2018, Havana, Cuba. To prove I was a Hemingway Hero, I challenged all comers to meet me in this fighting ring, bar none.
But the hombres had little interest in fighting a madman. Ha!
Just kidding, of course. Yesterday, wounded and only walking as needed, I sat at my computer culling work for my proposed website all the live-long day. I was working in the Cuba files. Oo-la-la, there are some tasty bits in there, though the photos are no more than travel pictures, illustrations for an article, perhaps. They are good, I think, but not "art." And that brings me to a dilemma in building a website.
But I'll get to that.
As I went through the photos, there were two trips intermingled in the folder. One was with Ili in 2017. One day I got a hair and said to her, "Let's go to Cuba."
"O.K." she said, and without much preparation, we booked a direct flight. Halfway there, I began to question myself. WTF? We would just land and see what happened. Ili had booked an apartment through an Air B&B site online. When we got to the airport, I knew to exchange money there for the best rate. Then we got a cab, gave the driver an address, and we were on our way.
The trip turned out to be very easy. Cuba was now a tourist destination, though most people were coming by cruise ship and staying only a day or two.
As I went through the photos, I was surprised to come across some movie clips. I'd forgotten all about them. There was Ili on our first afternoon sitting at a table in the Floridita drinking a frozen daiquiri. Three takes. I asked her where we were and what we were doing.
"We are at the Floridita drinking. . . I forgot what these are called."
"Daiquiris."
"We are sitting in the Floridita drinking daiquiris," she grinned.
"And what are we going to have to eat?"
With a mischievous look in her eye, she said, "Hemingway's balls."
WTF?
She did this each time, for all three takes.
I have lots of photographs of her, of course, but this was one of the few times I actually shot her with video. There we were on a sudden adventure before the accident, me a bit chubby but healthy, she looking wonderful and still in love. I decided to take the clips into Adobe Premiere and edit them into a little video. I don't do enough video editing and I keep forgetting how to use the program which, it seems to me, has been updated every time I go to use it. It took me a long time to remember how to make titles (I did a shitty job), cut and move clips on the timeline, and add transitions. The audio was pretty bad as I was using the built-in mic on the camera, so I tried to clean it up a bit. Then I tried to white balance and brighten the video. I didn't do a very good job at any of it, still, the clips were quite improved. After spending way too much time on this silly project, I rendered it ready to send. . . where? I wanted to post it to YouTube so I could put it on the blog, but I decided against that.
It was a lot of time spent with Ili's fanciful images. But I was O.K.
When I ran across the photos of me in the fighting gym that I had stumbled onto as I walked some neighborhood back streets, I thought, "Yea. . . that is me, alright, all faux-fury and bluster. . . a sissy-boy playing up his manhood." I was thinking about the trip to the doctor this morning.
I am worried, of course, but more. . . I am scared. I could call it "anxious," but that would be underselling it. As I've confessed, I have come to realize that I am and always have been an anxiety-ridden fellow, but sometimes I am just plain scared. I am afraid of my visit with the surgeon this morning. I am afraid I'll pass out when I see the hole in my leg, or maybe just vomit. I don't want to be the one who has to clean it and care for it at home. I want to close my eyes and let someone else do it.
But there is no one else. I'll have to cowboy up.
I won't go into my paranoia about all the things that might go wrong. I keep imagining that the wound won't heal and all that would entail.
I'm that kind of guy.
I'm also the kind of guy, though, who would always take off on a romantic adventure. At the end of the trip, Ili told me, "My god, that was the most romantic thing I have ever done."
"Stick with me, kid. You ain't seen nothing yet."
And for awhile, it was true. But that is for another time, perhaps. . . or perhaps not.
I am a louse. For two years in a row, it seems, I have forgotten the birthday of someone I care for deeply. I am like that. I am like Caravaggio's painting of Narcissus. I have never enjoyed birthdays, especially my own. Nothing anyone can do will ever live up to my grand expectation of what should happen, so I'd rather be ignored. That way, I can mope and cry that nobody really loves me.
Not the way I do, at least.
Yea, yea, yea. . . .
But it breaks my heart that I have plumb forgotten, especially since she has been remembering mine. There is no real way you can make up for that, I think, as I've been told more than once that birthday's are more important to women than is Christmas. Sounds like a sexist thing, sure, and I was told that by a male chauvinist. Still, that doesn't mean he was wrong. He was right about a lot of things even though he turned out to be a crook.
Brando, I mean.
I am learning not to judge the book by my cover too late in life. One dust jacket doesn't fit all.
I took this bit of information with me to my doctor's appointment yesterday. I was early, but it didn't matter. I waited for over an hour. By the time the doc got to me, I think she was in a hurry. She walked in with a nurse and a scribe. I think that is what they were. She smiled and said, "Your blood work was great."
"Well. . . I've been through a bit since I saw you last." And I proceeded to sing to her my sad song.
"I'm glad you got that taken off," she said.
"What was my testosterone level," I asked her.
"I don't think we tested that."
"Yes, it's on here," said the nurse. I had requested the test. The doc took a look.
"It's normal," she said.
"What was the number."
She read it off.
"I'd like to get it up to around 800," I said.
She winced. "Why would you want that much testosterone?" she queried. The nurse giggled.
"What are you laughing about?" I grinned.
"What most men want it for," she stumbled.
"No, no. . . if that was it I'd be asking for Cialis. I just want to look like the man I used to be so I can use my charms," I said.
"I don't know," said the doc.
"It's one cc a week of testosterone," I said. "That's standard. I've been around this all my life. Most of the guys at the gym who are over forty are on TRT."
She wasn't impressed. I didn't think she would be. My levels are o.k. I should probably leave it alone. But when all the other boys are getting pumped. . . .
I'll leave it alone.
So I took the good news home with me as a victory for the day.
"Looks like I might have another year," I told my mother, "if this leg thing turns out alright."
But my mother had a phone call just then, so my victory limp was over and done. When she got off the pone, she made me a grilled cheese sandwich and some chicken soup. I opened a small coca-cola. This is not the way I usually eat, but boy oh boy, it was good.
"I need to get back to my house where the healthy food is," I said. "But first, I need to stop a the infectious disease doctor's office and cancel my appointment. I want to hear what they have to say."
My mother was boo-hooing as I packed up to go home. "I like having you here," she said. It was meant to be sweet, but it was also something else, a whole lot of guilting, I think. It seems unfair, but I understand. And therein lies the rub.
As I pulled into the parking lot at the doc's office, I got a call. It was Tennessee. He had just gotten back into town and had missed my entire fiasco.
"Where are you? I've got something for you."
"I'm at the doc's office," I said.
"When will you be home. I'll stop by."
Since I've decided to give up drinking whiskey alone in my home every night, of course his present was a bottle scotch. The devil works in obvious ways.
I filled him in on my fun two weeks, and he told me about his. That's what people do. He wanted to know if he and his wife could take me to dinner, but I told him I wasn't up for going out yet. When he left, I thought about the dinner I had turned down and the one I would have instead. I decided I'd been eating like shit for days now, so I'd have one last shitty dinner. I went to the store and bought a frozen pizza.
My mother called. She said she was lonely.
"Yea. . . I know what you mean."
What could I say. People stop by and see her all day long. They bring her food. People call her on the phone. I can go days without hearing from anyone. But she is closer to the cliff than I, so I understand. Nobody wants to be alone with "the thing." I can only tell her that I will be much more alone with it than she is. . . but I know that is no comfort.
And that is what I had on my mind for the rest of the night. I watched a little tv and went to bed.
I will get back to editing my photos for the projected website today. I may get back to making photographs when I can get around again. I feel I have another year's lease on life, and I want to make it productive.
