So Quickly Passing

It was dark, I guess.  Automatic point and shoot camera.  Blurry.  Still.  I was reading James Salter's "Dusk and Other Stories" on the trip.  I wished I could write like him.  Some things are stupid and impossible.  But I wrote, as I always had and have.  I don't know who took the photo, but it must have been my girl.  We were at her tranquil garden home in Aix surrounded by works by Matisse and Picasso.  A gypsy in the palace for sure.  But more on that later.  

I took my mother to her appointment this morning.  Wrong day.  We go again tomorrow.  That is on me.  I'm slipping. I worry about that.  I used to hold all things in my head, but lately it seems there are too many things.  I don't know where the blame lies.  

I went to the fixit shop today and told them I would have my car towed in tomorrow.  The cleaning crew was coming, so I had to shower and get out of the house.  Went to the Cafe Strange.  Not so strange anymore.  The PhotoBooth is out of commission and they have replaced it with one of those digital things that is not the same at all.  Kids don't come for that.  The cafe is full of losers. 

Me, too. 

I met Mr. Tree at three.  He told me a price, but upped it in person.  Everything is more expensive, he said, but the truth is he gave me a price then bought his second home in the hometown of his Cuban surgeon bride.  He needs money.  I don't like him anymore.  He's a greedy fuck.  Nobody in business is a true friend.  

My pants are around my knees.  

I'm sick.  I'm tired.  I'm dying.  

"But so are you," said the dying but still lecturing Christopher Higgins.  

T called.  He is in town with his wife.  "Come have drinks with us," he said.  No can do.  You know my schedule.  "I told my wife it was a 50/50 chance."  

Too optimistic.  

I have been trying for two months to find out why I am not getting an appointment for a gel injection in my bad knee. I found out today that what I suspected was true.  My doc has retired.  I have an appointment now in a month with a new doc.  

I limp on. 

After Pamplona, and after touring the countryside with the Clone, I met up with my girlfriend.  I was living a different life.  I look back now and think I didn't realize how beautiful she was.  

Her friend's father owned the old hotel on The Boulevard.  Now, so many years later, she does.  She was friends with my girlfriend and her sister was friends with my ex-wife.  The circles in the old village were small.  The age difference between the two was four years.  I liked my girl's friend much.  She was what they used to call a real "hell babe."  She was hardy and up for anything.  I can't figure out now why my girl decided to pursue me.  I was out with another of her friends from Country Club College at a new wave club when we met.  She stayed with me and talked to me all night.  Then she went to Australia to study for six weeks.  When she came back. . . she moved in with me.  I had a card table and two folding chairs in the dining room, a papasan chair, a tinker toy couch in the t.v. room.  Two forks, two knives, two spoons.  Most nights I ate a can of tuna on spaghetti noodles with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and an ice cold bottle of cheap white wine.  I was a broke ass cowboy.  She was a princess.  

There we are in Cannes.  

That was our third and last summer together.  In three more years, I'd be married.  

I'm writing tonight because I have to get my mother to a doc appointment in the morning.  I may have more to say.  

I watched this again tonight and thought how great it is to fall in love.  I want to be young and falling in love again.  

Who doesn't? 

I told Mr. Tree, an Indian Malaysian, and his wife, a surgeon from Cuba, that when you tell your friends your troubles you have no friends. 

"Oh, no," he protested.  "We are not Americans."

Yea.  Just pull your trousers to your knees and we will give you help. More than you asked for.  More than you could forgive.  

"Love you, brother.  Call us if you need anything."  

I don't know what telling my tales of woe are doing to the blog.  Have I lost readers?  Am I down from some to none?  

* * *

It is morning now, and I have read the news.  It has done me no good.  I don't feel more informed nor a tad bit happier.  I measure time now by the pillbox I prepare each week for my mother's many, many meds delivered four times each day.  And now, by the B12 shots I give her every week.  It is terrifying how quickly the weeks pass, how rapidly my life slips quietly into the void.