Do you ever laugh my cryings and weep my joys? What I mean is, do you get a kick out of reading about my troubles and sorrows? I'm not trying to make you feel bad about it. It's o.k. You see, that is part of the deal. This fellow I write about is not real. He is a coyote, a trickster. Road Runner always outsmarts him, and he often outsmarts himself. So it's o.k. It's just part of the storytelling.
You fuckers.
Ha! I woke every couple hours in the night. I finally rose just before five. I didn't really want to read the news, so I went back and read a lot of my blog posts. There is some good stuff there, but boy, I should edit more closely. Whatever. It is all just the rough draft of an unwritten novel.
I'll blame today's errors on my lack of sleep. I have no coherent plan, really. There were just a lot of unconnected events yesterday that I will try teasing together. . . or along.
Up early, I went to the gym. The wound/scar (I'm not sure of its category now) is healing nicely so that wearing shorts to the gym seems fine. But that means I have to show off my swizzle stick legs that have not been exercised for six weeks now. Some walking and now a little stationary biking, but that is all. I am slathered in sympathy fat that must be lost. My overall build is. . . I am no natural Tarzan. It will take work.
I saw Tennessee at the gym.
"Are we still going to buy a camera today?"
"Sure. What time?"
"I'll be out of here by eleven. I'll pick you up at eleven-thirty."
When I got home, I stripped down and got into the shower. I soaped up my face and neck, then my chest and underarms and back. Scrub, rinse, re-lather. But all that is not to titillate or sicken you but to get to this: then the legs. You see? I had not yet touched the wound/scar. I soaped my hand and ran it lightly over the Z-shaped scab. It felt o.k. even though I was getting a little tingle in my spine. Once more. O.K. Enough. It was doing well. It felt fine. I was relieved.
T showed up just on time. He drove.
I know everyone at the camera shop to some degree, but when we walked in yesterday, I didn't know anyone. A new girl asked if she could help us. And she did. We were down to buying one of two cameras, the X-T5 or the X-Pro3. I don't deal in these crop sensor cameras and had forgotten the differences between them and what was more in line with what T needed.
"Let's go get lunch," I said, "and Google a couple things, then we can come back and buy."
Just around the corner from the camera store is a Michelin awarded udon noodle shop. They make the noodles out of some special Japanese flour and fly in the water from some sacred source in the Japanese mountains. I'm just riffing here from memory, but that is very close to being factual. I've eaten there twice before, but man, this time was a real home run. T lived in Thailand for a couple of years when he was training and fighting, and his wife has been working with companies in Japan and S. Korea for years, so he was very familiar with everything on the menu.
"I'll have the same," I told the waiter. Beef with udon noodles and an egg in their special broth.
"It is our most popular item," he said.
"We'll take some of the dumplings, too," said T.
While we waited, I scrolled through the specs on the two cameras we were looking at. Then the food came with little bowls of various things. I asked T what was what. Ginger and ground chili. Sesame seeds and something. I dumped everything into the bowl.
T took one bite, then another, then he said, "This is really good." He took another. "This may be the best I've ever had."
I was glad I came with him because what I was eating was much better than what I'd had in my prior visits.
By the time we had finished sucking the last noodle and broth from the big bowls, we knew what T was going to buy. And when we walked back into the store. . . I knew people again. There was my buddy who ran the processing lab. There was the owner's son. There was the Mexican woman who often helps me, and there was the little fellow who has been working there longest. I didn't know if the sales people work on commission, though, so we waited for the new girl who had been helping us earlier.
T. walked out with a new Fujiilm X-T5 and a used 16-55mm zoom lens which I thought to be the best lens for him to learn on. The T5 was marked down around $500 under what it cost at the big box stores online which surprised the heck out of me, and he saved another $500 by buying the lens used, so all in all, he did very well.
Driving back from the store as we passed the big gardens and park, T slowed the car and pointed into a tree where ten small birds were dive bombing a black crow.
"Look! The crow took one of the babies from the nest!"
And sure enough, he had the chick in his beak as the little birds dive bombed him. It was something I'd never seen before.
"And that is nature. Eat and be eaten," I said.
"That's all of life."
Back at the house, I helped T set up his camera menu for simple shooting. I hate the Sony and the Fuji menu systems. They are too long and complex. I showed T. how to set the camera to Aperture mode, how to use the exposure compensation dial, and set almost all the menu settings to something safe.
His phone rang. It was his wife. He was supposed to be home in four minutes. He was in trouble.
"O.K. man. . . I'll see you when you get back from the Keys."
The day was moving on, and I still had not taken a picture. The streets around the camera shop and the restaurant there in what is referred to as Little Vietnam was full of colorful people. It made me itchy, but not a picture I took.
We had stumbled into a market after lunch that was next door to the Michelin place. It was a huge collection of Asian food stalls with rows of tables and chairs set up in between.
"This looks like everyplace in Thailand," T said, and indeed, the place was packed to the gills.
"Oh, man. . . we have to come back to try this."
That is what is happening in my own hometown. It just keeps getting better. More money is pouring in, big money. Everywhere in my little village, million dollar homes are being torn down to build six million dollar homes. Longtime residents shake their heads in astonishment. Within just a few years, four or five Michelin starred restaurants have opened. I say for or five because I don't go. Can't afford them. Some of my friends say that Michelin is giving away too many stars and that they don't mean what they used to. Still, the places are plenty pricey. Many of my new friends and acquaintances do go, and I feel myself growing poorer all the time. Shitty car, old house, and a seemingly shrinking pension. I'll be sitting in my underwear in the yard throwing rocks at passing cars and yelling at kids soon.
So it seems.
"Why is he always carrying a camera? Don't talk to him kids. Don't even look."
See? You are laughing. That's what I mean.
Now the sun is up. I think I'll go back to bed. I may go out with the camera today and force myself to make a photo. I might. Tonight I am eating with my mother at her neighbors' house. Chicken and dumplings, I hear.
At least I won't' have to cook.
Oh. . . I almost forgot. I watched two very long interviews with Cormac McCarthy. Oh, shit. . . how awful. He is very disappointing in much the same way my other favorite author, James Salter, was. They were both small, precious men who were as boring in speech as they were scintillating in writing. I would recommend strongly that you not watch interviews with either of them. I have to, of course. It is what I do, what I know, but you. . . you are free to skip it. In life, I believe, they would have been irritating, forgettable men.
But fuck it. Let's get back to The Road.
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