Possible (If Unlikely)

I'm cheating, of course.  This isn't a photo from the Crap Festival.  It is another of the Bike Week pics.  I could have cheated more, though.  I think maybe I need more color photos here. 

Or even more.

Yea, A.I. colorized it.  It even, in one instance, unblurred the lady and recreated her face.  Yesterday's music selection of Iranian Jazz was also A.I.  

Oh, ye of little faith, those with the wailing and gnashing of teeth.  I went to the Crap Festival yesterday and it really was crap.  And I DID take my Holga toy camera.  And I DID, after many moments of doubt, take not one but TWO rolls of film.  I was going to develop them last night and scan anything that might have been of at least marginal interest, but I ran into a problem.  I always seem to run into a problem.  The two rolls of 120 film were of different brands, one Ilford and one Kodak.  I looked up the developing times.  Radically different.  What to do?  I didn't want to spend the time developing each roll separately, so I decided to take my Holga back today and shoot two more rolls, one of each, so that I can develop four rolls in two batches.  

Brilliant.  

But I must say, I don't think I'm going to be enamored with any of them.  They are, by and large, just people walking around in the street.  I don't get close with the Holga, not like I do with my Leica, so all I can do is cross my fingers and see.  

The day was gorgeous and the crowd not so much.  What do you expect on a Friday?  Retirees shuffling around in their none-to-glamorous attire.  And me.  Only here and there, a finely feathered bird would appear.  Saturday, however, should be another thing.  The Cruise Ships will roll in.  The crowd will be larger and some people MAY have the sense to wear something creative, beautiful, or interesting.  

Probably not.  We live in the 2020s.  It ain't like it was a century ago.  

O.K. Again, A.I.  But HERE'S the kicker--there was a LOT of A.I. at the Crap Festival. 

Tru dat!

And here you can wail and gnash all you want.  Some of it made the old printing press stuff from printmakers look tired and boring.  I'm not saying it was great, but neither was the stuff printmakers were kicking out.  A.I. is a TOOL, and artists will use whatever tool they have in their possession.  Look, for instance, at Maggie Taylor's work.  

She is the most famous digital artist--I needn't say "alive" of course.  She was married to Jerry Uelsmann,  the surrealist photographer under whom I studied.  Well, not literally "under whom," but he was one of my profs.  This digital creation is made from one of Uelsmann's own photographs.  Now Uelsmann, who studied under Minor White, was, at the time, the most valued photographer, in terms of dollars per print, in the world, and he created the first graduate degree pure photography program in the country.  The last time I heard him speak, he'd been teaching most of his life.  He had never used Photoshop, but of Taylor's work he said, "I feel like I've been teaching horse shoeing all my life."  

Now many people are doing it, not with Photoshop, but with A.I. I just now quickly popped in a request to make a Maggie Taylor style creation and got this. 

Now you can see that it is pretty shitty, but the idea is there.  A.I., being language based, takes a whole lot of "talking" to create something halfway decent.  It is not quick, not like this thing I got in milliseconds.  And afterwards, you need to work on it with many other digital tools.  So when you see a work that uses A.I., don't think it was like making a Jackson Pollock at the fair where you throw paint into a twirling machine and come out with whatever.  

"Fair?  What the fuck?  What are you talking about?"

O.K.  Some of my references are becoming obscure.  But you get my drift.  

There was only one artist in the entire festival that caught my eye.  She made hand painted photographic encaustics.  I don't know how she painted the pictures, but I think she did it with wax because the blue skies were of many hues, and even yellows and greens, but they did not totally blend together.  I was wondering if they might not have been done with acrylics rather than wax, but I wasn't going to touch them to find out, so I went around the booth to ask the artist.  When she saw me, she lit up and gave me a big hug.  It turned out to be someone I had been with at several Anna Tomczak workshops.  Anna became known for her 20x24 Polaroids in the "wayback," and was collected by museums everywhere.

