The Illusion of Beauty

 

Oh. . . pretty Modigliani girl. . . I might post you while I can.  We're bound to be banished one day soon.  The definition of pornography is likely to become very, very broad.  Nudity, certainly.  Photographs of people. . . possible.  Photography is a crime unless it is used by the government or network sports.  Well. . . men's sports.  Reporters and cameras are allowed into NFL dressing rooms, but holy harry motherfucker. . . there are things that should remain sacred.  

Let's talk about beauty for a minute.  It is a controversial subject, especially in The Time of Identity Politics.  

It probably should be, and I probably shouldn't take the photos I do, no matter how willing or unwilling the subject, but I've yet to be handed the tablets of stone that so many of you believe you have seen, so the morality of the cosmos is still a question for me.  You know more than I do about such things.  I'm a bit of a Nihilist, they say.  

But here's the deal.  Go to a waiting room.  Any waiting room.  It doesn't matter if it is a doctor's office, a tag office, or a jury pool.  Any will do.  Look around the room.  It is incredible.  The aesthetic is something to be avoided.  I sat in the waiting room of the big orthopedic group yesterday.  Tight jeans that accentuate ill-shaped legs all the way from the flat or flabby bottoms to the tiny little ankles.  Bubble guts and old tennis shoes.  Cheap flannel shirts with questionable patterns.  The obscenity of leggings.  There is no place for the eye to rest.  Braided eye lashes and hideous nails and blueberry lipstick.

Oh. . . you can call them beautiful.  I'm not talking about that inner beauty of people so sweet and loving you never want to leave their presence.  Nope.  I'm speaking strictly surface.  Sure. . . part of it is $$$.  I mean, a man or women wearing decent clothing can stand out in a crowd like this.  

And don't worry. . . I'm including myself in that schlub crowd.  I wasn't a standout except that when I signed in on the computer for my mother, I thought they wanted MY picture.  I pushed the button.  The photo was hideous, or I was, but I thought what the hell, it is just for the doctor's file.  It, however, caused quite a stir and some confusion.  So the doctor said when he came in with his assistant.  

"Oh. . . I was wondering. . . the picture didn't seem to match the name and data."

I guess they don't get so many patients who are transitioning there.  But yea, my photo on my mother's chart had half the staff in tears.  

Glad I could brighten their day.  

When the doc saw my mother, he put up the Xrays and gave her two options.  She could have surgery which would require an incision "here" and a plate and some screws to hold the bone in place.  Or she could keep the wrist in a cast.  The arm would not look perfect.  The bend of the hand might be off, but studies show that after a year, there is little difference in the functionality between the two options.  

My mother took door #1--the cast.  So they took off the old one and put on a smaller cast that lets her fingers free.  Looks like I'll be staying at mother's for a good while longer.  Her reasoning?  

"I'm 93 years old." 

After making her lunch, I was tired.  So was she.  We both lay down for naps.  But she was up much sooner than I, and eventually she woke me up with her banging around in the kitchen.  It was two-thirty.  I needed to go home and pick up a package that had been delivered, and I needed to go to the grocers.  But first, I wanted a latte at the cafe.  The day was a copy of the day before, cold and damp and gray, the kind of day that calls for hot roast beef sandwiches "au juice", steaming French onion soup, or a good beef bourguignon.  One of the last trips I made with Ili was to Paris in October.  Much of the time the weather was cold, damp, and grey.  One afternoon, we went to the Musee d'Orsay but hadn't made reservations online.  The line was long and we realized we might stand there in the cold and never get in, so we hopped across the street to a little cafe where we sat outside under a canopy and electric heaters.  We ordered two beef bourguignons.  When a couple came and sat at the table next to us, they asked what we were eating.  They ordered it as well.  Another couple came and ordered the same.  The waitress laughed and said that was the end of the bourguignon, that we had started a trend.  It is a nice memory of which one wishes to be able to say, "Remember that day at the cafe when we couldn't get into the d'Orsay?"

Selavy.  

The tall girl with the tats was working.  She had her back to me speaking to a big, heavyset fellow with a typically scruffy beard.  They were talking about some event he was going to that she would miss.  When he left, she turned around in my direction.  

Blankly, "What can I get you?"

"A latte."  I felt it was a joke.  I wouldn't order the cafe con leche from her.  

"Love you," she yelled loudly.

"Love you, too," I chuckled softly.  

"I wasn't talking to you."

"Oh. . . huh."

"That's embarrassing for you," she said like a high school mean girl." 

"Do you think?"

There was a table to sit not too near to anyone, so I took a chance and sat inside.  The cafe made me think of waiting rooms.  The cold air outside and the grayness and the dampness seemed to have subdued the crowd.  They spoke in lowered voices, in quieter tones, huddled in sweaters and sweatshirts, long pants and scarfs.  A girl by the window in a corner of the room sat pensively, raven hair and charcoaled eyes, a subtle bruised red lipstick highlighting her lips.  She wore a black faux-leather jacket mock NYC style.  When she turned and looked my way, I saw her face was pie shaped and diffident.  She had a haughty if somewhat insecure stare.  She and her ilk are why I like this dumpy little cafe with its dim lighting, wobbly tables, and dingy interior.  It is not a typical "slice of life."  Humanity, writ large, is hideous.  By and large, people are ugly, pure and simple.  Only here and there does someone attractive appear.  The eye alights on beauty in relief.  

Brando used to say that heels could never be too high or lips too red.  He believed in the artifice.  And to some extent, I know what he meant.  That is why I like the cafe.  It is a waiting room of artifice and freaks.  The girl in the corner drew the eye.  It is what she wanted to do.  It was purposeful.  In a world of schlock, there was the girl with the raven hair, the bruised red lips, and the charcoaled eyes.  

I know, I know. . . forgive me for I have sinned.  

I got a message today from a woman who wants to know if I would like to make pictures of her.  She has a most wonderful portfolio, intimidating, really.  She has modeled all over the world for the past ten years and has shot with some incredibly talented commercial photographers.  She is Polish and often has the visage of a Nicole Kidman, tall and thin.  She has posted videos, and I loved watching her move.  She doesn't really want me to photograph her, of course.  It is just part of the hustle.  She'd want money.  As I looked through her ten year portfolio, though still quite gorgeous, I could see the road.  I could see the miles.  And if I were to shoot with her, that is what I'd want to do, make a document of the end of a modeling career.  I thought through the idea for quite awhile.  

We will not make that project, I am certain, of the fading beauty.  

My mother was a true beauty in her time.  The mileage and the years.  

But, of course, I speak only of external things.  Some who are beautiful to look at have the most hideous interiors I know, and vice versa.  I am not speaking of the soul or the spirit.  Merely surface things, things by which I am fascinated.  I am fascinated by the hideous, too, but am also repulsed. 

David Lynch died.  Everyone knows by now.  

The famed director was a unique figure in U.S. cultural history: a purebred, corn-fed all-American surrealist and a man who insisted that below our manicured lawns and behind our tidy housefronts lay incomprehensible urges and unholy evil.

I saw "Eraserhead" when it came out and was wounded by that, then "The Elephant Man."  It took me about a year to get over that one.  I identified so very much with the man whose internal beauty was betrayed by the hideous exterior.  Lynch knew he'd hit a nerve with that.  

Maybe it is only my hideous imperfections that draw my eye to what I am not.  Who knows?  

"Tell me, Dr. Freud."  

I certainly would like to shoot with her, though.  I'd like to make a photo essay of all I see at the cafe.  

If you'd like to see me photograph the Polish girl, I'll set up a Go Fund Me page.  You can have exclusive access.  

I caught grief about the YouTube audio with the attractive girl singer pictured on the album cover.  Of course, she is made over, airbrushed and blurred.  A photograph can do that.  But she seems in keeping with today's theme, and the music is so very much what I listen to with mother in the evenings while I cook.  Last night's meal was hearty against the cold, stew beef over rice with stewed tomatoes and a side of asparagus.  It was as close as I was going to get to making that beef bourguignon.

I Had a Minute

I had a minute to myself yesterday.  After yet another visit from the home care company, the third in which they did nothing but "evaluate" her for insurance purposes, so they say, each from a different arm of the same company--occupational therapy, nursing, and rehab--I was able to leave my mother alone for a bit.  I needed to do some grocery shopping and I wanted to buy a book.  I decided to pop into the cafe for a cup of jasmine green tea, too.  

Exciting?

Not so much. 

