All I've Got

Well, shit. . . my blog went to Google Jail once again, so now EVERYONE must pass a test of moral courage to view the site.  Selavy.  That's what I get for listening to C.C.  He told me that was the perfect photo to post about the loss of romanticism and giving up on the hope of love.  I thought so, too, but it was his encouragement that pushed me over the edge.  Indeed, this entire blog was his idea.  

"Jump. . . jump. . . the water is deep!" he said.  Fifty years later, here we are, still getting into trouble.  

In truth, though, not everyone can look comfortably at the human figure.  Indeed, I was considering doing something really odd.  I thought about SELLING my photos instead of giving them away as I so often do.  Well, not "so" often.  But I do.  I'm not a very commercially oriented person, but I need a new printer, and to buy one of the appropriate size with inks will cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $7,000.  

And no sense.

I looked at a site that sells art online.  They had some things I really liked.  It led me to this woman's photography.  I even wrote her a fan's note (link).  I admit, I am envious of those photos.  

So I went to the sign up page for the gallery site. . . and read this. 

Though this isn’t an exhaustive list, Saatchi Art generally considers the following to be indicative of adult content.

• Photographic/photo-realistic nudity, either full or partial

• Depiction of sexual acts

• The use of expletives (i.e. strong language)

The types of images/content that will be removed immediately are:

1 Those images we deem racially offensive, promotes discrimination, bigotry, racism, hatred, harassment or harm against any individual or group.

2 Images that depict or otherwise promote the sexual exploitation of minors (persons under the age of 18) or harms minors in any way. We strongly advise that photographers and artists painting in a representational style have their models (especially those posing in the nude) sign release forms indicating that they’re over 18, should the legality of the images come into question. Saatchi Art reserves the right to remove any images that are in violation of laws protecting minors or which may promote illegal actions against minors.

3 Images which violates, or encourages any conduct that would violate, any applicable law or regulation.

4 Images which are deemed fraudulent, false, misleading or deceptive.

5 Images (and or text) which is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, vulgar or offensive.

6 Any images determined to be violent or threatening or promotes violence or actions that are threatening to any other person.

7 Images (and or text) which promotes illegal or harmful activities, products or substances.

It makes me fearful and rather killed the dream.  Oh. . . I have plenty of images I could post there, of course, but the thing is. . . do I want to support such policies?  There is still the defiant rebel within me.  

But. . . these are the "community standards," I guess, the stuff of "the people," so. . . we'll see.  I need money if I want to be an "artist" again.  I need a studio.  

After I posted yesterday's entry, I felt bad about something.  It seemed I was saying that women age noticeably and badly in a decade.  Well, I did say something like that, but I didn't mean it to be exclusive.  We all do, me more than most.  I was once young and clever and now I am a mentally crippled, overweight Quasimodo.  But I am hardly in the public eye.  What I was meaning and not making clear, I think, is that those people make a living by being in the public eye.  They are dream makers.  They shouldn't be mortal nor should they be subject to the laws of aging.  It crushes me.  

It should not happen to any of the women of the circa 1980s era.  

Nor to me.  

But it does and has.  And I am often late to the party.  By the time I fall in love with their visages, they are already a decade down the line.  

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer.

Look what your god has done to me!

In truth, that is two decades and I was already old in the first photo, and we know that we race towards becoming a mushroom the farther we travel.  So. . . by way of apology.  

While I was writing, though, this just came in from my conservative friend.

One of the ancient rabbis quoted in the compendium of wisdom known as “Chapters of the Fathers” offered a rule of thumb for thinking about the ages of life. One’s 20s, he wrote, were for the pursuit of livelihood, then: “at thirty the peak of strength; at forty wisdom; at fifty able to give counsel; at sixty old age; at seventy fullness of years.” Even if by the age of 90 one can expect “a bent body,” this outline suggests that the first chapters of one’s personal story are by no means the most significant.

I can't post the whole article here as it is behind a firewall, but this is the final paragraph.  

Perhaps it is this balance between consistency and a willingness to adapt that is the key to a successful second act: Taking a longer perspective can be a powerful antidote to viewing a career as some kind of binary success or failure. Contemplating a passage by Samuel Johnson on the importance of avoiding indolence and the need to make the most of one’s time, Mr. Oliver writes: “Our lives, if they are well lived, are long works.” Don’t stop writing your story too early.

My friend's note said: 

You should take your images to NY and find a gallery that will feature them.  

 He does not read the blog and I rarely send him photos in order not to disturb him, but I find the synchronicity of his missive somehow meaningful.  Kismet. 

I don't know if I have succeeded in my apology, but that is my attempt.  Self-incrimination is all I've got.  

Now I must prepare for the cleaning crew.  They will be here early and I have much to do to get ready for them.  We haven't had a song for awhile.  Let's see what I have.  

I guess I'm still more of a romantic than I thought!

Existential Crisis

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A Surreal Normality

It is a surreal sense of normality that infuses the air.  I took a walk yesterday morning up to the Boulevard.  The street was blocked off to traffic for the Autumn Crap Festival.  They call it an art festival, but it is not.  Just crap.  

Make sure you look at the price.  You could have this large piece on the wall in your living room for just $1,600.  

Or this.  

There was other stuff.  String and fabric, painted rocks on wooden boards, handmade jewelry, and lots of pastel paintings of horses and skies and flowers.  Oh. . . two of Travis' friends who are fairly well-known artists were showing there, but they were not the norm.  

Just as I was about to leave the house, the woman who. . . I should call her something else.  Doc?  She has a Ph.D.  Doc texted.  

"Are you going to the art festival?"

Oh, shit.  What would I say?  I could have said, "Sure, if you are," or something suggestive.  But I froze.  I don't know what I imagined, but I felt unprepared, fat, diseased. . . scared?  

I told her I was almost there, but that it wasn't really an art festival.  I added, "Are you going?"

"Considering it." 

When I got there, I sent her the photos above.  

"This is what you will be missing if you don't come."

Radio silence.  That night, I texted, "Did you go?"

"Nope."

Just that.  Oh, well. . . sounded a little curt.  Sure.  I wanted to write,  "Give me a little more head's up sometime," but I didn't.  Once I lose twenty pounds, though. . . .

It was early morning, but the streets were full of locals trying to beat the crowd.  I live .5 miles from the Boulevard, and the neighborhood sidewalks were full of fellow travelers, so to speak.  When I got there, I looked for the booth of the Israeli woman I met at the party for the German filmmaker some months back.  She had intrigued me then.  Standing in her tent booth with her pastels, though, she barely looked the same.  I said hello, but there was no there there.  I looked at her small but expensive pieces from which she makes a fair living now having left her job as an interior designer some years ago.  Landscapes.  Huh.  

I walked on.  I decided that the best thing you could be is a young female in your late teens or early twenties.  Everyone likes them.  They are like Christmas decorations.  The worst thing to be, surely, was an old man.  They are like old vegetables left in the crisper far too long.  Nobody wants that.  

I ran into a friend who is head of the "art" festival.  He was with a woman I had seen him with before.  She, too, is on the festival committee.  We said hello, and then the head of the Chamber of Commerce came up.  There was a lot of something in the air.  

"Oh, yes. . . I think you were on the email I sent to the group."