For now, though. . . well. . . there is the music.
It was a long day. All the signs were ominous. We drove to the surgical center through a downpour and flooded streets. Full moon. And when I got there, they told me my anesthesiologist was named Dr. Moriarity. Moriarity! That was Sherlock Holmes archrival. So I said.
"You're the second person today to mention that," said the attending nurse.
The doc's P.A. came in to explain what was going to go on that day. Of course. I asked if I was going to be able to walk after the surgery.
"Sure. He is just removing something under the skin. . . . "
I did see the doc just before they took me in for surgery. He was his usual taciturn self. He looked, maked my leg, and said he would have to put in "permanent stitches." I guessed that meant the kind he would have to remove.
When they wheeled me into the surgical room, I began to quiver and shake uncontrollably. I couldn't stop. It was embarrassing. The anesthesiologist was not there. I had met her earlier, but it was a man who said he'd be administering the anesthesia. Probably a P.A.
"Are you cold," he asked me.
"I think it is probably anxiety," I confessed.
"Oh, here, let me give you something for that."
That is the last thing I remember. I went into surgery at around 1:30. I came to in the recovery room around 3:30. That seemed like a long time to me. As I came to, I was shivering and quivering again. There were two nurses asking me if I was o.k.
"I can't quit shaking," I mumbled.
"That's normal coming out of the anesthesia."
"Really?"
I've been under many times before and don't remember ever quivering. It was taking me long time to come to. I was the last patient of the day, and I think the staff was eager to close up shop.
"Do you have any pain?"
My leg was stinging.
"A little."
"On a scale of one to ten."
I thought a minute. "Two."
Then they had me stand up to sit in a chair.
"Ow--it's a five now."
"O.K." said the nurse. "I'll give you something."
She put a syringe in my IV tube.
"What is that?"
"Dilaudid."
Oh, man. . . I like the Dilaudid. But that was it. No opioids for home. It was going to be all over the counter shit from here on. WTF?
I was still loopy when they brought my mother in. A nurse began explaining my post-op care to her, but she couldn't hear, so I said, and I answered all the questions. My mother would have been confused by it all anyway.
The doctor never came to tell me how it went. I'm guessing he was in a hurry to get home. I did not think that bode well.
The nurse told my mother to get the car and pull up to the front door. She helped me dress, then wheeled me out I a wheel chair. It was only raining slightly at the time. It was a straight shot to my mother's house, about two miles. With luck, we got home without incident.
I was loopy for most of the rest of the night. I hadn't eaten or drunk anything for around twenty-one hours, so I made a can of chicken soup. As it heated up, I put two eggs in and turned up the heat until I had chicken noodle egg-drop soup. It was thick and chewy. I had it with crackers and a small coca-cola. It went down well. A bit later, I took a pee. There. Two things to check off the watch list. I didn't have nausea and I had "voided." I felt a tightness and a stinging in my calf as I walked. I assumed it was the stitches.
My cousin called. My mother answered on speaker, so I could hear the conversation. My mother said, "They took the cyst out, so everything is good now."
Yes, she wanted it to be. But then I heard her say something that she hadn't said before.
"The nurse came out and told me that they had to make a big hole," she was making the size of it with her thumb and forefinger though my cousin couldn't see, of course, "and she said that they had to do reconstructive surgery."
My eyes and brain were popping. What the fuck did that mean? Nobody had told anything to me. When my mother got off the phone, I questioned her. She said the same thing and made the same sized hole with her fingers.
"That's what the nurse told me."
I didn't think that was the best news of the night. What could I do? I got another small coca-cola and settled back into the remainder of my Dilaudid buzz.
After dark, I was getting hungry, but my mother hadn't anything for me to eat. She doesn't own milk. There is no coffee or tea. She did have some of that shit they call peanut butter, Peter Pan with sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil, some other shitty oil I can't remember, and palm oil. Why are they allowed to call it "peanut butter"?
I spied a tangerine and ate that. Then I started drinking water. There were left over cans of sparkling water that I had brought some time ago. I tried talking with my mother, but she couldn't hear most of what I said and I would have to repeat it in a shouting voice. I gave up and turned on the commercial laden news.
I checked my phone. The only two people who were checking on me were people from work. One was the woman who kind of almost asked me out. She had texted the day before I went to surgery out of the blue to see how I was doing. I hadn't heard from he in about a month. So I told her my tale. She was super duper sweet and wanted me to know all the things she would do for me from taking me to surgery to getting me groceries, etc. Now she was checking up to see how I was doing. I felt like I was getting healing vibes.
The other text was from my old secretary. She said she heard I was sick and wanted to know what was up. I asked who told her. She told me the woman who kind of almost asked me out had told my replacement at the factory for whom my old secretary now worked.
"I don't want to get anyone in trouble," she proffered, "but. . . . "
"No trouble. She has been super sweet. I will copy the text I sent to her about it all before I went to surgery because I am too loopy to try to write it all out again."
And so I did.
I didn't get another text from her.
Later that night, one of the gymroids texted to see how I was doing. It was on a group chat, so another one texted in, too.
And that was it--work people who I don't see any longer and two gymroids.
"My girlfriend should have taken me," I told the gymroids, "and should be taking care of me now, but. . . ."
Yea. My mother talked about how much help Ili had been after my wreck. I think she was thinking the same thing.
But, "A man alone ain't got no bloody fucking chance."
Especially in today's market. "Back in the days of Good Old America," as the memes go, they would have admitted me into the hospital, prepped me for surgery in my room, taken me to surgery, and brought me back to the room for the evening to make sure I was o.k. and to give me whatever meds I needed. The Medical Industry, however, works from a bigger profit motive that seems more like something in a developing country where you go sit in a cattle pen waiting to see a doctor in the clinic who does whatever then shows you the door. Maybe India would be a good model.
"If anything goes wrong, if you can't void that night, if you nausea or vomiting, or if you see any seepage through the bandaging, call your doctor. Try to keep the leg elevated. Eat lightly. Clear fluids."
Right? What do you think would happen if I called the doctor's office at midnight if shit went wrong?
"If this is an emergency, call 911."
But with all of my mother's intensive medical training, I guess they thought I'd be fine.
There is nothing in any of this that is giving me confidence or making me feel good. Much the opposite, I'd say.
My beautician is getting a hip replacement. It is also going to be outpatient. WTF?
When my mother had me, there was a three day hospital stay. Now they let the mother and child stay for one. That is a good metric, I think. If anything goes wrong, "you know what to do."
As I watched the commercial news stations, almost every commercial was for some medical drug or device.
Now we have RFK jr. And now he has Casey Means. Michelle Goldberg has a nice column on that in today's Times (link).
I think we are all fucked. Some just don't seem to mind.
Whatever. Once you are in the hands of the medical system, you are done for anyway. Your life will not be your own. I'm going to start my meditation and groovy vibing and try to align my chakras and get my auras straight on my own, for I am, really, what I've got. I need to center myself in a way I've not been centered for a very long time. I've been living on anxiety and adrenaline for too long now. I'm going to have to embrace myself and what the great void of the cosmos has in store. I DO know for a fact that meditation can change your mental state, that you CAN move the needle into a sort of Nirvana. I've seen it done with brainwave machines in psychology labs with kids who've had no prior training. They could change the temperature in their bodies just by concentrating on moving a needle. Some were better at it right out of the gate than others, but they could all do it, each and everyone of them.
I should be able to do it, too.
And so, for a little mood music, something to help me move the needle. Maybe it can move your needle, too.
