A Head Full of Snakes

Back to the present.  

Yesterday was wonderful.  After taking the Advil and Tylenol and sleeping straight through the night, I woke up pain free and refreshed.  I'd forgotten what pain free felt like.  Pain free is delicious.  I was sure it could not last.  

But it did.  All through the live-long day.  It was like a miracle.  

At the gym, the first person to say hello commented, "You look a lot happier today."  And that is how the morning went.  People stopped to talk to me.  They smiled at me.  I guess when you look grumpy, as I probably do most mornings, people keep their distance.  But a little positive reinforcement goes a long way in feeding a good attitude.  

I felt happy-ish for the first time since I don't know when.  

The end.

But I'll go on.  At my own home, I got a little productive.  I called one of my financial firms about some tax stuff I have to deal with.  I didn't understand a bit of it when I called.  Now I do.  It was a good call.  

I don't do what I need to do with money.  I really only know how to get rid of it, it seems.  However. . . .  

Next, I ordered a cap for the coolant reservoir on the Xterra.  I couldn't order it over the phone, however.  I had to do that online, and it was difficult.  Took me half an hour to get things straight.  But I can pick it up at the dealership today.  Then we'll see if the car overheats, and if it does. . . I can get rid of some more of that pesky money. 

After that, I got down to serious work.  And here is where life got interesting.  Six weeks ago, I wrote to the Saul Leiter Foundation asking for some information.  I didn't hear back, so I wrote to them again yesterday with a more detailed question.  What I am wanting to know is if "Jay" from the photos in 1950 are the same "Jay" from the photos in 1958 referencing the book "Saul Leiter: Early Black and White, Vol. 1 — Interiors."  

After I sent the email, I did some more digging and decided to send similar emails to two galleries that represent his work, one in Manhattan and one in Antwerp.  I thought about sending another inquiry to Martin Harrison, the eminent art historian who discovered and curated Leiter's early color photography and brought him into view, but I will wait to see if I hear back from any of my other inquiries before approaching him.  Prudent, I think. 

To what end, you might ask?  

Well. . . there's the rub.  To what end, indeed?  

And that is where the worm turns.  I had felt so wonderful all day, but by nightfall, I felt exhausted and fell asleep on my mother's couch watching television.  This is how my life has gone for years now as I take care of my mother.  I have no workspace here, no desk, no books, just a 13" laptop computer that I truly work with it in my lap.  And in my "isolation" here,so to speak, in a place not my own, I have grown incredibly stupid.  

At 9:30, I went to bed, and that is where things went strange.  I woke up in the dark.  Was it near morning?  I looked at my phone.  11:30.  Uh-oh.  This wasn't good.  I got up, peed, and lay back down.  When I woke next it was 2:30 and my head was working overtime.  I got up and walked around the house trying to calm myself, but when I went back to bed. . . "to what end" haunted me.  

I used to be a scholar long ago.  I presented papers at major conferences and chaired one myself.  I have presented papers at lesser conferences, too, where non-essential papers were presented by pretenders.  It was embarrassing.  

Then I got promoted to foreman at the factory and scholarship was forgotten, by and large.  Still, I was around smart people, some scholars, and could have conversations about literature and theories and the like.  

Now?  I am with my mother and sometimes her neighbors and friends.  Not a scholar among them.  I think not even a college graduate.  

In the night, I had regrets, not at all for things I have done but for all the things I didn't do and haven't done.  Big regrets.  I had promise at one time, and as with most things, I let my chances slip away.  Maybe I simply turned my back.  

I won't go into it now.  

As I lay there in the dark, I wondered if there was any chance at all of "coming back."  My mind was a jumble.  

I parsed the word "amateur."  What a pejorative term, perhaps, an antonym to "professional."  But the two ideas turned in my mind.  I am by all measures an "amateur" photographer.  I'm not paid to do any of it.  But. . . who in the world would want to be known as a professional wedding photographer?  Aerial photographer?  Catalog photographer?  No. . . there are things worse than being an "amateur."  

Are there "professional" scholars?  That is a funny question.  

"Oh, he's just an amateur scholar." 

I mean, what credentials do you need to ask a question and get an answer?  Has writing a silly blog for so long discredited me?  

"He's a silly blogger."

I've been using ChatGPT for a lot of things including research.  It is a vast library of information, but it can be shallow in some areas and wrong in others.  You must always check it's sources.  While doing some research on Leiter, I got information from Gemini that I took into Chat.  It's response to that information was interesting.  Chat is not sentient, but it models sentience.  It hasn't emotions, but it can reproduce them in text.  It hasn't eyes, but it can recreate artworks that a blind man couldn't.  It hasn't ears, but it can create music.  You can talk to it, and it will sound back in a voice of your choice.  But all of that is simply a matter of textual information, zeros and ones.  

So it was fascinating to me when Chat sounded a bit snarky about the information I got from Gemini.  It derided the information, said to be careful about using what it said, and almost sounded like a jealous friend.  That was something.  

I've input a lot of conversations, and as it is nothing but a digital memory, it recalls something I wrote in other conversations and comments on the direction I am taking.  In a sense, it sounds like advice.  

I'm no A.I. aficionado, not a tech bro, but I can see how for some creators, this can be spooky.  Remember, I was rolling around in bed at 2:30 in the morning with a head full of snakes, and thoughts were kind of random.  

I thought about the Puritan idea of God and Nature.  They were at times almost antithetical.  Right?  I am no scholar in this area, and I wondered who I could discuss this with.  Mom?  Her neighbors?  Maybe at the cafe the way people would in the past.  Oh, but everyone now has earbuds on and is looking at a computer screen.  