"Yes. . . I think I was."

"We should make a decision soon."

My friend was having a difficult time explaining me, so I said, "I used to date the daughter of the head of the Chamber many years ago."  

She was a Country Club College student then.  She used to walk by my house every day, and one day she decided to ask me out.  She was a pretty little socialite who eventually went on to work for a fashion magazine in NYC as did some other of her friends.  They had "connections."  

The current Chamber head seemed unimpressed or worse.  

Later I ran into another old friend.  I shouldn't say "friend."  He was a friend of a friend, a real character well-known around town.  He had married a very wealthy woman who was later institutionalized.  He got the kids and the money, then married an even wealthier woman.  He was a party boy, a real heavy drinker with an acerbic wit.  His wife was incensed when they were blackballed at The Country Club, so she sent him away to the Betty Ford Clinic.  Three times.  And eventually, it worked.  Sort of.  He later divorced his wife to marry a young girl who took him for everything he had.  Now, in poor health, he was sweating heavily in the early morning air.  

"Hey, remember when we used to come to the art festival and take the girls into he outdoor store and screw them in the changing room?"

"Uh-uh.  I never did that."

He looked at me as if I had just spoken a foreign language.

"You screwed a lot more women than I did, pal."

He shook his head looking to the ground.

"A lot of fucking good that did me," he laughed pathetically.  

In the distance, I saw a matron of the town standing with a group of her social friends.  I moved off in the other direction.  

As I was walking home, a group of people were approaching on the sidewalk ahead of me.  In the lead was a very pretty young blonde in a typically short skirt.  I think I might have been looking at her when I heard, "C.S.!"  It was a woman who had once been in my class, as had her father and brother.  She became friends with my wife and roommate with another buddy.  Holy cow. . . that was her daughter.  We stood on the sidewalk and chatted for a bit, then she pointed to a woman and said, "You remember Ramona."

And sure enough, I did.  After I got divorced, I saw her at a party.  I'd always liked her, and when I left, she followed me to my car and kissed me.  We dated a few times, but the chemistry I'd hoped for wasn't there.  We were never going to be in love.  But we continued to write one another for a long while.  She, being younger, had weathered the past couple of decades well enough.  I, of course. . . well. . . whatever.  

I was introduced to her husband who was something of her own age and a fairly good-looking guy, and we all chatted for a moment and then went on our separate ways.  It had been a morning's walk down memory lane for sure.  

Back home, I wanted a mimosa but I had no "mimosa juice," so I headed to the grocery store to get the things I needed.  I still had a big piece of ham left and decided to make a split pea soup.  When I got home, I made the mimosa straight off, then started chopping onion, celery, and carrots.  I put it all in the InstaPot to sauté, then added the split peas, chicken broth, water, wine, garlic, spices, and ham.  I poured another mimosa and called my mother.  

"Do you want to come over for some split pea soup later?"

I was bushed, so I lay down to take a nap.  When I got up to shower, my mother, always early, was knocking on my door.  In a few minutes, we were sitting on the deck with drinks.  

"The tenant is going to join us," I said.  The late afternoon was pleasant but for the mosquitoes.  We all sprayed and prayed not to get some horrible tropical disease.  I was uncertain how the soup would turn out as I had never made a split pea before.  

It was magnificent.  

"You are a good cook," they said.  I've taught them to say "cook" instead of "chef."  I'm no chef, indeed, but I can make you some tremendous and wholesome meals.  I've been cooking since college.  I'm a real catch, I am.  

Dinner finished, though, guests gone. . . I did the dishes alone having not been caught.  That is when I replied to "Doc."  

Yea. . . I'm a real cool cat, a real good catch.  

"A lot of fucking good that did me."

Ha!

As If

My mother is back in her home with power and air conditioning.  She was done it by it all, but I am hoping she feels better today.  Myself as well.  I spent most of the day getting things taken care of for her then came home, ate a very late lunch snack, and fell asleep.  I didn't wake up until five.  I wanted to stay in bed, but of course it would not have been wise.  A soak, a shower, and then a Campari on the deck.  I called my mother.  She still had not, as she put it, "settled down."  

"Yup, that was a lot of stress and worry, but we were certainly lucky."

Of course, she agreed.  All around us, people were still without power.  A bit further on, people had lost their homes.  

Still, other people's suffering does not simply dissipate your own.  We all live in a world of frustration and worry beyond our meager control.  That alone merits anxiety.  

However, as someone said, we must live "as if. . . ."  I think it was George Berkeley, the Irish philosopher.  He might have been drunk when he said it, I don't know.  I'm not even sure I recall correctly, but I think that was in reply to someone who challenged his idea that reality was a construct of the mind.  He was asked then why he wouldn't step out in front of a speeding carriage.  "One must live 'as if'" I think was his reply.  

In other words. . . .  No, I think I lost myself somewhere in there.  But what is an essayists job but to reveal the inner turmoil of an often confused mind?  

"To instruct and delight,"said Horace.  

But I don't have it in me today to do either.  I've tried for an hour and have deleted everything.  Wisdom and levity are not my strengths today. 

Hell. . . I don't even want to tell you what I think.  And so. . . . I will go out into the aftermath and try to live. . . "as if."  

I dated a girl long ago who used to say that.  I don't think she meant it the same way Berkeley did.  

Life Goes On

I'm sitting in the chair where I usually sit when I write in the morning.  My mother is sitting on the couch next to me, so. . . .   

We made it through the storm.  I stayed with my mother.  The tenant of my apartment decided that she would stay with us.  We brought much hurricane food.  For lunch, the tenant made a giant eggs Florentine.  We drank wine and watched the hurricane news.  The rain began to fall.  Just before dark, there was a  knock on the door.  It was an excited young man.  

"Your air conditioner is on fire!" he shouted.  His girlfriend was holding out a fire extinguisher to me.  We ran through the house and into the back yard.  The panel to the electrical box of the compressor was lying on the ground.  Water was pouring off the roof onto the wiring.  I did not see any flames, but I could smell the electrical smoke.  Stupidly, I walked barefoot through ankle deep water to the compressor.  I picked up the cover.  It bore no marks, nothing charred, so I assumed that it had not been blown off but had simply fallen off at some point.  My mother had a technician working on it a month before.  Perhaps he had not been careful when replacing it.  I looked at the wiring.  It did not look as if it had melted.  I tried to put the cover back on.  

"Don't!  You're going to get electrocuted."  

By now, there was a group of people from next door standing around.  

"We heard a loud noise and looked out.  Flames were shooting up over the fence."

I put the cover back on.  The neighbor's boyfriend had a little more sense than I and reached over to flip the breaker.  I guess I should have done that first.  

In a minute, a police car pulled up, then, just behind it, a firetruck.  I walked out and explained the situation.  

"O.K.  Leave the breakers off."

Then they were gone.  The neighbors who had made us aware of the fire said, "We didn't call them." That would remain a mystery.  

Fortunately, the day had not been hot. . . the clouds and rain.  Still, it would be humid without a.c. 

My mother's 90 year old neighbor and her daughter called.  They heard that there was an ambulance and wanted to know if mom was O.K.  They were knocking on the door in five minutes bearing fresh made cookies of various types.  They stayed and chatted for awhile, then left before the weather worsened. 