The day was gray and cold and damp.  I stopped at the cafe first, but since upper respiratory infections and plain old flus are at an annual high here right now, I decided to sit outside to reduce my chances of catching something that might infect my mother.  It was chilly, though, and I was wearing a light sweater and shorts.  I wrote for about a minute and drank my tea more quickly than normal.  The crowd was bland, but I saw little of even that.  Rather, my gaze fell over the parking lot and the dirty side of the building that housed the 7-11 next door while the grey light rained down about me.  

I popped into the hipster record and CD store across the street to pick up McCarthy's "The Passenger."  I was surprised at how busy the store was on a Wednesday early afternoon.  I don't think many people have jobs they go to anymore.  I retired and Covid came and the world changed, or at least it changed in the USA, and people got to stay home.  My replacement at the factory hardly ever went to work, and I, coming from a generation of "report for duty" workers, was truly and deeply pissed.  

Selavy.  

I wandered over to the book section.  I love the book section.  It is hip.  It is exciting.  But not that day.  It looked picked over.  Luckily, they had a single copy of the McCarthy book, but no "Stella Maris."  They had yet to replace it since I bought it.  I thought to buy something by Pynchon that I had not read like "Mason Dixon," but they hadn't a Pynchon book on the shelf.  Indeed, the pickings were looking pretty paltry.  I was grateful, however, to get the book I came for.  

After that, I headed to Fresh Market.  I thought I might buy one of those frozen packages of lasagna that they make right there in the store--or somewhere--but I was on a fool's errand.  All I could find was some small frozen lasagna meals that you heat up in the microwave.  I bought apples and avocados, and then I hit the bad/good part of the store.  Pumpkin bread.  A big piece of chocolate cake.  Some baked fruit/oat bars.  Again, as in the record store, things looked picked over or depleted.  I wanted to buy a good, rich chocolate bar, but the selection looked like that of every other grocery store, waxy and unsatisfying.  I carried my bags out into the grayer world and drove back to my mother's house.  

The jazz radio station was playing shitty music.  The road was full of morons who stopped at green lights and made dangerous, stupid lane choices as they drove side by side for miles.  I tried to tell them how idiotic they were, but they didn't seem to hear me.  

It was going on four when I got back to my mother's house.  I had a lot to do before making dinner.  I promised her I would wash her hair and give her a sponge bath.  I had laundry to do.  But first, I wanted to sit down with a faux cocktail and a cheroot and chill.  She decided to join me.  When the across the street neighbor with whom we have eaten many dinners saw us, he came over bearing a dish--chicken and dumplings.  It was getting really chilly now and I had finished my cheroot and faux cocktail and was ready to go inside, but neighbors being what they are, he stayed for a long while to chat.  By the time he left, I was chilled to the bone.  

I was getting things together for mom's bath when there was a knock on the door.  It was the neighbor.  He'd forgotten to bring the bowl of lima beans.  O.K.  Thanks.  I didn't want any of it.  He is not a good cook, and he does not make healthy meals.  The chicken and dumplings had no dumplings but rather flat noodle-like things.  The chicken was shredded to the point of invisibility.  The invisible chicken and doughy noodles were slathered in a most dominant thick white pasty liquid for which I had no name.  Not quite gravy, maybe.  I was certain that the lima beans were from a can.  

I sat them aside and got wash cloths, towels, soap, shampoo, and a small tub to put in the sink.  I had to get down under the sink to untangle the sprayer hose from the nutty mess of plumbing someone had done long ago so that it was long enough to spray into her hair.  She bent over the sink and the cleaning began.  

I gave her a good scrubbing and dried her, then got the hair dryer and played hair stylist.  

I gathered all the dirty laundry and put it in the washer.  

"What are we going to do with this?" I said motioning to the two bowls the neighbor had brought.  "Do you want to eat it?"

We did out of a feeling of obligation.  I steamed the Brussel's sprouts and heated up some bits of left over chicken.  Out of these things we made a really lousy meal.  

"That wasn't very good."

"No.  It was nothing like your cooking."

We both felt queasy.  We hadn't eaten much.  I pulled out the chocolate cake.  It looked rich, but it tasted like birthday cake.  Too much flour.  It pissed me off.  The entire day had been off.  If I'd had a bottle of scotch. . . . 

Somehow, the kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes, pots, and pans.  I got to work scrubbing and cleaning.  When I finished, I turned off the jazz station so my mother could watch "Gunsmoke" or whatever.  I was going into another room to read.  

"You need to put the clothes in the dryer."  

Yea, yea, yea.  That was urgent.  

Later. . . "The clothes need to come out of the dryer."

Of course.  No point in letting them sit for a minute.  

I folded clothes and hung up my mother's things.  I made a cup of tea and left my mother to westerns.  

By nine-thirty, I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer.  I said goodnight, took my supplements and meds, brushed my teeth, climbed into bed, and read the first page of one of the New Yorker articles before I turned off the lights and fell into what I hoped without hope would be a long, restful night.  

It might have been, but I woke up with a light in my eyes.  My mother was up and down all night.  She is not doing well in many ways.  93 is an obvious hellscape of infirmities.  It just doesn't look like much fun.  

Today, eight days after the accident, I take my mother to see the ortho.  We will know more about her skeletal fate then.  

With each day, my mother becomes more dependent.  She's given up, for instance, getting up to get a glass of water.  

"Could you. . . ."  

We are heading in a bad direction.  

I had a dream last night about a woman who may have liked me, the one who almost asked me out.  She has a boyfriend now and has quit texting and almost inviting me to things, so I am inclined to think that it might have been something more than befriending an old colleague, but I will never know.  In the dream, however, I did know.  It was a long dream, I think.  

Last year, I went to a music festival in Grit City called Porch Fest at her invitation.  All the grand old houses with their deep porches host musical groups.  It goes on from morning late into the night.  There is music everywhere.  Crowds, too.  This year, the gymroid group wants to go.  Such is my lot.  

Red, however, is texting me supportive messages and promises to send me expensive medicines that will make me young and help me live forever.  I could use the first part, at least.  

The books are good, though, as is the music.  And usually the food is, too.  We'll get back on track with all that today.  I'm hoping to get in a long walk after the visit to the doc, but the weather will be a carbon copy of yesterday.  A stroll in any kind of weather, though, is usually good for the soul.  

And so. . . let's dance.  

The music selections right now are from my evening meal preparations listening to the university jazz station while I dance and cook.  Trying to stay mellow.  I don't need no jive right now.  

It's a Dumb World--Let's Dance!

One wonders how anyone could vote for an evil clown and his clown posse.  Then one has to wonder how anyone could vote for a party who champions transgendered males in women's sports.  Dr. Oz, Pete the drunken rapist.  Social Justice Math.  Where does it end?

I have the answer.  It doesn't.  

It was reported to me yesterday that Stephen Colbert was a kind of smarmy asshole to the director of the CIA about the dangers of TikTok.  Colbert didn't get it, I guess.  The director said that the Chinese know everything about the people who use the app.  They know where you go, what you buy, who you text with, etc.  Colbert pondered why it mattered.  Dumb.  

The answer can be seen in the power of advertising.  I watched eight hours of football on Sunday.  No. . . I watched about six hours of commercials.  And therein, I think, lay the answer.  If people are willing to watch that dumbass shit and be persuaded to buy those products, they can be convinced of anything.  

I didn't see the show, but if the reporting is accurate. . . Fuck Colbert.  

Academia is much like everything else now.  I finished reading "Stella Maris" last night.  I'll get to that, maybe, in a moment.  As soon as I finished, I Googled book reviews, then I went to Google Scholar and looked to see what had been written.  The book reviewers were mostly trying to be clever or seemingly bright.  The academics were performative giving feminist readings and wondering why everybody was white.  

O.K.  I made up the last part.  That wasn't about "Stella Maris," but about the other McCarthy novels.  There was a lot of identity politics going on.  But that has been the coin of the realm, and if you want to make hay. . . . 

Ain't no different than any other marketplace.  I've been in the field.  I've toured the country on the factory dime looking at other academic institutions.  Oh, man. . . admin loves to tout anything new.  They have to make a mark.  They WILL do anything, spend money on writeable walls and rooms without walls (yes, they are contradictory) and everything else that is peripheral to education, substance be damned.  

Now I'm simplifying and making generalized statements, so take them as you will.  If you want to argue the point, I'll need to do some background reading to prepare myself.  I'm silly, maybe, but I'm no fool.  But here is some data.  Kids today are far behind the kids who came before them in reading and math skills .  Far behind kids who grew up without technology, moveable desks, talking walls, behind kids learned to diagram sentences and were not taught the "new math."  Not an opinion.  Just data.  