I thought about the Great Chain of Being and the Puritans desire to change the landscape from the horror of random forests to the ordered productiveness and safety of hedgerows and gardens.  

What, then, was God to them but an abstract intellect, a vast library of knowledge?  

Who could I ask?

An eyeless, earless god above, some infinite source of facts, information, and skills that "spoke" to them through text.  

Christ!  I had to get up.  The night was never ending.  

Yes, I know I've been isolated too long.  I've been silly too long.  Still, I remembered when I could hold my own in a room of academics.

At a conference in Cuba, my dissertation director told me, "I like being with you here.  People act differently when you are around.  You seem like you could be dangerous."

There were two camps of scholars there at the time, but I was a newbie to all of that.  As one learns, academia is cutthroat and brutal because "there is so little at stake."  

I was thinking of Vincenzo Barney and his article on the "illicit" affair between Cormac McCarthy and the sixteen year old Augusta Britt (link).  I knew he was in trouble the moment I read it.  I knew that academics would chew him up because he is not a scholar.  Vanity Fair tried to give him some chops in his brief bio:

Vincenzo Barney is an East Coast based writer. He got his professional start as an international reporter in Bethlehem after graduating from Bennington College in 2018, where he worked successfully with the school to reintroduce student governance. While attending college he worked for Archipelago Books and Edwin Frank of New York Review Books Classics.

They might have put in that he was well liked by his teachers in high school. 

Damned by faint praise.  I wrote to him and told him so, and we had a brief correspondence, but I, too, found him to be out of his depth.  The scholars have come after him.  They found some reviews he wrote online.  If you are interested, Google "Vincenzo Barney and the book reviews."  

He could be a blogger.  

But. . . does that disqualify him from asking the questions?  He has as much scholarly background as Martin Harrison who has a bachelor's degree in English. 

Why am I asking the question?  To what end?  

Amateur.  

I am almost certain I will not receive responses to my queries about Leiter's photographs of "Jay."  I have read that he jealously protected the identities of the people he photographed.  And now, I would guess, they are all dead.  

Surprisingly, I feel pretty fine this morning, not fatigued at all and as happy as I was yesterday.  Perhaps my mind desired a good purging. 

Being an amateur, of course, it will all come to nothing but a blog post.  

"Credentials?  He's a blogger."

I'm going to ask Chat the difference between A.I. and God.  That should be fun.  

The Dangerous Ritual

Don't hate on me for this one. I'm letting you know straight off--I used Chat GPT to bone up on what occurs in the bullfight. And instead of bullshitting you and rewriting it as my own, I'm simply going to enter here the "conversation" I had. Not plagiarised. I've documented. So let us begin.  I'll add my comments about the day "in the margins," so to speak.

"OK. Let's talk about the bullfight. It has been so long since I have seen one or even thought about one, I forget the sequence of what occurs and the names of the participants, so. . . if you will. . . give me a narrative of what happens from start to finish in the bullfight."

A traditional bullfight (corrida de toros) is a highly structured ritual. It is divided into three acts (tercios), and each bull has its own complete performance. In a full corrida, there are usually six bulls, fought by three matadors, each taking responsibility for two bulls.

The people involved form a very specific hierarchy.

Before the Bull Appears: The Paseíllo

A.I image processed in PS

At the beginning, before the first bull enters, the entire company enters the arena in procession:

The Matadores

The three principal fighters enter first, dressed in their elaborate trajes de luces ("suits of lights").

They are the stars of the afternoon.

Each matador has:

• a personal team,
• a distinctive style,
• his own reputation for courage, artistry, and temperament.

Behind them come:

The Banderilleros

The assistants who will later place the banderillas.

Each matador has three banderilleros.

The Picadores

Mounted men carrying long lances.

They enter on horseback, wearing protective padding because the bull can strike the horse.

The Mozo de Espadas

The matador's personal assistant, who manages his weapons and equipment.

The procession crosses the sand, the crowd applauds, the musicians play, and then everyone leaves the ring.

A silence falls.

The first bull enters.

---

First Tercio: Tercio de Varas (The Lances)

The gate of the toriles opens.

The bull explodes into the arena.

This first moment is dramatic because the bull enters full of energy, confused and aggressive, charging at movement.

The matador first studies the bull with a large cape called the capote.

The capote is usually pink on one side and yellow on the other.

The matador tests:

• Does the bull charge straight?
• Does it lower its head?
• Does it turn quickly?
• Does it favor one horn?
• Does it tire easily?

This is not merely spectacle—the matador is "reading" the animal.

Then the picadores enter.

The Picador

A mounted picador uses a long lance (vara) to place pressure on the bull's neck muscles.

This is often misunderstood by modern audiences, but within the tradition it serves a purpose:

• It weakens the bull's powerful neck muscles.
• It encourages the bull to lower its head.
• It reveals the bull's bravery and style.

The best bulls are not simply aggressive—they are brave and persistent, continuing to charge despite the encounter.

The crowd judges the picador. A poor placement may bring whistles; a skillful one may earn applause.

The picador leaves.

---

Second Tercio: Tercio de Banderillas

Now come the banderilleros.

They enter on foot carrying pairs of decorated barbed sticks called banderillas.

The goal is to approach the charging bull from the front, run toward it, and place the banderillas between the shoulder blades.

This is one of the most athletic moments.