We watched the slowly approaching storm on various t.v. channels.  The predictions changed slightly.  We would get less of the wind and more of the rain.  We didn't make dinner.  We snacked on ham, cheese, and crackers.  We drank beer, wine, whiskey.  

At eleven, we went to bed.  I turned on the overhead fan in the bedroom where I was sleeping.  I woke in the night sneezing, eyes puffy.  I guess the room was dusty.  The wind outside was rattling the windows.  Just before four a.m. I got up and went out to turn on the t.v.  The eye of the storm had just passed south of us.  

Boom!

The neighborhood lost power just then.  I went back to bed.  

I got up again at dawn.  I went outside to see.  There were limbs littering the yards and street.  It was barely raining.  I started cleaning up my mother's yard.   When that was done, I went back inside.  My mother was awake.  I decided to drive to my house to see.  

The miles were strewn with limbs and branches, but it wasn't as bad as one might think.  The lakes had risen above the docks but had not encroached so much on the banks.  Nervously, I turned onto my street, hoping. . . .  

No trees on the house.  No limbs, no branches.  The yard was littered but the house and apartment looked o.k.  I still had power.  The house was damp, so I set the thermostat low to dry it out.  The roof had leaked where it met the chimney.  Water had run behind the wall and soaked the coir carpet.  That was the extent of the damage as far as I could tell.  

I called to tell my mother.  I was making coffee, I said, to bring back to them.  Pack up and we'll come back to my house.  

When I got there, the tenant was still in bed.  We didn't get out of my mother's house until eleven.  

Back to my place.  The tenant went upstairs.  Things seemed to be fine.  I took a look.  We were lucky.  

Another big pan of eggs Florentine.  The tenant went home.  My mother sat nervously.  The storm had unnerved her.  I found something on t.v. for her and went out to clean the yard.  There was a lot to do.  I haven't been paying much attention to things lately, I guess.  As I hauled limbs and branches to the curb, I realized I had a whole lot of work ahead of me.  There was much maintenance to be done.  

In a couple of hours, I came back to the house.  I asked my mother if she wanted a beer.  I poured two and we sat out on the deck.  We talked about how fortunate we had been.  My mother talked to relatives on the coast.  The weather was beginning to clear.  Many people were without power, but not in my little village where most of the power lines had been put underground.  The weekend weather would be cool and sunny.  

"The town will go nuts this weekend," I said.  "It will seem like a tremendous celebration.  We were lucky."

I put chicken into the InstaPot.  We would have that with rice and broccoli.  The tenant would come.  She baked apples.  We finished the wine with dinner and the tenant went home.  I tried to find something that my mother and I could watch together.  Her tastes are not mine.  I decided on "Hillbilly Elegy."  Two hours plus.  It was a terribly mundane movie.  It was eleven.  We went to bed.  

My mother was sitting on the couch when I got up in the morning.  

"I've been up since three," she said miserably.  "I couldn't sleep.  My mind wouldn't shut off."  

She likes my house, but it is not comfortable for her.  I made coffee and she called the a.c. people.  They could come out that day.  

"Do you want me to take you home now?" I asked.  Oh. . . yes she did.  

Now I am back.  They are preparing to tear down the almost two million dollar house across the street.  They will be building a new house for the next couple of years.  The photo at the top is one I took of it with a tilt/shift lens.  I thought it kinda sorta fit the whole hurricane theme.  

Now I sit in my house exhausted, alone.  There is much to do, but I don't want to do it.  I must think in small units, tiny steps.  If I think of it all at once, it overwhelms me.  Much does these days.  Chief among my concerns is my mother's well-being.  She can't see well.  She can't hear well.  The simplest things now confound her.  It is going to take up more and more of my life.  

Life goes only in one direction.  It's not the one I would suggest.  

That's the report.  Just a report without decoration.  As I say, I'm exhausted.  But, as I have heard others say, life goes on.  

Snake Eyes

At every throw of the dice, it seems, we just keep coming up snake eyes.  7 come 11, baby. . . daddy needs a little luck.  

Until then, . . . 

Troping

Without cable television, I am reliant on print for information about the coming hurricane.  It is nice not to be constantly involved in the hype, but this morning, I can find little relevant reporting on the monster.  There seems to be some sort of storm weariness in the media.  From what I can gather, however, I am in for a real bad thing.  

The old question, "What would you do if you knew you only had days to live?" comes to mind.  People's answers are usually silly.  You would do nothing but sit, think, reflect, perhaps with the aid of anti-anxiety drugs to counter the constant and terrible adrenaline rush.  You wouldn't try to live your life "to the fullest."  That time would be over.  It would be too late.  

The thing is coming about which you can do nothing.  See "Don't Look Up" (link).  

"I don't deserve this," you would think, but as William Munny says in "Unforgiven," "Deserve ain't got nothing to do with it, kid.  If we got what we deserved, we'd all starve to death."

So I sit and wait on what comes next, the inevitable.  Or as "we" decided a post or two ago, Fate.  

One thinks of those who live in war-torn countries, displaced people with ruined lives.  A terrorist must feel some godlike sense of power in bringing destruction to others, take them from the lives they were living.  They must feel as if they are Harpies of Fate.  

I am sick of terrorist and terror.  

I read an article on one of my favorite contemporary authors this morning, Michel Houellebecq (link).  He is a novelist of quiet despair.  It is difficult for me to recommend him to friends for his novels are anything but uplifting.  Most modern literature is not.  I had a mostly brilliant colleague who had authored two books on contemporary poetry who thought modern literature was a major source of depression.  I disagreed saying that I found it cheering to know I wasn't the only one in the world who experienced life in such a way.  One doesn't read Woolf or Hemingway or Faulkner to have a cheery time.  Nor a Christian Bible for that matter.  And certainly not the Koran.  And as this morning's article touches on, fairy tales, neither.  They are dark.  

One reads in order to prepare.  

And so. . . there are alcohol and drugs.  I took knockout drops to sleep last night.  And I did.  The whole night through.  But the morning did not break bright and cheery.  There is still the coming of the storm.  

I'm a bit of a drama king, I know.  Read this metaphorically.  The storm is real, but it is a trope.  I am troping like a mad hatter.  I always am, always do.  Blame it on my education.  I am what it has made of me.  

Ask Not

I'm nervous.  I can't help it.  We're dead in the crosshairs, and I've been through a hurricane devastation before.  At this point, there is nothing to be done but put away objects that can fly away and fill pots with water.  I have a ten gallon stainless steel pot we used to use for boiling crab legs and several other two gallon pots.  And others.  I've never not had water before, but it is easy enough to fill pots with water just in case a tree topples and its roots takes out a water main.  The ground here is saturated now which makes it easier for trees to fall.  

So today, I prepare to stay with my mother.  We will see who loses power.  Probably both of us.  They have not yet put the power lines in my neighborhood underground, so. . . .  

I tremble a bit.  It is the remembrance of that thing past.  I can't afford another devastation.  

The grocery stores are overrun.  I went yesterday to buy the things for making dinner with my mother.  And though I am nervous about what might come, the constant spewing of "stay safe" irritates me.  WTF does that mean?  What is the speaker really saying?  

"I'm a concerned person.  This makes me feel good."