And Trump will be the new president in a few days. . . again.  And the Drunken Rapist Fox Media Guy will be confirmed to lead the military.  

And, apparently, it was Gavin Newsom who set the L.A. fires ablaze. . . according to Fox.  

Whatever.  Go live in Russia or China.  If you get my drift.  

"Stella Maris."  I don't know to whom I would recommend the book.  What was that quote I have somewhere about "late work"?  The novel is no "Blood Meridian," but what is?  Melville's other works were no "Moby Dick."  Now I can't say that Faulkner didn't write three great novels, but his late work was not that.  Hemingway won the Nobel Prize after "The Old Man and the Sea" which I think is one of his worst novels.  He couldn't finish the last things he was working on for years.  And for all the proclamations about "The Last Tycoon," it was no "Great Gatsby."  So, yea. . . I don't think "Stella Maris" will be part of "the canon," but it is intriguing.  It's a million times better than the best Stephen King schlock ever written.  Anyone who thinks King a good writer should stay a billion miles away from McCarthy.  He's better than Bob Dylan.  I'm only saying that to the Nobel committee.  Where the fuck is McCarthy's Nobel?  As Harold Bloom points out, only Pynchon is a contemporary rival. . . .  I don't know. . . I'm not weighing in on that.  I'm only trying to whittle down the reading public to who may like the novel.  You've got to be up for something other than entertainment.  

Here's one book critic, Beejay Silox (I shit you not) from The Guardian.

Women, I am repeatedly told, don’t like – don’t get – Cormac McCarthy. It’s the kind of patronising nonsense that gets levelled at us when we point out the converse: that McCarthy’s fiction doesn’t get – doesn’t like – women. When female characters do appear in his pages, they are cowards, victims and sexpots: sirenic doom-bringers, cheetah-owning dommes, simpering twits and bad mothers. It’s often possible to admire the Pulitzer prize winner despite his paper-thin girls (see also Roth, Updike, Mailer and all the other cocksure Americans). Not in this novel. Stella Maris is a transcript of Alicia’s therapy sessions. The book hangs on her voice, and that voice is preposterous.

Alicia is less a character than a receptacle, a dumping ground for eight decades of snarled (and snarling) ideas. As her conversations with Dr Cohen deepen, she slips into McCarthy’s own narrative voice, with all its rococo cadences and tell-tale tics (“olivedrab”, “moonminded”, “girljuice”). It’s a grotesque kind of irony that the author’s most risible creation is the closest thing he’s given us to an avatar.

I've always warned that McCarthy's literature is male, that it is about the harsh realities of being male in a dangerous world.  That was true.  He attempts something else in this novel.  I don't know Beejay's work, but it is surely up there with a finger snap and a head twirl. . . girl!  Full of pithy puns and trite social awareness one offs.  

The novel went, finally, where I had suspected it should go and where I would have had it go.  If it hadn't, I would not have liked the novel nearly as much.  But I won't give it away even though most book reviewers do.  I'm glad I hadn't read the reviews before the novel for just that reason.  

Now I have to read "The Passenger," the book narrated Alicia's brother.  And I look forward to it.  

Life here at mother's isn't all bad.  I really have nothing to do when I am not cooking, fetching, and cleaning than read.  I don't need to hate myself for not making good photographs (of nothing) right now.  All I have to do is be a go-between for my mother and her home care people, the doctors, the insurances, and anything else that comes up.  My mind is a blank but for the books I am consuming.  I'm halfway through the New Yorker essay collection and have started Patti Smith's "Just Kids."  My mind feels richer already.  And my mother has an Alexa device in the kitchen, so I tell it to play station WUCF while I'm cooking or cleaning, and the music makes me happy and I dance.  My mother gets a kick out of my dancing.  Ili and I used to dance when we cooked, crazy shit, and we'd laugh often to the point of tears, but I haven't really danced while I cook since, so there is that joy.  And my mother REALLY appreciates the meals I am making as do I.  I am no chef, but I am a damn good cook.  I am able to get away to the gym each day for an hour or so, after which I visit my house which is has taken the appearance of an old dream.    So, yea. . . it is not all misery.  "Catch as catch can" living. . . if you know the phrase.  

Let's dance!

A Man Alone

When things get crazy, my mantra for decades has been, "I'm a house plant, I'm a house plant."  It calms me and keeps me quiet without any sudden reaction.  I am in house plant mode now.  I need to do some breathing exercises, too.  I had begun doing them before that night in the ER when my mother's system crashed.  Before bed each night, I would sit on the edge of the bed and breath in, hold, and breathe out for twenty breaths.  It is a remarkable thing, really, in how easy it is to clear your mind of anything but the breathing.  It is reportedly very good for your health and well being.  I had plans to increase the interval to 30, then 40 breaths.  

I haven't breathed since my mother's fall.  I need to breathe again.  

I also need to stretch.  A little light yoga on the floor.  I'm stiff as the proverbial board.  No. . . you can't imagine.  I'm drinking ever so much more water than I have in decades, so maybe that will help my ligaments and tendons a bit.  Breathing and stretching, I think, might be my road to Nirvana.  

I need some Nirvana.  

But it's O.K.  Don't worry about me.  

That's a joke.  Ain't no one to worry about me.  Everyone tells my mother she is lucky to have me.  My mother says she only stays alive because she has to take care of me.  Some things are too complex to unravel.  But she may be the only one who gets it.  Nobody ever says, "Poor you.  Who will take care of you when you are old?"

I am old.  I only pretend and appear to not be so much.  Mine, if you listen, is the Hero's Tale.  

We all know how tales end.  

All that is possible is a hope not to cry.  

"I'm a houseplant, I'm a houseplant. . . oommmmmmm."  

People are now telling me similar tales they have gone through with someone, a father, mother, spouse.  

"My father came to live with us. . . ."

I want to say, "us" back to them.  There were spouses, siblings, children. . . there was some shared responsibility.  

"It ain't the same.  Don't try to pretend."

Hemingway famously wrote, "A man alone ain't got no bloody chance."

He didn't write "bloody" originally, but that prudish editor Maxwell Perkins would not let him publish "fucking."  I have to go back and look, but I'm not even sure he allowed "bloody."  As I think back, it may have all been dashes or asterisks.  "To Have and to Have Not."  You can look for yourselves.  

I'm too busy with "Stella Maris."  I'm near the end of it, and I have a few thoughts.  When McCarthy was at the Santa Fe Institute, he spent his time talking to theoreticians in math and physics.  So it is reported.  It is also reported that these geniuses said that McCarthy was interested in what they were doing.  The book may reflect this interest. . . but I doubt any real in-depth understanding.  He could have read the equivalent of Will Durant's "The Pleasures of Philosophy" or some overview of the history of math.  There is no evidence of any true or deep understanding of the fields.  That's o.k.  He sets the novel in the 1970s which alleviates much need for an understanding of what comes after.  It's a historical novel in that sense.  Psychiatry was not what it is today.  The meat of the novel is an exploration of the meaning and reality of the self.  What is normal?  How do we know?  Ultimately, is the self or selfhood or even existence knowable?  And does it matter?

It is McCarthy probing as he himself approached death.  Or, perhaps, vice versa.  

You may not find much solace there, but I haven't finished yet, so. . . . 

The book IS more interesting in light of the new biographical info on his affair with the 17 year old girl half his age with whom he illegally ran away to live with in Mexico.  Oh, my. . . I understand him so much better now.  

I'm trying.  I don't want to be a heavy, a drag in print.  I'm adapting, giving in and hopefully not giving up.  I visit my house and my old life and things and interests and activities, but only for a minute.  Then I'm back to being a houseplant.  

Ommmmm. 

My mother is peripatetic this morning.  `She says she feels worse than she ever has in her life.  Her whole body.  Her stomach.  Her back.  Everything.  I don't know what to do.  I ask if she wants to see a doctor.  I get no answer.  Tell me how you'd feel?  I mean, you can ask family, dial a friend.  I don't know what to do.  

"For Whom the Bell Tolls."  Hemingway/Donne.  "Ask not for whom the bells toll. . . . 

Dismal

I shouldn't, I know. . . but I'll take a chance.  I may make the internet gods mad and get cancelled, but I did what the fuckers wanted and then people couldn't get into the site.  I may move the whole thing to Substack if things go south.  Apparently, one can do whatever one wishes over there.  For good or ill.  