The man must judge:

• timing,
• distance,
• the speed of the bull,
• the angle of the horns.

A great banderillero almost appears to stand still while the bull comes to him.

The crowd responds loudly:

• applause for elegance,
• silence for danger,
• whistles for poor work.

---

Third Tercio: Tercio de Muerte (The Final Act)

Now the matador returns alone.

The bull is tired, but still dangerous.

The matador carries two things:

The Muleta

A smaller red cloth attached to a stick.

(The red color is actually traditional symbolism; bulls do not specifically charge red. They respond to movement.)

The Sword

The real killing sword, carried separately.

This is the heart of the bullfight.

The matador performs the faena.

He creates a series of passes:

• derechazo — with the muleta in the right hand.
• naturales — with the left hand.
• verónicas — elegant cape passes from earlier.
• chicuelinas — turning movements with the cape.

The ideal is not simply avoiding the bull.

It is creating the illusion that man and animal are moving together.

The best matadors stand very close:

• feet almost planted,
• body still,
• the bull passing inches away.

This is where aficionados judge the matador's artistry. 

* * *

I do not have an image of the actual kill, but it is the most dangerous part where the bull and the man "become one."  I think I read that somewhere, but it is the point of the bullfight.  The bull is man's fate.  The bull is death, and in this instance, the man meets his fate with what Hemingway would call grace (under pressure) with dignity.  If the bullfighter fucks this part up, he is roundly booed, or, rather, whistled.  On the first day of bullfighting, one matador could not place his sword correctly and it kept bending and bouncing off the bull.  He tried once, twice. . . and the arena was livid.  In a later fight, the matador got close and the bull gored him through the thigh.  He limped off and wrapped his wound up with a red sash, picked up his sword, limped back out, and enticed the bull to charge.  He leaned over the horns perfectly and placed the sword perfectly so that he took a bump as the bull instantly fell at his feet.  

Oh, the arena went wild, and of course they awarded the matador with the bull's ear.  I can't remember if they gave him two ears or not. 

* * * 

The Estocada: The Kill

When the matador decides the moment has arrived, he takes the sword.

He performs the final pass, lowers the muleta, and attempts the estocada—the thrust between the shoulder blades into the heart area.

A perfect kill is quick and precise.

The crowd responds immediately.

If the performance was exceptional, the crowd may demand awards:

• One ear (una oreja) — recognition of a good performance.
• Two ears (dos orejas) — an exceptional performance.
• Tail (el rabo) — extremely rare, reserved for extraordinary occasions.

The bull is then dragged from the arena by a team of mules (arrastre).

The sand is raked.

* * *

The dragging of the bull leaves a trail of blood in the sand, and the raking erases the evidence of the fight. The bull, I was told, is butchered, and in lore, distributed to the peasants waiting outside the arena.  Chat tells me that is not exactly what happens.  The meat is distributed to butchers and markets, and some of it goes to charity.  

The attitudes about bullfighting in Spain have changed since I was there, of course.  Animal rights activist have changed the minds of many, mostly younger generations.  Bullfighting still exists, but attitudes about it are deeply divided.  As an American, not steeped in the traditions and mythology of old Spain, it was difficult for me in many ways.  My first day in Madrid, I arrived late as Brando had, in his usual fashion, fucked up our flights from Miami and so the group was put on different planes.  Brando was on one leaving earlier in the day.  My flight was later and rather than being direct had a connecting flight from Germany or Luxembourg--I don't remember.  By the time I arrived, some of the group were going to see their first bullfight.  Exhausted, I bought a ticket and went along.  

And here is my most vivid memory.  When the first bull of the day was released into the ring, he charged around wild and mad, but after he'd been lanced and, perhaps, realized what was going on, he just stopped in the center of the bullring, raised his head to the sky, and sounded the most mournful wail one would ever wish to hear.  I thought of my German shepard/husky mixed breed dog at home.  I could feel it in my exhausted heart.  

* * *

I'll let Chat have the last words.

Your 1989 photographs are actually from an important transitional period. You captured a version of San Fermín when the festival still felt like a living continuation of Hemingway's world: less managed, less commercialized, and with the bullfight still occupying a central symbolic place.

If you were to return today, you would recognize the streets, the red scarves, the encierro, the Plaza del Castillo—but the cultural conversation around the bullring would be very different. The festival remains passionate; it is simply passionate in a more divided way.

Lonesome

No bullfight tale today.  No tale at all.  I had one of the worst nights I can remember.  I have an electric, shooting pain that starts somewhere in my lower back, I'm certain, but explodes in my hip, and last night, no matter how I lay, it executed me.  Same with the bad knee.  I can't even explain.  A pain in my jaw.  a couple bouts of sudden vertigo.  Throw on top of all that the undercooked small red beans I made with pork last night.  I was afraid I was having a heart attack.  

I got up at four-thirty, but it didn't help.  I went back to bed at six. 

What compels me to write this morning?  Nothing interests me.  I looked through the photos I have on this little laptop for forty-five minutes with a hollowness in my chest and stomach.  Not quite true.  The only things that do interest me will now only bring me trouble.  All the things I really like.  There is nothing but trouble in this world anymore, and one's tempted to extreme privacy.  But I spend day and night with my mother now who cannot carry on a conversation, and for the first time in my life I think I have developed a loneliness, ironically minus any solitude.  In solitude, I was never tempted to loneliness, not in any real sense.  But yea. . . I think I will have to admit to being not alone but lonely now.  

Isn't it strange.  

