What Next?

I hope you have been noticing some of the elements of the photography I've shown here over the years.  Surely you've recognized the simple setups of the chair or the chaise lounge from the studio days.  Sometimes I'll add features that were not in the studio like a window.  I am able to change some color schemes.  This was one of my first attempts with ChatGPT to convert one of my very early studio pics.  You may remember.  

She was a pretty Persian, a student at Country Club College.  We got along well and kept in touch for a good while, and she planned to come back to the studio again, but things happen.  In this case, I can't remember what.  I should go back and look through my email and report here. . . but right now, I haven't the time or energy.  

This was the second version, or maybe the third.  I said no, no, no. . . landscape rather than portrait orientation.  But it came out a bit odd, so I tried again.  

In the end, I liked the first version best, but feel free to like what you wish.  I just thought I would go through some of the iterations with you.  

I've learned much about making images in A.I. now and often stray further from the original photo.  I've found a hundred ways.  

I got a slow start yesterday and decided it was too late to exercise before going to see my mother, so I got dressed and headed out the door.  Outside, I could hear water running.  I walked around to look.  Uh-oh.  The lawn guys had cut the head off one of my sprinklers and water was running out of the pipe and puddling up on the ground around my deck.  

Shit piss fuck goddamn.  

I went to the back flow device to shut off the water.  The levers had rusted tight.  I ran back to the irrigation controller to shut it off and see if that would stem the flow.  Nope.  I got a hammer and tried beating the back flow levers.  The levers moved, but only the levers and not what they were supposed to turn.  The water kept flowing.  I would have to turn the water off at the meter.  But where was it?  The irrigation meter is next to the water meter for the house, but I couldn't see it.  I began to dig.  I hit something.  It was a brick.  I was digging with the claw side of the hammer I had used to beat on the back flow levers.  Deeper I dug and finally I was able to find the cover to the water meter.  Roots from the ligustrum had grown over the top of it.  Branches had grown and with the weight of the leave were hanging above it.  I cursed the lawn guys.  I'd asked them many times not to blow the lawn clippings and leaves into the beds, but they have short memories.  I went to the utility shed to get a shovel and some hedge trimmers.  I came back and trimmed back the branches above the meter and then began to dig away the dirt.  I had to use the clippers to cut back the thick roots.  As I dug, I could feel the strain in my lower back.  Not good, but there was nothing to be done about it now.  I had sweat through my shirt in the muggy morning air.  Finally, I got the thick cover of the meter loose.  I went back to the garage to get the big key to turn off the water supply.  

Shit piss fuck goddamn.  Where the hell was it?  I looked everywhere.  I know I'd put it here, but it was gone.  I began cursing the tenant.  Surely it was her fault.  Had she lent it to someone?  

The water kept flowing.  I jumped in the car and drove to the hardware store.  

$25 later .  . . 

The water was off.  I decided to cut back some other branches from a couple trees.  I was soaked.  I was dirty.  Fuck it.  It was noon.  I needed to get up to see my mother.  I washed my hands but didn't bother changing.  

When I got to my mother's room, she had company--three of the gals from the neighborhood.  Mom looked much better.  Things were pretty lively.  One of the girls, the daughter of my mother's 91 year old neighbor, figured out how to get the cowboy channel for my mother.  "The Rifleman."  

"Don't change the channel," my mother cried out.  We turned the t.v. off and back on to see if the station would come back on because we all knew my mother would never be able to find it again.  

It did.  

When my mother's lunch came, the girls said it was time to go.  I fixed my mother's plate.  Put tartar sauce on her fish sandwich.  Opened her apple juice.  There was a cheesy cauliflower dish.  A bowl of cut fruit.  A piece of cake.  Mom ate it all pretty well. When she was finished, I moved the tray off her bedside table and said I was going.  It was after one.  I'd be back in just a few hours.  

I had packed my gym clothes, and that is where I went.  And WTF?  When I went to the locker room, there sat Craig.  

"You been here all night?" I joked. 

"Hey. . . can you help me do something?"

"Sure."

"I can't get my sock on.  Can you put it on for me?"

I'm not very good at these things.  I don't like doing them.  I don't really enjoy touching people I don't love.  But I've been such a caregiver this year, I closed my eyes and gave it a go.  The first attempt didn't go well.  I took the sock off and rolled it up so I could get it over his toes.  His legs were swollen twice a normal size.  I was eye level with the scars on his knees from the replacement surgeries.  His feet were like hooves, hard and inflexible.  I got the sock over his toes and got the rest rolled most of the way up. 

