Well, I got my ears boxed by the Blog Gods again yesterday within minutes of posting. If you couldn't see the post, it doesn't matter. Actually, it might be a good thing. I don't think I'm fit company for polite society anymore. But here's what confuses me about getting spanked yesterday. I can post a nude painting by Lucien Freud without any trouble at all.
I think. We'll see. But this image is posted online everywhere. It is published in magazines and newspapers. O.K. It is, I guess, not considered. . . I am not sure. . . real? But when I post an A.I. produced image, how is it different? It isn't "real" either. I don't get what moral grounds are being followed there.
I hope this doesn't offend anyone. I was going to reverse yesterday's 1950s ethos (that ran all the way through The Craig Ferguson Show) by turning things around, or maybe please Progressives and make the image with two women, but I figure why push my luck?
The "right" has always favored censorship. Now that the "left" does, too, we are a better country. People should not be allowed to offend anyone.
I have thought about moving the whole blog to Substack. They censor nothing there. It is still a kind of "Wild West" situation. I'm pretty sure, however, that sooner or later, that will change. It will probably be due to economics.
The 1960s was a goofy, failed attempt at "Peace, Love, and Understanding." It was hijacked by capitalists and drug dealers. Pretty much the same thing.
I didn't feel like cooking yesterday, and I had a bright idea. I'd go to the good Mexican place and get takeout, and while I was waiting, I'd have a spicy, skinny margarita. I used to go there a lot when I wasn't living with my mother and the bartenders knew my friends and I. T is a talker. I'm the quiet one. I haven't been to the place for maybe five or six months. The last time I was there was an early dinner with T. There was a new barmaid, pretty, from Brazil. Another bartender, a tatted up Brazilian boy T dubbed "Cannello" was also there. T chatted them up as he always does. I just kept looking at the barmaid. She had bright eyes and most spectacular cheekbones. So I told her.
When I walked in at 4:30, being Friday, the bar was already filling up. There are two bars that face one another, one inside the restaurant and one outside. When I sat down, Cannello was there.
"What can I get you, my friend?"
"My friend," is what the boys say. The girls always call you "Mi amore."
I ordered and looked around. Two women were sitting at the outside bar. They looked expensive, and not in a hooker way. But who knows anymore? They were a mixed couple, one white and one black. The white woman was wearing expensive sunglasses, but I could see she was staring at me. She looked familiar. She was a true beauty, exquisite hair and nails and the smoothest most lovely skin you might imagine. I, on the other hand, looked like me, and I was getting a little uncomfortable.
Just then, though, the barmaid came from the other end of the bar where she was making service drinks.
"Hello!" she beamed. It was the Brazilian with the great cheekbones. I was feeling very unattractive that day, and so my response wasn't really what it should have been. But she stayed and talked a bit. She remembered everything about our conversation five or six months ago. I was stunned. I stumbled through it all and motioned to my cheeks. She smiled.
"I have put on some weight, I think. They do not show so much."
"Yes, that was the first things I noticed. I said, my god, she has put on so much weight."
She laughed and went back to the other end of the bar.
The woman outside was still keeping me in her line of vision. And then it clicked. I think she was a girl I had taught in a film class oh-so long ago. Was it? I did the math in my head. It was not long after I got divorced, after Sky left town, but before the gig at Country Club College? Man, my timelines were getting skewed. I couldn't remember, but if this was the same person, that was twenty years ago. I don't think this woman was nearing forty. No, not a chance. So. . . what?
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was a hooker. There are plenty in this town. A plethora you might say.
I was glad when the food came and I could bolt. I'm not used to being in public now. Pinhead Quasimodo just wants to hide in the belfry.
I tell too much, but I have kept back a lot of "unsavory" details here. The girl from long ago had asked me for a favor I had not been willing to grant. She did not take it so very well.
Maybe that is why I had the dream I had last night that has unnerved me this morning. But, as I say, I tell too much sometimes, or show too much, or lie too much, or tell too many truths.
I should stick to simply opining. People are used to that. It is what has replaced the news.
O.K. We'll see what the Blogger Gods have to say about this one. One day they may just pull the plug and I'll have no way to tell you where I have gone. I should be careful. As Homer Simpson told Bart, "Don't say anything unless you're certain everyone agrees."
Both my mother and I have those split sinks, the ones with the divider. I hate the things. Funny, though--I bought mine when I remodeled the kitchen when we bought the house. Mine is an enamelled cast iron sink weighing several tons. My mother's was here when she bought the house, a light metal thing. Neither side in either of our sinks is large enough to wash large pots or baking pans. It was only this morning that I realized why they even make the double-basin sink. It comes from the Ozzie and Harriet days when people washed dishes on one side and rinsed them on the other. Duh.
"O.K. boys, why don't you help your mother out and wash the dishes tonight."
"O.K., dad."
"David and Ricky are really good kids, aren't they Ozzie."
"You bet they are."
Sometimes I hand wash dishes here, but just like everything else I do, it is half-assed. They are never as clean as when they go into the dishwasher. Sometimes afterwards I'll find something stuck to a knife I just washed. And did you know that a dishwasher uses less water than hand washing? It is true. Use the Google.
I wish I'd have bought the old farm kitchen sink instead, but changing mine would be hard and expensive. My mother's on the other hand. . . .
Sometimes I think I'm smart, then I find out otherwise.
I said goodbye to T yesterday. As things go, closing on his house took longer than expected, so mid-afternoon, I figured I wouldn't hear from him about getting together. I was sitting in the cafe sipping on my lavender French soda--I couldn't believe it, but the counter woman working that day was not the one who made the last one for me, but she knew how to make them. When I asked her if she did, she looked at me like I was a fool and said, "Of course." Lavender was an alright choice, too. I will take a tour of all the flavors eventually just to see. I thought about buying the fixings and making them at home, but I decided against it. I'd make too many and burn out on them. No, it is better to go to the cafe to get myself a treat.