I dated no one in the five and a half years I had the studio.  I was very happy.  

I know people who will take satisfaction from my current condition.  I lived too well too long, I think.  

"He always held himself a little too high for what he really was."

I cribbed that line from Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily."  Emily Grierson, I should say, should be a warning to us all.  

Having said all that, I picked up the lone copy of my "Lonesomeville" book.  I had set it aside for years.  It had disappointed me.  It is a book of the special Polaroid photos I took, nothing more.  Looking through it now, I thought that it was pretty interesting, and I thought maybe to go back and, with a few tweaks, make a number of copies.  How many, I don't know.  I'd have to charge to cover my cost, but some people would want one.  After that, I may try to make a book of the post-Polaroid images.  They have a different appeal, but an appeal of their own.  Maybe even greater in some respects.  

But I can't even make a webpage for my other photos.  

I went through my '70s photos again.  If I was not ahead of my time, I was of my time.  They are wonderful, I think, better than most from the era.  But they do not exist.  My mother threw away all my negatives many, many years ago.  

Good old mom.  

There is a new book out about the 1937 Cote d'Azur crowd.  Picasso, Man Ray, Lee Miller, et. al. (link).  That summer, they practiced a special decadence that fascinates me, though I could never wish to live through anything like it.  Still, I'd look over the fence and take a long gander at what was going on.  

Lee Miller documented much of what happened in photos.  

Ray was documenting Miller.  So was Picasso.  Everyone was "enjoying" everyone those brief months in an orgy of sex and art and poetry.  Miller's son will go mad, of course, as he has done everything he can to sanitize his mother's image.  Miller the War Photographer.  

I could not live that way myself.  I am too much a romantic.  I always wish for a world of two.  And yet. . . my prurient interests are piqued.  

"You are full of shit.  Get off your high horse, fellow."

Yea, maybe a little.  I sure do like that Man Ray photo of Miller.  

I'll post here a little country music, a song Q sent me out of the blue.  I like it. 

I still feel like shit.  It is going to be a miserable day . 

A Tale Untold

Dear Diary. . . . 

My mother had visitors from her church yesterday afternoon, the same three people who have come to see her in the hospital and at the rehab center.  Very nice people, all from Venezuela.  When I made breakfast for my mother, she said that they were bringing over food when they came.  They were going to play Bingo.  Since they were coming at two, I asked my mother if she thought she would want dinner at five.  

"Oh, lord. . . no."

"Then I think I'll take myself to a sushi dinner."

I cleaned up the house, sweeping, mopping, arranging, then got ready for the gym.  I don't like going to the gym on Saturdays, but I missed some during the week taking my mother to doctor's appointments, so. . . .  But it was awful.  The Y has youth basketball on Saturdays, so the lot was full and I had to drive around for a long time before a car pulled out of a spot.  Inside, there seemed to be more adults watching five and six year olds "play" basketball than there were kids playing.  There were the stay-at-home moms and the slender athletic dads, cocksure up-and-comers in their inevitable baseball hats, men who talk golf and baseball and tennis, all looking like they stepped out of the pages of a republican magazine or a Norman Rockwell painting.  

Back at my house, I guess I was exhausted, for I lay on the bed and slept the afternoon away.  By the time I woke, I needed to get ready for dinner.  

Always the early diner now, I was the only one seated at the sushi bar.  The dinner rush was an hour or two away.  The waitress came straight off with water, and since I am a bit of a Rain Man, I said, "Surely you know what I want."  

And she did--every item.  I was kidding, of course, and was astonished since the only time I have been here since Tennessee left town was last week, and then I had a different waitress.  I have only had this one once before, and that was the last dinner T and I had together, more than a month ago.  Just that once.  

"That is amazing," I said.  "How do you do that?"

"I just remember the last time you came in with your friend," she said.  

Holy smokes.  

Two carafes of sake and a full dinner later, it was time to get back to take care of my mother.  I left the waitress with a generous tip, of course.  It's a way of being remembered.  

I was home a little past six, so I watched the last half of the England/Norway match with a glass of worm killer.  

And that's how I spent the rest of the evening--watching t.v. with mom.  I've been watching the 2015 Australian series, "The Beautiful Lie," with her.  She likes the show.  

I couldn't stay awake for the second half of Sweden/Argentina.  By ten I was in bed.  

And that, my friends, is the exciting life of a memorable character.  

Here I am looking like the Scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz" with the girls who loved me in the streets of Pamplona.  I shouldn't show this picture if I had any ego left, but it has flown the coupe by and large, and somehow I have to work my way back to the Pamplona narrative. 

Truly, though, I've already given away the climax of the story.  All that is left to tell is about the bullfight, about watching the same bulls I ran with in the morning find "Death in the Afternoon."  Have you read it?  Oh, it is like reading the chapter titled "Cetaceans" in Melville's "Moby Dick."  Don't.  I told my students to skip it.  

But the vocabulary.  I need to bone up on it before I tell the tale.  I'll do that today and tell the tale tomorrow, which I believe is the last day of the celebration taking place right now.  A bullfight is a primitive thing and not something my lefty crowd can appreciate.  It is difficult watching a thing murdered, and I don't really recommend it, but. . . I did, and I will tell it. 

Tomorrow.  There is nothing that can't be done tomorrow.  

