Anxiety and Mania

I was rather excited and happy yesterday.  This morning, I can't quite get hold of myself.  This radical mood swing has several components and moving parts.  Perhaps I should tell it in chronological order as I am too flighty right now to think cleverly.  I'm locked into survival mode.  

Mom seemed to be doing fine on the first day of November.  The time change hadn't really played a role in our lives on a Sunday.  We did what we do and I turned back the one analog clock in the house by an hour.  I made a small breakfast of hard boiled eggs and sliced Kiwi fruit and dallied a bit before going back to my own home to see if it had been "tricked" on Halloween,

All was fine.  It was just before noon, and I had no plans to walk or exercise.  I wanted to go to the coffee house and to the cafe thinking to make some photos.  But first, I put a load of towels and wash cloths into the laundry and went to the computer to. . . oh, I forget to what. . . but there I went into research mode.  I'd been looking at the new photo book I had gotten, the prints by Reig, and I had an idea. I wanted to see if I could do it.  I knew I could, for I had done it in the past, but as things go, I'd given up the project and had moved on.  

I checked my email first and had another message confirming I would be among the first to receive the new peel apart instant film to try out.  Gratis.  I was buoyed by the news.  

My handwriting is anything but enviable.  Worse than that.  When I was in elementary school, my grades were top hole except in "handwriting."  I think that is how they labelled it.  I consistently received Cs and Ds there.  If they gave grades for coloring, I would have done just as poorly.  I've never tried to figure out why, but believe that I am simply impatient.  I am not good at taking my time.  I am not slow and careful.  I've realized lately that has been a problem for me in many things.  I tell myself, though, that I make up for it with the genius of spontaneity.   My thinking is nimble and quick.  And so I succor myself with that.  

As I said, I had an idea, so I went to Chat to ask it to produce some handwritten script for me in Italian that I could use as a palimpsest layer with my images.  It produced something lovely, so I took it into Photoshop and layered it with this photo.  I played around with it, fading it in places, playing with the opacity.  I went back to Chat with the results and asked for other things as well.  I experimented and the day wore on, but lo and behold, I had a working model for what I might want to do as a project.  I sent the result to my Miami friend to get permission to use this as advertisement for what I was projecting to do.  I asked if I could shop it around.  She wrote back, "Of course!"  

I had ordered some Japanese Kozo paper for the inkjet printer and was anxious to see how this would look.  Holy smokes, kids, it looks better on paper than it does on the screen.  It is a true beauty.  A real knockout.  I sent the image around to some friends to see if I was crazy or if it would hold their interests.  They liked it, but you never know what is real and what is just polite.  

This is just a mock up of sorts, though, for I researched further how to manipulate the print, and much of what I will do with the final product is physical manipulation.  I still have a lot of experimenting to do, but it is the first time I've felt like going down the rabbit hole with experimenting for a long while.  Between this and the peel apart film, I'm fairly jacked.  

But this is where the time change got me.  I'd forgotten about it and had been looking at the time on my computer screen, not thinking.  When I went to put the towels in the dryer, I looked at the analog clock.  It was getting dark outside and the skies had opened up.  The sky was black and the rain torrential.  I had planned on making pho for dinner, but time had gotten away from me, so I called my mother to see if she would eat chicken and salad from the Greek place. 

No answer.  Worse.  "This number is not taking calls at the time." 

I packed up to go, but getting from the door to the car was impossible.  I would get soaked.  I waited a bit for the rain to let up, but there was no let up.  I threw things into a garbage bag and braved the storm.  

I was wet from head to toe.  Driving was dangerous, but being Sunday night, the traffic was light.  I followed another car through flooded streets watching the rooster tales it threw up, slowing down where the water was deepest.  

I got wet again going into the Greek place.  And coming out.  

Traffic was irritatingly slow going back to my mother's, cars in two lanes riding slowly side by side.  They were making things dangerous with their constant tapping of the brakes.  Once again, I lost faith in human intelligence.  It happens. 