It is raining. I can't eat. I can't drink. And wouldn't you know it, there is a full moon. At least it is the Flower Moon and not something really ominous. Still--surgery on a full moon. I am numb with anxiety. I'm a big macho baby. Very typical, stereotypical. . . a meme. Now there is just the waiting. Six hours until surgery. Just sitting, thinking. It is a day to be gotten over.
I am in the hands of a doctor now, someone I've spoken to for maybe four minutes. I have no idea what I will be required to do, post-op. I never asked. He never said.
I just wrote a long, revelatory post. Too much so. It is gone now. I'll put up the front. It is a busy week for me who generally does little. My days and weeks have become a jumbled mess. I checked the schedule, though, and the maids are coming Tuesday. Since I have surgery tomorrow, I need to prepare the house today. I have an appointment with my primary care doctor on Tuesday morning that I am hoping I will be able to drive to. I guess it is best that I stay at my mother's house, then, on Monday night. That means packing up some overnight things. Monday's weather is foreboding, of course. Severe weather with high winds, possible flooding and tornadoes. As my father used to say, "I shit you not." It plays with my head, of course. Ominous. Should I check my horoscope? On Thursday, I have an appointment with the infectious disease doc.
WTF? I used to be so young and spry.
I managed to drive out to see my beautician yesterday, but I had been a mess of nervous dread all day. I did not manage to get over to see my mother. My body was leaden. I got to my beautician's house at 5:30. By 8:30, I was a platinum blonde. She really did it this time. I'm feeling a bit like Jean Harlow.
Home, I put some frozen enchiladas in the microwave just before nine and called my mother. Eating that late is not good, and I had to stay up later than I wanted. I need to get my mother some flowers and figure out what we will do today. But I am not up for it.
Have I told you I am an anxious person? I get paralyzed by it now quite often.
I don't know if I will be able to write for the next few days, but I probably will. I just can't seem to stop.
I woke up at six in the still-dark. As I walked to the kitchen to start the coffee, I saw that there was a car parked on the curb outside my house. Weird. I stared for awhile, but I could see nothing. I made coffee and read the papers. Quarter to seven, I got up to go to the computer in the study. It was light now, and I could see that the car was empty. The passenger's side window was down. It rained in the night. WTF? It seemed even weirder. Maybe the car broke down in the night? I don't know. To be continued.
I've gone nowhere, talked to no one. I have been staying away from people. I thought about going to the cafe to get a tea, but I decided against it. I don't want to catch anything before my surgery on Monday, nothing that would make them want to not put me under. I think I've become people-phobic anyway. It's not them. It's me. I don't want to be around them. The quiet solitude is my comfort. I have a routine now that works. I read, I write, I take long walks, and then Epsom Salt soaks. I shower. I eat lunch and then I cull my photo files. That feels productive. I may nap. I may not. In the late afternoon, I go to visit my mother. Back home, I make dinner and eat while I catch up on the daily news. Then I read. If I get antsy, I'll cull more photos. Then, around nine, I will watch something on t.v. Before bed, I have begun to do some breathing/meditation exercises. There is a pattern, but there is variety, too.
My young friend who moved to Miami keeps in touch. She is an odd bird in some ways. Loves old things. Has started a vintage apparel business with her sister. Likes old jazz music, so I send her some classics. I sent her something more contemporary stuff the other day and she sent some music back. "Blue Angel," by Hermine. O.K. I give her a history lesson, send her a link (link). I don't know if it will be used. Maybe. I send another link to "Babylon Berlin" in the original German with English subtitles. The dubbed version is awful. I've sent the link to many, but you have to buy each of the four seasons. I don't know anyone who has done that yet. But it is worthwhile. It is the weirdest series I've ever seen. Leave it to the Germans. I have a lot of German ancestry. It may explain a lot.
I believe in genetics.
The hallucinations have stopped and my vision is finally beginning to clear. My appetite is back, too. Maybe some other desires as well. It has been a rough--how long has it been? It is all a haze. Has it been a month? No, certainly not. But when was I in the hospital? Last week? I don't know. I can't remember anything clearly. I think it is this and the state of my battered body that fuels my desire for isolation. The world is a scary place.
I get my hair done today at 5:30. It is a terrible inconvenience. I don't want to go, but my gal is going in for a hip replacement and is sneaking me in before she does. It may be awhile before she can do me again, so I must go. I don't think, though, that I am capable of carrying on a conversation.
Sunday is Mother's Day. I can't muster the energy for that. I'll need to get my mother flowers, but I'm not sure what else I can manage. My concerns are all about Monday. Mom's across the street neighbors want us to come to dinner, but I can't. I'll be a complete lunatic by then.
Oh so many moms. Isn't that something?
I look forward to being somewhat normal again. Cyst free. I am hoping to travel. The concern is my mother, of course. People tell me that I need to take care of myself, too. They are swell to say so, but it is not so simple. Maybe, though, I can get away for a few days at a time. Miami. The Keys. I want to go see my friends in Yosemite. Maybe a quick trip to my friend in the Midwest. I really want a museum trip to NYC. I long to go to Mexico City once again. I'd love to do the Google Flights thing, just pick the cheapest flights on any day and go someplace I have never been. There are plenty. St. Louis. Kansas City. Omaha. Anywhere for a few days just to see. It would be like living again.
There are two kinds of places I have always liked--locals only dive bars and small, beautiful, intimate places devoid of the masses. People will rush out tomorrow to stand in lines to get into crowded, shitty restaurants to be part of the mass madness. By and large, it is a lack of imagination, lives that have been routinized. There is a sense of belonging, I guess, that is comforting. It is a distraction from the void.
Why do babies cry? That was a question posed in "The Passenger." It isn't because they are happy. They cry when they are born. Then they cry a lot. Parents, in an effort to succor them, attempt to distract them. They jingle things before their eyes. They coo and whisper. They pick them up and rock them. Maybe we are conditioned to seek distraction, to avoid thinking about what is to come.
Yea, maybe I need to get out and see some things, join the herd, dance with the masses.
But hey--we have the music. There is nothing like music. All the arts envy its ability to make you feel. Just a series of notes, major, minor, augmented, 9th. . . . Artists try to do it with colors, authors with sequences of words, but nothing sets the soul afire like a rhythm, a melody, some harmonies. . . a simple tune.
I have never been a Joh Prine fan. I find much of his stuff silly. But yesterday I heard this. The lyrics are dumb enough, especially the "Constantinople" part, but the sound is pretty evocative. There is that loose snare, that pedal steel, the Hammond B3 organ, and what I think is probably a National guitar. Slow three chord blues. Thuwump.
Oh. . . and adult coloring books. Can you imagine?
I finished culling my many years of S.F. photographs yesterday. "Culling" may be hyperbolic, though. I whittled them down to about 180. Now I need to choose, what?--ten or so? I don't know shit about building a website, so this is all a wild shot in the dark. Really. . . I can't see the target.
In a folder from my visit in 2012, I found this photo. I'd never processed it, so I took it into post-production and sent it to Q. This was our afternoon visit to a bar downtown he said was owned by a friend. The friend was not there, so Q gave him (or her) a call. As I remember, we drank for free. It was early, though, and the place was empty.
"It gets going around midnight," Q said. I think that is what he said. Probably. It was three in the afternoon as I remember it.
Now I will begin culling my NYC photos. Many, many more there. It will be a giant task. After that, Mexico, South America, China, Europe. . . . I should be finished with this part of the website by. . . I'll never finish, I'm afraid. But it is fun going through them all.
The weather here is supposed to be extreme on Monday--storms, flooding, tornadoes. That is the day of my surgery. I was already feeling a foreboding. Now. . . I'm spooked out of my head. A dark cloud looms on my horizon.