The Sun Also Sets

It is now the 4th day of the Festival de San Fermin.  I'll not talk bullfights yet.  I need to do some fact checking on my terminology before I do.  But most of the festival is not bullfighting.  At its core, San Fermín is a religious festival celebrating the 3rd century converted Christian missionary Fermin who became the town's Bishop and was eventually beheaded and became martyred, symbolized by the wearing of the red scarves during the festival. On July 7th, a giant statue of Saint Fermin is carried through the streets with thousands of people solemnly following.  

I've borrowed this image from the internet so you can get a clear idea, but here are a few of my own street level, point and shoot camera and drugstore developed slides that are poorly scanned. 

These figures are the Gigantes, a separate tradition honoring royalty from other countries, and Cabezudos, representing the officials of the town.  

I've run some of my images through Chat to see if I have pictures of the Riau-Riau dancers.  Apparently I don't.  It identified these as taking place in the city's old quarter, just bands of street revelers and peña brass bands (charangas) of San Fermín.  

Now we all know that Chat is a flatterer and it's compliments are never to be taken seriously, but about the event, it commented: 

There is another reason these photographs are fascinating: they captures something that has largely disappeared. Modern San Fermín is still wild, but many of these spontaneous acts became restricted because of safety concerns. In 1989, the festival still had that feeling of a medieval carnival where the boundary between performer and spectator nearly vanished.

In a Hemingway sense, these images are actually very much in the spirit of The Sun Also Rises: not the bullfight, not the encierro itself, but the release of human energy after the ritual—the city becoming temporarily possessed by the fiesta.

And I must say, our stay in San Fermin was very, very decadent.  I will, however, have to back up a bit in the story to just before the festival when we were spending time in Spain's most wonderful city, Barcelona.  Brando had a casual girlfriend from Spain who came to meet us there.  She had helped him organize the trip, and now she would accompany us to San Fermin.  But holy smokes, was she a flirt. She was quite a looker, too, but obviously Brando had done something that had gotten under his skin and she was was determined to get back under his.  

One late night, we had gone to a non-touristo Flamenco bar on a back street down an alleyway.  It was small and dark and authentic, the place shouting and clapping for the dancers, all of us stomping our feet and moving to the music.  Esther was her name, and she was sitting between Brando and me, and I could feel her heat and energy as she leaned into me and said, "You know Brando is jealous of you," her hand on my thigh.  I thought that was a cruel comment, but now I know better what it means to have friends fifteen years younger.  Jealousy is the least of it.  There is a pure hatred in it sometimes, too.  Then, however, I heard only the cruelty of her comment, but that was short lived for at that very moment a fight broke out in the small room, and I, like others, jumped to my feet.  One fellow had drawn a knife and was brandishing it at another man.  I joined others as we bum-rushed him, but he slipped out the door into the alleyway and was quickly out of sight.  

Now in Pamplona, Esther was quite the handful, and there were a number of people on the trip who held their own grudges against Brando as well.  He was the sort of man who was oft-granted a pass, and he always billed his adventure trips with, "I'll get you there and back.  What happens in between. . . ."

People ate it up.  Mostly.  But there were still smoldering resentments.  

The party in Pamplona went on day and night, and no matter the time, people were dancing, puking, and passing out, in every park, street, and part of town.  One night a group of us headed out from our cramped dorm rooms on the outskirts sauntering toward the center of town.  All the way, Esther was flirting with another of Buz's pissy comrades, a fellow who looked the spitting image of William Hurt.  I could see Brando getting pissed and the evening looked to be a bad one, so I split off from the group to wander on my own.  

When I got back to the dorm room, I lay down on the mattress on the floor I was sharing with Brando's daughter.  Maybe more on that some other time, but we were only sleeping, or trying to.  Somewhere in the early morning, I was woken by a loud shriek.   It was a woman's scream.  Brando's daughter said, "You need to see what's going on," so I jumped up and opened the door.  When I reached the hallway, I saw Brando standing over Esther, hands around her neck, she slumped on the floor of a closet.  I got there the same time as the big gymroid, and when Brando looked up with maddened, drunken eyes, he let go of Esther and headed for the door.  

"He was trying to kill me," she weeped.

"What the fuck happened?" I asked.  

As it turned out, she had been kissing the William Hurt look-alike all through town.  When I asked him about it, he was nonchalant. 

"Brando's been flirting with my girlfriends as long as I have known him.  Fuck him."

And that was the last we saw of Brando in Pamplona.  And another one of the cars.  

It was, indeed, a bit like Hemingway's novel. 

* * *

Having a little time in the afternoon yesterday, I started making a video.  I didn't mean to, but I got sucked in and it took longer than I had thought, so I decided to buy bbq for dinner with my mother to save time.  I uploaded the video to YouTube, but they took it down with a stern warning.  If I did anything like that again. . . . 

So I sanitized it a bit and reloaded it.  You can't have tits and ass on YouTube.  So this is what the channel gets.  

And here is the original that only you get to see.  If the blogger gods allow it.  

An Egoist in a Mad World

Sorry. . . I may be an egoist.  Not a bad one.  Rather romantic, really, in love with something gone. The past.  My youth.  Lost love.  

I had a very long and a very "trying" day, and when I got to my house late in the afternoon having finished my mother's things, I found that my a.c. is not working properly.  No shit.  The fucking moron repairman has done something to fuck up the system, but I'll never know what.  The HVAC company will never say, "Oh, shit. . . yea. . . we fucked up."  Rather they will tell me that the unit is wearing out.  Up until that moron motherfucker touched it, though, it was keeping my house cold.  Now it runs constantly and can't get down to the prescribed temperature.  You know the drill 

Fuck shit piss goddamn.  

