Genius

I love this image.  It is a rarely seen photograph by Garry Winogrand.  You have to have been there and then to make a photograph like this.  I don't live in such a place.  I don't.  Where I live, there are no such scenes.  I look at it with awe and wonder.  

Could I make an image like this with A.I.?

Without a doubt.  

Like Tiki culture, like Hollywood, I can make images and videos of things that never existed.  Total fiction.  Make believe.  Fascinating and beautiful.  

I have tried to do in my life all the things I made believe doing when I was a child.  I have done most of it, and it has shaped me.  There was adventure and romance.  By and large, it has been wonderful.  

But I think I had just as much fun pretending.  

A.I. is make believe.  It is pretend.  If they would take the fucking guardrails off, it might be endless.  

So. . . is that really a Winogrand image at the top, or did I make it up in A.I.?

I once "hand painted" a famous Sarah Moon photograph that I loved using Photoshop.  It turned out wonderfully.  Now it circulates on the internet as a Sarah Moon photograph.  It scares me sometimes.  I think I will get sued.  

I've been watching lectures by Richard Feynman on YouTube.  Funny guy.  How'd he get to be so smart?  

Some people just are.  A college in the northern states, I was just told, is advertising two faculty positions at present, one in English and one in Physics.  The starting salary for the physics prof is $150,000/year.  For the English prof?  $56,000.    

I'm pretty sure the music and art professor positions don't approach the physics professor pay, either.  

After watching Feymman, I watched a documentary on Edith Wharton, after which I watched one on Tolstoy.  Each started out life with more money than a physics prof by far.  

Wharton's and Tolstoy's accomplishments couldn't be much more dissimilar, I think, but both shared something with Feymman and the great composers and great painters in history.  They were all Jewish. 

I kid.  

They all had tremendous imaginations.  But. . . and here's my point. . . they then expressed those imaginations in captivating, and dare I say, "magical" ways.  If you get past the idea that mathematics is about numbers, it is scary in its beauty, but even numbers are abstractions when place together in certain ways, in formulas and theories, are are awe inspiring.  

The same, I think, is true of the abstractions of words, and notes and colors on canvas.  Everybody can do it, of course, but the way Wharton put words together evoked such thought, such feeling. . . . Bach placing one note after another. . . that we all have the same emotional response to the sequence. . . Cezanne's daubs of color next to another. . . etc.  

The common reader, looker, or listener thinks it and feels it without wondering why.  The critic tries to look more closely and explain how the effect is achieved.  But even there, of course, the attempt falls short, for if they could truly explain it, we could all do it.  

Nope.  It is all "magic."

There are lots of musicians, artists, writers, doctors and lawyers and Indian Chiefs. . . . 

But as someone once said, "God made many artists but not so very much art."  Something like that.  

OK.  So I wanted to write away from the troubles of my days for a moment.  The city put up new street lights on my street.  Not just my street.  They have done it all over town.  Every block or two, a new, stylish, old fashioned street lamp cast its puddle of light.  I was afraid that they would put one up that would shine in my windows, in my bedroom windows, and keep me up at night.  They were digging the hole in my yard when I left to go see my mother in the hospital late yesterday afternoon.  When I got home, it and several more were up. 

And they are lovely.  Or, at least, they are not going to keep my up at night.  I am at the point in life where I try not to get upset about the things I can do nothing about but cry and complain.  In truth, I'd already determined that if the street lamp was a problem, I would get a ladder and spray paint the side that was bothering me.  Much easier than fighting City Hall.  

Let me tell you another way to solve the problem.  Not saying I did this, but. . . get some of the spray adhesive and spray it on an offending light. Slowly, over time, dust and dirt will stick to it, and it will grow imperceivable dimmer and dimmer.  

Or, here's a fun one.  Spray paint a wall with it saying whatever you want.  Anything at all.  Ever so slowly, the words will emerge, first faintly, and then. . . . 

I would never do that, though.  Especially not now.  

But a stencil of the face of Jesus really freaks people out as it slowly emerges over the days and weeks.  

So now for the update.  They did my mother's MRI on Wednesday night.  I was in her room when young Cock Robin in his doctor's coat came in to report what we already knew.  

"Now a neurosurgeon will come up to see if you are a candidate for surgery."

All day yesterday, nobody ever came.  She is still not scheduled for surgery.  She has now been in that shitty room for a week.  They've known about the collapsed vertebra since she went to the E.R.  If she doesn't have surgery today, she won't have it until next week. . . BECAUSE. . . the I.R. department, part of the neurosurgical wing, doesn't work on weekends.  

And so my mother lies miserably in wait.  

She wants to go home.  That's the plan. 

And so, my life, even now, is one of a constant service.  I won't bore you with the details.  Not today, anyway.  

I haven't cooked a meal all week.  I don't think I will.  I had a Poke Bowl from Fresh Market last night for dinner.  I put a can of garbanzo beans in with it.  Ten dollars.  If I cooked, it would have been more.  I would have had a lot of leftovers that would have sat in the fridge until I threw them away.  

Oh . . . when they brought my mother's lunch yesterday, it was, in part, a turkey and cheese sandwich.  It was cold and windy and wet outside, and when I left the hospital, I thought I wanted a hot roast beef sandwich.  Maybe a French dip.  But you know what?  Ain't no place in town serving roast beef anymore but for one popular, old place that I do not like.  I find their sandwiches reminiscent of Arby's.  So I went to my buddy's place on the Boulevard and ordered a hot duck sandwich.  Holy Moly. . . man alive. . . such a delicious sandwich, especially on a cold winter's day.  

Went back to see my mother at five.  Ate, drank, and fell asleep on the couch.  I think I spilled the last sips of my tea.  Went to bed near midnight.  

Yep.  Life at home.  I'm back. . . for how long I can't be sure.  But for now. . . .