I am an anxious person, I think. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I am. I bottle it up, of course, but it makes me ill. I saw this the other day, though, and thought, "Maybe I'm not alone."
I've always believed that worrying was the only way to hold the universe together. If I don't worry, things fall apart.
You're welcome.
I read that younger people, tired of the nihilism of the contemporary world, are turning to religion. Life in the void is hard. I understand. But I read long ago that there is a "faith gene."
The God gene hypothesis proposes that human spirituality is influenced by heredity and that a specific gene, called vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2), predisposes humans towards spiritual or mystic experiences.
You can Google it for yourself. Maybe we can't help how we feel about such things anymore than we can determine our hair color.
Well. . . I've changed mine. Perhaps that is a bad example. But you get my drift.
I have a minority reaction to many things. Drugs, for instance. I don't have the right brain chemistry for coke. Some muscle relaxers jack me up. Valium is like speed for me. Smoking pot and eating mushrooms do not put me in a happy place. Opioids and alcohol, on the other hand, seem to work quite fine.
I'm probably a genetic romantic, too. I am sure, as the old song goes, I'm "addicted to love." Only recently have I begun to think badly of the women who have left me over the years. They have always remained "Golden Girls" in my thoughts, and I missed their warm and gentle touch. But lately, I've begun to remember the shitty things they did, the horrible, mean, selfish things, and their brilliant lights have dimmed. Is it a shame? Maybe. I've perpetually taken responsibility for the things that went wrong, but now I am remembering what I did right. I was true and never took another lover. I'm pretty certain the same cannot be said for them. Maybe not a physical lover, but their hearts and minds drifted. I listen to the old song.
I'll bet she's not like me She's out and fancy free Flirting with the boys with all her charms But I still love her so And brother don't you know I'd welcome her right back here in my arms
As my friend once said about me, "If she came back, the door is always open."
Don't know if that is true anymore. I've been ghosted, and I don't think it was anything I had done.
But these have been dark days, and my mind has not been right. I read some more yesterday about the drugs I have been taking. I had to as I filled out the surgical form required of me. I should have read more carefully before. Hallucinations was a side effect of all the antibiotics I took. I'm already susceptible to paranoia, sure. And I have that "martyred" feeling sometimes, something my friends berate me for. Maybe that is genetic, too. But in my madness these past many days, when I would close my eyes, old lovers faces would appear just above me, and not in a loving way. I would open my eyes to see them. Then I would close them again and they would reappear.
Yes. . . my mind has not been right. My mind has taken a darker turn. Things look bleak.
Look at Q's face in that photograph. That is like the faces leering down at me when I close my eyes. Enigmatic. Maybe menacing.
Jesus, I need to get a grip. I am nothing but paranoid about the surgery. Something is sure to go wrong, something the surgeon didn't count on. I'll wake to bad news.
"I'm afraid we are going to need to take the leg below the knee."
Or maybe I'l get a terrible, life-threatening infection. No. . . I need to keep worrying. Otherwise, disaster is a certainty.
It is tough tackling the void alone. I don't hold it against Generation Next or whatever they are called for turning to their chosen gods. Society has failed them. Church will make them feel better and more secure. They have learned the old Hemingway lesson, "A man alone ain't got no bloody fucking chance."
But, I think, they are going to miss the Great Adventure.
Well, there must be some way I can lose these lonesome blues Forget about the past and find somebody new I've thought of everything from A to Z Oh, lonesome me
This is not my photo. Duh. But I like the set. Were I to have another studio. . . .
But where was I? Oh. . . I feel much better now. I'm not all the way "there" yet, but my mind is clearing. My body seems to be warming up. I've turned my a.c. down a degree back to where it is normally. My vision is still blurry, but I think/hope it is getting better. The shakes seem to be gone.
And last night, I cooked a big meal. Maybe not "big," but normal.
I'd never made salmon patties before. My mother makes them, and I love them, but I have never tried. Last night, I tried. I looked up recipes online. Too many variations, too many ingredients. I went with the simplest one and maybe made it even simpler. Chopped onion, canned salmon, two eggs, Panko breadcrumbs, and olive oil. Shall I reveal that I have never used Panko before? No, I shouldn't.
I smashed it all together in a big steel bowl, then made patties. I read that you should put the patties in the 'fridge for anywhere from thirty minutes to all day, but I didn't have time for that. My patties fell apart a little bit. I put olive oil in the cast iron pan and cooked the patties for four minutes per side over medium/high heat. Rice and asparagus.
Damn. I forgot to add the spices to the patties. There were bland. Next time. But they were o.k. Not as good as mom's, but o.k. I ate two big patties, all the asparagus, and a big portion of rice. Coconut water was the drink of choice. I haven't eaten a full meal in a week and a half.
I felt I'd put on all the weight I lost. But I felt good.
Look, bitches, that's all I got. I haven't been anywhere, haven't seen anyone. I walk, read books, watch t.v. I've had a retarded brain. I guess I can report that the mild hallucinations are gone. There is that.
Oh. . . I DO have a tale to tell. It comes from the weekend I was so terribly sick from the antibiotics. I was weak, shaky, puking and out of my mind. I was lying on the couch toward dusk on Saturday napping. I woke when I thought I heard someone in the house. I thought it might be my tenant, and I called out her name in query. There was some disturbance, then I saw something fly through the living room. WTF? I was already paralyzed by illness. Now?
I lay on the couch listening. I heard nothing. I forced myself up onto shaky legs and peered around the corner. On the window shutter in the dining room was a big, black, cowled thing. It was HUGE and looked like the Caped Crusader or a sleeping Dracula. Fuck me, I thought. What was I going to do?
I have a big net in the garage that I have used over the years to catch armadillos, but the netting was too wide for this. I didn't want to fuck with a bat. My reflexes were non-existent at this point. My tenant had been clipped by a flying bat a year or so ago and had to go through the rabies shots. She said it cost ten thousand dollars. I don't know. I consider her an unreliable source. But I didn't want to go through the rabies thing, so. . . I called her.
"I don't know what to do. There is a bat in my house. I'm sick. I can't try to catch the thing."
"O.K. I'll call the police."
Call the police? My mind was flip-flopping. Nothing made sense. O.K. I thought. I'm going to let her take care of it.
She came down, but wouldn't come into the house. I sat in a chair on the deck barely able to move. This was the day before I went to the hospital, and I mean, I was sick in my bones.
The cops showed up, a young Black man and a White cop with tats all over his arms. He was the same cop who came out to take my report when my cameras were stolen.
"It's hanging on the shutter in the dining room," I said as I led them into the house. They peered into the dining room from the kitchen.
"How are you going to get it?" I asked.
They looked at one another then at me.
"I'm not going near that thing," said the Black guy. "I'm not messing with a bat."
The White guy called animal control. It was Saturday night.
"They didn't answer," he said, "I left a message. We'll see if they call me back."
We all hung out on the deck for a bit. No call back. The White cop started searching the internet on his phone and came up with three numbers of private critter control companies. He gave them to my tenant.
"I doubt that animal control will respond. You might want to call one of these companies," he said. And with that, the police were gone. The tenant called two of the numbers. One was in a different part of the state. One was an answering service. The last one, however, said he'd be out in half an hour.
He showed up in shorts and a t-shirt and a pair of surgical gloves. I took him into the house and showed him the bat. He walked back to his truck and got a small net, maybe eighteen inches in diameter.
"He's got it!" said the tenant who was watching him through the window. It had taken about ten seconds. When he came out, he was grinning.
"How many people looked at this thing and thought it was a bat?"
"Four."
He laughed. "It's a bird."
WTF? He looked it up. It was a chimney swift. Of course. It had come into the house through the chimney. That is what woke me up. That is what made all the clatter.