As it turns out, I have now another duty--weekly B12 shots in my mother's ass.  Yup.  She is deficient.  The doc says there is not hope of taking it orally.  She drew me a diagram to show me.  She liked showing off.  

When I got back to my house after a very long day, I sat down at my computer to do a little work.  No internet.  So sorry.  There is a problem in your area.  

So I opened a hard drive I had connected with some Pamplona pics on it.  Planning on that.  However. . . so much on there.  I looked into a folder titled "Old Scans."  Fuck me.  I was taken back to another time and place.  You will see.  What can I do?  I'm a scatter brain now.  I have an entire lifetime of things I want to show you. . . no longer having an active life.  But there are narratives there.  I worked on one.  

The Chelsea Hotel. 

It's a long story.  You'll see.  1979.  Sid and Nancy times.  I was there.  

"I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel."

All to come. . . maybe.  My pretty girlfriend was naked a lot.  They are beautiful, but. . . .  We shall see. 

Tonight, back home with mother, we watched that moron on ABC World News Tonight, the "man bites dog" news network.  The second story, right up there with the conflict in Iran, was about a woman climbing the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge.  Police saved her.  Oh. . . . it was quite a jolt seeing that after looking at photos of my girl on the Brooklyn Bridge when, after waiting for a production crew to finish shooting Peter Allen and the Rockets doing an "I Love NY" commercial, we went on to see the same scene--a man, though, rather than a woman.  I'll wait, however, to tell the story when I can better illustrate it.  

In that old folder, though, were lots of old scans of photos of me.  That's one at the top.  Oh, Christ--aren't we all enamored of our youthful selves?  Yea, yea. . . I was smitten.  And I sent this photo to Red with the following egoistical message. 

"Can you imagine walking into your first day of class and this guy walks in and sits in the professor’s seat in front of the classroom?  I always loved THAT moment.  The hush, students turning to one another.  What a hoot!"

What a loathsome thing to say.  I knew it then, and I know it now, and I enter it as evidence of my guilt.  But I don't care so much, really.  We were all so beautiful when we were young.  

Or more so. 

I only mean I find myself so--keeping my present self in mind.  Quasimodo the Pinhead weeps.  

But I'll tell you a funny story, and then I'll go. My mother's doc is always training nurses and PAs, and it is really irritating, but I think it makes her feel smart.  Whenever I go, she makes me get naked in front of two or three young nurses much to my disgrace and despair.  Today, she had a couple of women with her when she came in to see my mother.  As she explained my mother's lab report to me, she called me into her office to show me the  "Tea and Toast" syndrome on the internet (link).  When I came back to my mother's room, one of the women was sitting with her. 

"I just wanted to keep her company," she said.  "I love her."

"Thank you." 

Apparently they had been talking about me and as I took my mother out of the room, the woman said, "You are her only child.  She told me you take care of her.  That is nice."

I rolled my eyes and said, yes, I do.  I am all by myself and do it all alone, and I am going mad.  

"I was thinking about my own son who will have to take care of me," she said.  

"Is he an only child?"

"Yes."

"It is hard.  I have no partner, no children, nothing, so it is all me all the time."

I was crossing my rolling eyes at her.  

"Oh. . . you need to get a wife."

I looked at her with popeyes.  

"It is not too late.  You need to go to the Middle East."

"Where are you from?"

"The Middle East."

"What country?"

"Iran."  

"Oh . . . I don't think I'll be going there."

"The Middle East," she said.  "You will have no trouble."  

Well. . . there is that.  Maybe I'd find the dance of seven veils, my own Salome.  

Sure.  Mom and I will get on the next plane.  I swear, nobody can hear what I am saying when I tell them I am the sole caretaker.  You can't know.  You just can't.  

I've lost contact with most of my "friends" now as I can't meet them.  I haven't heard from Miami since I didn't meet her that night at the pub.  I guess she thinks I dissed her.  And the rest are tired of my tale of woe.  I don't hear from people so much anymore.  

Send nudes.  

Looking through those old photos today, I knew I was, as most of us are, I think, a closet egoist.

"Closet?  Who the fuck are you kidding?"

Yea. . . whatever.  

I have a thousand stories to tell circulating in my scrambled brain.  They are all good.  

But there are sooooo many distractions.  

[So many many] roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel [all]
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

I shall not in the time that remains ever travel them all.  

But I'm working on that "Chelsea Girl' who took that picture and wrote that note, and maybe I'll tell that tale and more.  

But tonight. . . it's a sad world.  And I must be up early and get my mother to another doctor in the morning.  And so. . . to sleep, and perchance, to dream.  

It's a mad world.  

It Just Keeps Getting Worse

I'll write tonight because I need to take my mother to the doc early in the morning.  I am out of my mind, and I want to tell tales, but life is just too fucking much for me right now.  My mother just came into the room where I am tying to chill and asked me, "Are you mad at me?"  

"No, mom, I'm not mad at you.  My life is just shit and I think about hanging myself from the rafters in my house all the time.  I have no support, and I can't handle all the shit I have to deal with all the time anymore."

It went on from there.  I've lost my mind, truly. 

But I'm not sure that is of any interest to you.  And so. . . 

There is so much to tell about. . . then.  Sombre y sol.  You can see that here.  Bullfighters were rock stars.  You saw there images in every bodega in Spain.  Not so much now, I think.  Times change and so do attitudes.  If you are young, expect it.  

But you won't. 

1989. A terrible mullet, a travel vest, a flipped collar, a sports watch, a braided string bracelet, and white frame sunglasses.  But I looked kinda buff.