I just like the image.  I like looking at it.  It may be a terrible admission, I don't know.  Or much care anymore, really.  The world has much bigger problems than a man with an eye for naked beauty.  Now that we've virtually eliminated smoking, we are going after the drinkers.  And the meat eaters.  We will, in due time, create an earthly paradise.  

I'm not living in one.  I'm in a truly terrible place right now, and I'm not even drinking.  I'm exhausted.  I'm not the man I've led other people to believe.  I'm not capable of doing all that needs to be done.  I'm not able to bear the pressures, to "hold up."  I guess I'm what some people would call a coward, but I feel overwhelmed.  This life is far too much.  

My mother is having more problems than just the broken wrist.  I left to go home to get some things yesterday and was terrified the whole time.  I can't tell you what I'm living with, but it is the thing I can't bear.  One more straw, it feels like, is all it will take.  

Maybe, though, I'll feel better when the sun comes up.  

I am truly alone in this thing.  People are quick to say, "If there is anything I can do. . . ."  But they absent themselves now.  "I didn't want to bother you. . . ."  I don't blame them for that.  I blame them for the other thing, the self-serving lie.  No, I don't blame them, but I'd rather they say, "Gee. . . that's awful.  I can bring you cookies if you want."  That's what they mean.  

It doesn't help that I am reading Cormac McCarthy's "Stella Maris."  The book is a dialog between a psychiatrist and his young, prodigal mathematical genius patient.  Stella Maris is the psychiatric hospital into which the young woman has checked herself.  There is not much of a good time there, and the conversations are weighing me down.  

At night, when I go to bed, my thoughts are all about death and dying.  It is becoming increasingly hard to live "as if."  My mother's health problems are not all I am dealing with, of course.  I have plenty of my own.  

Pretending is becoming ever more difficult.  

I took my mother for a little walk yesterday.  She needs to move.  She's been immobile since falling.  She made it halfway down the block and back.  We sat outside in the warmest part of the day.  I thought it might help, but I could tell no difference.  She sits with a stare that is a thousand miles and internal at the same time.  I speak and she looks at me.  She doesn't hear me.  I say it again upping the volume.  Conversation has become impossible.  I am reduced to responding to requests.  There are many. 

As the air cooled beyond comfort, we went back into the house.  Commercial t.v. only, I put on a playoff football game.  It was four.  I watched it and another.  Football was over at eleven.  I saw maybe two hours of football.  I saw more commercials.  The networks now show short commercials between plays.  It is hideous.  

"He missed his target on that one.  The offensive line is going to need to do a better job.  Join us tomorrow night for NBCs newest hit comedy, "Your Mother Is a What?" starring Bev Beachum as Beverly Potter, a 36 year old single mother whose teenage daughter is a laugh a minute.  You won't want to miss this zany comedy premiere tomorrow night at nine central.  O.K. It's third and long. . . . "

I watched the American Experience play out over those eight hours of football.  I understand better why our culture and country are so fucked up.  It is truly hideous.  

This is not my life.  Or, rather, it now is.  

I read this morning that as people live longer, the gap between their healthy life and the end of life is growing.  9.6 years on the average now, people live with chronic disease.  They live longer in worse health.  This is not good news.  If they get everyone to stop smoking and drinking, will the gap increase?  Will people live into their hundreds with chronic disease rather than dropping from a heart attack "in the prime of their lives"?  

"Dad just went to bed one night and never got up.  He passed in his sleep."  

Or will we be hooked up to machines in sterile rooms where we are filled with expensive chemicals that keep us alive?  

This is a morbid post.  I thought posting the photo would help.  All the commercials yesterday showed young people running happy and active and all the older people taking a medicine that would help them live longer with diabetes or heart problems and many potential side effects including rectal bleeding, liver damage, occasional dizziness and a danger of kidney cancer and stroke.  If you are young, you get shoes.  If you are older and can no longer do parcourse, you get pushing someone on a swing and Pezumamax.  

Whatever.  I'm waiting for the sun.  Everything will be better then.  The world's a fine a lovely place.  

I really don't know how long I can do it.  I don't even have a cat.  

As If

I'm exhausted to my very core. . . but here I am at 5:30 a.m. staring at the computer screen, scanning yesterday's news and drinking coffee in one of three recliners in my mother's home.  But it's o.k.  I feel fine.  Really.  Maybe.  I'll write it out and we'll find out together.  

I don't know how much more of my mother's trials and tribulations I can write about.  I mean I can, but it does not make for good conversation and readers are under no obligation to come here and listen to the primeval complaints of a morbidly self-absorbed man.  I have found out that some people do come to the site as they have told me that they couldn't get past the Sensitive Material warning page.  Weird.  No. . . spooky.  I wonder what malevolent internet god is limiting visitors to the blog.  This is something I cannot control.  I guess that is no different than the rest of life, though.  For instance.  

I am only just catching up on the L.A. fires.  It is unbelievable.  Devastating.  One never imagines such a thing really happening.  Red lives down the coastline from the fires.  I asked her if she was OK.  She said so far, unless some sick weirdo starts a flame in her neighborhood.  She has friends who have lost their homes.  One fellow, she said, lost a home in Malibu and is in danger of losing another one in the Topenga canyon. 

Losing L.A. is like losing one of America's most hallowed mythological landscapes.  It is like losing a childhood dream.  It will take a long time to process.  

But. . . you know the story of Babylon.  Sodom and Gomorrah.  Etc.  Really.  It seems absolutely Biblical.  

But L.A. was the first city in the world to have smog.  It really is the city of global warming, isn't it?  Cars, baby.  L.A. car culture was real cool.  

Daddio.  

I imagine it is time to repent of your sins.  If you're gonna, I wouldn't wait too long now.  Admit it.  You were wrong.  You now fear that all those moral codes you rejected will come back to haunt you.  Berlin will certainly be next.  There is no place more vile in the Western World.  I should say "Christendom." There will be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth.  

And these were/are the people who chanted "Peace."  I mean those liberal heathens in L.A. and in Berlin.  Those dirt worshipping heathens who live outside the west and western moral codes, philosophy, and religion, have never known anything but violence and war.  Suffering is like oxygen to them.  Torture and killing are just a way of life.  

So. . . yea. . . so far, it seems, I'm supporting the idea that I'm O.K.  I'm fine.  Let's see.  Let me tell you a bit more about mother.  

Thursday my mother was being held in a veal pen, not a hospital room but one of the short term patient rooms where they put you after your colonoscopy for a bit before you can go home.  They kept her there for two days because her potassium levels were low and her blood pressure was all over the place.  Her caretakers were nice but unknowing.  On Thursday morning a staff doctor came by.  She never saw an orthopedic doctor.  On Friday afternoon, as I was making my way to see her, she called and said they were discharging her.  Her neighbors were there and said they would take her home.  I made a mistake and said o.k.  So I went back to my house to gather up some things since I would be staying and taking care of her.  

The mistake was that they let her go without making an appointment with an ortho and without giving her any pain meds.  Had I been there. . . . 

On Saturday morning, we got a call from a home care nurse.  She came out at noon.  It was a preliminary visit to set up the deal.  She seemed dismayed that my mother had not seen an ortho nor had been given any pain meds.  My mother's fingers were swollen and blue, and she was concerned about that, too.  She said that an orthopedic group that has long been the standard in my own hometown had a walk-in clinic open until three and that I might want to take my mother in today rather than waiting until Monday to call the doc that the hospital had listed.  

So I did.  

There was, of course, no doctor there.  Why would a doctor be working on the weekend?  That would be the idea of an idiot.  So my mother got new Xrays and saw a P.A. who was not able to do anything but suggest we make an appointment with an ortho.  I did weasel a script for Tramadol out of her.  It was only a three day supply, but it was something.  

And so.  There is nothing fucked up with the "system."  It is fine.  

I have been staying in my mother's house for about a month now. . . no, wait. . . since Friday.  Oy!  I'm worn to the bone, tattered and frayed.  My life is fetching, cooking, cleaning, network t.v., and repeating myself more loudly so my mother can hear.  

"Can you open this?"

"What does this say?  I can't read it."

"Are these the pills for pain?"

"Can you get me some. . . . "

"Will you pull my sleeve up."

"Where are my shoes?"

It is not much, I know, and I am being a total little bitch, but I live a solitary life.  I'm not used to interacting anymore, I guess.  

So I read.  That is good.  That is what I have just now.  I haven't read enough in years.  I'm building up my endurance again.  I read between chores.  I read after dinner.  I read before bed.  

