How Can I Be Happy?

Woke at three.  Up at four.  What was wrong?  It made no sene.  I'd had a happy day.  Happy makes you more inviting apparently.  People smile at you and say hello.  You feel more alive, attractive almost.  There is a woman at the gym who I don't really talk to.  I don't talk to women I've not been introduced to at the gym.  I'm observant.  I see the creepers always ready to "help" a pretty woman work out.  They like to "mansplain" and give advice.  Nope.  Not me.  

Anywhere and everywhere, no matter. . . I am shy.  I don't talk to people anywhere uninvited unless I am on a mission to make a picture or a story, and then I am only a persona. 

The woman is strong and well-built, and when she is working out, she has what some call a resting bitch face.  She looks like she could be mean.  But the minute you talk to her, she lights up like a warm candle.  The transformation is crazy.  

She chatted me up (or vice versa) for a very long time.  Nicest person in the world.  We weren't flirting.  She is married and has two kids.  Her husband comes to the gym with her sometimes on the weekend.  No it was just friendly chat.  She had changed her hair, but it a bit shorter but not short, and blonded it, too.  It looks very nice and so I said.  

"How does your husband like it?"

She told me he doesn't like for her to change but that he did like her new hair. 

"I'll bet.  But yea, relationships are about stability.  Home base.  Nobody likes their spouse to change.  It is scary.  You always want your girlfriend or wife to be five or six pounds over ideal weight.  When they start going to the gym, start losing weight, change their wardrobe and hair. . . I always figure it is time to pack my underwear and toothbrush and just move along 'cause they ain't doing that for me."

She laughed at that.  

"Yea, when I start cutting up and losing weight, he always gets nervous."

It has been a hard-learned lesson.  In my experience, women don't leave without a Plan B.  But, you know, some relationships last a lifetime.  

After the gym, I went home and was glad to be there.  I had a call from the roofing guy and we went over what he was going to do and I said, "o.k."  Things were getting done.  They were costing money, but these were necessary things.  Old C.S. was taking care of business.  

When I called my mother to ask her what she wanted to eat, she said she had been eating all day and wasn't hungry, so I went to her house and had a Beer Lite with her before I took myself to a sushi dinner. 

Dinner hit all the high notes.  Everything was perfect. And when the pretty Asian girl brought my edamame, she smiled and said, "Hello. . . welcome back."  I think they are told to say that.  If I owned a restaurant, that is what I would tell them all to say.  What is there to lose?  What percent of the crowd will be coming in for the first time?  Still, I liked it.  I used to ask my students how many compliments they had given that day.  People are bad about giving compliments.  They are only interested in receiving them, by and large.  

"Try it. It hardly matters what compliment you give.  Just say, oh, I love those earrings or simply don't you look nice today.  People will like you better.  Life will go smoother.  Try it.  You'll see."

Scripted or not, her little phrasing had the intended effect.  

But something Woody Allen said in a movie I can't recall has always landed with me. 

"How can I be happy when I know that people are suffering?"

Indeed.  And I was going home to that.  My mother and I sit before the television, but she isn't there.  She isn't watching.  She has gone to some internal place.  She is in pain.  She is worried.  The future ain't what used to be.  And so. . . the guilt.  How can I go out and enjoy myself, how can I be happy, when my own mother is suffering?  I know some people can do it, but I am not of that ilk.  

Thus. . . whatever.  I had sake with dinner and it was good, and I had a whiskey when I got back, and it was good, too, and I watched my mother sit in her chair and look at her hands and so when she grunted and shuffled off to an early bed, I decided to take one of her old hydrocodone tablets.  

But even drinks and the drug didn't put me out.  

Were I a free man, I would put on my workout things and go to the exercise course and be showered and ready for the day by mid-morning.  I might head out of town to the Farmer's Market again or I might take a photowalk somewhere around town before getting lunch.  But I am stuck in place.  My mother will get up and I will put together her meds and sit with her and make her breakfast and sit with her until I feel I can get away for a bit.  My day will be condensed into a couple hours before I start getting things ready for our dinner.  

The 24 or so hours of happiness, though. . . quite something.  

My old college roommate is in the hospital, so I sent him the silly fun Sean Francisco stuff.  He wrote back that it reminded him of our college days.  We were fairly enamored with detective novels then, both classic Spade and Chandler stuff and the new, hipper takes on the old themes written in the contemporary language of a Tom Robbins novel.  One of the good ones was "Ackroyd" by Jules Feiffer.

Whodunnit? Who's Who? And, more importantly, "who the hell am I?" He solved the case of the missing parakeets. Now if he could only figure out who he was... Jules Feiffer works his easy-going wit and biting social satire into his second novel "Ackroyd," which begins as a parody of the Raymond Chandler school of detective fiction, but ultimately asks the age-old Is identity merely a metaphysical conceit? A shamus who may or may not be a sham, Roger Ackroyd (named after the victim in Agatha Christie's most shocking novel) is hired to investigate a case of writer's block by sports writer Oscar Plante. Over the course of five years, in between the bonhomie of Elaine's and tangling with unconventional femmes fatales, Ackroyd's personality begins to merge with his client's as he acquires his ex-wife, his mistress and, eventually, his craft. In "Ackroyd," Feiffer uses the detective genre to further his investigations into human neuroses, and to re-imagine the artist as a young sleuth forced to cope with a corrupt world.

The silliness of my little book cover, then, served to cheer my old friend up.  

I AM a silly man.  Silly and absurd.  It has been my shield and armor against the mean stupidity of the world.  Again, I wouldn't recommend it, but. . . . 

Having said that, the little Hopper Creeper thing I made has gotten more hits on YouTube in two days than anything I have yet done.  I promote nothing.  I just put them up, so other than you people, who I am not even sure watch the stuff, I don't know how anyone finds the stuff.  But as C.C. told me long ago about making a blog, "Just write it.  People will show up." 

Of course, C.C. was being evil.  The blog has often been the bane of my life.  

I have made some images on OpenArt AI using the same prompts I use on Chat.  Usually the results are too plastic and distorted for use, but somehow I hit on a combination that came out nicely noir.  And now that Chat has censored me to death. . . .  

O.K.  My mother is up now and moaning and groaning with every breath.  My nerves are frayed.  Maybe you could do it.  Maybe could keep your peace and sanguinity while listening to the dying animal day and night and day and night. . . .  

I am living in a Beckett play.  

What can I do?  Maybe I'll make "Hopper Creepers #2."