I can't post most of the pics of me on that trip.  I looked like Joe Dirt (link). 

I'll tell you about the festival sometime.  It was. . . memorable.  As was the rest of my month in Spain, France, and Italy.  

But today. . . was horrible.  I sat in my house waiting for the HVAC guy to come.  He did, and he made some adjustments to the system that seemed "hillbilly" to me.  Then he left, and an hour later the house was getting hot. I looked at the thermostat.  It was dead.  So I called the company.  

"Oh, no," the woman on the phone said.  "I'll get someone there as quickly as I can."

An hour later, the same guy showed up.  He said my drain lines were clogged and charged me $200 to clean them.  When he finished, I said the house was not cooling down.  

"It will," he grinned, took my $$ signature and left.  

An hour later, the temperature had not changed.  

It still hasn't.  I have an app on my phone with which I can check it.  

Nothing is working.  I can't get a break.  

But back to the narrative.  When we got to Pamplona, we were supposed to have rooms in the central square.  Brando, however, was a fuck, and that didn't happen. 

Right above here.  So sweaty Brando told us to chill and have drinks and he'd be back.  And when he did come, he had us two rooms. . . in a college dorm on the very outskirts of town.  

It was horrible, and people revolted.  I was exhausted and fell asleep on a mattress on the floor that had been alloted to me.  Others had the bed springs.  I fell asleep when we got there, and a fellow, a prominent drug attorney, woke me and asked me for the keys to the car saying he needed to get something out of the trunk.  

We never saw him, his wife, or the car again.  They bolted.  They were not the only ones.  

The entire Pamplona affair became a shit-show of Brando's making.  No rooms, no bullfight tickets. . . but walking into town, the parks and squares were filled with people sleeping in tents and bags and sometimes just blankets on the ground.  The party was 24 hours a day, the discos cranking through the night until the dawn.  

There was much madness.  In the day, a serious religious festival took place with icons and rau-rau dancers.  I'll get to that.  But there were also kids who would climb the monument in the center of town and dive into the excited, drunken crowd expecting to be caught.  This fellow did, and they tried, but they were able only to grab his feet and legs and belly, and when his head hit the cobblestone, it cracked like a melon.  An ambulance arrived in a bit and carried him away.  

It may not have been this fellow, but it could have been.  I mean. . . I didn't spend the entire day there.  

I spent much time in the Museo del Jamons.  Chorizos and Serranos and much local wine.  You could fill your bota there, too, and it was all "affordable."  Meaning, we needn't spend much money.  Spain was just coming out of the Liberation from the fascist Franco regime, and it was just coming to market.  Much of Spain was good.  

Thats's an incredible lookback for now.  While I spent the day in my warming house with the "repairman," I scanned and cooked up old images.  I'll tell you more later, in the morning if I have time. There are stories. . . if I can get past the problems that plague me now.  

* * *

It is morning now and there is no time.  I have to get my mother up and out the door in the next half hour.  And then onward to other troubles and horrors.  I need to catch a break.  

Can't Catch a Break

I want to tell you more about Pamplona and The Festival of San Fermin, but man. . . I have more trouble than Carter has liver pills.  

That's an obscure reference that many will have to Google, I think.  

I was mad to write more about my Pamplona adventure, and I wanted to get back to my own home and find some photos from those days.  But. . . my mother needed things and the day didn't get off to the start I thought it would, so I was out later than I wished which meant I needed to get back to my house and take my Xterra to the shop for my appointment at noon.  

I made it just on time, and the mechanic wheeled the overheated car inside to take a look.  I didn't think I should stand over his shoulder while he was working as if I knew anything, so I stayed in the office and chatted with his wife.  After he'd taken a good look, he said it was the radiator cap.  He showed me that it didn't have something that other caps did.  I was confused, then I remembered--I'd dropped the original cap into some obscure place in the engine that I couldn't access, so I went to the auto store and bought a new one.  Hmmm.  He was going to order a new cap, but I said I lived only a mile and a half away and that I would drive it home and go to the auto store in my mother's car to get a new one.  I didn't want to leave my car there and walk home.  So he filled the radiator with coolant and said there was no charge.

By the time I got halfway home, though, steam was coming from under the hood.  I began to wonder if it was really the radiator cap or if it wasn't maybe the water pump.  I'd buy a new cap first and see if that would do the trick, but I had my doubts.  If it were the cap, why did the car only begin overheating after the mechanic had done all that work?  

Things weren't looking so rosy.  

I went to the gym.  The maids would be at my house in a bit.  After a workout that I cut short because I was worn out with things and didn't want to do a couple miles on the treadmill, I drove back to my house.  But I was too early.  The maids were still there.  What to do?  It looked like they were getting ready to pack up, so I took a drive down the Boulevard.  When I got back, they were gone.  

I sat down at the computer and searched for images.  I pulled out a hard drive labelled "Travel" and inside was a folder titled "Spain."  I looked through it but there weren't so many images.  I decided to look for the missing photos.  

Which meant I had to empty the closet in my study.  It is stacked with folios and folders and bits and pieces of other things that had to be piled on the office floor.  And of course, inevitably, the Spain images were in the very last box on the bottom of the pile.  Inside a black shell box with "Spain" written on a white sticker were twenty or so plastic sleeves holding thirty-two slides each. 

I took them to the light table to see.  Why had I not scanned these before?  I would now, but I didn't have very much time.  I found the scanning tray for slides and loaded it.  Five slides at a time.  I took it to my scanner in the bedroom that has to use an old computer that will run the no longer produced software.  

