"I wasn’t able to generate that image because the request violates our content policies. Please provide a new prompt or describe a different concept you’d like to create — I can help you craft something similar in tone, style, or atmosphere that stays within allowed guidelines. What would you like to try next?"
WTF? I asked Chat to create an image of a 1940s burlesque dancer in the manner of an E.J. Bellocq photograph. It wouldn't, so I tried again in a new chat. I got the image above. But when I asked it to recreate it in my own style, I got the "violates our content policies" statement over and over again. Well I'll be. My loose copying Bellocq in my "Lonesomeville" series has brought me to this.
Yesterday was a twenty-two hour workday. I took my mother to a one o'clock appointment with the superstar of osteoporosis doctors. It is very, very difficult to get in to see her. My mother's primary doctor says she recommends patients to her but they can't get appointments because she works for the other medical system in town. There are two, and they do not like to take one another's patients. It is nuts, but they are each run by MBAs maximizing profit.
So our getting an appointment felt special. I drove her to The Women's Pavilion, a division of an orthopedic group that is part of a larger medical octopus with 24 hour ERs, doctor's offices, and hospitals around the state. Within minutes of signing in, my mother's name was called. She was weighed and measured and had her blood pressure taken. Then we were taken to a room where my mother was asked a whole bunch of questions. The woman asking the questions wanted to talk to my mother, not me. It was a Women's Pavilion, of course. My mother says she can hear everyone but me. I mumble, she says. So I sat back and watched the woman try to get answers from my mother about her falls, hospitalizations, operations, meds, etc. My mother would lean forward and say, "What?" and then shake her head. It didn't take very long for the woman to direct her questions to me.
Ho!
The list of questions was long, some about family medical history, most about my mother's long life. Had she ever been a smoker? Did she drink alcohol? Beer, wine, or liquor? Here I looked at my mother. She got nasty.
"I don't know, honey," she barked. "With as much pain as I'm in, I'm thinking about drinking it all."
Had my mother had a hysterectomy? Did she have implants? The list was long. I wracked or racked my brain to remember much of it, even the many, many hospitalizations and operations this year. Then we got to the list of meds she was taking. My mother just sat back shaking her head and asked, "Why do they do it this way. Why don't they just put it all into one pill?"
The medical assistant's eyes popped. I giggled.
"Yea," I said, "why is that?"
When she was finished, she left and said the P.A. would be with us shortly. When she came in, we went through much of the same drill. She was going to talk to my mother. I sat back and watched. Soon, her eyes were cutting to me silently begging me to help. She had a checklist and was marking my answers down, mostly yes or no things, but some dates as well. When we were done with that, she said my mother would need a bone scan and a blood test. We could do the scan today if we had time, but the blood test was a fasting one. Once these were done, on our next visit, we would see the doctor.
She showed us to the front desk where we could make our appointments.
"Let's see. . . the next free appointment with the doctor is March 9. Are you free then?"
I guffawed. "Oh. . . it depends, you know. What times are available?
She gave me three.
"Let me check my calendar really quickly," I said staring at her. I paused. Yes. . . I think we are free."
How many bones might my mother break in the next, what. . . . five months?
"I can put you on a list and call you if something comes open earlier," she said.
"Yes, that would be nice."
From there we went to the Imaging department. When I said we were told they could scan my mother today, I was told no. I made an appointment for next week. Then we went to schedule her bloodwork. I made the appointment for another day next week. That makes four doctors appointments in three days next week.
It was three when I got my mother situated back at her house.
"It's three. Now I'll start my day," I said. Yea, yea, I'm getting snippy. I had errands to run, things to check. . . .
I was back to my mother's house at five with a bucket of fried chicken. This was my mother's dinner request. Driving with the chicken made me hungry. As soon as I walked in the house and put away the rest of the groceries, I opened the chicken and a beer. It was a whole chicken, two legs, two wings, two thighs, two breasts.
We ate it all with nothing but beer. I hate to say it, but that was the highlight of my day.
My nerves are not good. I poured a cocktail and went outside. My mother followed. I just sat there for a long, long time watching the daylight fade, the clouds in the blue sky turning flamingo pink, new parents pushing strollers by on the sidewalk, waving, saying hi.
I put my mother's eight o'clock meds together. We have a new one to add to the mix. The dining room table is filled with pill bottles. I can't remember everything, so I pick each of them up and read the label dumping the appropriate pills into the pill cup.
I turned on t.v. YouTube recommended a two hour documentary on Beryl Markham (link). It was new. Of course I was going to watch it. She's been one of my heroes since the 1980s. I've read the two biographies that have been published about her. I've seen the documentary with interviews made in 1988. I had purchased "West with the Night" the year it was first reissued. I was in one of the two great little bookstores, now long gone, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan when I saw it. Hemingway had praised the author.
When the doc was over, I was done. I went to bed and slept until two-thirty. For the next two hours, I sweat with pain and horror. Irrational fears gripped me. Or were they? I was certain I didn't wish to continue any longer. The terror had me and wouldn't let me go. I got out of bed three times, but it didn't help. Finally, I drifted back into a restless sleep. Still, I rose before the sun.
The fear stays with me. I have decisions to make but feel incapable of making them. I want out.
I want out. I want out.
There seems to be no end to misery now. The human body and the human mind can only take so much. But Beckett had it down.
"That's what you think."
I go to see my beautician today. I may get the haircut I had in yesterday's vid, but I don't know. I will leave it up to her.
My mother is up and waiting for breakfast. I must serve. I'll leave you with this. I made a little video from two photos I took on Saturday at the Farmer's Market. Or Farmers Market. I don't know. I am fascinated, but this is silly stuff. It means nothing.
No comments:
Post a Comment