"I'll take it with me and let it go at my house. If I let it go here, it will just go back to your chimney."
He was a swell guy. I hadn't talked to him on the phone, didn't know anything but that he was coming.
"How much do I owe you?" I asked.
"Two hundred."
Holy shit! What could I do? I was sick and wanted to get back on my couch. When he was gone, I said to the tenant, "Two hundred bucks!"
"He was going to charge five hundred, but since it was so easy. . . ."
"What? Five hundred dollars? You're shitting me!"
"No. That's what he said on the phone."
I was too weak and sick to complain. I was just glad the thing was gone.
I called the tenant the next day to take me to the hospital. You know the rest.
I'm lucky. I've had multiple people offer to take me to surgery on Monday. I've not asked anyone, of course. These were all acts of kindness. But I don't want to bother anyone. The day will be a drag. The surgical center called to tell me that I needed a driver and someone to stay with me for 24 hours after the surgery. That pissed me off. They make too many assumptions. They should have just done this in the hospital and kept me overnight, I think.
Whatever. That is where I am. Now it's on to yogurt and oatmeal. Not combined, of course. Gut bacteria and fiber. I need to get healthy.
It is raining and will be, reportedly, for days. The rainy season has come early this year. Temperatures are above the norm. The college kids have moved out. The town is quiet but for weekends when the hoi-polloi come to town, but they are an ugly lot. I will walk in the drizzle and the rain. That's all I have.
I'm off the poison, off the antibiotics. Now I'll see if I return to "reality" as I know it. Your "reality" may be different, of course. Everybody now is on the pipe or vape pen or mushroom gummy. Everyone is in therapy, AI or other. India attacked Pakistan and Xi is going to party with Putin. The U.S. Navy just lost another $67 million dollar jet off the deck of a ship, and all I can think of is "McHale's Navy."
You may need to Google that, depending.
As the world falls apart, however, two things dominate the news outside Earth Two Trump World: The Met Gala and the Choosing of the Pope.
I finished watching "Sugar" last night. Bullshit. He's an alien who decides to stay on planet earth rather than be loaded back on the Mother Ship. It didn't need that. It became a cheap version of Win Wenders' "Wings of Desire" where an angel decides to give up his wings. At least in "Wings" the angel stayed on earth with no superpowers. The masses, though, it seems craves super powers, magic crystals, elixirs, potions. . . anything unreal. But, and here's the kicker to me; they know little to nothing about the natural world, don't know minerals and how they are formed, don't understand chemical compounds and their structures, know little if any math beyond the basics, and have scant knowledge of physics beyond gravity. It is easier to hope for aliens and super heroes and magic rocks.
If there are miracles, though. . . count me in. I could use a few.
I'm terrified to post this next thing. It might get me in trouble with the. . . you know.
This is Emily Ratajkowski at the 2024 Met Gala. She skipped the Gala this year, but "The Naked Dress" was everywhere. Rat is tired of all the politics of the male gaze, the female gaze, etc. She thinks the Taylor Swiftian ethics of "dressing for the girls" and "dressing for revenge" is bullshit. She's been liberated from all that, she posted on social media. She just doesn't care anymore.
I'm guessing that is why she had to post that on social media.
I don't know. I missed the whole thing once again this year. Drats!
But the real shit is the conclave to choose the new Pope. I'm not sure how much God has to do with the power politics of this stuff, whether he speaks to them the way he speaks to the head of the Mormon Church--reportedly. But it seems certain that the contest will be between Church liberals and Church conservatives. Since Vance killed the last Pope, this will be a most interesting vote. I hope someone comes out shouting that the election was rigged. Maybe loyalist will be inspired by the January 6th patriots.
All I'm saying is things are getting weirder. This Christmas, some children will get two instead of thirty dolls while billionaires have twenty cars, five yachts, six mansions, two private jets, etc.
There's trouble right here in River City. This I know, and I don't even have cable.
Oh--I almost forgot! I went to see the surgeon yesterday. I got weighed first. I've lost eleven pounds in ten days. I just haven't been eating. I don't recommend this diet, though. It is pretty scary. I don't feel so well. The doc saw me for about two minutes. He scheduled me for surgery on Monday at a surgical center, not a hospital, so I will be in and out the same day. They will put me under, he said. I won't remember anything. I hope he's speaking only about the surgery. I don't want total amnesia. There are so many things I wish to remember.
But I'm anxious. How's that? A better way of saying I'm scared. Anxious is allowable, but scared, that's another thing. I'm trying to keep my emotions in check.
I'm puny now, decimated, but my mother tells me, "You look good." Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in the open garage at my mother's house with her and several of her neighbors. When the sexy dog-walking lady came by with her two big dogs, my mother's 91 year old neighbor's tiny dog ran out in a rage. I hobbled out as quickly as I could to get it. Then I talked to the sexy lady. My mother had already told her about my hospital stay, and she inquired how I was doing. I told her I felt like crap, that the antibiotics had kicked my ass, and that I was a little light in the head.
"Well you look good," she said, echoing my mother.
Starvation is a good look on me, apparently. I hardly ate yesterday, either, and I am sure that by this afternoon, I will have dipped below the weight I had hoped to achieve at the beginning of the year, under 200 pounds. I'm afraid, however, that I have become "skinny fat." You know what I mean. Not the rugged boy I've always wanted to be.
Prebiotics, probiotics, fermented foods, and fiber. That is on my agenda for the next few days. Get some gut health back. Clear my mind. Bring some life back into this old body.
Oh, yea. One more thing. When I was scheduled for the surgery, I was told I needed to have a driver who I know. Can't be Uber. O.K. I said, but that is problematic. I don't really have anyone to drive me. I hate asking favors of people, especially for something like this. Someone will have to sit in a waiting room for four hours or so. No wife, no girlfriend. . . I'm in a pickle. That has been my takeaway from this whole thing. I have no "support group." Oh, one of the BBC gymroids would take me, but I'm not down for that. My old work group has kind of dispersed and dissolved. No, I don't want to ask any of them. So right now, I'm faced with a quandary. I'm a man on a wire, alone, an enigma, a mystery.
Or I'm just a pathetic guy without any close friends. Multiple choice? You know which one I'll choose.
I've read too many books, watched too many movies. Tell your children that's not the way to go. Major in computers or business and join a fraternity or sorority. Fit in. Work your way up the corporate ladder. Get married, join the country club, have children and vacation at nice resorts. And always remember Homer Simpson's great advice to his son, Bart--the Rule of the American Playground.
"Don't say anything unless you are certain everyone is going to agree."
The Google Cops are after me again. They put a warning on yesterday's post on one blog but not the other. Titties, I guess. "Community Standards." My "community" doesn't mind titties. Or dicks or anything else. Their's is an authoritarian community, I guess. There is no freedom throughout the land. You are allowed to lie and promote conspiracy theories, but no titties .
Whatever. It scares me. Most days, now, I have to try two or three times to upload a photo. I don't know what is up with that. I have a whole lotta writing on the blog that I don't wish to see disappear. One day it might. I guess I should know better than to count on authoritarians to protect you.
The crazy thing is that I've been a fan and supporter of The Google. By and large, anyway. But as we are learning, you can't count on anything anymore. Nothing. Not even that rock of ages, nature. The seasons shift. Precipitation patterns get disrupted. Distant stars explode and meteors strike the land.
I go to see the surgeon in a little bit. It is my last day on the poison, on the antibiotics. I've felt like Fido's ass for over a week. I'm hoping that my mind and vision clear and that I regain some vitality. I am not like myself now. It is frightening. I barely move. I have no "gumption." Nothing interests me but sleeping. If it is not the drugs, then I am in big trouble.