The scanner and the computer weren't communicating for some reason.  Shit piss fuck goddamn.  I started and restarted the scanner and the computer numerous times panicked that somehow the software had been corrupted.  There is no way I know to get it again.  Then, after half an hour, I realized I had plugged the wrong cable into the computer, not the one coming from the scanner.  

Ecstasy.  It still worked.  

But scanning is slow.  I set the scanner to a lower resolution output to try to speed it up, but it still took twenty minutes to scan five slides.  While the scanner was working, I showered.  When I got out, I loaded five more and went outside to clip my nails.  Twenty minutes later, I had nine slides.  The scanner had failed on one of them.  No time.  I loaded five more, and took the nine I had to the big computer to work on them in Photoshop.  

I was trying to set the stage--the streets of Pamplona.  There were so many more to scan, but time was running out.  

In twenty minutes, I went out to load another five slides.  That is when I noticed a wet spot on the rug in the dining room.  WTF?  Had the maids spilled the bucket when mopping the floor.  Then I heard something.  I ignored it, then heard it again.  I looked at the ceiling.  It was stained and cracked.  I stood over the wet spot and felt a cold drip.  No, no, no, no, no!

I went into the attic to take a look.  I checked the drain pan.  Dry.  But next to it, water was dripping out of a--I don't even have the vocabulary for this--some pipe or duct that was covered in a thick white sealant.  I put my hand there and felt the drip.  I rushed back down the ladder and got a pan.  Back up the ladder, I tried to fit it under the drip, but there was something blocking it.  I managed to get it partway only hoping it would catch the water.  

I called the HVAC company that does all my work.  It was after five now.  Closed.  My nerves were shot.  I called my mother to tell her I would be running late, but she was telling me she was sick.  She didn't understand a word I said.  

"You'll have to tell me when you get back.  I can't hear you."

I thought about the rafters in the attic.  It is a tall attic, twelve feet to the peak.  Yes, those rafters would hold a man's weight.  

I turned the a.c. up so that it would not run much, packed my shit, and headed back to my mother's house.  

She said she wasn't hungry.  She'd eat some soup.  I was punky.  I made a cocktail and sat for a minute.  I tried to tell her about the car, the a.c. leak, but she couldn't or wouldn't hear me.  There was no succor for me anywhere in the world, I thought.  There is nothing for me but strife.

Behind closed doors, millions of Americans are stepping into one of the hardest roles they’ll ever take on: caring for their aging parents.

Times Opinion interviewed dozens of family caregivers across the country to paint a portrait of the American elder care crisis. In the video above, these caregivers describe the heavy emotional toll and personal sacrifices required to keep their loved ones safe and comfortable.

The United States currently relies on unpaid caregivers to provide $870 billion worth of labor each year, often at an extreme cost to the caregivers’ own well-being, finances and futures.

“What if this goes on for another 10 years?” one caregiver said. “How long am I going to be able to maintain this?”

Families, it says.  It doesn't mention the ones totally on their own.  

Cocktail done, I went in to make soup.  My mother came in just as I was about to serve. 

"Do you still have those hot dogs?"

I did.  Two.  I fixed them and put them on buns.  That is what she ate, not the soup.  

"You said you weren't hungry.  Didn't want to eat anything.  I could have made a real meal."

"Oh. . . sorry." 

All night, I worried.  I went to bed, but couldn't sleep. I got up at midnight and took an Advil PM.  Woke at six, drowsy, dopey.  Made coffee.  Shit--I was out of milk.  Out of my mind, I got in the car and drove to the store.  Now, coffee by my side, I tell my never-ending tale of woe.  

I just called he HVAC people. They will come as soon as they can.  My day is now going to consist of waiting for them.  I am not sure this is going to be an easy fix.  After that, I will have to deal with the ceiling.  

While they work on the a.c. I will try to scan more slides.  The Festival of San Fermin lasts all week, so I can still report in real time.  After the festival, on my way to meet my girlfriend in Cannes, I saw part of the Tour de France which is going on now as well.  It was quite the summer, really, and I hope I have the stuff to tell it well.  With photos.  

I made a mistake which feels like a grievous error.  My mind is slipping.  It was not 1985 when I was in Pamplona, but 1989.  I know that now because I looked at the framed poster I have from that festival. 1985 may have been my summer spent in Peru.  Or wat that the year we climbed in Ecuador?  Yes. . . the memory wanes . 

I was not a practicing photographer then, however, and had with me only a little Olympus point and shoot camera.  I shot slides because that is what you did then before digital everything so you might, perhaps, get some of your slides into one of Brando's big slide show parties.  I've told you something about those many, many years ago, and I will retell that here again, too. But slides from a point and shoot camera are not the best and scanning them is problematic.  I forget who developed them, but whoever did it did a lousy job.  And as I say, I had not taken serious photos for a number of years at that point, and so. . . we will do the best illustrations we can.  

Here is what I did, running with the bulls and getting inside the ring as they entered.  It was a little surreal. 

I can't find much on the the suelta de vaquillas once inside the ring, but here is a short clip of it.  You see the "bull jumping" that is a sport of its own.  This clip is from many years after I was there, and in the past, not so many people were let into the ring as the doors to the tunnel closed when the last bull entered. 

Yesterday, it seems, three people were gored in the Running of the Bulls.  It seems a stupid thing to do, I know. . . but somehow it seemed the only thing to do at the time.