She was known for her assemblage work as well.  She is the one who taught me the once secret and now well-known techniques for image transfers. That is where I met the woman with the encaustics.  I was an invited guest to the workshops.  For some reason, Anna liked me.  I don't think it was my work because I never really showed her any.  I think the encaustic artist was an invited guest, too.  She was really good, a mother and a housewife who did like my work with cameras and so we bonded.  

But I was truly amazed she remembered me.  It was for me, the shut-in, quite a delight to be remembered that way.  Even before I knew she had made the encaustics, I had determined to buy one, and I will go back and buy the one I liked today.  She is now represented by a decent gallery and she told me that Anna has a show at the big Center for the Arts right now.  I will go to see it this week.  

As I wandered around, once in awhile I'd hear my named called out.  People who knew me, not whispering behind their hands or being snide, but generally friendly people I know.  And that was a treat, too.  One fellow, the attorney who was supposed to go to Africa with Travis and me and our now dead ex-friend Brando--the one who throws the fabulous parties every Saturday night of the Art Festival, the one with the amazing art collection in his bachelor's pad with the amazing gardens out back, the one who always has the fabulous music, the great food, the full shebang. . . called my name.  We chatted for a bit and then he told me to come to the party tonight.  And no shit--I'll be able to go! 

This break from caregiving has been wonderful, but now I am beginning to feel the dread of going back to it once again.  A man released from custody only to be incarcerated once again after just beginning to fully enjoy his freedom.  My life has become the life of a true retiree only recently.  I spend my time as I want, only just beginning to know what I want to do.  This is how I was meant to live.  

It will be short-lived.  

But today and tonight, I will enjoy my newfound freedom as much as I can.  

And I will come home with a new piece of art.  

There will be pictures, I hope.  Maybe even a story.  I'm hoping for torrid.  Maybe I'll get lucky at tonight's party.  Maybe some young artist will fall for me, lick my neck and whisper in my ear and tell me things will be fine. . . for awhile.  

Wouldn't that be something?

Yes. . . as close to a miracle as one is ever likely to get.  Still, there is a potential in the offing, and what more does one need than a possibility, no matter how slim it might be.  

It's the only reason to stand on that little patch of ground, naked and empty, with the void surrounding us--and not take the leap.  

Potential and Possibility.  Now there's a fable I should write.  

Big Prick in Uptown

The "Art" Festival starts this morning in my own hometown.  Three days of crowds wandering through booths of ceramic ashtrays and bland watercolors of exotic locales, everyone with a fried dough or corn dog. . . . 

I'll be there.  

Travis texted me wondering if I got my credentials for sitting with the city's elite, eating and drinking away from the hoi-poloi like a civilized citizen.  Not his words.  My buddy runs the affair and has asked me to stop by the tent where that happens, but I've never gone.  I'm sure I'd see my ex-wife and others from my onetime social past.  Probably a lot of the people from the Club Y, too.  

I don't know.  I've just become a bitter asshole, I guess.  That's what Q tells me, anyway.  He called me the other night just to tell me so.  Oh, he soft-soaped it with telling me I was a good son, but I always take the insults more to heart than any sort of praise.  

Maybe that is why I stay away from people.  Surely, for instance, I'd hear whispers and feel the sneers if I went to the Credentialed tent.  

"Do you know that guy? Yea, he used to be married to her. He lived with Daddy Warbucks daughter for years. I don't get it. He's gotten strange. . . but he was always an odd duck."

Did I mention my paranoia?  

I should take my camera to the Crap Fest so that I can have something "new" to post here, but I'm parnoid about that, too. 

"Look, there's that guy. What's he doing, you think?"

It's hard to believe that I ever had a wife of a girlfriend.  

But it is spring, and the saps starts to rise and the creeks start to flow, and the bombs are dropping like crazy.  I live in Paradise, so I might as well enjoy myself today.  None of what I plan to do could I do if I were taking care of mom.  Yes, I should consider myself lucky for a minute.  I ate corned beef and cabbage, so I should have "the luck of the Irish."