I was just writing all of that in my journal when my phone rang. It was T. 2:30 p.m.
"What's up?"
"I'm at that Cafe Strange sucking down a French soda."
"I'm on my way to pick up my checks."
"Why didn't you just have the deposit them in your account?"
"I've had them split the money up into four checks that are going different places, into different LLC accounts. Are we still going to get something to eat?"
"Man, I thought we were going to get together early."
"Yea, I got caught up. I got a room at the Hyatt. I have to hook the trailer up and take it over there, shower. . . I can be ready by six."
I hesitated. "That's too late for me. I've got to . . . "
"I know. Don't worry, it's O.K."
"You'll have to call Black Sheep."
"Yea, he's been blowing up my phone all day."
"I'll call you later on," I said.
I felt relieved in some ways. A long farewell dinner. . . .
After the cafe, I went back to my house to pick up my things--remember, I live out of a travel bag--and head to the grocers. I was making pho and I would have to boil the drumsticks for awhile. Then I remembered that T and his wife had given me an InstaPot that I had taken to my mother's. Oh, yea. I'd pressure cook them. Perfect.
It was four when I left my house. I was just turning by Country Club College when the phone rang. It was T. He thought he might need help putting the trailer on the bumper hitch now that it was full. I made the detour to his house to help.
But when I got there, he had a jack under the trailer tongue and was preparing to hoist it.
"Country boy shit," he grinned. He backed his $100,000 pick up truck that "can pull down a house," got out and jacked the trailer tongue up just high enough to drop onto the ball hitch. I didn't have to do anything.
Except say goodbye.
"Ain't your house anymore," I said.
"Nope."
"You have to feel some relief that all this is over with."
He nodded.
"Alright. I got to run."
"Yea. I'll be back at the end of July."
We shook hands.
"I'll call you later after dinner, amigo."
We left it like that, like we would parting after a night out, talk to you later, etc. But driving away, I knew I was down yet another friend. I've run out of people to call when I need something. Physical or mental. I could feel the void.
At the grocers, I got the things I needed. Chicken legs, garlic, ginger, cilantro, basil, scallions, jalapenos, avocado, bean sprouts, mushrooms, hoisin sauce, and. . . shit, piss, fuck. . . they had duck sauce and oyster sauce but no fish sauce. Whatever. I've never used it in pho before but read it was highly recommended. Well, not tonight.
A bottle of Vouvray.
When I got back to my mother's, I had to get started right away. I chopped garlic and ginger to saute. I had the burner on to heat the pan before I put in the olive oil as I've read I should do. As I cut the ginger, I smelled something odd. I turned to the stove and saw that I had turned on the wrong burner, the one that I had laid the top of the Instapot on. The plastic was burning. HOLY SHIT! I picked it up and saw the melted plastic. Had I ruined it? Would it still work? This was me all over. A brand new, never used Instapot and I fucked it up. I let the plastic cool, then I put the lid on the pot. It went on. The damage was only cosmetic.
Phew! as they used to say in the days of double-basin sinks.
I sauteed the ginger and garlic, and. . . shit, piss, wtf? I'd forgotten to buy chicken stock. I ran to the pantry to see if there was any in the house. Oh, yea. . . there were several boxes of organic stock that T had given me when he was cleaning out the kitchen. Real stock, not the Swanson shit that is fake. Nope . Good old T. The pho was on him tonight.
Stock and wine, salt and pepper, chicken legs, red pepper, the sauteed things and the sliced scallions. I set it for half an hour. Poured a glass of wine and went to sit with my mother to tell her about my day, to hear about hers.
"You're going to miss your friend, aren't you."
"Yup."
Now when I needed something, I was on my own. Me and mom.
I went back inside to check on things. I cut the avocado, opened the bag of bean sprouts, tore the cilantro and basil leaves, chopped the green parts of the scallions. I took the chicken from the pot and put in the mushrooms. When the drumsticks had cooled enough, I pulled off the meat and chopped it into small pieces and put it back into the pot. I boiled the noodles.
"Hey. . . dinner's ready."
I'm getting better at making pho all the time. This was the best I'd made yet.
"You're a good cook," my mother offered.
"Sometimes."
I was that night.
After dinner, my mother said she needed something from the pharmacy. Benadryl. My mother takes more drugs than anybody I've ever known. She gets 40 mg of oxy a day and still takes over the counter pain pills and things to make her sleep. I think it is clear that drugs will not kill you. I've always been afraid of them, but I'm beginning to believe that I have been wrong.
It was eight o'clock and beautiful out. I am nearly never out of the house at eight o'clock anymore, and it felt good. I felt like running, just revving the engine and never looking back. I remembered for a minute what living felt like again.
"Run, baby. . . just run."
There are still a thousand places I want to go. I don't let myself think about it much, but the desire now was like a flood. Rather, I parked the car and walked across the lot in the golden light. I got the benadryl. Then I stepped next door and got a bottle of scotch.
After a little t.v., both my mother and I were ready for an early bedtime.
I didn't call T.
I slept and had glorious dreams. There were women. There was travel. I took fantastic pictures. The last image I had as I woke late after nine and a half hours was of a woman in that basic carnival mask and a white dress on her hands and knees atop a washer and dryer, a man's torso in the foreground, back to camera, looking at her. A brightly lighted scene. Probably using well placed strobe flashes.
I opened my eyes. Yes! Why have I yet to make that photo?