I have become a slow reader, but it is picking up.  

Yea. . . I'm fine.  I have no complaints.  We have heat against the cold, food against hunger.  Things could be a whole lot worse.  

L.A.  

But I am up against end of life things.  It is best not to think about them, to deny them, I think, for there is nothing to be done.  One must simply deny it until it can be denied no more.  We must live our lives "as if."  

I had to look it up.  Hans Vaihinger who influenced Schopenhauer.  1911.  I could have sworn it was Berkley or Bacon or somebody English before that.  Someone who proclaimed that just because an event happens a million times does not mean it will happen again.  

"Then why don't you walk in front of a speeding carriage?"

"Because one must act 'as if.'"

That is how I remember it, but not well enough, apparently.  

I won't be back in my own home for a long while now, so I must begin to make a life here.  I was supposed to photograph the little league wrestling again last night.  That whole project is put on pause.  I must figure out something to do.  And, of course, I can't give up the music.  It soothes the savage breast or beast.  

Yup.  Don't worry about me.  I'm just fine.  So many have it much, much worse.  

Sensitive Content Warning

  Just an update here from my mother's house where I am staying for awhile.  I have had several emails and texts that people can't get past the "Sensitive Content Warning" page, so I have removed it.  We'll see what Blogger has to say about that.  They are the reason I added it in the first place.  So, remember you can reach this blog through either https://www.cafeselavy.com/ or https://carnivaleselah.blogspot.com/.  

I hope I haven't lost any of you in the meantime.  

Selavy.  

Selah.  

Cluster F*ck

I am not at home.  I will be living at my mother's house for an untold amount of time now.  I miss home.  The sounds, the smells, the views, the textures are all different, of course.  Sky sent a sweet note, and I don't think she meant it as a swipe, but she said, in essence, that I was a man of comfort and routine--something like that.  Maybe that is simply the way I took it.  It has become true, of course, since I retired, lost my girl, and suffered through the Covid isolation.  What else was there for me to do but invest myself in enjoying the fruits of my labor, the richness of my home?  Yes. . . I developed rituals.  

And none of them follow me to my mother's house.  

Selavy.  

I am exhausted, but maybe I can give a brief synopsis of what happened since my mother fell.  She was in her garage getting the groceries out of the car.  She went down.  She called me. 

"I fell again," she said in a low voice.  

It was 1:45.  I jumped into the car and drove over right away.  When I got to her house, she said she wanted to call 911 because she would get in faster.  O.K.  

Forty minutes later, the ambulance showed up.  They asked my mother which hospital she wanted to go to.  She said the closest one to her house. 

That was the first mistake, and I should never have let it happen.  

They loaded her into the ambulance as the neighbors came around to see what was going on.  They wanted to talk to me, to know what happened, to give their opinions and tell me that if there was anything they could do. . . .  It took me a bit to get them satisfied and to lock the house up.  

When I got to the E.R. they told me to wait and when my mother was in a room, they would let me know.  

It was three o'clock when I entered room 117.  Remember the time. 

A nurse came in and took my mother's vitals.  She said Dr. Marvel would be in to see her in a moment.  

"You made that up," I said.  

"No.  That's her name.  Madison Marvel."  

I've decided to change the name here.  Her real name was even more spectacular and surprising and one I can't imagine anyone else having.  But. . . I can't reveal it and then say what I am going to say.  

I took out my phone and Googled her.  She was young.  She was beautiful.  She had graduated from my own alma mater med school in 2022.  Yikes.  She was a sports medicine doc who trained in the ER program at the other major hospital group in town.  She was not affiliated with either system which made me wonder if she had passed her boards yet.  Doctors have seven years to pass before they are not allowed to practice any longer.  I know this from dating a neurosurgeon who had not yet passed her boards for a bit.  

Dr. Marvel was very sweet to my mother, but I'll skip to the chase.  We sat in the room a very long time waiting for my mother to be taken for Xrays, then even longer before the doc came back.  My mother had a compound fracture of the radial bone.  The doc was going to try to move the bones back into place.  They gave my mother a shot of morphine, something for anxiety, and a Tylenol drip.  At that time, my mother's blood pressure was outrageous, 205/100.  Dr. Marvel said that it was going to hurt a bit, but she would give my mother a lidocaine block to help.  

My mother had fallen decades ago and broken her other wrist.  That was another horrible day.  I took her to the E.R. and she lay on a gurney for hours.  They could not find a doctor, they said, who took her insurance.  They said we could wait until one showed up or we could drive across town to a doctor who would see her.  I put her back in my open Jeep and we bounced our way through traffic.  

Skip ahead.  That doctor had a machine that had Chinese finger handcuffs and a crank.  He strapped her arm down, put her fingers in the handcuffs, then cranked the handle pulling my mother's hand upward.  I watched the bone move and heard the popping.  I almost passed out.  

"That was absolutely medieval," I said.  

"No. . . I gave her something to reduce the pain."

I told this story to Dr. Marvel who listened to it wide-eyed and disbelieving.  She might not have even been born, though, when this story took place.  

Dr. Marvel got everything ready.  She had a syringe with the lidocaine and put into my mother's wrist.  I was watching as she moved it around and around as if searching for something for quite awhile, occasionally pushing the plunger a tiny bit.  

"Can you feel the bone?" I asked.  

She looked at me.  

"Yes," she said.  "You see the blood in the syringe?"

I had already noticed it and had thought of the way a junkie will sometimes reboot heroin by pushing the plunger then pulling it back and re-injecting again.  Blood, of course, comes back into the syringe.  But I didn't mention that.  

All of the sudden, my mother began to fade.  The doctor asked her if she was o.k. but she didn't respond.  

"Do you have pain in your chest?" she asked.  

My mother mumbled.  

"Do you have numbness in your legs?"

No response.

"Do you feel a tingling in your lips?"

My mother kind of nodded.  I was watching the doctor's eyes.  They were telling the story.  The alarms were going off on the monitor.  My mother's heart rate dropped into the thirties.  The doctor seemed uncertain, then ordered some atropine and a defibrillator.  My mother looked like she had fallen asleep.  My adrenaline was pumping.  One of he nurses asked if the doctor wanted to hook my mother up to some electrolytes.  The doc said yes and left the room.  In a moment, the nurse put a gallon bag on the hanger and hooked my mother up.  Then everyone left.  

Wait and see, they said.  

When they were gone, I asked my mother to give me her hand.  "Mom. . . let's do some breathing exercises, o.k.  Deep breaths, hold, and then a long exhale."  I did them with her.  Her heart rate and O2 levels started coming up into the 40s.  "Good girl. .  .that's working.  Let's just do some more, slowly.  Just relax, don't try.  Just think about your breath."  Holy shit. . . bp in the 50s.  My mother was coming to.  

"How are you feeling?"  

"O.K". "

Did you pass out?"  

"I don't know," she said.  "I just felt sleepy."  

"O.K.  Let's do some more breathing."  

I massaged her neck and her scrawny shoulder.  I could feel the metal plates and bolts that held it together.  We breathed.  Heart rate 60s, then 70.  O2 levels normal.  

I'm not claiming anything.  I'm just telling what happened.  I am not claiming some mystical hippie shaman stuff.  Maybe it was the electrolytes.  Maybe this would have happened anyway.  But this is what happened.  

We didn't see the doc again for over an hour.  When she came back, she said she had been in touch with an orthopedic surgeon.  She wasn't going to try the block again and wasn't going to manipulate the bones back into place.  The orthopedic doctor said at 93 my mother's skin was thin and there was a chance of the bone coming through and that would be an even bigger problem.  She was just going to put my mother in the finger trap and let her arm hang and let gravity do some work.  

Another hour before the nurses rolled in an IV pole with the Chinese finger trap I had already mentioned attached.  The pole had no brake on the wheels, though, and they pondered how to keep it from moving.  They got a tourniquet and tied it to the bottom rail of the bed.  I could tell none of them had ever done this before.  

"I think this will work," one nurse said to another.  

When Dr. Marvel returned, she stood and looked for awhile, then tried to put my mother's fingers into the trap.  They fell out.  She tried again.  Success.  

"We'll let this hang for awhile and let gravity do its work," she said.  Everyone left.  There was a shift change.  A new nurse came in and introduced herself.  I told her I'd made a big mistake bringing my mother here.  "I should have taken her to the big hospitall," I said.  "They would have had an orthopedic surgeon there, wouldn't they?"  She shook her head.  "We are small and just don't have the staff," she said, then. . . "but you didn't hear it from me."  

