Gazing into the Darkness

I've been looking at too many of my photos.  I can't look at them anymore.  I am understanding why Garry Winogrand left 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film when he died, and another 6,500 rolls that had been developed but were never even turned into proof sheets which means they were never viewed.  I got a message from the film lab yesterday that the film I had brought in didn't have any images on it. Blank.  

I was almost glad.  

Jesus.  That's 80,000 undeveloped frames of film.  234,000 unproofed frames.  314,000 unseen images made by a master of photography.  

He just couldn't stand looking anymore, I guess.  

I don't know how many images I have that have never been cooked.  I get tired of photographs that aren't fucked up in some way.  I like to mess them up, "degrade" or manipulate the photographic quality.  Burn them, smear them with goo, transfer them. .  . anything to get them to look like something else.  I like using weird lenses.  I spent an entire weekend intentionally taking extremely out of focus photos in Manhattan once so that the images were just smatterings of color.  

I've been trying reflections, skewed scenes, abstractions for a few weeks, but I'm tired of looking at those, too.  

I need a camera that can photograph the past.  

I've been pretty good about cleaning up my diet.  No sweet buns or coffee cakes with my coffee in the morning.  No cookies or potato chips or other manufactured foods at night.  I've cut my alcohol consumption, too, and have gotten better at hydrating during the day.  I've picked up my aerobic activity which wasn't difficult since it had fallen to zilch.  I've taken no sleep aids at night.  

Yesterday, I noticed the difference.  I was more my old self again, a little funnier, a little more chipper.  I may come out of this depression I've been in.  

Now I need to work on my resentment.  My mother walks bent double.  She cannot stand up straight.  She moves slower than a sloth.  It takes her five minutes to get up from the kitchen table and walk to the car.  She moans and farts when she does.  Now, friends, this is not on occasion.  I am not working a shift. I do not go home at night or for the weekend.  This is, by and large, the entirety my life.  The creaking and clanking of the walker that she cannot hear.  The banging of hard objects on the kitchen table that resounds like cannon fire.  The up and down all night.  It is what I live with, and it has worn me past the point of remembering pity.  I must get back to compassion for her and forget about the life I have lost that I can barely remember now anyway.

I am no Mother Teresa.  Or maybe I am.  It is reported that she was a mean-assed bitter woman.  Christopher Hitchens was not a fan and argued that "Mother Teresa used the suffering of the poor as a fundamentalist, media-friendly pulpit to promote archaic dogma."  

We are an impoverished nation now that both Hitchens and H.S. Thompson are gone.  In the era of Trump, there is nobody who comes close to the intelligent vitriol either of them could have artfully heaped upon him.  

In looking for that quote, I came across this: 

"Author Gore Vidal insists that one should never avoid a chance to have sex or be on television."

Funny that, as last night I watched a segment of the old Dick Cavett show with Vidal and Mailer trading vicious barbs.  That is how I spend my evenings.  

I think Mailer might have said much the same thing.  

It is Friday and I should look to having a bit of fun.  An hour of fun, anyway, which is all the time I can allot.  But it is difficult now, with no running mates or fun companions at my heed.  Indeed, I have become all but forgotten as something invisible ultimately is.  They are not to blame.  Lives must be lived as fully as possible.  But what, I wonder, shall I do?  Last Sunday, I decided to go to a friend's Boulevard restaurant and bar for a pressed duck sandwich and a beer.  I sat alone with three silent tvs playing on the wall above my head.  I had no fun at all for my nearly forty dollars.  The next day I got a Big Mac for five.  It was a much better sandwich.  

My life is devoid of music now except when I drive.  My algorithms seem to have gotten back on track and I am getting things to soothe my jagged nerves.  Driving in my own hometown has gotten to be much like driving in a mini-Manhattan.  You just can't go anywhere.  The state needs to institute real driving tests to keep the morons from getting licenses.  All I can do is pray for some music to help me chill. 

There is a full moon which I have not seen.  In the old days, I would have wandered from my house to the lake to sit and watch it for awhile.  It was a chance to reflect and fantasize and wonder.  I might be able to step out into the driveway for a moment to look up, but I miss those nights at the lake sitting in that romantic, melancholy spell.  

All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: "O love! O love!" many times.

But, of course. . .  

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

Thank you, Mr. Joyce.