And that was the start to my day. I'll fix no breakfast this morning. In a little while, I will take my mother to a distant bank to renew some CDs. Then we will go to TooJays, a deli restaurant, for lunch, and I will get what I always get there (Rain Man), a pastrami/corned beef sandwich with coleslaw.
A big outing.
OK, kids, that's the report. I've yet to hear back from the Leiter Foundation. If I don't hear something this week, I will write to them again, tell them that I am going to publish the article one way or another and that their silence on the matter will become a centerpiece of the story.
No I won't. I'll just beg.
I wish there were still big clubs that had stages and big bands like they did in the "Thin Man" movies. I'd love to go sit at a table and order drinks. I'd go every night.
Just another window pic. The message caught my eye. Here's an example of a photo that will be forgotten before you finish reading this post. And yet. . . .
Sex has ended many careers. Platner "sexted" someone, so now he can't be a politician. A little weird, I think, but sex is, you know, "sexy." I think there are three kinds of politicians, those who get caught and those who don't. And the third? The very scary weird.
I should amend that to say "those who get accused." How many convictions are there?
Anthony Weiner.
But that's just me. There are people who volunteer for military duty. Imagine that. It seems very odd. Taking orders has never been my forte. I have a difficult time doing what I am told to do. I think such things are genetic.
T came back to town to close on the sale of his house. He sold it to a family you all know. He still had things to get out of the house, so I helped him with the big stuff. I'm not so good at that anymore, though. Bringing heavy shit down the stairs was scary. My back, hips, and knees are no longer mobile. Still, we got it all done without incident. He wanted to give me a lot of things. A brand new king mattress. Lamps. End tables. Toaster and coffee maker. Other things, too.
What I took was a very expensive ladder. I need a good ladder. So I thought. But when I got it back to my house, I thought again. A ladder means work.
I don't want to do that anymore. I'm not even good at it. I should have taken the toaster.
At one point, I asked him if he was relieved or sad to be closing the next day.
"Sad."
Good lad.
I'll see him again today, then he is gone. His truck already has Tennessee tags. The cost of everything Tennessee is cheaper--car insurance, property taxes, etc. Not just a little cheaper, either. A third of what one pays here. But I've read my own state now is the most expensive in the country for buying and maintaining a home. Surpassed California. And yet people are crowding in. They are moving to Tennessee as well, though. In droves. The state has a lot of room for people, so it won't be overcrowded anytime soon.
But it is changing nonetheless. It will soon be North Carolina. That's where Q moved. I saw an advertisement on t.v. for his own hometown. They invite you to come. There are things to do, people to meet.
I'm not going anywhere. Not even to the coast. Mom and I will be right here if you need us.
I'll just have to content myself with windows and reflections and the like. Now I need to feed my mother. And so. . . .
Oh. . . I wrote the email to the Saulter Foundation yesterday. No response yet. Waiting.
Couldn't sleep last night. I could. I did, but only for an hour at a time. Gave up at five-thirty. Now I sit in the dark with a muzzy mind running through the catalog of ideas I had yesterday. I don't think I can make a sensible narrative out of them, so this will be more of what I called yesterday, "The Jumble." Not a stream of consciousness, but more a stream of unconsciousness, a somnambulistic guide to the universe. Mine. It's the only one I know.
First off, the photo. I was shooting reflections much of Saturday. Ain't no New York City, of course, but it was what I had. Or, in the common parlance, what I got. Cloudy days are good for shooting windows, I found. I may make a practice of it.
You know who did? Saul Leiter. His photos. . . but we'll come back to him. I may find a chronology if not a narrative after all.
The mundane. Got up, read and wrote and drank coffee. Skipped breakfast since my mother didn't want any. Went to the gym and skipped a lot of my workout. Felt good to skip it. I wanted to take myself to lunch, so I went home and showered without any intervening things. I was at the good Spanish restaurant by one.
Rain Man. I haven't been there more than two or three times in the last year, but the barmaid remembers me, remembers what I order. It's amazing. So,
It had been so long, two years or more, since I had gone in with my friend now living in the midwest during one of my Dry Januarys and had the bartender make me a faux-Sangria that we could not yesterday for the life of us remember the code name we used so that I wouldn't have to call it a lemonade. But she remembered how to make it. And she remembered that I usually order ceviche and gazpacho.
The place was empty, so we had plenty of time to catch up.
"How's your mother doing?"
Yup. Always the conversation starter. Crazy, though, that she remembers. It felt good to be eating lunch out again, sitting on my own, chatting with the barmaid. I remember her life, too. She is a real peach. I'm glad she is still working there.
Lunch didn't last long, though, eating alone and not drinking. What to do with the rest of the afternoon? Maybe I'd go to the museum at Country Club College, I thought. Or maybe I'd wander around on the edge of Gotham with a camera. Or. . . .
I went to the cafe. I wanted a coffee. It was a coward's way out. It was familiar. When I walked in, the counter lady saw me and smiled, and when it was my turn, she asked, "Do you want a French soda?" I felt a little bad.
"No. I'm going to have a cafe con leche. I'll tell you why. I just ate lunch at the good Spanish restaurant and the bartender made me a faux-sangria that was delicious and refreshing. I told her, though, about the French soda you made for me, and she got her phone and looked it up and was excited to make one for herself. We said that's what I'd have next time I came in."
"There's a girl who comes in here and gets the French soda. She knew what an egg cream was and I said well where were you the other day?"
Big smile. I like going to the same places. I guess I like being remembered. Call me Rain Man. Call me Norm.
After coffee and handwriting in my journal, I thought I might go for the camera thing, but when I stepped out, the heat and humidity were pre-tropical rain heavy. No. I was tired. I would go home, take off my clothes, lie on my own bed, and take a nap.