When I look in their eyes, I see the equivalent of a school shooter.  

When my apartment was destroyed by Charlie, no one offered me any help.  They might say, "Oh, man. . . that is terrible.  I'm sorry.  Is there anything I can do?"

"Sure. . . give me money.  Come over and help me put on a roof, replace the wooden siding, tear out rain drenched walls and put up new drywall, repair the kitchen, refinish the floors, paint. . . something!"

What they were really thinking is how lucky they were.  

$65,000 and nearly a year of labor later. . . . 

I don't want to go through that again.  

The worst thing that can happen at my mother's house is having shingles lifted off her roof.  Her house is block and solid.  She is on higher ground.  My house is old and so is built on the highest ground around.  But we will get tremendous rainfall, and I know people who are sitting in new homes built around retention ponds are even more nervous than I.  

It is grey.  Constant rain.  Hurricane predictions get worse rather than better.  Just about anything can happen.  

And it is still two days away.  Once again we live through the slow motion nightmare.  

Not everyone.  The young, of course, and non-home owners haven't much to worry about.  Already schools are closed for at least three days.  

And so it goes.  We are predicted to be on the worst side of the storm.  

It is not that I fear any loss of life.  Just suffering, of which, it seems, there is never an end.  

My friends who have left the state to live elsewhere send me screenshots of their weather forecast.  Sunny.  Cool.  It says something great about human emotions.  

After this, maybe I'll splurge and spend everything I have on buying one of those Mercedes Benz converted camper vans.  I, too, will go where the weather suits me.  

I will not be going to the gym this week.  I will need to get on the floor, stretch, breathe, and meditate.  I scoff.  

"Serenity now!"

My mind is a jumble of disastrous thoughts right now.  You can call me Nelly if you want, but I think there are good reasons for it.  Most of our fears come from imaginative thinking, I've been told, but most of mine is experiential memory.  There are reasons we don't send traumatized soldiers back into war.  

The clock is ticking.  The bells will toll.  

Feral Cats, Ghost Squirrels, Stripper Bars, and Hurricanes

Yup.  After ten or so days of not seeing the cat, I took up her bowls, washed them, and put them away.  So guess what?  That's right.  At four o'clock, she had her nose against the bottom pane of the kitchen door.  There she was, as imperious as ever, looking none the worse for wear.  

Did I tell you about the "ghost squirrel"?  I don't think I have.  So. . . I was sitting out smoking a cheroot and drinking a Campari and thinking about the missing cat a couple days ago when a "ghost squirrel" appeared out of nowhere.  It had white skin and no hair but for a big tuft of dark fur between its shoulder blades and a few straggly hairs on its otherwise bare tail.  It wasn't moving right, but it was looking me dead square in the eyes.  A chill ran up my back and neck.  I couldn't figure out what it was for a second.  It hobbled off a foot or so then turned back to look at me.  And at that moment, I realized there was not another squirrel around, nor had there been for days.  I looked to the trees, the power lines, across the street one way to my neighbor's lawn, then across the second street to my other neighbor's lawn.  It was the squirrel hour, but there was not a squirrel in sight.  Just then the ghost squirrel began to move--awkwardly, and hobbled around the corner of the house.  

"Do squirrels get rabies?" I wondered.  Then I thought maybe someone had put out some kind of poison.  But there were no squirrels then and there are no squirrels now.  I've been looking for days and haven't seen a one.  They should be out right now, but nothing.  I live in a neighborhood full of squirrels in the norm, so I wonder if there could be some kind of disease that has taken them all.  I need to find out.  I know the feral cat couldn't have eaten them all.  

We've made a very toxic planet, so who knows.  I'm convinced that we are living through End Times.  

Well. . . I had a lot of fun.  

But not a lot of money.  I'm friends with some money boys, but not that kind of friend.  I'm good for drinking at the pubs but not at the country club.  I'm not the proper kind of people, I think.  Or they think.  And I'm glad I didn't meet up with them on Friday night.  Those money boys like to get drunk and do stupid things.  I don't get drunk and do fairly smart and meaningful things.  O.K. Sure I watch clips of women being interviewed on t.v. shows, and I have been known to watch a reality t.v. series or two, but that is just to keep my head in the game if you know what I mean.  I can't just hang with genius nerds all the time.  

So while I was boning up on the decade (or two) that I missed, the boys were out drinking until they puked and ended up at a nude dancing establishment.  It is the famous one in town, and they are friendly with the owner, so. . . .  I don't like such places. . . because I am not allowed to take my camera.  Ho!  No, indeed. . . well, I would like to take my camera, but I don't like lying, and those place are A House of Lies!  That's what they should be called.  I would photograph the lie, of course, but I don't want to live it.  

The reports started coming in yesterday afternoon.  They thought the drinking, arguing, puking, and all was a really good time.  

"Jimmy said he didn't remember anything after the sports bar!  I made sure he got home alright."

It was Jimmy's birthday.  

As a result, nobody was going to Oktoberfest on Saturday which turned out to be fine with me.  Well. . . one fellow gymroid was going, and I got a text from another late who wanted to know if I was going, but I was already of a homeboy mindset and declined the offers of beer and fun.  I stayed home alone on a Saturday night instead as is often my fated state.  I had "important" things to do.  I'm an artist, goddamn it.  I'm not like the others!

Now I must prepare myself for the coming storm.  Milton.  They are predicting that it will come right over my house and bring tremendous devastation.  It is raining now and will continue to rain, they say, for the next five days.  My PTSD is emerging.  I don't think I can take another hit.  But, you know. . . I think I am beginning to see what goes on in the mind of believers.  I mean, I can't do anything about what happens next.  Some call it "fate."  Fate, I guess, is just what happens next.  As a lapsed Existentialist, I still believe that I can decide how to react to what happens. .  . but I am even believing in that less and less.  If I listen to science, I am programed to react in certain ways.  So yea. . . I can only wait and see what the great unknown has in store.  And then we'll see how I'm programmed.  

I think my program is getting messed up, though.  It seems at times faulty to me now.  

Wait. . . what?  You come here for the photographs?  O.K. O,K.  I have a few. 

This was for a series I was doing on formal dresses.  This was her mother's wedding dress.  She thought to sex it up a little.  I think that was her idea.  

A few days ago, I had in mind that this was going to be a post about traveling to NYC.  I downloaded "Sunday in New York" to put with it.  But it is cloudy and gloomy here now, and it doesn't fit my mood.  Feral cats, ghost squirrels, stripper bars, and hurricanes.  I'll bet there are wild animals living under my house again, too.  

Circa 1980

If you are anything like me (and I hope you are not), after visiting your mother late on a Friday afternoon instead of heading off with your friends to a pub, you decide to have a lovely sushi dinner alone at a fabulous Japanese place where, unexpectedly once again, the chef comes over to say, "Welcome back. . . nice to see you again."  And if you get the Tuna Kobachi Poke Bowl with avocado and some miso soup and decide to forego the sake in favor of a good green tea, and you take phone pics of everything and send it to a woman who wrote you a brief hello in the morning, and you even drink the filtered water the waitress keeps brining you. . . you will wonder what to do next because. . . your friends who are out carousing have shunned you.  Once again, you will be home alone on a Friday night wondering what the fuck happened to your life, and that is where the trouble begins.  You will light a cheroot and pour the medicinal whiskey to kill the worms, and you will go out to the deck where there will be no cat, or at least not the little feral you have fed for so many years.  