I'll know more this afternoon. Fingers crossed. I hope he is a good surgeon. How do you know? In every profession, some are better than others. There are Top Dogs and there are just Plain Dogs. Trying to ferret the good ones out is a daunting task. There is no scale to look at. And so. . . wishing and hoping are my only tools.
I've set a goal to work toward--the website. I dedicated two hours to culling old work yesterday. I didn't even make it through the San Fran pictures, but it felt good to be working at something. I need some purpose in life other than going to the gym, bathing, eating and sleeping.
I hadn't seen anyone in two days, and when I went to my mother's in the afternoon, my voice wouldn't work. I haven't spoken much for days. My voice was just a raspy wheezing. It took half an hour before it cleared.
Terrifying.
I've not been eating much. Bad belly, nausea. So last night, I decided I'd try making up a dish. I chopped extra-firm tofu into blocks and powdered them with corn starch and flour. I heated olive oil in a cast iron pan on medium high heat and let the tofu cook for 3-4 minutes per side. Then I plated them and put more olive oil in the pot and added chopped garlic and fresh spinach leaves. As they began to wilt, I added garbanzo beans. Salt and cayenne pepper. In a minute, I added the tofu back to the pot, turned off the flame, and let it sit for another minute. Plated, I added toasted sesame seeds and teriyaki sauce.
That was an easy meal to get down and darn good, too.
Remember I told you that "Sugar" was sort of made for adults? Last night, it got weird in a sci-fi way. Really disappointing. I'm six or seven episodes in and can say that it didn't need that. Now what? I'll try another episode tonight, I guess, but I don't have a good feeling. Why do people need the ridiculous and impossible to pique their interest? Why do they need fantasy and horror? There is enough horror in things that are not fantasy or supernatural.
I don't get it, at lest beyond adolescence.
But don't use me as a measuring stick. I'm way outside the norm.
I won't post any titties today or maybe ever. But I've had posts that were flagged that didn't even have a human form in them, so I don't know wtf Google Corp is looking at. I DO know that I can't post pictures of children with guns. I posted a home movie from the 1950s on YouTube that got flagged because my father and I were pointing toy guns at the camera like real bandits. I can almost understand that one, but the human form? Pretty f'ing weird to me.
I heard a good one yesterday. I'd take more music like this. Let me share it with you. It is a pleasant end to a pretty shitty blog post. I'll let you know what the surgeon says. Wish me luck.
It is just past six. The world outside is dark. I was "down" yesterday. I was sure I had some terrible disease and not just a reaction to the antibiotics I have been taking now, in one form or another, for over a week. My digestive system was terrible. I felt nauseous for the entire day and only ate a bowl of oatmeal and a navel orange. Perhaps that is why I was weak and trembling. I don't know. I was certain it was the onset of Parkinson's. I felt terrible when I called my mother in the afternoon to tell her I wouldn't be able to make it over. After dark, I opened a can of soup and had some crusty bread. That seemed to help. And before bed, I made a cup of hot Golden Milk.
While house ridden, I sat at my computer with the idea of selecting some photos for a website. It is an impossible task. I am sure I am enamored by photos that others may not get or like. I imagine that they are probably right.
I opened a file that said "Lonesomeville Pola Selections." Oh my god. I haven't looked at some of these for years. I would not be able to go through all the Lonesomeville portraits in a day, and the "selection" took me over and hour. I was thrilled, by and large, by the images I have not seen in a good long while. Made almost 20 years ago, they have weathered well, I think. And I have ten thousand of the old Polaroids that I have never worked on. The weight of that overwhelms me. The terrible thing, though, is that I can never show many of them. A whole lot of them. They are verboten. They are honest and true and collaborative, and they are beautiful, terribly, terribly so, but no one, I think, would show them. It made me weep. Almost. As I scrolled through them, though, I imagined a room full of large prints, 24"x36", hanging on the walls of multiple rooms in a gallery. But who would buy them? If seen altogether, say one hundred of them or so, I think there might be private collectors who'd pay the desired price. A one day showing, perhaps, of invited guests. Yes. . . that is what I would do.
Sure.
My hands trembled. Was it emotion or was it a disease. I was definitely overwrought.
I decided to switch to travel photos. I had a folder on a hard drive labelled just so. I began at the bottom of the alphabetic stack. "Yosemite." As I scrolled, I recalled the moments. There were Yosemite photos spanning many years. Most of them, however, were merely personal. There were friends and girlfriends I knew at the time, wonderful memories but nothing for a website. San Diego. I was there for three days at a conference staying at the Coronado. I hadn't much time to photograph. One, maybe two, photos I might use.
San Francisco. Years and years of San Fran. I hadn't looked at them for a decade or more. Holy Fuck! Street photography. I don't remember taking so many photographs. But I remembered each picture as it came up, the where and when. Early century, film and nascent digital. I was alone. Mostly. There was one trip with a girlfriend, but the rest were just me revisiting a city I loved, walking the streets, shooting from the hip, making memorable images of a time and place. Early cell phones. Different clothing styles. They seemed to make a time capsule. The hours passed, and I knew I was too attached to make the right choices to show an anonymous public.
"Don't overthink it," was my forgotten mantra.
"These are better than anything you see being published on IG or YouTube today," I told myself.
But I couldn't be sure. I am too fond of my own lazy talent. I cannot be objective. Moreover, I can't take rejection. What, I wondered, if I were the only one who liked them?
It was the ending of the day, and I had made no choices. I had only looked on with curious awe and wonder. I have a powerful imagination, and in the end, I had emerged the victor, my genius finally regarded.
I still had many, many folders to get through. My imagined website was already grossly overpopulated.
My nerves needed calming. I poured some coconut water and lay down in an Epsom Salt soak. I have become like a Victorian woman who needed baths to calm her nerves. As I neared hysteria, I remembered hysterectomies. That wouldn't solve my problems.
Maybe.
Dark. I was more relaxed after my bath, but weak and limp, too. No calls. No texts. The sick and diseased, I thought, were to be forgotten. It is too much a reminder of the things we don't want to think about. Sunday families ensconced in their lives, the weekend closing, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and a little family television.
I needed the t.v., too. But it seems there is now a dearth of adult shows. Super heroes, vampires and zombies, terrible and shocking murder t.v., inane comedies. I watch YouTube for a bit, little bits of politics and travel, some art if I am lucky. I make some tea, then turn to the channels I am paying for, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Hulu. . . how did I end up with so many? Apple has a series--"Sugar." Colin Ferrel. I like Colin Ferrel, so I turn it on. Hmm. Not kid stuff, at least. Weird in some ways, though I have problems with some of the post production they have done. It is o.k., though, for a sick, tired, maybe diseased man alone on Sunday night. It is o.k.
I make a big cup of hot Golden Milk at nine. I will go to bed at ten. I am tired. All I want to do is sleep. I clean the kitchen, prep the coffee maker for morning, turn off lights as I go. I brush my teeth. Am I worried? Sure I'm worried. There are two kinds of people, and I am the wrong kind right now.
"If there is anything you need. . . ."
O.K. What the fuck. They gave them to me in the hospital. I take a Xanax. I'm tired of the anxiety. I turn off the lights and lie down. I try to be grateful. I make my pleas. Then I think about the photos I looked at in the afternoon. If I started from the beginning, back in my college photo days, I could make a series. My voice is no good for narration, though. Could I narrate and then have AI do the voice over? Is that a possible thing? Probably. Surely. I could see it in my imagination's eye. I could hear it. Holy shit, people would go mad for it. Should I stay anonymous? If they didn't like it, if nobody liked it, I'd have my cave in which to hide. But how could they not? It would be brilliant. But then I thought of some of the few interactions I have had when I have shown some of my work in online photo groups. There are haters, many, many stupid haters whose joy in life is other people's misery. No, the whole thing is a bad idea. I don't want to deal with people. I don't do it for the money nor for fame. I just make the pictures. I've made some good pictures over the years. Nothing commercial. Nothing bright and crystal clear. Nothing for the masses. So why do I want to appeal to the masses now?