When I got up, I decided to look through some of my photo books. I picked up Saul Leiter's "Early Black and White: Interiors." I bought the book when it came out in 2015, looked at it, and wondered about something that I wanted to research, but way leads to way and I forgot about it. Looking through the book yesterday, I was seeing that in his early black and white, he was playing with reflections and honing the technique that worked so well in his color photography. O.K. I was appreciating the book a bit more now. Then I came across the photos that I had wondered about before. He photographs a young girl in 1950. Several of the photos were labelled "Jay." That is as descriptive as any of his photo titles get. There was one, "Barbara and Jay, 1950."
Barbara served as one of his nude subjects in a number of other photos. But so did Jay. The internet is fickle about such things, and I can't find the photos from the book there. But there are three or four of them .
Skip ahead. There are photos from 1957-8 titled "Jay." Several.
Is this the same girl? Those years are referred to as Leiter's "Bohemian Years." He shot with a close group of friends. Many of the interior shots are nudes. I have been intrigued.
I went to the computer and opened ChatGPT and asked the question. Chat and I researched for quite awhile. It searches the internet quickly. It had data on a lot of what I asked, but it ran into a wall. There was no information it could find on the relationship between the two Jays. Or one. Chat did a bit of sleuthing, though, sort of facial recognition stuff, and said it was about 75% likely that this was the same Jay. It told me where to contact Leiter's curator who, in 2015, I had contacted before. She is the one who "discovered" Saulter not long before he died and began organizing his huge library of works. She brought him to the attention of the world, got his books published.
Margit Erb first met Saul Leiter while working at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in 1995, and became his close friend and representative. Following Leiter's death in 2013, Erb founded the Saul Leiter Foundation in 2014 to archive, organize, and exhibit his tremendous body of work.
Chat was very good at suggesting what sort of information I should ask for and what probably would not be good starting points. It seems likely that no one has investigated this query. There are over 80,000 pictures in the archive, so the years between 1950 and 1957 might contain more "Jay" photographs.
Then, as always, the clock ticking, ticking. . . I had to leave to go back to mother's. I decided to bring the Leiter book back with me so I could do some more work that night.
Then I forgot to bring it to the car. Drats!
You know how I feel about A.I. It is a calculator and a data bank. You must be careful, though, as you do not always know from where it draws the data. The data could be bad. Chat is good about giving you sources, though, and using those, I have found information that Chat has not given me. I only look at sources that are reliable.
The thing is, Chat will sometimes opine. I guess that is why people feel it to be more sentient than it is. Sometimes the opinions can be provocative in a good way, though. If you are careful, it can lead you into some good brainstorming on your own. But you are better off, I find, not engaging with Chat when it does this. You can go down some bad rabbit holes. But for information, brothers and sisters, it is quick. In microseconds it will find you sources that would have taken days and maybe weeks to find on your own. And the more information you feed it, the more you will get back. It is good for that.
So, I am thinking about contacting Erb to see what she knows and is willing to tell. I can see a good article in this. I have written academic papers for most of my life, and I used to know how to do it. It has been awhile, but maybe I still do. A short article to some publication on this might be fun. I'd almost feel like I was doing something again.
But don't count on me. I'm really good with ideas, but I can be terrible at bringing them to fruition. I've confessed that here many, many times before. But I HAVE done so on occasion, so I allow myself to hope and dream.
I looked up my buddy's old girlfriend that appeared to him in his fever dream. She is a girl I knew as well, what was once called a "Cover Girl" before the use of the term "Super Model" that became popular in the '90s. As you can see, she was big in the Farah Fawcett era.
Before I knew her, I knew her sister. She was in a class I taught. At the time, she told me she had a famous sister, a model who was dating Tommy Chong. Her sister had a big crush on me, but didn't everyone? A few years later, when I met the model, she said, "My sister was in love with you." Holy shit! The connection was made.
"So YOU are the famous model."
"I was big in Japan," she laughed.
It was at her house that I had my first taste of Rothschild 1968. She was a swell gal, and I can see why her memory would come back to haunt my buddy. Memory is the floodgate to hell, though. Or it can be.
Last night, his memories spurred mine, and I was running through the catalog of women I had loved or liked or with whom I had been fascinated. Then I thought of Leonardo DiCaprio. Why, you ask? Had he been in love with me or I with him?
No. I was thinking of two things, though, that he is constantly criticized for--having a Dad Bod and dating younger women. He seems to laugh it off ok in public, or so it would seem. But having one and having done the other, I thought about how demeaning people can be. The Dad Bod thing, of course, the body shaming, is hurtful, but at least it is observationally true. It is a thing that is beyond denying. But the other thing makes some horrible assumptions and demeans not DiCaprio but whomever he is seeing at the time. It assumes that a) DiCaprio is not interesting or intriguing or sweet and kind and wonderful enough for a younger woman to find attractive if not more, and b) that she is simply a bimbo gold digger who is only about him for the. . . whatever, fill in the blank. Now I know it is an old joke, terribly apocryphal, older than Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" (link), but it is no more apocryphal or true than 50% of marriages where the age difference is minimal. To assume that anyone is a trophy girlfriend or trophy wife--or in many cases now, boyfriend or husband--is unthoughtful.
But yea. . . it makes people feel they have a leg up on things, that their pathetic lives have a pinch of something superior.
"Oh, sure, you fucker, I know you'd be screwing that if you could, you creep!"
"No, no, baby. . . I only have eyes for you!"
Don't even let me get started on the Epstein mania.
And so it was at evening's end as I shut down the house and got ready for bed. I'll forget all about the Leiter article, I'm sure, but I think I will write the query to Erb to see if I get a response. I would love to get a chance to see the archives.