"That's good enough," he said.  "I'm going to a funeral."

I watched him struggle to put on his pants.  He was in worse shape than I had thought.  His clothes spoke of poverty.  His eyebrows were wild.  I watched him run a comb through his thinning hair.  I changed into my gym clothes and asked him if he needed anything else.  

"No," he said.  

I told him I'd see him later.  

Since I've been living with and taking care of my mother, my body has begun to fail me.  Walking becomes more difficult.  My hips and knees are hurting badly.  My lower back is a wreck.  I've not had a real workout in weeks.  I was only doing a therapy kind of workout that afternoon trying to get my body to work.  No weights.  Thankfully, hardly anyone was at the gym on a Saturday afternoon.  Except one.  Alain.  He came back to see how I was doing.  

"You're losing weight," he said.  

"Not the good kind.  I'm just getting puny." 

He stood and talked for a long time, maybe twenty minutes.  The afternoon was wearing on.  I wanted to get through this workout and go to the grocers.  I did some stretching, some flexibility exercises, and then got on the treadmill.  I thought to walk an incline for two miles, but my knee and hips wouldn't let me.  After a single mile, I stopped.  I did my orthopedic stretches on a platform for about twenty minutes and looked at the clock.  

By the time I got home from the grocery store, it was four.  I had decided to boil shrimp and have Spanish rice with chopped olives for dinner.  I needed to get back to see my mother.  The smart thing to do, I thought, was to set the rice to cooking in the rice cooker and boil the shrimp.  Boiling shrimp takes two minutes.  I would drain them and put them in the refrigerator.  The rice would be fine.  And that is what I did.  

After a shower, I headed back down the road to my mother.  She had already eaten dinner.  Pork chop, crab cake, fruit and veggies.  The food at this rehab facility is pretty good and about twenty times better than the hospital meals.  

I had an idea.  

"Hey, ma. . . do you want to go for a ride?"

She said she was up for it, so I got her into the wheelchair and tooled her around the place.  

"Do you want to go outside?"

"Sure."

We got into the elevator and went to the first floor.  I didn't know if I was allowed to do this or not.  There was a woman sitting in a wheelchair by the front door.  

"We're making a jailbreak," I winked.  

"I won't tell anybody," she said.  

I strolled mom around the building to a little garden area where we stopped for a while.  I sat down on the bench--in a puddle of water.  

"Whoa!"

That was funny to my mom.  She was doing much better now.  I'd walked with her in her walker in the morning.  She told me she had done it again by herself in the afternoon.  She seemed to be getting stronger, and I suddenly knew that I would be taking her home when rehab was done.  She'd be able to use a walker again.  Maybe I'd get a wheelchair for outings.  But is seemed certain to me now she would be going home.  

She was dying.  Then she wasn't.  

The facility is huge.  It has housing for hundreds in their apartment complexes.  We were sitting by the big restaurant that served the village.  We watched old people walking in.  

"Are you ready to go back?"

"Yes."

Back on her floor, I took her to the public sitting room.  There was a gas fireplace behind glass flickering for eternity.  Above was a huge t.v.  We were the only ones in the room, so I put on the evening news for my mother.  I was glad my dinner was ready at home.  

I got home at six-thirty.  I made a Negroni and sat down.  Negronis are equal parts Campari, sweet vermouth, and gin with an orange slice.  I've become addicted.  I need to stop, but man. . . at the end of these days, it is medicine.  

I plated the shrimp and rice.  Too many shrimp.  Too much rice.  

I couldn't eat it all.  It was dark now, or nearly.  Saturday night.  I was beat.  I wouldn't be able to pressure wash the side of the house and the deck until I got the leaking irrigation pipe fixed.  I needed to call someone about the back flow device.  Things were getting worse rather than better.  People were at movies, bars, on dinner dates.  

I poured a whiskey.  

I'd been watching more of the Chamorro stuff during dinner.  

He is a romantic fellow.  You've noticed, of course, he champions mostly young women.  One could complain, or one could say he is counteracting the boys era of the Rat Pack.  You can say whatever you want.  

I love the choice of music, though.  Always my kind.  Times gone by.  Time recaptured.  

Somewhere after nine, I rented "The Phoenician Scheme" from Prime Video.  I made it to ten.  I was shot.  It was the stress of the day.  It was the alcohol.  It was my mother's durability and the knowledge of my own fleeting life.  I was done for the night.  I knew tomorrow would be very much the same.