But my mind is being taken over by fatigue, and soon I sleep.
Will I feel better today? It is beyond sunrise now. I must keep living with intention. I will spend an hour culling photos from San Fran for the website today. Then, depending on how I feel, I will take a walk and think about upcoming projects. I have many ideas, but some of them will only get me into trouble. People, I feel, would not understand my intentions.
I was fifty, fit, and feeling fine. I was living in a most vivid season. Extended adolescence, sure, but what was the point of anything, anyway? Life was a cabaret. I was foreman at the factory by day. I was teaching classes at Country Club College at night. Young women knocked on my door and asked me out. Eyes would sparkle. Hearts would flutter. Oh, my. . . yes. I was a miracle.
Jesus. . . what happened?!?
We all know what happens. I'm still taking the antibiotics, still feeling very puny. I'm no longer foreman nor am I teaching. No women ask me out. Miracles are an illusion. There is no escaping the laws of nature.
Why is the photo so bad? That was my first digital camera. I didn't know how to use it yet and had no skills in Photoshop. That would come, but for the moment, most of my pictures looked much like that .
Selavy.
"But what the fuck is up with the skirt?"
It's not a skirt. It's a pareo. I was an adventurer. I was exotic. I drove an open air Jeep and lived a hero's life in mountains and jungles, on oceans and rivers. . . I was Tarzan, man.
Ho!
Now I limp and carry a dad gut. I've lost interest in most travel. I care for my mother.
I shared my pareo.
Now I have a difficult time securing a bath towel 'round my waist.
I feel puny today, small and weak and listless. It is fairly scary. What happened to the flame? Is the fire going out? I'm not sure throwing more fuel on it will do any good.
My mother is worried about me. Funny turn. So she made dinner for me last night. It was my first real meal in a week. We sat outside in the afternoon air, then went inside to eat. Then we sat out some more. I cleaned the kitchen and did some work on her computers, but around 6:30, I said I had to get home. I wanted to watch the Kentucky Derby.
Maybe I've gone senile, too. I'd forgotten that I have cut the cable. Shit, piss, fuck goddamn. I went online to try to find a workaround. None to be had, so I went to YouTube and searched for the race. I found it. Sort of. The middle of the screen was blocked out. Whoever was streaming it, probably someone in East Europe or Kenya, wanted me to go online and pay money to see the race. Now I'm dumb, but. . . .
So I really missed it. First time in my adult life, I think.
Things fall apart. Entropy is a universal law.
I was very sad. I should have gone to a bar to watch it, but I can't drink right now and I don't have the energy for that.
I have two favorite parts of the day now--morning coffee and nighttime Golden Milk before bed. Isn't that something?
Those years after my divorce were the most vivid time, and somehow, I thought it would last forever. Perhaps it is tragic, really, to live so well so late. Better to gradually descend than to step off the cliff.
I'm bragging. I'm whining. Neither is attractive. But a writer has to tell his truth no matter how ugly. As he knows it.
Whatever. Even the Pope had his detractors. Bill Belichick. Woody Allen. Johnny Depp.
It is inevitable. Somewhere, someone is criticizing you, too. Glass house. Stones.
Outside the weather is gloomy. Inside, too. I don't feel like doing anything. I'll make some oatmeal, I think. Milk, peanut butter, and honey to make it lively. It is nothing like gruel. It is hearty.
I should spend the day making selections for a website. I don't know if I will ever take photos again, but if I do, a website would be helpful. Surely I can pull out forty or so good pictures illustrating my photo diversity. I should quit trying to overthink it.
The day is dark. The house is quiet. Only you and my mother know my current plight. I hide my bones from the rest.
"Oh, boo-hoo. You're so pathetic. Nothing is wrong with you. Shut the fuck up."
I would if I could. I just don't think I can. Maybe I've picked up the Trump syndrome.
But you know, during it all, I was taking photos for a woman I couldn't have. There is always something motivating action. Here's a song from 1999. It was the end of one thing and the beginning of another. We live in eras, I guess. It was to be quite an era.
I'm not being dramatic. Well. . . if you are asking. But these antibiotics have done something to my brain. I keep having slight hallucinations. I have a difficult time concentrating. There are other, less questionable reactions, too. I'm tired. I don't want to eat. But the brain thing. . . I looked it up. It is one of the possible side effects of the drug, a contraindication. The drug insert doesn't say whether your brain goes back to normal after taking the drug. But man. . . I'm out of it, so if the past two entrees don't make sense or seem to have a randomness to them, you can expect much the same today.
"The mind is a terrible thing to waste."
"The mind is a terrible thing."
But even in my retarded mental state, one thing is very clear to me. Trump MUST be tested for tertiary syphilis, and the results of that test must be made public. The disease has clearly entered his brain as it did King Henry III or King Charles V. We are living with the remnants of barely coherent Lunatic in Chief.
I hope that goes viral and becomes a public outcry.
"Test Trump! Test Trump! Test Trump!"
I don't even like horses. I never wanted one. I've ridden them on occasion, but I always feel guilty sitting on the poor thing's back. And they know it. They don't do what I want them to do. They try to brush me off at every fence post and tree. I can't remember ever wanting to be a cowboy.
But today is the Kentucky Derby, and I never miss it. Weird, right? Well, it is only because my father liked it. I don't know why, but he did. Since his death ever so long ago, I've watched the race raising my glass in a toast to him, and I've learned to appreciate the competitive heart of the beasts.
But you know, they train chickens to play tic-tac-toe and bears to walk on balls and donkeys to jump off diving platforms, so. . . .
Horse racing is cruel, they say. I agree. It is like most professional sports. Athletes train a lifetime through injuries and pain just to kiss the golden bowl. But the American Public, and the Global Public, too, hold them up as heroes and listen to what they have to say about everything from social issues to politics. Hell, they've even elected that Alabama Moron, Tommy Turbeville, to the U.S. Senate, and that guy is one more knock on the noggin away from shitting his pants and drooling in public.
All by way of saying, I'll watch the Derby today. I bet on the Derby once. Just once. When the series "Luck" was showing on HBO, I found out that the female jockey on the show was based on a woman who was riding in that year's Derby, so that is where I put my money. I went big--$10.
She didn't win, place, or show. I was down a drink at the bar.
I've watched the Derby from some pretty spectacular bars, too. But that's a story already told.
Now I'm going to make some of my "friends" happy. If not happy, at least satisfied, justified. . . I don't know. I've eschewed a normal, middle-class lifestyle. Or maybe it eschewed me. I was married, and I have helped raise a child, so maybe what I've said about marriages and parenting is colored by that. For all of you who I have irritated, all of you who have felt angry about my castigations, this will give you a bit of a chubby.
I'm having a hard time being alone right now. I don't mean in a social sense. It is difficult being sick and trying to take care of yourself by yourself alone as you age. One wants a gentle hand on the head and a soft, reassuring voice. Rather, I have the sound of my own whining and the creaking of the old house. When the monsters of thought emerge, there is nobody to distract from them.
"Oh, yea, man. . . you always touted your independence. You were a real Existential Hero. So shut the fuck up. He-he."
That is actually a facsimile of something said to me once by a friend. He has his own problems now, but he has a wife to mitigate the suffering.
I know there will be a vicious delight from some who surround me, but regardless, we all get it in the end.