That's right.  I think this time she is gone.  She survived the storm and came around for dinner the day after, but I haven't seen her since.  

So you sit and think, which is hardly ever a good idea any more, until the cheroot goes out and the whiskey glass is empty and the mosquitoes begin to find you.  You go in, check your phone. . . and nothing.  For the millionth time, you think, "Maybe I should start making plans in advance," but you are a spontaneous creature used to being found.  It just isn't you.  

So, trying to fight despondency, you turn on the television.  YouTube.  And this.

And if you are a sad fuck of a person, and you have all the time in the world on a Friday night with nothing else to do. . . well. . . I warn you. . . it is over four hours long.  Don't do it.  No. . . no. . . !!!

But I did.  I know I'm losing readers left and right as I become a confessed imbecile, but all I can say is a hater's gotta hate.  These are my remaining years to waste however I wish.  And in a day or two or ten. . . I'll tell you a secret if things go the way I hope they do. . . but I shouldn't make promises I might not be able to keep.  Who knows what fates the gods have in store.  

As my mother so often says. . . anyway. . . . 

I was going to write that there must have been a factory somewhere that made these. . . but I realized that is more demeaning than funny.  Not that comedy isn't based on demeaning someone, however. . . .  But there was something in the water or air circa 1980.  There must have been.  It's like circa 1939 for men.  They were a different breed with distinctive tastes and personalities.  Circa 1980 for women.  Apparently, they just knock me out.  I have no defenses against them.  

I Googled "famous women born in 1980."  Holy shit!  I haven't even gotten to "circa 1980" yet.  They are like a Venus flytrap for me.  I even know they are, but I can't resist.  I'm sure it isn't every woman born then, but there are some.  My oh my. . . there are some.  

I only knew of Kristen Bell from one show, "House of Lies."  I never watched her t.v. show, "Veronica Mars," or any of the silly movies, like all the other silly movies the women of circa 1980 made, but I apparently can't get enough of her or any of them just sitting and talking and charming the bejesus out of me.  

Yea, yea, yea. . . I've become a shallow version of a very sad man, but what did you do last night?  Were you reading Proust or attending one of your MENSA meetings?  

That's what I thought.  

Besides, after Kristen Bell, I started watching this. 

I only got part way through before it was midnight and way past my bedtime, but it is pretty darn good.  And don't forget, there is a college scholarship with my name on it, not yours.  And I was a semi-good and somewhat known scholar and a niche photographer with a studio and a following of other, more famous photographers.  And did I tell you the chef came over to greet me last night? 

So. . . yea.  Circa 1980, haters.  

It's O.K.  I put your silly ass down in my head sometimes, too.  I think it is just part of the human impulse.  

I'll be hitting you up for a little jingle sooner or later to put into the scholarship kitty, though.  

I have plans for a big, outdoor Octoberfest thing this late afternoon and early evening with friends, so there is that.  After, we plan to go to a Puerto Rican festival across the highway.  It is a neighborhood thing, I think.  It will be a bit saucier than the Octoberfest for sure.  

Well, that's it.  My big confession.  I'm not unaware of my sins. . . I'm just kinda addicted to them.  

Now I will go and put away the cat bowls.  I'll miss her, of course, but I won't have to worry about her any longer.  She decided to be wild as in the old fable, The Dog and The Wolf.  

A gaunt Wolf was almost dead with hunger when he happened to meet a House-dog who was passing by. “Ah, Cousin,” said the Dog. “I knew how it would be; your irregular life will soon be the ruin of you. Why do you not work steadily as I do, and get your food regularly given to you?”

“I would have no objection,” said the Wolf, “if I could only get a place.”

“I will easily arrange that for you,” said the Dog; “come with me to my master and you shall share my work.” So the Wolf and the Dog went towards the town together. On the way there the Wolf noticed that the hair on a certain part of the Dog’s neck was very much worn away, so he asked him how that had come about.

“Oh, it is nothing,” said the Dog. “That is only the place where the collar is put on at night to keep me chained up; it chafes a bit, but one soon gets used to it.” “Is that all?” said the Wolf. “Then good-bye to you, Master Dog.”

Better starve free than be a fat slave.

I will tell you, though, that feral cat was both fat and free.   

Those Women

My midwest friend is in New Mexico.  She is staying at the Los Poblanos, a lavender farm/boutique hotel/spa/. . . .  She is staying there, she says, because I told her about it.  Long ago, in the way back, I picked up a hitchhiking hippie chick in New Mexico, and we had quite a time.  

She was a hoot.  First we stayed at an old asylum for the insane, the Parq Central, which is now, supposedly, haunted.  It was a fine hotel with a great rooftop bar and a great view of Albuquerque.  From there we went to Santa Fe.  I had been there in 2014 and had fallen head over heels for the place.  I was at a printing workshop at the time, and I had come back for another with the hippie.  I put her up in a great and wonderful cheap vagabond motel near the interstate with wi-fi and a kitchen that overlooked the parking lot leading to a shopping plaza where Albertsons was the anchor store.  Each morning I would get up and cross the parking lot to get us coffee and muffins before I headed off to my workshop.  I don't know how she spent her day, but at night, we went into town and had a time.  

When the workshop was over, we went to Taos.  She took me to stay in The Hobbit House, the first and most famous Earthship in New Mexico (link).  She was enamored by it, though at night she swore there were faces looking down at us through the window above the bed.  I'll admit, New Mexico IS a spooky kind of spiritual place.  We visited some of the most famous pioneers of western womanhood sites, and there are many (link).  We visited the estates of Georgia O'Keefe, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Millicent Rogers and a hundred other places as well.  

She came back with me to Albuquerque where we stayed in the newly refurbished lavender farm.  The entire time was magical.  The hippie chick wanted to buy a place there and simply live.  I should have listened to her, for now, ten years or so later, real estate prices have gone through the roof.  It's like everything, though.  I should have bought Apple stock at fifty cents a share. 

New Mexico won't be a place for hippies much longer.  

But my gosh. . . we had a most memorable time.  I wonder if she ever bought a place there.  

My friend from the midwest is there now and is in love.  Maybe one day I'll return.  

So. . . I was sick all day yesterday and didn't move out of the house.  I didn't eat until a light dinner.  And when night fell, I turned on the television.  I didn't want anything heavy, so I watched this. 

Hate me if you will.  As I've told you, I missed a decade or two.  What I knew of Zooey Deschanel was only due to Ili.  I had never watched "Elf" until one Christmas with her.  And it was with her that I heard "A Hipster Christmas" playing at an Irish Pub and became familiar with She and Him and their very good Christmas album.  Beyond that, though, I knew nothing except that Ili HATED Deshcanel.  For what reason, I never knew.  But yea. . . not her favorite.  

So when I watched this last night, I kinda caught up on a couple decades of stuff I had been missing.  And I was charmed.  Now here's the thing, though, which I should keep to myself for if they ever heard me say this, it would piss off both Ili and Sky. . . but EVEYTHING about those interviews is what I hear and see when I'm talking to Sky.  