It was now ten p.m.  I'd been sitting and fretting for seven hours.  I asked if there was a cafeteria.  It wasn't a cafeteria as one would know it.  It was a fast food joint with a tray of old pizza and some fried chicken fingers.  There were a lot of chips and candy and muffins.  I got a coffee and a protein bar and went back to the room.  

At eleven, Dr. Marvel came in.  She had an idea.  They were going to add some weights.  She left and the nurses came in with the weights and started futzing around trying to figure out what to do.  They got some ribbons and looped them around my mother's bicep, then tied the other end to the weights.  They had no idea what they were doing.  The weights lay on the ground with the ribbon attached.  There was no way to raise them.  They were trying to recreate the medieval machine action I had mentioned before.  It was a real cluster fuck.  

My mother lay like this for another long spell.  At 12:30, Dr. Marvel returned with nurses.  

"This looks better, don't you think?" she queried the nurses with a bit of a vocal fry and uptalk in her voice.  

"Sure," I said, "the blood has drained from her hand to her elbow," I said, "so the swelling has been reduced."  

They took off the finger trap.  

"We are going to put a partial splint on this to keep it in place.  We're not going to manipulate it.  The orthopedic surgeon said that she wouldn't recommend surgery at your age.  Well just keep it in the splint and let it heal.  It won't be perfect," she said.  

What? WTF?!?  This was it?  My mother hadn't even seen an orthopedic doctor yet.  Why?

It turned out that they didn't have orthopedics at this hospital.  

Even putting on the splint was a cluster fuck.  The material hardened and they struggled to get it into shape and cut it.  

I walked out of the room with Dr. Marvel.  "You are going to keep her overnight, right?"

"No, I don't have to.  I can release her to go home."

I looked at her.  "I don't feel comfortable just taking her home.  I think she needs to be monitored tonight."

"OK.  I can admit her, sure."

But they couldn't find a room.  The hospital was full, they said.  

At one-thirty, we were just waiting for a room to open up.  They didn't get my mother into a room until 4:30.  And it wasn't a hospital room.  The horror story goes on. . . but not today.  My mother is up.  I need to get to work.  And so. . . . 

Easy Listening and Two Xanax

I'm too exhausted to write the details of the last few days.  They kept my mother in the hospital for another night.  I can't stand to go into it now, but the healthcare system is rotten to the core.  Not the people working in it but the system.  The people working at the hospital have been sweet and kind and generous.  No complaints there.  But the not for profit greedhead MBAs who had a better idea of how to "do" healthcare. . . well, we all know how terrible but somehow satisfying it was that people cheered when the CEO of the big insurance company got murdered.  

So. . . I got to sleep at home one more night.  I got home from the hospital late and ate takeout bbq too close to bedtime.  Today, I will begin my new life as caregiver.  As I've reported, I've come to love the comforts of home.  I will not have that for a while, nor will I have any ability to travel.  I'm going to be stuck with home care, cooking, and Gunsmoke.  

Maybe I'll be up for telling the tale in a few days.  Right now. . . I'm a walking zombie.  

Here's my new dating app description.  Beautiful.  

"Old, white, single male living with 93 year old mother."  

I'm lucky I started Dry January on Dec. 26.  I'm two weeks into this shit.  Otherwise, I would have been looking for the hospital bar.  I'd have downed a fifth of scotch these last two nights.  Still, it is difficult to watch two lives dribble away while sober.  

"I'll take easy listening and two Xanax for fifty, Alex."

Another Fall

Long, horrible story that I don't have time to tell now.  My mother fell. . . again. . . and broke her wrist.  The story just goes downhill from there.  But I'll have to craft it later.  I didn't get to bed until three after sitting with her in the ER for over twelve hours.  Healthcare is a real shit show.  I've had little sleep, but now I need to get back to the hospital.  

Call Me

I did leave the house yesterday, but just for a bit.  I had to.  The cleaning crew was coming.  It was nice to come home to a sparkling house and clean sheets for the first time in. . . oh. . . I won't tell you, but I forgot to wash them last time, so. . . I just slept on the other side of the king bed.  That was my mother's suggestion.  It was, but she was kidding.  

And once again, I didn't turn on the television.  I read.  I've been reading again.  I have a bunch of books to get through.  My brain has turned a bit into mush, though.  I can only read for half an hour at a time or thereabouts before I get brain weary and need to get up and move or fall asleep.  It frightens me a bit.  How did I let this happen?  My brain is in the same condition as my body now, it seems.  I am, however, now working on them both.  I'll be fit as a fucking fiddle soon.  

I'm reading the book of essays by Maeve Brennan.  Those are fun.  They are short pieces, about the length of one of my blog posts and seem almost, but not quite, as off the cuff.  She uses much more description, though, of what she sees.  I've gotten too much away from that, I think as I read her.  There is a bit of Hemingway in it, descriptive passages without too much detail, sort of what Hem says he learned from the paintings of Cézanne.  That she made a living doing that grieves me a bit.  That's not about her.  It's about me.  

I'll need to read some longer form fiction, though, to get ready for tackling Cormac McCarthy's last works.  I'm sure they will be wearisome.  I'm predicting that I will start them but never finish them.  I just don't think they are going to be so good as his best and even his second best works, but I won't know if I don't take the ride.  

It is cold here in the sunny south.  It is 38 degrees out as I write.  The air is blue in the dusky morning and does not invite me to go out.  I have set my thermostat higher than I ever have before.  I can feel the cold air seeping in from my many old windows, can feel the cold air coming up through the floorboards.  I've lived here since 1996, but only now is this bothersome.  My metabolism is certainly changing.  I have become an old man who dislikes the cold.  You'd think these layers of fat would insulate me.  Ha!

I shouldn't post that photo.  I keep telling myself it is not appropriate in the moral climate of the day.  People are "personally offended" and "triggered" so very often "these days," and I have been good about not showing the most. . . uh. . . well, the most provocative stuff.  But I must say, I find this photo to be more objectionable than most of my photos.  It is like boudoir photography which I think is the sleaziest form of the craft, but goddamn, the photo just pops.  She was a real pro model who drove more than an hour from the coast to shoot with me just because she liked my pictures.  She wanted to come back and shoot again, but she was leaving the country in a few days for about three months, and of course, after that we lost touch.  I look at the photo now and think, "I should have asked her to marry me."  She was fun.  

My music algorithms are all over the place.  I'll get some hillbilly music followed by something like this.  And I'll like it, but it is like a guilty pleasure, something you don't want your friends to catch you listening to.  

"What the fuck is this?  Man. . . your hormones are whacked!"

Yea, but the air is cold and the coffee hot, and the world outside my window is blue and I am loathe to move, and besides, the old version of this was pretty good, so. . . whatever.  

I'm pretty sure nobody who comes here plays these YouTube things anyway.  One person's music is not another's.  But, if you are interested in the emotional penumbra cast over me lately. . . . 

Home Alone

 

CNN  — Aubrey Plaza has shared her first statement since the death of her husband, writer and director Jeff Baena.

Baena died by suicide last Friday.

 

As you all know, I was crazy for Aubrey Plaza when I "discovered" her a few months back.  I guess. . . wait. . . what?  Too soon?

I worry, of course.  What else have I to do?  I had another in a string of "those days."  I hadn't bathed for three days and had scarcely left the house.  I knew it was time to do both. . . but I lingered.  I did what I had been doing all beautiful weekend long.  I wasn't depressed.  I don't think so.  I just didn't want to leave the comfort of home.  So I said.  I felt content.  So, it was late when I finally got dressed to take a walk.  It was a fine day, but what was that smell?  Jesus Christ--it was me!  I guess working up a little sweat activated something.  I smelled like an old pizza.  It was bad, but it made me hungry, too.  

The walk was a good thing.  Then I went to the gym.  It was well past my usual hour now.  Hardly anyone was there which was good.  I really didn't want to get too close to anyone, stinky as I was.  

I left the gym and went to Whole Foods to return a Henley shirt I bought on Amazon.  Amazon recommended I buy an XL, but it turned out to be too big.  I'm betting the L will be too small.  I'll know tonight.  But I needed bread and milk and a few other things, so I shopped.  I decided to make a little lunch at the hot food bar.  

When I got home, I still needed milk.  WTF, was I going senile?  

Probably. 

I ate my lunch and perused things digitally.  The BDSM place wrote to tell me that they were changing ownership and would not have a photography night this month.  I still hadn't heard back from the burlesque troupe, but everything was a go for shooting the little league wrestling that night.  

