Summer Finale

Sunday, the final day of summer.  What will you do?  I know what I will be doing.  

Oy.  

My mother is home, but she is not doing well.  Pain.  And other things.  She can't remember much now.  If I ask her if she took her pills, she doesn't know.  She has had lots of visitors.  They always ask, of course, how she is doing, and she tells each and every one of them in dramatic fashion all about her miseries.  She is not celebrating her homecoming.  She tells everyone she will be back to the nursing home soon.  

Now I must cram my life into a few hours a day.  The rest are spent tending my mother.  

Still, it is the last day of summer, and somehow I'd like to celebrate.  How, I wondered, do people do that?  Well, I asked.  

People celebrate the end of summer by holding outdoor gatherings like barbecues, picnics, and field days, enjoying nature through walks or camping, and engaging in relaxing activities such as reading or having movie nights. Traditions often include activities that savor the remaining warm weather, like eating seasonal produce, enjoying ice cream, or having a campfire, and some people use the occasion for reflection, like decluttering or journaling about their summer experiences.

I guess there are no historical or cultural traditions like dressing up in nettles and walking barefoot across briars.  Barbecues and ice cream sound nice but not so different from so many other weekend activities.  Perhaps I will make up my own.  Seems like I've waited a long time, though, to be curious about this.  

I'm not old, baby, I"m brand new. 

In the days before Google, you could just imagine something and tell people it was true and they would have had a devil of a time fact checking you.  There used to be many myths and urban legends masquerading as facts back then.  Now, a prof gets fact checked real time in the classroom.  

And yet. . . Kirk.   

I was ill once again yesterday.  At first I thought it was just the Tylenol PM hangover, but I went back to bed after breakfast and slept until near noon, and when I got up, I was still feeling ill.  When I went home, I managed to do a little work at my house.  I moved everything back onto the deck, heavy things including the big glass table top that I should not be carrying alone.  Of course I was wearing flip flops, and when I picked up the round glass, I got a flashback of when I dropped one on my toe at the end of last century.  I damn near lost the thing.  So, being a clever boy and know round things can roll, I rolled the glass top to the table.  I still had to lift it, though, to put it on the wrought iron table, and when I did, I felt myself pitching forward so I quickly put it into near middle and let it fall.  I was afraid it would shatter, but I got lucky.  

By the time I had the deck put back together, I was soaked in a sickly sweat, so I showered and got ready to come back to my mother's house.  Before I did, though, I asked ChatGPT to give me glass plate image of a ju-jitsu fighter in a slumped contrapostto stance inside a beat old wooden gym.  

This was the result.  I had forgotten to say female, but that A.I. platform already knows me--ha!  So this is how I imagined the photo I will take of the ju-jitsu champion to look.  Good separation between subject and background, a good silver-toned sepia tint.  I can try to shoot the image on my big assed Black Cat Liberator or I can use my Fuji GFX with a Leica R 105 mm lens.  Or I could shoot it with my Canon digital with an 85mm lens.  As long as I shoot with the lenses at full open aperture, I should be able to get the separation.  I have glass dry plates I could try to shoot with, but that is a real hit or miss project.  What is important in this picture is the lighting, natural, coming from an open source like a window or door.  All in all, there is much to think about.  But I'm glad I can get mood board from Chat so that I have some visual idea what I want to do.  

It gave me ideas for a project I've long thought about, so I asked for some other creations.  

I swear, it would be hard to beat these A.I. images.  But at least now I have a visual representation and can show people what I am trying to do.  

I stopped at the grocery store on my way back to my mother's to get the fixings for a spaghetti dinner.  And when I got back to her place, she was sitting with the across the street neighbor lady.  The neighbor was thrilled to tell me all the things she had done for my mother that day.  Earlier, that morning, another neighbor came by and said she could help with my mother.  

"O.K." I said.  "You take nights."

I made a Negroni and went out to sit with the neighbor and my mother.  My mother was complaining about the pain, about her feet beginning to peel.  When the neighbor left, the pretty woman who walks her two big dogs stopped by to say hello.  

"How are you doing?" she asked my mother.  I shook my head "no."  But the floodgate was open.  My mother poured out her miseries again.  Then the blind trike rider from down the street road up with her little dog and the big dogs went mad, so I ran out to keep the little dog from jumping out of her basket.  The pretty lady left and the blind woman stayed.  She asked my mother how she was doing.  

The thing is, when any of these people come up, I have to carry the conversation.  They talk to me or to my mother through me, and that is another whole job in itself.  I am the social director, the entertainer.  

Negroni long gone, I excused myself to go in and begin prepping dinner.  

And that's life its own self.  

I took nothing to help me sleep last night and so I slept poorly, but I feel better this morning.  With the start of the school year, infectious diseases are all about and spreading, and I seem to have already been subject to a couple.  Today, here in my own hometown, the weather will be sunny, and I hope to take my big boy Liberator out to make a couple photos to see if I can manage to hit focus with it.  I just need somebody willing to stand in front of my camera.  

My algorithms are turning a bit more toward "club" music.  Not the kind that Q plays, but old nightclub music stuff. . . and I like it.  Yesterday this song came up while I was driving.  I recognized the words but for the life of me, I couldn't remember who did the original.  This morning, it came to me, but I'll leave it to you to puzzle it out for yourself.  

You will probably get it on the first try.