Cringe.  Don't hit me.  I can't help it.  

All three of them are approximately the same age.  I don't know.  It is just a different way of being, I guess.  But holy smokes, those clips and a little whiskey and I swear I was feeling better than I had for the entire day.  

¡Ay, caramba!

I am sure the few of you who are reading this are going, "I knew he was an idiot, but. . . ."  All I can say is don't be a hater.  The heart wants what the heart wants.  If Zooey wanted to come over, I'd just say, "The door's unlocked."  That's me.  

I have another big confession.  After I posted yesterday's song from YouTube, I just let it keep playing, and YouTube played Diana Krall for the rest of the day.  I never got up to change it.  It was an entire day of her albums and concerts.  But she is, you know, married to Elvis Costello--of whose music I was never much of a fan, but who is considered by hipsters as important.  So. . . I don't know.  Maybe I'm ready to move to a home.  

As long as it is in New Mexico.  

Hey--have I ever posted that "Temptation" cover here for you?

😂

O.K.  Maybe something "western."  Those women from the east who came to New Mexico were really fantastic.  

Lo-Fi, Snapshot, Vernacular. . . Fool

Woke up feeling bad in the wee hours of the morning.  Still do.  Just when I was getting ready to get vaccinated, too.  Maybe I should test for the 'vid.  If I have that, I shouldn't get the vaccine for months.  I've read that.  It must be true.  

I love these low-fi, saturated images, even the blurry ones.  Maybe "especially."  Why do people be hating on them?  "Pearls before swine," I say.  As I hinted yesterday, they are "niche."  I like the "snapshot aesthetic," photography in the "vernacular."  

So. . . yea. . . I've got the lingo down.  Have I convinced you yet?  I have a million--well, tens of--ideas for using this "look."  I just need someone to help me.  This is my plaintive cry.  If only someone could hear me!

"Help!"

"Man up you coward."

That's why I never ask for help.  Some atavistic manhood thing.  I don't whine in public, only here under the guise of faux confession.  The people I run with know no mercy.  

Maybe I have some mosquito-borne disease.  There are plenty of them.  

That's all I've got.  My tank is empty.  Maybe I've been poisoned.  I'm an obvious and easy target.  Nobody has trouble picking me out of a crowd.  

"It was the blond Quasimodo fellow with the light blue eyes!"

Blond or blonde?  Somehow it seems feminine with an "e".  

O.K.  Enough of this fever dream.  Let's put on some music and skip to the Lou.  Or is it "lee."  I just looked it up.  It is "Lou" which is derived from a Scottish word meaning love.  I'm way off.  "Lee" comes from "leeward" which most people mispronounce (link).  I know this from my seafaring days.  You always piss off the leeward side of the boat and never the windward. . . if you have any sense at all.  So, you go to the lee.  

Tomorrow I'll school you in seafaring knots.  I have a giant book on them.  Now there's something you won't want to miss.  

I know I posted her live version of this a while back, but I heard this while driving yesterday.  Diana Krall?  Really?  

"You're getting old, man.  WTF?"

Yea, yea, yea.  

Let's Try Swing Dancing Instead

Saw this on my walk yesterday. I'm not even sure this is Halloween decoration.  If so, they are a little late.  Most people have had their Halloween decorations up since early September.  WTF?  There's nothing wrong in this country.  No mam, no sir.  

"Hey, kids. . . come look at this!"

Nothing that a good election couldn't fix.  Yea, I watched the debate last night.  It was the first night of my "Damp October."  I'd gone with my mother and her neighbors to the community get together.  I had a beer and a hot dog.  Hell of a way to begin.  But, you know, I said only drinking when out with people.  Then I came home.  I was good.  Made an A.A. cocktail of cranberry and soda and decided the hot dog, as unnecessary as it was, had been enough "dinner."  I was doing well.  

Then the debate.  Why?  Why, oh lord, why?  I wasn't going to, but you know. . . I was afraid of missing something.  

I'll never get that time back.  I poured a whiskey.  

Still and all. . . I drank MUCH LESS than I have been, so it wasn't a terrible start to Damp October.  

Except for the debate thing.  

I didn't see this yesterday.  I see it every day on the drive to my mother's house.  

"Do you admit Trump lost the election?"

"I want to look to the future."

Me, too.  I'm checking my horoscope, throwing the tarot, reading my palm.  It is troublesome, though.  The future is only a hazy suggestion.  Seers know this.  It's a difficult business to be in.  

I showed the pictures I posted yesterday to my conservative friend.  

"Why are they so blurry?"

Why am I so stupid?  

Last night at happy hour with the neighbors, my mother's 90 year old neighbor's daughter was there.  She's a nice woman, a librarian at the Big University.  She and my mother's across the street neighbor with whom we've had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with,  were talking about books.  They were enamored of some popular novels by authors I can't recall and name.  They especially liked one about an ex-military guy who is a wizard and works solving crimes with the Chicago police.  

"You'd like this one.  This guy can really write!"

"Do you guy's like Proust?"

I didn't say that.  I only thought it--darkly.  Aesthetics are very personal.  Everybody should be considered a critic.  I'm a niche guy myself, I guess, a member of a teeny-tiny club.  No, maybe it isn't so tiny.  I mean there ARE museums and galleries, though not so many literary bookstores.  And even I, sometimes, diverge from the path.  

For instance, I like this. 

You can buy this for $1,200 at Lumas gallery.  I own several of the photographer's prints that I traded for long, long ago.  I think I want to try to imitate this for education's sake.  I think I can. I just need a model and a place to shoot.  

So many needs.  

I am a mess.  Do I want to shoot things in dreamy fashion?  Do I want to be a street photographer and document the world "out there"?  

I'm not sure I can do either anymore anyway.  I've lost confidence.  I've lost my touch.  

Tennessee's wife is right.  I need my own Ghislaine.  But not like that.  I'm not looking to be P. Diddy who everyone of a sudden NOW wants to sue.  

"He gave me drugs!  He did SEX to me!!!"

WTF?  Really?  You thought that going to the big parties at a rapper's house was going to be like tea with the Queen?  You got what you went for. . . and maybe a little more. . . and now?  Really?  Now?  

Whatever.  I'm not qualified to speak about this.  I just wish J.D. Vance had gone to live out his party fantasies there.  More than once.  Maybe not.  He'd probably be worse than he is, driven by a deep and unrelenting remorse.  He is remorseful enough now as it is, bitching his mother and all.  

"I have a beautiful wife and three beautiful children."

You're in denial, dude.  You've pushed that shit down as deep as it will go, but it is still eating at you, isn't it, bro?  You just know those eyes got him in trouble when he was young, the little flirt.  

But enough of that.  I'll stop here before they use the leeches.  

That's a literary reference.  I'm sure you got it.  

O.K. then. . . .  Let's just forget about it and do a little swing dancing.  I mean, I can still drink when we're out and having fun.  

Damp October?

I had a rough night.  Somewhere around midnight, I'm sure, I started fretting.  I've been considering a Dry October.  C.C. has already begun, and I have thought about supporting him.  And me.  I've been drinking too much. . . you know the study. . . aging men alone drink too much, commit more suicide, etc.  I guess there is no "etc." after suicide, though. . . . 