After lunch, I took a nap.  When I woke up, it was four.  I still needed to clean up.  It was going on five.  I called my mother to tell her I was running late and wouldn't be over.  

"What time is the wrestling thing?"

"Six," I said.  I was stretching the truth, though.  Six-thirty.  Still, I hadn't gotten any of my camera gear together, and I needed to charge batteries.  

I made a mocktail and lit a cheroot and sat on the deck to think.  That is what I did for a good long while.  It was five-thirty.  I still needed to do the camera thing.  It would take half an hour's drive to get to the wrestling ring.  I sat.  I thought.  

I decided not to go.  

I felt myself sinking.  Why?  Why wasn't I going?  It just didn't feel right, I told myself.  It was stupid.  The BDSM was stupid and so was the burlesque.  Everything I was doing was stupid.  I'd lost my way, lost my talent, lost my mojo.  What was I doing, anyway?  There was always that voice in my head.  

"What do you do with the pictures?"

"I'm an artist, goddamnit," was once my inner voice reply, but it wasn't very convincing.  It was almost ironic.  No, it was ironic.  But, you know, why do people draw of paint or collage or whatever they do?  

"I'm a hobbyist, goddamn it!"

Well. . . that certainly sounded dumb.  As always, carving wooden ducks in the garage.  

I used to get accolades, of course.  Now I barely get answers.  

It was dark.  I was still sitting, still ruminating.  Whatever, I thought.  I need to make dinner.  

And I still needed milk.  A grocery store run.  It was seven, seven-thirty.  I made a quick meal.  I didn't want to turn on the television.  I would read after eating.  

I went to the big computer and looked at my files from the last wrestling shoot.  O.K.  I didn't hate them.  I wanted to do more, wanted to talk to one of the wrestlers and find out what makes them do it.  I looked up the wrestling website again.  There was an instagram link to one of the female wrestlers I had shot.  I went there.  She had used one of my photos on her site.  Just one.  I'd sent a bunch to the guy in charge.  He must have shared it with her.  I thought I would like to ask her those journalistic questions.  

"What are you doing this for?"

Inner voice.  Yup.  

"I'm just an idiot."

It was eleven.  I was worn out.  I went to bed.  

This morning my conservative friend sent me the front page of the WSJ as some sort of social commentary.  I made a joke that we had different interests, he and I.  But there was an article about taxidermy, so to be funny, he sent me this.

Maykut said taxidermy is a dying art that needs new blood to continue to broaden its reach. She said the pursuit is full of contradictions that appeal to different interests: morbid and cute, light and dark, real and fake, blue collar and high end.

“It’s complicated and provocative, and people feel so differently about it,” she said. “That’s what makes art. It’s a skill set. It can be in museums, but it’s also roadkill. But maybe that’s all art—you have finger paintings, but then you have Picasso and Michelangelo. It’s everything, everywhere all at once. There’s death and taxes. And taxidermy.”

Kismet.

Maybe I'll take up taxidermy.  

It is cold this morning for the sunny south, thirty-nine degrees.  Overcast, too.  A gray and gloomy day.  I should stay home in my comfy house and make some French Onion soup like my gal friend in the midwest did yesterday.  She sent me pics. 

Everyone's an artist.  Red sent me photos and videos of what she was working on in her lovely home on the coast just south of Venice.  In one photo, the sun was just rising.  

My conservative friend keeps texting as I write.  

If you’re an A-lister with a penchant for decorative dead animals, chances are you know about Maykut. The 43-year-old taxidermist has sold butterflies to Drew Barrymore, an antler mount to Nick Jonas and a jackalope to Courtney Love. Her squirrels have added a measure of realism to the Saks Fifth Avenue windows. Her birds decorate the No-Mad Hotel in Manhattan.

Jesus.  What rung of the ladder am I on?  

I just previewed this post.  The video I linked is "age restricted" so you have to watch it on YouTube for whatever reason.  Makes no sense to me, but the post makes no sense if you don't watch it.  

But what does?

Maybe YouTube will let you hear this.  It is a surprising song to me.  Astaire was a dancer.  I guess he had many talents.  

Bitch, Bitch, Bitch

Sunday, a better weather day than Saturday.  What did I do?  Oh. . . you know.  But I DID got to my mother's in the afternoon, so there's that.  I hadn't bathed for going on three days.  I hadn't taken a walk.  I'd barely moved.  

"Maybe something is wrong with me.  I don't know.  I wasn't sad or depressed or anything.  I kept thinking I'd leave the house, but I just didn't.  When I drove over here, people were out and milling about everywhere.  The Boulevard looked packed with happy people.  The kids are back for the start of the term at Country Club.  Everyone looked like they were having fun.  Maybe it depresses me to go out around so many happy people. . . maybe I don't want to get dressed. . . I don't think, you know, that anyone is happy to see me."

Then my mother told me about my cousin's husband's brother who is a full-on alcoholic.  He was dying, living in a cheap motel in North Carolina when the family got a call from someone who had helped him cross the street and get back to his room.  Nobody knew where he was at the time.  His mother had died and he had one hundred thousand dollar inheritance due him.  So my cousin and her husband bought him a bus ticket to come stay with them.  Not them, but their ne'er do well son who was renting a cheap two bedroom apartment.  They were going to charge him a lot of money to stay there and take care of him.  They helped him at first, but now he just lies in bed for days.  

"He says he's depressed," my mother said, "and that he just wants to die."

I laughed and pointed to myself.  

"You don't want to die, do you?"

"No, no. . . not at all.  I'm not depressed, either.  I'm laughing about just hanging around the house.  No, I am fairly content."

Then she began telling me that she thought she got depressed this holiday season.  

"Nobody comes to see me.  I'm just alone."

Which kind of pisses me off seeing that I am there for an hour or more every fucking day.  And what she is saying is not true.  She gets phone calls and visits every day from neighbors and friends.  She complains about being on the phone with one woman for hours.  She says with some disdain that one or another of her neighbors came over "and stayed for an hour."  People come out from her church to see her.  

She has a friend who is a little younger who keeps falling and isn't able to get up.  She drags herself across the floor and dials 911.  This has been happening a lot.  

"She complains that she can't get anyone to come in and help her, but she doesn't want to pay anyone."

"Why would anyone want to come give her baths and clean her house and wipe her butt. . . I mean, she is not interesting or good looking or even very friendly.  What the fuck is wrong with people?  Would you want to go help her?"

"No."

She has a family that barely talks to her, two daughters and a son.  They don't help.  

And that is how I left my mother's house, stinking from a weekend sitting in front of the computer, listening to music, reading, and not watching t.v.  I wanted to watch t.v.  I wanted to see Nikki Glaser's opening monologue to the Golden Globes.  But I have cancelled cable t.v. and have yet to buy rabbit ears, so I can't get the networks and I don't subscribe to Paramount.  I spent half an hour looking online for ways to watch, but I found nothing.  No matter, I thought.  I didn't want to watch anything but the opening.  I would be able to do that Monday morning on YouTube.  

And that is what I did when I got up today.  Tame.  She wasn't going to say fuck it like Ricky Gervais.  She wasn't successful enough for that.  So she tiptoed around the room like a cocktail party host.  

I can't blame her.  

I watched the opening, then I got sucked into watching some of the award speeches.  Jesus Christ, I can't believe people like to watch that stuff.  A lot of stupid people trying to be grateful and profound.  Demi Moore's speech sent me over the edge.  And Adrienne Brody's speech was even schmaltzier.  

But there is no underestimating the taste of the masses.  Especially their taste for the new.  

"Oh my god, have you seen the new reports on drinking alcohol?  They are saying now that no alcohol is good for you, that even a little causes cancer!"

WTF?  Really?  You thought that drinking was good for your health?  Did you think all those fuckers at the bar were health food junkies?  That hangover you had, you thought that was just alcohol healing you?  Did you ever look at he label of a Peroni bottle?  That guy doesn't look like the epitome of health, does he?  

"Have you ever tried those CBD cocktails?  That's what all the kids are doing now,  They don't drink alcohol."

Yea.  CBD is good for you, sure.  So far.  It's been around for a decade now.  Lots of studies on what it does to the body. . . wait. . . no there aren't.  So sure. . . it has to be good for you.  But young people are dying of cancer at an increasing rate.  Hmm.  

Doctors know that the best medicine is exercise.  The first impactful study was done looking at bus drivers and conductors in Britain in the 50's or 60's--I can't remember.  They looked at one thing--heart attacks.  Drivers died much earlier than conductors at an incredible rate.  It was the difference between sitting and standing.  That started the bevy of studies that have increased exponentially over the years.  