Hey, now--that did turn into something of an organized tale after all, didn't it? I guess I've learned something after a few hundred million words.
I was struggling to come up with a song to end this with, and then. . . oh, yea--"My Heart Belongs to Daddy"!
Why should I labor today to tell a tale when there is so little to be gained and maybe something to be lost. It is senseless, really, all this writing. Everyone has given it up. The era of emails and blogs ended long ago. We live in a faster world, now, more immediate. Texts, if you are lucky, but more likely shared IG or X posts. I do that, too, shamefully, but I must stay "in touch" with friends who complain about my text messages being "tomes." The attention span of people has devolved.
Mine, too. I'm not simply pointing the finger. Just giving it.
But. . . Youtubers are making movies that are killing it and overturning the market. Kids can do more with an iPhone now than corporate studios do with a million dollars worth of film equipment. At least creatively and monetarily even if not technically. But all the equipment and technique can't make up for a lack of imagination which is what corporations seem to be selling.
And that's how you get the Clown Prince for president.
My buddy sent me a strangely well written message last night.
And there it was. At first just an image. Not clearly in focus but unforgettable. Blond, blue eyed with a blunt bob. Hair drifting in the wind as she smiled. The kind of look that millions had seen in magazines. Then it was followed by a succession of more faces. I knew them all. Why just now and why so poignant? Capturing a slice of what is impossible to get back i suppose. And there it was.
He's a really bright guy even if he is stupid. What could I do? I made it visual.
I fucked up, though. I made it in portrait rather than landscape mode. Selavy. I used two A.I. engines, an app to rip the music, and a video editing program to make this. I don't care enough about it to go back and redo it.
He liked it well enough. Memories.
They are like that photo, a disoriented hodgepodge of ephemera, reflections, things near and far. A jumble.
O.K. Forget what I said yesterday about "Spider-Noir." I watched Episode 2 last night. Boring. Silly. I'm over it.
Probably.
This is Chris Craft. So he said. I went on a photo walk yesterday. Got a late start. It was hot and humid and sometimes a bit drizzly, and my knees were barking, but I thought if I was going to walk, I could walk anywhere, and I could walk with a camera, and so I went to a little village across town to walk its Main Street. It is another old part of town that is growing, as all things around my little hometown are, with a proliferation of bars and restaurants. But this Main Street still has some funky little shops, too, not the big chain stores but little mom and pop places that aren't as put together and shiny. And since I wasn't going to be on a street with big crowds, I took my larger medium format digital Fuji camera because it just makes the most beautiful digital files. I wasn't looking to be stealthy. I wasn't going to be shooting from the hip. I wasn't sure if I would take any pictures at all. I just took the camera with me.
I parked at one end of the street with the intention of walking a mile, mile and a half, in one direction and then back on the other side of the street. I parked a few blocks from the old high school and walked nearly to Jack Kerouac's house just up the street from my old, dead friend's house who lived on Shady Lane.
Right away, I was stopping to take pictures. Bold colors caught my eye, and later, big empty spaces. Shop windows were great on a cloudy day, the ratio of translucence and reflection seeming to be about right. I made a lot of photos of shop windows. I wanted to take photos of people eating, but I didn't have the confidence I would have needed for that. People can tell by your posture and demeanor whether you are just creeping around or if you think you are doing something of importance. This day, I just didn't have it. But there surely would be a lot of pictures of reflected me.
Halfway up the street, I saw a guy cleaning the big glass windows of the biggest, oldest, bike shop in town.
Oops. I kinda got caught. Well, nothing to do now. He was staring at me as I approached. O.K. I was deciding how I would handle this one.
"Hey--were you in a band?" he asked as I got close. O.K. Alright. I'd been recognized. He must be someone who used to come and see us play. As always, I was surprised that anyone could still recognize me.
"A few," I smiled.
"Which ones?"
I named the most popular.
"What did you play?"
Wait a minute--he didn't recognize me. He just saw some aging hipster walking down the sidewalk and thought to start a conversation.
"Lots of things, but in those bands I played guitar. The band was really popular, but in truth, we weren't very talented."
He began talking guitar talk. He'd played in bands. He named off a guy who was in one of the big bands of the seventies. He'd played with him in a band in high school.
"Alright," I said.
He launched into a schtick about great guitarists. He went on and on about Stevie Ray Vaughn.
"He had strong hands," he said playing air guitar behind his back. I really didn't have much to say about guitar players, so he went on naming musicians from the sixties and seventies. So, me being me, I thought I'd push him over the edge.
"Yea, those guys were good, but you know who put them all to shame?"
"Who?"
"Prince. He could outplay them all."
Oh, I knew the response I'd get, and I was right. Why I do such things is beyond me. It's just fun to turn the room sideways sometimes and watch the furniture fall.
"Alright, man," I said after awhile, "I got to keep moving. Here. Let me take your photo before I go."
Now the thing I missed, I just wasn't ready, was him hitting what is known in bodybuilding as "the most muscular pose" (link).
"Seventy-five, baby."
By the time I had my camera up, though. . . well, you see what I got.
"Chris Craft, just like the boat. My band was called Chris Craft and the Cruisers!"
I left him with his headphones and his window washing equipment and limped on down the street thinking you never know what will happen when you leave the house. Just another little domestic adventure.
By the time I got back to the car, I'd taken a pretty fair number of photographs. I was dripping sweat and was oh-so ready to sit down. I rarely take my phone with me when I'm walking. I'm not someone who likes to listen to music through earbuds, and I don't care to be available for calls or texts. When I picked up my phone, I had a message from my mother. I'd forgotten to leave her two o'clock meds. It was one-thirty. I was half an hour from her house. Shit piss fuck goddamn.