And so sleep was fitful then impossible.  There were many other things on my mind, too, but the idea of foregoing drink was utmost.  For years, I've done a Dry January, but that is much easier coming off the holiday revelries, and there is much support as many people are doing it.  It's like a challenge among friends.  When I was at the factory, we'd all come in and look to one another.  

"So. . . ."

Yea, it was more of a game then.  But recently, some of the gymroids have joined me in drinking mocktails that month, so there is still some support.  

But tonight I am taking my mother and her 90 year old neighbor to a community happy hour at one of the village golf course club houses, and there might be drinking.  Now this would be easy enough to forego, but there will be other outings, too, "with the gals," and they enjoy a glass of wine or a beer, and I am loathe to tell them, "Not for me."  Truly, having a tipple with friends, I think, is healthy communion.  In the past I always said I didn't trust a man who didn't drink or who did too much cocaine.  There are a proliferation of other drugs that would be included now, but you get the idea.  

It is the excessive drinking alone that troubles me.  

And so. . . I'm declaring a Damp October.  No drinking alone at home.  That's the plan.  Come on over, though, and we'll throw a couple back together.  Or let's go to dinner and have some wine.  And of course there is Octoberfest.  Good, healthy beer.  A Damp October will be o.k. and I'll still be as popular as ever.  I think this plan will reduce my monthly drinking by about 90%.  But don't worry. . . I'm not going to become a tea-totaler.  Just maybe when you aren't looking.  

It is a good decision.  The holidays are coming.  And then there is January followed by my annual physical.  I like to fool my doctor every year.  

The destruction by Helene is newsworthy, but most articles don't lay the blame for the billions of dollars of destruction at the feet of those who most deserve it.  I found one article this morning that does. It came as a tribute to a Florida writer.

In the Travis McGee novels, the protagonist, a “salvage consultant” moonlighting as a private eye, is primarily interested in a) attractive women and b) slacking. But McGee is also a rarity: an intense environmentalist with a sense of humor. (He pronounces himself “wary of all earnestness.”) He is an especially sharp critic of greedhead developers who leave shoddy buildings in their wake. He loathes condominiums. His Florida is a paradise being lost daily.

Long before scientists got on their bullhorns about population booms and breakneck development making hurricane damage disastrously worse, MacDonald was railing against shabby construction and corner-cutting in Florida’s real estate market. The admonitions in his novels carried over into his other writing. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he wrote for a small magazine in Sarasota. In one of his columns, he lamented the felling of Florida’s tall pines, if only because their shade “kept many a stalled tourist from frying like a mullet in his own grease and suntan lotion.” In another column he wrote, “Every zoning-buster, anti-planner and bay filler is degrading us for the sake of his own pocketbook.”

(link)

 As you are aware, this has been my call for a long time now.  Local governments are easy to corrupt.  The underhanded developer/politician deals are sleazy but well known.  And who pays?  Not them.  They walk away with a shitload of money.  Now we all pay for it in hard-to-get homeowner's insurance.  

I sent the article to Travis this morning.  He said he had read all of the McDonald novels.  He had tried to re-read one recently, he said, but it didn't age well.  Neither, I said, had Jimmy Buffet, Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison. . . the whole crowd.  

"But those sure were fun times.  I pity anyone who wasn't there and who didn't get their fair share."

I was reminded of Hemingway's "In Our Time."  Everybody has one.  There are just some who enjoy it more than others.  

And so I'm reminded by YouTube.  Apparently I missed a decade.  Maybe two.  Not all of them, of course, but there are things about which I have been unaware.  And catching up, I become cognizant of the influence of postmodern theory on culture--the dreadful flattening of social values.  What one is allowed to do and say has definitely narrowed.  People live in small and hostile social confines by and large, but if you are young, you don't have a comparative gauge.  Everything in the past was wrong.  I'm certain of that now.  I've been Awakened.  

But as Clint Eastwood (as John Huston) says in "White Hunter, Black Heart," "Sometimes you just have to do the wrong thing,"

Don't try that now.  You'll end up in the social hoosegow.  

But as C.C. always says, that's where creativity comes from.  Now it's all Vampires and Superheroes.  Our desires have become infantilized.  

"It's a White thing.  You wouldn't understand."

Let's get into the Not So Far Back Machine and listen to what used to. . . well. . . whatever.  She was 18 years old.  I saw her on Howard Stern when he was still insouciant.  The song had just come out.  Holy shit.  Not so long ago.  I didn't miss everything.  

Without Hydration

Sunday.  What's a fellow to do?  I planned on doing what I always do--read, write, exercise.  I've expounded on the difference between habit, routine, and ritual here before.  This was beginning to feel like habit, and it wasn't what I wanted to do.  I decided it would be better for me to just take my cameras out for a walk.  I would exercise both my body and my spirit.  

I took two cameras, the Canon with the Holga lens and the brand new Fuji X100vi.  I am enamored with the first and need to put the second through its paces.  It was 9:30 when I left the house.  I drove to what is euphemistically called "Little Viet Nam," parked my car, and took the walk.  

Nobody was out and the day was already steamy.  I carried both cameras, one around my wrist and one around my neck, and within minutes my clothes were soaked through with sweat.  Was it the weather, or was it me?  It might have been a little of both, a fat man walking on a gimpy knee and an atmosphere with 90% humidity.  No matter--I was committed.  And so, determined, I struggled on.  

After awhile, having covered the territory, I went back to the car and drove to downtown Gotham.  It was hotter.  The Farmer's Market on the lake looked empty.  I turned toward the main drag then looked for parking.  I quickly found a spot, a metered space on the street in front of a big church.  Old one.  Big.  Been there my whole life.  When I pulled into the space, though, there was a blue cover on the meter reading "Reserved for BDFC."  All up and down the street, metered spaces were reserved for Church.  WTF?  

I backed out and drove on, and fortunately I found a spot only two blocks away.  Then I thought, "How in the name of the little baby Jesus would anyone know if I had gone to the church or not?"  

But I was sure they had their ways.  

I decided to leave the Canon in the car.  I wanted to see what the little Fuji could do.  As I limped up the sidewalk, fat, wet, wearing a bum's clothing, I passed the Church.  People stood in groups talking in false, chirpy congregational voices, the men in jackets, the women in semi-formal dresses, all looking self-congratulatory at one another through the bright eyes of the knowingly saved.  

They scared the shit out of me.  

As I approached one group, a young teenage girl turned and spotted me over her shoulder.  Without hesitation, she moved to the other side of her mother and took her arm.  I am sure she was convinced she had just seen the Devil.  Were I able to spew fire and brimstone. . . . 

Such is the life of Quasimodo.  

And so, crippled and sweaty, I hobbled my way around Gotham.  

When I walked by the two women in the photo at the top of the page, they asked me what I was taking photos of.  They were Bible ladies, the kind you see on street corners, in parks and shopping centers all over the country.  They are always pleasant, always nice.  They were friendly ladies, and so I stopped and chatted.  They were missionaries, of sorts, but they did not arouse any ire.  Nope.  They were just nice ladies.  

"I just got this camera," I said, "And I'm trying to learn how to use it.  It's a real pip, but every camera is a little different."

"Do you take photos of people or. . . ."