"If we got what we deserved, we'd all die of starvation."
Probably.
But I once had a marvelous studio in town, an atelier.
"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills."
If you don't know the quote, you probably shouldn't be here. But stay anyway. I don't want to be alone.
Two more days of oral antibiotics, then a visit to the surgeon. It has been just over a week. It seems months. I've missed everything. Before I went into the hospital, the weather was beautiful and Country Club College was thriving. When I got out, school was over for the year and the weather was sultry. The coming and going of the College kids marks the seasons. Now comes the long, brutal summer.
That's all I got. That and some more music. I try to listen to music before bed now so that I might have better dreams, organic stuff, not synth and techno nor heavy electric shit but stuff made of harmonies and wood. And there is sooo much out there. It amazes me how much of it is so good.
Don't skip this. Don't cheat yourself. Look and see what people can do! Why aren't there clubs like this everywhere? Crazy.
Yesterday was surprising. I was still weak, tired, and a bit disoriented. I didn't get a lot done.
That's the update. Nobody really gives a shit about how you feel because they can't do anything about it. If you are sick, it is a drag. But remember, it is important not to bring people down.
And so. . . .
Things were going swell, I thought. I was upbeat. The mirror hadn't been disappointing me as much as usual. In just a couple of weeks, I'd been called "hot teacher," "the awesome C.S.," and had found a text from my old CEO in which she referred to me as "boy toy." Oh, yea. . . a little attention can go a long way.
All forgotten, though, during my misery.
But. . .
I had a coworker with whom I became friends, a "Black Woman." She had African blood, but Native American blood, too. "Blood." How cracker can I get? Sometimes, I swear. . . . If she were from Appalachia, maybe we'd call her a Melungeon. I just had to look up the spelling and Wiki said that the word was a slur. How fucking bad is this going to get? I've only recently learned the term because T told me he is Melungeon. After that, I watched a couple of YouTube history lessons on that. It didn't seem to be a slur.
At some point, I became my coworker's boss, in part due to her support, and later, she became mine, in part due to my support. When she was young, she was the first Black student to be integrated into the county's white school system. She didn't want to be, but her parents, both educators, thought it important. It was a cracker county and the white kids called her names that I only learned about through her telling. She hated them. When she graduated, she chose to go to an HBC. She told me stories of being a kid driving with her parents from Miami to Atlanta. She needed to pee, so her dad pulled into a gas station.
"Fill her up," he said to the attendant. "And my daughter needs to use your restroom."
The attendant looked at him and said, "I can fill up your car, but I can't let your daughter use the restroom." It was the early '60s in the segregated south.
"Thank you," her father replied, "but I won't be needing your gasoline."
She said she was crying, ready to burst, but they were afraid to pull over and let her pee outside for fear of what might happen.
So many things are invisible to the privileged. It was her birthday, so I stopped at a card shop on the Boulevard to get her a card. I couldn't find any birthday cards, though, that had Black faces on them. I'd never tried to buy a b-day card for a Black person before, and what had been nonessential and unseen by me now made me furious.
"My grandmother used to take a brown crayon and color in the faces," she told me.
In college, I was told, "Liberals lie" by my hippie roommate. It took me awhile to get it. They lie to themselves, mostly, I found, patting themselves on the back for their liberal sensibilities, but their lives remain relatively unchanged. See Tom Wolfe's "Radical Chic and the Mau-Maus," an essay written in the early '60s about rich liberal fundraising for the Black Panther Movement.
I decided not to be a "liberal." Still. . . I thought I knew.
I didn't know so much. Being friends with my coworker and her friends was an awakening. I'd be hanging out with them, just shooting the shit, kibitzing, and then I would say something I thought made sense, something I thought was correct and true, and they would all snap back and look at me and ask me if I was crazy.
"What?"
And they would tell me what.
"Oh. Oops."
They let me get away with a lot, though, because I was their friend.
I'd walk the halls with my coworker, and whenever we came to the door of a minority, she'd stop, hang on the doorjamb, and say, "Are you O.K.?" It seemed weird to me for a long time. "Just remember, you've got people."
Now I was a White Boy who had always gotten more attention than he needed or deserved. I'd always had a stage, a microphone, so I thought talking to people in the hallways was an annoyance. But my friend talked to everybody. Just briefly, but she did. We had a boss, a VP, who we both disliked venomously. My friend's gripe about her, though, was that she would walk by you in the hallway without acknowledgment. Hmm. I wondered about this for I was sure I did the same.
She taught me that people want to be acknowledged. They want to be seen. They want to matter.
And so, I changed my behavior, and boy did it pay dividends.
When I was waiting to leave the hospital on Wednesday, many of the staff came in to say goodbye. I knew something about all of them. I'd asked. They were more than stick figures, now, slightly, at least, fleshed out. As I was being walked out down the hallway, the woman who cleaned my room saw me. She looked for a moment and I waved.
"Have a good journey," she said. I nodded. "You, too."
I thought about my friend--"Remember. . . you have people."
I decided to take a walk yesterday, but I was having trouble getting started. I was a little worried. I wanted to walk the two mile route, but I wasn't sure I'd make it. I was weak, man, and shaky.
As I slowly slugged my way up the first big hill, far ahead on the cross street a garbage truck was waiting to make a turn. Two hundred yards away, maybe. Maybe a hundred and fifty. I'm not much good at guesstimating. I looked up and saw the figure on the back of the truck waving. It was the old garbagemen from my neighborhood whose route had been changed long ago. The kid on the back is young, a cool fellow, and I raised my hand to return the wave. The drive honked his horn. As the truck turned the corner, the kid yelled out, "It's good to see you, man!"
"Good to see you, too," I shouted back across the distance. That gave me a lift. You see how that works, right? I'd been "seen." Validated. Silly little things, you know, but good things.
I walked on to where the road hugged the lakeshore, big, rich houses on the opposite side of the street. In the road was a big truck. A group of fellows was re-bricking a long, wide driveway. As I approached, I saw a big fellow with long hair and a fly away beard shouting to the workers in Spanish. As I approached, I flipped my usual peace sign, a habit from my youth I've never outgrown. As I came alongside the truck, the big fellow barked, "You're ten minutes late. You need to show up on time."
I laughed. "Just fire me," I said. "It looks like hard work to me."
He chuckled and nodded his head. Being seen.
I need to write a note to my friend, I thought, to tell her what she taught me. We don't see one another anymore. You know how things go. But we text greetings and queries and outrages to one another from time to time. I needed to let her know I was thinking of her.
When I got home, I checked my messages.
When she graduated, she went back to live in Miami. I said, "stay in touch." I didn't think she would. She sent a nice message about how things were going there and this pic. Another little "up." Sometimes, just when you feel like you are hitting bottom, you find something to float on. In a matter of an hour, my spirits had been lifted.
They were at their nadir as I sat alone in the silent hospital room contemplating my life and the future.
I still have not been able to eat. These antibiotics are tearing me up. I was weak and fairly listless last night as I sat on the couch drinking tea and watching social justice videos on YouTube. I knew I was "in a state" as kept feeling the sobs in my chest and the tears on my cheeks.
"What the fuck is wrong with me?"
I put on music instead.
In my hours of quietude, I've come to a decision, the kind you come to in crisis, to live more slowly and deliberately and with more attention and purpose. High-minded shit. I hope I can remember to do these things and to replace irritation with gratitude.
If you are in need, I am available to be your Spirit Guide/Life Coach for a small fee. I'l give you a good deal. You're my friend. I don't want to overpromise, though. Just know. . . I see you!
I think I feel somewhat better this morning. Thank you for asking. Now I must get on with living intentionally.