By the time I got back to my house, the day was slipping away. I needed to do laundry. I checked my mail and picked up the packages Amazon had left on my porch. I needed to shower. And of course, I wanted to dump the day's pics into the computer to see what I had.
Mail and packages opened, laundry going, I slid into a hot shower. My hair, now much shorter, is fun to wash. Easier. Quick. Cheap. I trimmed my beard, did my duties. It only takes a minute now with the hair dryer. I put on clean clothes and went to the computer. I dumped the card expecting nothing. I've learned. Everything seems like a good photo when you are taking it. Later, nothing does. Results are always disappointing. But. . . hey now. . . these weren't all terrible. I decided to work on Chris Craft first as I knew in the morning it would be the only story I had to tell. I'm out of practice. Don't do this enough anymore. Chris Craft did what people do when you raise a camera. They smile. Why did I not take his smiley pic and then tell him to just look at me without the smile. Why? Because I was nervous. Because I forgot.
I was just glad he wasn't yelling at me for taking his picture before. Relieved, you might say.
Of course, I did a quick take on one of my window pics. See those black corners? That's because I'm using a lens made for a smaller sensor on my bigger sensor camera. But the lens is lovely and I already had it and only needed to buy an adapter to use it. I could have cropped this a tad more, but whatever. I didn't have time to do much at all. It was time to get to the store and buy groceries for dinner. I never have time. Good god how much I wished I could just get takeout, pour a drink, and work on the rest of the images for the night before sitting on my big leather couch in a darkened room and watch some show before bed. That's not a lot to wish for, but it is wishing for the impossible. And yes. . . I'm complaining.
I may take my camera out again today. Tonight is the Blue Moon. Once, you had to rely on me to remind you, but now, the news outlets, as always, have followed my lead and they announce the full moons, too. They steal from me ceaselessly. I guess I should take it as a compliment, but. . . I should be getting paid.
Selavy. I won't see the moon tonight. The clouds are endless here in the once Sunny South. Before long, they say, people will be living on the moon. That will, for me, change everything.
Have you heard about the sonic booms rocking the east coast? The government acts like they don't know what's causing it, but we do, don't we? Aliens. No shit. What else could it be but some supersonic spaceship visiting us from beyond, here to see the last of a dying planet?
Unless it is some Chinese super spy plane that goes so fast it cannot be detected by our radar systems.
I'm not sure which of those two I pick. But it is definitely one of them. Definitely.
Wait. You'll see. The Times will be saying the same thing soon. They are always watching this site.
O.K. Let me give you a little coffee and champagne music for a sleepy, cloudy Sunday morning. A mellow take on Duke Ellington tune.
I was looking for a photo to post today, but I haven't taken anything worth a darn and I was sick of looking at the second and third tier photos I have in a folder on my little computer here at mom's, so. . . I took one of them into Chat and transformed it into something noir. Why? Last night, mom and I watched "Spider-Noir," with Nicolas Cage. And holy moly, I got hooked. It is a series on Amazon Prime, so I look forward to Episode Two tonight. I don't know if it would be your thing, but you are definitely not as bored and seeking some distraction as I. Not even close. So don't take this as a serious rec, but yea. . . for what it is, it is really good. The N.Y. Times reviewer referred to it as "What if Humphrey Bogart happened to be Spider-Man?"
That's pretty accurate. Cage looks weatherbeaten and worn. There is no attempt to make him pretty. In a world where Brad Pitt never ages and I do, I'm down with Cage, Penn, et. al,--hey, wait a minute--they were both in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"!
I envy Pitt, don't get me wrong, but I gotta hang with the fellows who, like me, have aged like old fruit.
Like real people who can't afford Goop do.
But. . . I'll confess. . . .
A buddy of mine, one you've read about here before, has an appointment with a plastic surgeon who is renown for his work with eyes. One of the gals at the gym is very open about the work she gets, and at fifty, she still looks like a kid. When I got my hair cut, she was very complimentary, so I said, "yea, now I gotta do the eyes."
So she told me to go to this fellow who did hers. Just the under eye. She has another person for the above the eye work.
So I told the other fellow, and he said he was thinking about doing it. Yesterday he told me he had made an appointment for a consultation.
"Let me know," I said.
But, in truth, I'll stick with the old fruit look just the way God, in his wisdom and glory, intended.
Oy!
Oh--you can watch "Spider-Noir" in either black and white or color. True dat. They made it both ways. I watched the color version last night.
What a world, right?
"It was the best of times. It was the worst of times."
Other than this, I have nothing. I'm lost and can't find my way home. I get the occasional story from Red, and I woke up to a text pic from my Miami Friend, but they are living and I have become a zombie. When I left my mother's house yesterday afternoon, I couldn't think of what to do other than my usual routine. I'd already gone to the mall. Really? I'm pathetic? I had planned on driving to the Farmer's Market in the town half an hour away, but it is raining. So I will make breakfast for my mother and then. . . and then. . . ?
I'm running out of Xanax.
Here's a song for a rainy day to put you in the mood for noir and a double Old Fashioned.
We'll just start off with a little fun. That's what I had making up various "cards" for Red's birthday. It was fun, but also cause for reflection. Being an old pinhead living with and caring for his mother twenty hours a day, year after year, I don't have a lot of interaction with other people. The gym and the sometimes cafe are just about it. There was a time when I needed to get away from people. I grew up an only child and imaginative, creative time had become part of my DNA. And before I was a pinhead, girls liked me. I've thought about writing those tales down, but it would sound like "Tales of Swordsman in the Valley" sort of shit, so I don't. Not that I was a swordsman. Ever. I was always sweet and shy and never, ever asked a girl out on a first date. For all my vanity, and there was a fair bit--at the time, I never passed a reflective surface without looking, unlike now when I instinctively turn my head away--I never had confidence. I was always the boy at parties who went to the room lacking people, standing alone, looking out over the scene as in a dream. I've been thinking about all of this over the past few days as Red and I have been in textual conversation, something I once had in abundance.