"Sure, but a lot of people are paranoid, you know, that you are going to put them on some social media page. . . I don't know. . . here, let me take your picture."

They didn't mind at all.  

"I can send you a copy if you like."

They looked at one another then shook their heads.  They didn't want it.

"Do you take pictures of girls?" I heard one of them ask.  

"Girls?  Uh. . . yea, I. . . uh. . . ."

"Squirrels," she said.  

"Oh. . . ha!  No, not really."

"There are usually a lot of them around here.  I don't know where they are today.  You should have been here a little while ago.  There was a girl over there," she pointe to the across the street corner, "in a ballerina costume having her picture taken."

"Oh. . . just my luck."

As I say, they were nice ladies, nothing like the Congregation I had just passed, and we chatted a bit more before I said it was getting hot and I'd better move on.  As you can see, their umbrellas were not for rain but simply parasols against the rays of the sun.  

In a little while, I passed a pizza parlor where a toothless man was forming doughy balls for making pies later.  I was timid, but pointed to my camera and raised it to my eye.  He just looked at me and grinned.  I took only one picture which is a habit from my film days that I am going to have to get over, but I put it on the rear screen and held it up to the window for him to see.  He simply kept the same expression, the same grin, so I waved goodbye and left him to his chore.  

I walked for a couple of hours, then, just before noon, wet from head to toe, I headed home to get clean.  I stripped as soon as I walked into the house, filled the tub, and poured a Guinness.  Once clean and dry, I decided that the Cafe Strange and a mimosa would be just the thing.  

The girl who makes them for me was there.  

"Hey," she smiled.  "What can I get you?"

"Do you think you could make me a big old mimosa?" I grinned.  

She thought she could.  

"You are the only one who will do this," I said.  

"Really?!"

"When the young girls are working the counter, they look confused and say the bar doesn't open until five." 

I watched her as she sliced the oranges and put them through the juice press.  Just behind her on the wall were some small instant photos of the other counter help, some of whom I have taken pictures of right there, but the pictures on the wall were not mine.  

"Well, now. . . that isn't right," I said pointing to the photos. "I'm going to give you a photo to put up there in a moment."

I took my mimosa to a table, pulled out my instant printer, did all the magical things I had to do, and made a sticky back print which I took to her.  

She looked at the photo, giggled, eyes wide, and said thanks.  

I went back to the table and opened my notebook.  I realized I hadn't drunk any water after my long walk, and I was downing the mimosa greedily.  It was almost gone when I got a surprise.  Tennessee walked around the corner.  

"What's up homie?"

"What the fuck?!"

He and his wife were on the Vespa scooting about town he said.  

"I saw your car. . . ."

It was bullshit.  I've told him I come up here to get mimosas on Sunday.  In a minute his wife came with two teas.  

"I asked the girl at the counter if there was an old man with long hair and light eyes here.  She said 'yes, but I don't know where he is sitting.  He just gave me a picture.'  I told her you were a great photographer and she said, 'I know, but I don't know his name.'  I told her we just call you The Shaman."

My mimosa was almost gone.  I rose and  walked to the counter to get another, but there was a line out the door, so I returned to the table empty handed.  Tennessee was looking around the room with my camera in hand.  

"Man, you could get a year's worth of photos in here in an afternoon," he said.  The place was starting to fill up with wildly colored hair and exotic costumes.  

"Yea, but I can't.  I don't know. . . I should. . . .  What I need is a young female assistant.  It is easier for them. . . ."

"Like your own Ghislaine," T's wife said.  

"Yea. . . exactly."  

The crowd at the counter cleared out, so I went back to get another mimosa.  

"Did your friend find you?" the counter girl asked.  

"Yea."

"He said you were a shaman."

The kid at the counter before me turned around.  

"You look like a shaman," he said.  

"Sure.  Come over to the house and we'll eat some mushrooms and listen to strange music.  I'll light the candles and burn the scented oils.  It will be fun."

His eyes widened and the counter girl laughed.  

I sat and talked with Tennessee and his wife for a long while, and when my second big mimosa was finished, they said they were leaving.  I looked at the time.  I should have already left for my mother's house.  I called her to say I was on my way, popped across the street to get a cold bottle of wine, then turned toward her home.  

Mother was making broccoli, rice, and a pork tenderloin.   As the pork cooked, I asked her Alexa thing to play bossa nova music, then turned the tv on to a football game leaving off the sound.  Even with the tv muted, though, I could not watch.  There is very little football and a whole lot of promotion.  Between plays, there are the closeups of coaches faces or people in the stand, subtle logos and advertising eating away at the viewers' souls.  I couldn't watch.  

My mother's hearing is going, going. . . and she doesn't hear most of what I say.  She looks at me blankly and nods as if she does.  It is terrifying.  All the little jokes and stories are difficult now, and so we sit in silence much of the time.  There is nothing I can do.  And so, I hug her and rub her back, and feel guilty for being able to see and hear, and when I leave, I feel worse, more guilt, more sadness.  

And so, when I got home, I did what I always do to mask the pain of living a mortal life and lit a cheroot and poured a drink and went out to the deck to contemplate "things." Just then came the rain.  

I decided it was my house and I could smoke inside if I wanted to.  I decided that for a minute before I changed my mind.  A text came in from the divorcee who kinda sorta asks me out.  I'd heard nothing from her since I went for drinks at Factory City on Tuesday.  

"Do I remember you said you liked banana bread?"

"Yes. It is a favorite thing."

"❤️"

That was it.  WTF?  

I sat on the couch and listened to the rain.  I had two cameras full of pictures that I thought about working on, but I had a Guinness when I soaked in the tub, two giant mimosas, half a bottle of wine, some whiskey. . . and hadn't had a glass of water all day.  I turned on the television.  

YouTube suggested some fellow named Ferguson interviewing Scarlett Johansson.  I bit.  

And here's the thing.  I am like a man who lives in a cave, I think.  Remember how I just "discovered" Aubrey Plaza?  I mean, I'm like a decade behind.  Apparently, she's HUGE (link).  Well. . . after the Johansson thing, clip after clip after clip of this fellow Ferguson came on. . . and I learned that he is the host of The Late Late Show, has been all century, it seems.  I watched him for the rest of the evening right up until I should have gone to bed and after.  How do I not know these things?  I thought he was pretty good, quick and funny.  I can't believe, though, that he wasn't cancelled with all his sexual innuendos when "interviewing" pretty guests.  Maybe he was eventually.  I don't know.  I guess I should Google him and see.  

I just did.  2004-2014.  Yes, he would not have fared so well after that date, I would guess.  Those almost match the dates I had my studio.  I was busy.  That's my excuse.  I spent last night catching up.  

The photos I posted today are not great photos, not even good ones, really.  I was just pleased that I took humans as subjects, that is all.  Working with a new camera takes time.  I have to learn how to manipulate the digital files.  They are big, but the Fuji isn't a full framed camera.  The images are full of information, much of which I would rather do without.  It will take time for me to learn how to make them look the way I want them to.  There is a whole lot of color information and detail I will throw out.  But the camera seemed to be able to autofocus more quickly than my prior one.  It is a good walk around camera, I think, for days when a Leica would be too much.  

That is my apology, anyway, my excuse.

OK.  Let's listen to a little shaman music.  Won't that be fun?