I set the table for dinner and turned the television to football--the Broncos and the Chiefs.  The food and the game were both good.  Kansas lost on the last play of the game.  

I was thinking about my doctors appointments as I prepared for bed.  I get my blood test results today.  They will take my blood pressure again and once more it will be high.  What to do?  I had not had a cocktail before dinner and had only wine with my meal and then an after dinner scotch.  Maybe another.  Then I made chamomile tea that I drank for the rest of the night.  But I needed to have a good night's rest.  My neck was still jacked.  I had to make a decision--Tylenol and Advil PM.  It would do my bp no good, but. . . . 

I woke a couple times in the night, the last time just before I got up at six.  The rain had continued all night.  There were flood warnings.  When I woke for the last time, I was in the middle of a terrible nightmare.  It is too weird to explain, but it seemed that I had been having this dream for a long time, maybe for many nights.  Human aliens were trying to kill me.   Yea, but it seemed so very terribly real.  

When I got out of bed, I was sure my blood pressure was through the roof.  The rain continued coming down hard.  I'd been worried about this, for I no longer have a raincoat.  I have to park far from the entrance to the medical building, and if it were to be raining, I would go in soaking wet.  Anxiety is one of my constant companions.  If I don't worry, things get worse.  

And that is where I am now as I write this post.  I can't get hold of myself, can't calm down.  I am not looking forward to this visit with the doctor shortly.  

Disaster thinking.  The news all 'round will be bad.  Have I told you about my cowardice?  

I will not be able to get excited about the project again until I find out what the doc will tell me today.  If the news is not terrible, here is my plan.  I like Reig's work, but he is not a great photographer.  Maybe I am not so hot myself, but I believe I can better him.  I will put together a little portfolio that I can show people.  I will look for the most interesting faces I can find and tell them I want to make pictures with them that will look like this.  Surely they will be beating down my door work with me, right?  

Maybe.  I sometimes get a bit manic about things.  Maybe I'm wrong about this image.  Maybe it is too kitschy for some people.  Maybe it just looks silly.  Maybe people won't respond to it at all.  

But that is not on my mind this morning.  I need to stop my heart's racing and my hands' shaking.  It will be alright.  It will be fine.  

The rain is to continue, they say, for several days.  My moods are tied to weather.  They have been even before my garage apartment was destroyed by Hurricane Floyd.  I'm a blue sky kind of fellow.  Soft rain sits well with my melancholy.  But hard rains and heavy storms bring out the disaster thinking in me.  I am imaginative when it comes to doom and gloom.  

And so, now I must go and try to prepare myself for whatever comes.  I've climbed glaciated mountains over 19,000 feet.  I've survived in avalanches and lightning strikes in total white outs.  I've rafted down primitive white water rivers that had been the death of others.  I've been scared on multi-pitched rock climbs when our repel rope was stuck on rock shards high above us as the sun was sinking.  I've been sick in the Amazon sleeping with natives in the jungle.  Yup.  I've done all that and more.  You would think I could handle a trip to the doctor.  If you did, however, you'd be wrong.  I did all of that, I now believe, trying to prove to myself that I wasn't the coward I now contend I am.  I think everything I've done has been an effort to overcome it.  

I'm nothing if not confessional.  My ex-wife told me it was a terrible flaw. 

Still, I'll fight you if I have to, so don't fuck with me.  

Please. 

No music today.  Rather, I'll leave you with more of that silent travel stuff.  You don't have to watch, of course, but man, the creative objects in Viet Nam are inspirational.  Talk about palimpsest.  English, French, and Vietnamese over the centuries making the most visually interesting things I've seen.  I will incorporate some of what I see here into my project, I think.  

If there really is to be one.  

Oh. . . that image will not look like anything on your phone.  You must see the fine details on a larger screen.  I plan to print the pictures big, at least 24" on the small side.  Just saying.