I don't wish to belabor the point. I won't go back to my college days, nor my twenties and thirties, and barely my forties. Not yet at least. But after my divorce and into decade five, my dance card was filled with "attractions." It was in many ways one of, if not the, most interesting time of my life. It was the turn of the century and things were humming. Monica was dating her father's friend, her old dentist, on "Friends." Monica Geller and Tom Selleck.
Just sayin'.
At night, I'd write emails. And I would get them right back. There were notes. There were letters.
But pinheads living with mothers are not on people's minds. Nobody writes emails any longer, but even the thirteen word text messages have dried up. So I realized this week writing with Red. And I have had to wonder--where did they all go? Don't they ever think of me as I so often do of them?
Making up the birthday treats, I had to go back in time. March, 2012. She was a kid. I don't throw anything away. There were the emails, the very first. I copied and sent them to her. She had recently graduated with a degree in art. We spoke of working on encaustic images together. Creative shit. Fun stuff. I was a year from decade number six. Not even. She never knew that old me. So I put us together, she early twenties, me late thirties, early forties--I can't remember. Just younger. Just to flatter myself.
Wait a minute--who was I doing this for, her or me?
Obvious.
It's all a little bullshitty, though. We were always pals, never lovers. Oh, there is love, but the kind that accepts the other person at face value without criticism or judgement, without needing to try to correct the other's obviously flawed life. I mean, lifes are flawed, and we often do the wrong thing, enter into flawed relationships, and there are plenty of people who will tell you so, who want to give you advice, who will criticize even the people that you love, and those are not people to suffer. So. . . the circus theme quite suits Red and my relationship. Life is a cabaret and we are Old Chums.
O.K. I just spent too long putting this video together, and I have pinhead duties to see to, so. . l I'll just leave you with this, a little tribute to a longtime friend,
I was excited. I asked my mother if she thought she could do a ride to the beach and she said yes, so yesterday I looked around for condo rentals at the nearest seashore. On the average about $1,500 for the week. Yesterday, back at her house, I told her what I found. She looked stunned.
"Oh. . . I couldn't spend a week there."
Deflation.
"I could spend a month or more," I retorted. "I'll start making dinner."
Feeling all summery, I'd bought a bottle of Vouvray. It seems the perfect summer wine, light, sweet, crisp, and a little fruity. It goes well with the salad life. So I made a big salad for the two of us and used up the half pound of ground beef I'd gotten on Memorial Day, cooking it up with ground garlic and ginger, cumin and chilis, tomato sauce and a can of garbanzo beans. Since I found this recipe, it has become a favorite.
I have to succor myself with good foods and Vouvray and forget about travel. Except for this morning. My mother needs to go to the bank to renew more CDs.
Maybe I'll get another French soda this afternoon.
T called just a bit ago. Drive time call. He was on his way to the gym, but nothing is close to his property.
"I got to get you up here," he said.
"Sure. I'll bring mom."
"Yea. . . bring her! We'll set her up on a porch. . . . "
Nobody gets it. I guess you'd have to live through it to really understand.
Red texted me some video. She missed her flight out of Detroit, so she booked herself into the Detroit Club. Living the Dream. Tomorrow's her birthday. I only know that because she recently told me, and even then, I had to go back in the text stream to look it up. I am HORRIBLE about birthdays.
"When is my birthday?" I asked. Of course she didn't know. And of course I wouldn't tell her. Birthdays are a burden, I think. But she is hitting one of those landmark ages, one of the ones you dread in your heart of hearts. I knew her when she was a kid, so I sent her the very first photo I took of her when we met.
And the second.
That was a long time ago, 2013. I'll send her a birthday card tomorrow. I should have made a postcard to send to her, but truly, I forgot her birthday was coming up.
I did send some out, though. T got one yesterday.
Looks like it got a little beaten up in delivery. I sent two. The second one hasn't arrived, he said. I told him that it is probably tacked to the post office wall in some Tennessee hick town. I wish I could send the Lonesomeville series. Oh, boy. . . that would get me some trouble.
I made some images and videos of me in my thirties and other people who are now older. It was funny to me. Red loved hers. Of course she did. Others didn't enjoy them as much. Selavy. Some people only enjoy me in deprecation, self or other.
I think I do enough of that just by posting every day, but also. . . .
You have to have a sense of humor, I think. Here I am, an old pinhead. Tell me A.I. ain't grand.
Or maybe it isn't A.I. at all!
I am getting a late start. I can't sleep. My right knee keeps waking me in the night. I called the ortho's office and am scheduling another injection hoping it helps. If not--they say you know you need a new knee when you can't sleep. And then the drive time call with T. Now I need to care for my mother. I'm a pinhead, but I'm a good son. So they say.
Heard this at The Fresh Market. Was nice with my salad.
'At's right. . . I did that. Took me a trip to the M-A-L-L!
WTF?
I heard that malls were dead. Empty. Being converted into homeless centers or something.
I got what they used to call back in the 'hood, "a wild hair." I don't know. I got to the gym early. I needed to get home and do some things before the cleaning crew came. I needed to shower. I needed to go to the bank, too, to get them some money. And that all went swell. I finished the last thing just before they texted.
"Be there in thirty minutes."
They are good like that.
So I headed off. It was just after noon. I had made my mother breakfast but had skipped my own. I had been eating like a fat fool all weekend and needed to change my ways. I wanted a good salad. You know, the way people used to eat--in movies about Hollywood. Rabbit food and fancy water.