"A little exercise goes a long way.  You don't need to train like an Olympian.  But, you know. . . HIT training is such better.  You do need to stretch every day, too.  And meditate.  One minute of meditation is great.  Just listen to your breath.  But twenty minutes is better.  You don't need 10,000 steps a day.  It is better if you walk at a quicker pace.  The further, the better.  You need more protein than you are probably getting, but don't try getting it from meat.  Legumes, nuts. . . but watch your calories.  It is the fiber that is important, but you need two servings of fermented food every day, too.  There are only five exercises you need to do to to live longer.  Don't try to overdo it.  Semaglutides have been shown to have many benefits, but some people. . . . "

So, hey. . . did you hear?  If you have even one drink of alcohol, your chances of getting cancer increases!

People are just batshit crazy, I think.  

Yea, I looked at the Red Carpet shit, too.  I'm as looney as anyone. 

I'll get out of the house today.  I'm going to take a walk and go to the gym and not drink and be young forever.  Then tonight, I'm going to the Little League Wrestling place to take some photos.  Look at me, living the dream.  

No matter. . . the music keeps playing.  It is good and hypnotic.  I'm certain the right music can make you healthier.  Not electronic music or rap, though.  They probably cause cancer.  

Can you imagine Peggy Lee as a young singer today?  She'd be killing it.  Let Trailer Swift try this.  

But Amy Winehouse could have, but that didn't work out quite right for her, did it?  Who knows?  She didn't have to get old and stay in the house away from the world like some aging movie star from a bygone era.  

A Beautiful Saturday

Saturday was gorgeous, a nearly perfect day.  The air was cool and dry, the sky clear and blue and a million miles high.  And so I did what I do so often now on perfectly beautiful Saturdays.  

I stayed home.  

I could see the day from my windows, and I even stepped out on the deck once, but I was homebound all the live-long day.  

What is wrong with me?  Have I become an isolate?  

I don't know, but I was at perfect peace, cozy and warm in my house on a chilly day.  Crazy, ain't it?

I was, however, semi-productive.  I did loads of laundry.  I cleaned the kitchen.  I opened mail, something I do on rare occasions.  And I decided to look for the odd little things going on in my own hometown.  You might be surprised how difficult it is to find small events in a big tourist town, or maybe you are more savvy and already linked in to some social media platform that tells you what's going on.  I have never found that channel, though, and I am always reading about something I would have gone to the next day.  I used "the Google" and tried every variety of search terms I could think of.  I searched for Lucha Libre near me.  I couldn't find any.  Selavy.  But I did get some good information on the best places to see it in Mexico City.  I found out, too, that it is OK to take a camera into the arena.  I found out where I could sit for the best photos.  There was a fellow who had already done it.  No worries. . . his photos were the standard kitchen variety, but the information was helpful.  I looked up flights to Mexico City.  Not bad.  Very do-able.  Two and a half hour flight.  I could do three days and be home for a fair price.  So there's a thought.  

During the search, though, I did come across some little league wrestling again.  I sent pictures to the fellow who let me come last time and didn't feel I had adequately heard back, so I decided to email him again.  There is an event tomorrow night and again on Saturday.  Could I come?  He wrote back right away and said that I certainly could.  

O.K. then.  Chills of anticipation.  Could I do it differently?  Better?  There is only one way to find out.  And this time, I will try to go back to the dressing room, and I will try to talk to the wrestlers.  I want stories.  

That was my thinking.  

I believe I have already told you I heard back from a bigger league women's roller derby team across the state.  I wrote back to them and said I would definitely be coming and would wait for further information.  

I really want to shoot a series in a go-go bar.  Mad to.  So I Goggled to find any in my area.  There are not very many any longer.  The religious popos have shut most of them down.  But something else popped up, though, a private BDSM club across town.  I've known about it for years.  One woman I shot with in the studio long, long ago invited me to go.  I had no interest at the time.  They have a night once a month, however, when they let "certain" photographers come to one of their dungeons to take photographs.  I wrote to them saying I'd like to come.  It is not my thing, but I am imagining the images Elmo Tide style (link).  

Getting into a strip club is going to be difficult and probably impossible, but I have a few ideas about that.  I'll need investors, though.  I think I may know a few.  Until that time. . . there is burlesque.  Like BDSM, it is not my thing, but again. . . Elmo. . . so I found a venue that appealed to me, one I'd never seen before.  I found an email address for the troupe and wrote  to see if I could make some photos with them.  I leaned in on my credentials once again, hoping.  I wait to hear back.  

Rodeos.  There is one about an hour away that takes place every Saturday night.  They don't supply an email address, just a phone number.  You may remember that a few years ago, I did a documentary on the biggest professional rodeo in the state.  It happens in February and is part of the national championship cowboy series.  I will lean on that when I talk to them, I've decided, and see what happens.  I need to try to get some credentials to shoot the big event in February, too.  I've got to get some credentials from somebody.  I need to quit being afraid and just try.  But it is like asking a girl on a date.  I simply can't take rejection, so I don't.  But man. . . on the credentials thing, I just have to try.  Any small town paper will do.  

I also found a Dude Ranch that listed cowboying and glamping.  They, too, have Saturday night rodeos.  They have a Farmer's Market and. . . ready. . . luxury teepees for rent.  I may have to go stay in one and go to everything they offer.  I'm certain it will be expensive, but sometimes the piper must be paid.  

I still need to get in touch with the stock car track management, but my semi-writer/artist friend wants to go in on that, so I will wait to talk to him and let him try to make arrangements.  That is what he does.  He is good at it.  

That took a couple of hours.  I had drifted into a beautiful afternoon.  I ate some peanut butter toast and decided to go the big computer and work on one file before I let the house.  I knew where I wanted to go.  A small museum of American Art in town is displaying the works of Sally Michel, an "abstract tonalist" painter.  I would go there, then I wold stop by the big warehouse of plants and home furnishings where I met the owner a month or so ago, the woman who Q knew from his days in the electronic music scene here in my own hometown.  

I went to my old, untouched studio files and chose a picture to work on.  It was good.  Then another.  I have developed a somewhat different approach to making the same sort of image that I did before.  It takes a long while to finish one, but the music was playing and it was good.  I had let my Apple station play all morning, and it was humming on all cylinders.  It put me in the zone.  

When I got up from the computer, I felt guilty.  It was mid-afternoon now.  If I was going to go out, I needed to go right away.  I stepped onto the deck.  Oh. . . it was lovely.  

I ate a grapefruit.  Then I worked on another image.  

At four-thirty I called my mother.  

"Would you hate me if I didn't come over today?"

I needed a pack of cheroots and some broccoli.  I was scruffy.  I hadn't even splashed water on my face.  No matter.  I threw on a sweater and headed out the door.  Who cared?  At the liquor store, I bought some non-alcoholic rum.  At the grocery store, I bought lots of things I hadn't planned on.  When I got back home, the sun was near to setting.  

I made a non-alcoholic rum and coke, lit a cheroot, and sat out on the deck.  It was getting chilly.  The rum and coke wasn't a rum and coke, but the flavors were strong and that was just OK.  

As the sun set, I went to the kitchen and prepared some parboiled cod, steamed broccoli, and rice.  When it was ready, I put it all into a large bowl and drizzled teriyaki sauce over everything.  It is the easiest meal in the world to make and is always better than I remember it to be.  

I didn't turn on the t.v. The music was still good.  I cleaned up the kitchen and was going to read, but I decided to cook up one more picture.  

It was eleven when I got a text.  The tenant had come home from her holiday travels.  She said she had knocked on my door but got no answer.  The lights were on.  The car was in the drive.  Was I OK?

I texted back.  She came down to pick up her mail.  I was sleepy now, but she wanted to chat.  

It was midnight when I brushed my teeth and went to bed.  

I had completed eight pictures.

I'll not stay home today.  Uh-uh.  I won't go near the big computer.  When I get in there with the music and the images, I get lost.  Hours go by without notice.  Nope.  Not today.  

I sent the photo at the top of the page to Q with a note--"I don't give a fuck what your friends say.  I'm pretty fucking good at this."

And I sent him the song that was playing at that very moment.  It is a damn good one, too.  Q sent back a message.  He liked the photo and he liked the song.  

Now. . . I need to get out of my chair and into the wild.  I will not be a shut in another day.  I will be an active man.  I will be an adventurer.