinx it.  But I went to the park and walked and did some light exercise yesterday.  I kept in mind my new attitude and didn't try to push myself to do "more."  I've done "more' my whole life.  Now I am looking to do "just enough."  I'm giving up the fantasy of sparring with Tennessee.  Who cares?  I'm just going to get a gun.  There will be a steep learning curve if I do.  I've only shot one once.  Back when bullets would bounce off me, I didn't need one.  I probably don't need one now, but you know the old joke--if I do, I'm going to need it real bad.  

I'm not getting a gun.  I'm just saying.  I'm not going to keep trying to be Tarzan.  Remember that movie "The Incredibles"?  

Yea.  

For lunch, I made two toasted tuna fish salad sandwiches.  Toasted, I say.  It makes a difference.  I was feeling like a normal person eating sandwiches for lunch.  I had a yearning for an iceberg lettuce salad. . . with thousand island dressing.  Remember those?  Holy smokes were those good.  I remember them from going through the line at the old Morrison's Cafeteria.  If you never had the opportunity to go to one, you missed a real treat.  There is NOTHING like that now.  You got a tray, put it on one of those three-railed metal sliders, and pushed it along from station to station where men and women in white uniforms and chef's hats asked you what you would like.  Salads, vegetables, starches, meats, fish, and poultry, then deserts.  There was always a tremendous selection of things.  When you got to the end, the cashier would ring up each item and you'd go into the giant dining room and pick a seat.  My father used to call it Morrison's Cafe.  I thought he did it just to irritate me, but now I think I get it.  It was one of the few places we went to eat dinner out.  

I"d love to go to one now.  I'm really craving an iceberg lettuce salad.  

After lunch, I began to work again on the surf series.  Every time I look at it, I get excited.  I love those photos.  I still have one small professional printer that is functioning, and since my idea is to print the images 5x5 or 6x6 inches, I thought I'd print one and see.  

Everything was off.  

A decade ago, I bought a ColorMunki.  I just like the name.  It is an instrument for calibrating the colors you see on your computer monitor.  I've never used it, but I found it in the closet a few weeks ago when I was cleaning.  I decided to give it a go.  I found out why I hadn't used it before.  It just seemed ridiculously difficult.  But. . . I gave it a shot.  After I calibrated my screen, it shown much duller and flatter than it had before.  Computer monitors are set up to be bright and shiny which is why internet images look so much more lively than a photo of the same image.  But for printing, you don't want that.  You want to see what the final print will look like.  

After that, I sent the printer through a major print head cleaning cycle.  Twice.  Fortunately, the print heads all cleared.  I made a new print.  Oh, yes. . . things were much better.  

That took three hours.  

I went to see my mother.  She had had a bad day, she said.  She looked like it.  She didn't look so very well sitting in her chair.  As so often happens to her now, after doing the least little thing, she just "falls apart."  That's the phrase she uses over and over.  She has bee feeling especially bad since her fall.  I am taking her to the doctor this afternoon.  Her blood lab results will be back and we'll go through that, but my mother wants to have an MRI of her head and neck.  I'm thinking what she is going to get is a referral to a neurologist.  

I hated leaving my mother looking so down.  I know sooner or later I am going to have to move in and take care of her.  But not yet.  So I kissed her and drove away feeling like a shitheel of a son.  

Grocers.  All I'd eaten was those tuna fish sandwiches.  I was not interested in sticking to the bland diet any longer.  I bought a smoked half chicken, salad mix, tomatoes, and garlic,  I had asparagus in the fridge.  I also had some rugalach I had gotten at Whole Foods the day before.  

When everything was ready, I sat down and opened a beer.  Yup.  Damn the torpedoes.  Everything in me wanted that beer, a good IPA.  Man oh man, dinner was good.  

Fuck it.  Dinner done, I poured a whiskey.  I've never had such a good whiskey, and it hit me like a shot of heroin.  I sunk deeply into the leather couch.  I was happy.  

But I shouldn't drink.  Even though I have been sick, I look good.  My hollow face looks better than the bloated one.  I mean, you should see my portrait smoking a pipe.  It's a close up.  O.K.  It was the best of the lot, but it is flattering--and I believe it.  

Rather, what you get is a photo of ghostly me, semi-reflected, see-through me.  I took this on my walk on Saturday, so yea, it's the new me.  I'm still deciding if I like the photograph, but since I am in it. . . I'm biased.  

In my solitude, I hear so much good music.  There is so much good music, I can't believe the stuff most people listen to.  But music and musical tastes are among the strangest things.  You can never predict what a person will like, but you will know them by the music they listen to.  I believe that.  My mix of music has become terribly strange.  I must be a strange man.  Maybe just eclectic.

I should report that when I called my mother after dinner, she said that just after I left, everything cleared up and she felt good.  She sounded much happier.  I certainly was.  

But you know what I'd really like?  I'd like a chicken fried chuck wagon steak with gravy to go with that iceberg lettuce salad.  Doesn't that just sound good?