I ran through my memory bank of local restaurants, though, and couldn't remember anything like that on the menu. No Caesar with chicken, no Cobb. I really didn't want to go to a restaurant anyway, but isn't it odd how we've fallen away from the big salad?
Then I had a bright idea--Fresh Market. They made good take-out food, but they also had a little court to eat it in. Just the thing.
I got a great salad with balsamic chicken and a strange half and half green tea and watermelon juice drink. And that, my friends, was an unexpected treat.
I sat and ate slowly and watched the customers come and go sizing them up in my head, paying attention to the details of their clothing, their body shapes, their gait. I don't do such things anymore. It felt like vacation.
I had an idea. I wanted to get out of my own hometown. Not far. Just past Gotham. I never leave town, never go more than five miles from home. This would be huge.
I'd go to the mall!
It was a little scary, though. The interstate has changed much since I was last there, more interchanges, more lanes, not all off ramp on the right hand side. Jesus. I was driving slowly. No hurry. The sun was shining. The music was playing. Cars were flying, speedsters switching lanes over and over again. And there was me, hunched over the steering wheel, leaning close to the windshield looking for my exit.
Fuck! It had all changed. The mall used to sit in the open all by itself. Now you couldn't see it for the building that had gone up around it. This was a shopping and dining Mecca now. I'd expected a ghost town. Years had gone by. Lanes had changed. I creeped along until I saw something I recognized--the giant Ikea store. A quick right. Around the back where nobody used to park. Rain Man style, I always used this entrance. Bloomingdales!
It was ninety-five degrees in the parking lot. Opening the door to Bloomies was like entering the oasis. And the fragrance--I'd forgotten that. Bloomies has its own fragrance. Surely they pipe it in through the vents.
A quick left into the Men's Department. Things were still in the same order. First Ralph Lauren, then the suits--Armani, Boss, Canali, etc. I walked through the aisles just looking. I was feeling really underfunded. A plain Ralph Lauren button up was $160. Emporio Armani--not the good Armani--had nice pants for $480. The real Armanis are four times that. Nice shoes. I was just picking up ideas, I told myself. I moved on.
I walked through Abercrombies. Teens, some with parents. It's good to know what kids want. I liked the new cropped shirts for boys, short hems, sort of like old Guayaberas. Nice.
I stopped at the Mont Blanc store to see what a new nib would cost. The nice lady told me how to clean the one I have.
On and on. The mall had gotten more upscale. Chanel. Ferragamo. Versace. Hermes. Dior. Tiffany. Gucci. Balencia. Prada. You work your way down to the Tommy Bahamas and H&M as you wander closer to Macy's. Somewhere between, the mall widens. On the right, the nice restaurants, on the left, a food court. It is like crossing the tracks and you get to athletic shoes and gaming stores.
Climb the stairs and wander back.
I got sucked into a Western Wear store, Tecovas.
"Which side is the men's boots?" I asked. Turns out I was looking at the women's.
"But I can show you those, too, if you are interested."
"Thanks," I stumbled, catching myself. "I mean. . . I don't want to be so binary."
The woman laughed.
"These are the exotic leathers--shark, crocodile, ostrich. . . ."
"Do you have shrimp skin?"
"Uh. . . what?"
"Just kidding."
"Have you ever worn cowboy boots?"
Oh, shit. Here we go.
"Nope. Only Beatle boots."
I had her grinning now.
"I haven't been to a mall in years. I'm just wandering around."
I looked in the window of the Ray Ban store. I saw something. I tried them on. Holy shit--this was totally me. Round metal. $220.
O.K. O.K. I was just collecting ideas.
The idea was that I wanted to live like a Hollywood movie star but I was a poor-assed dirtbag better suited to surf trunks and cheap Chinese shorts.
I wouldn't kick about the price of a $50 t-shirt anymore.
Stepping back out into the heat, the scent of Bloomingdales clung to me. I hadn't stayed in the mall long. It was still mid-afternoon. What to do?
I headed to the cafe.
When I walked in, I saw that the woman at the counter had cut her hair. So I said.
"We're twins," she laughed.
We talked about how little shampoo and conditioner we had to use now. Summer savings.
"What will you have?" she asked.
I was feeling all vacationy. I remembered decades before in Palm Beach, I'd gotten an egg cream.
"How about an egg cream?"
She looked at me for a second.
"Just kidding. I saw that you had the Italian syrups and it made me remember them. I can't remember the ratios, but it hasn't any eggs in it. It is syrup, seltzer, and milk."
She thought and then said, "It sounds like a French soda." She pulled out her phone and Googled. "Yea. I can do this."
H-O-L-Y S-H-I-T! It was delicious and perfect on a very hot day.
"This is my new summer drink!" I gushed.
I sat down with my French soda and pulled out my notebook. I'm happy that I still write in notebooks because all the research is showing that hand writing is good for the brain. Typing on a computer, not so much. There are different neural connections, and studies show that students who type notes do not remember as much as students who take notes by hand.
So I wrote and drank and was happy. Then I had an idea. What if I could take my mother to the beach for a week. Could she do it?
When I got back to her house, I asked.
"Do you think you could ride in the car that long?"
"Yes."
I was excited. I think she'd be fine. Maybe I could get her in and out of the pool. This was a stirling idea.
I'll check out some condos this week. It is scary. I don't remember how to do this stuff anymore.
And so--The Mall! It started with the salad. I needed to change the routine, get out of the rut.
The bad thing is, though. . . I really want those glasses.
On the way back, I heard a song. It is just the kind of Europop that makes me happy. Maybe you will like it, too.