That sounds funny, though, the luck of a  people who suffered through a potato famine.  What kind of luck is that?

Q is Irish.  He's been lucky.  

But there will be no topless women selling beer here in my own hometown.  All the weirdness takes place behind closed doors.  In public, there is a stodgy conservatism in the streets.  

That was an unplanned rant, obviously.  It's like the automatic writing of the mystics.  Spontaneous, written not by the writer but some spirit beyond.  Indecipherable.  

Maybe I should just treat myself to a facial and a massage.  That might be just the thing.  It's a simple exchange of values.  You give them money and they do things to your body.  It is obvious what each of you values.  It's like everything else, really.  

You know, I think I'll take a Holga toy film camera to the festival and a whole bunch of film.  Oh, yea.  There's an idea.  Yup.  That's just what I'll do.  Who gets mad at someone with a toy camera?  

I think I'll get the fried dough, too.  

Cesar Chavez Died for Your Sins. Oh. . . Wait. . . .

What is it with guys, anyway?  I mean about sex.  Popes and priests and public school teachers. . . and presidents and congressmen and on and on and on.  Now Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King.  I mean, I would have expected that from this Dugar fellow, but, really?  Sex sex sex.  Is that all fellows think about?  

Pretty much.  So say the shrinks, anyway.  

"[Researchers] found that the average man in their study had 19 thoughts about sex a day. This was more than the women in their study – who had about 10 thoughts a day."

This research refuted the old standard that men had a sexual thought every seven seconds. However. . . and this is my own brilliant idea. . . the researchers used college students in their study. Given that researchers also find that college students today do not drink or have sex as much as previous generations, I'd suggest a new set of guinea pigs.

In my own hometown, it seems that sex is about all the men think about. Your ribs can get pretty sore from elbows around here every time one of them sees an attractive girl.

Same goes for my gay friends. They are even worse about the boys. But you know that.

Anyway. . . . .

I did nothing yesterday but art related stuff. Not art, per se, but related. I had to fuck around with technology, printers, print drivers, paper profiles. . . then trying to find all the things I use to make image transfers. I didn't leave the house until it was late afternoon and I needed to go visit with my mother. I didn't shower or take a walk. I didn't even bother to cook. I ate leftover corned beef and cabbage.

It was rather glorious.

Today, however, I need to be practical. At least somewhat. A few hours of work on things that need taking care of.

But I don't want to. I'd rather spend my day making pictures again. I am, for all practical purposes, useless.

I woke this morning at four and read the news. When the sun comes up, I'll go back to bed.

Isn't that something?

Oh, darn. . . I just remembered that I wanted to write about Tamara Lempicka. I watched a doc on her a couple nights ago. Well. . . it will have to wait. But she was quite something, I think. As much as I hate to admit it, I am awed by scandalous women.  There is an entire YouTube channel about them.  

I just reread the thing I quoted.  Do you think it's true that women only have ten thoughts a day?

Luck of the Irish

Spring Break, baby, and everybody's by the pool!  

Kinda.  

Do you know what the number one destination for Spring Break is this year?  Yup.  My own hometown.  Well, the airport that serves it.  It makes me wonder why, but my friends seem to understand it perfectly.  We have attractions and parks here, and the kids can hit many beaches from here where the party's started.  

Except they are fighting and even shooting one another.  WTF?  It is true.  Four shootings already at the beach town I went to for Bike Week.  In contrast, there were none during Bike Week.  

All my college professor friends want out.  They say the kids are utterly useless.  They don't come to class, and when they do, they don't take notes.  And school administrators are forcing them to have high pass rates so that they can get funded well by the state.  It is even true at the Country Club College where the tuition is so high everybody must pass.  

Spring Break should be about drinking and trying not to pick up an STD.  That is fun.  But fighting?  What the fuck is that?

It is the Joe Rogan Generation, I guess.  Everything is martial arts.  Stand your ground.  

Etc.  

Well. . . if they enjoy that, good for them.  I'd much rather lie by the pool next to that woman with a margarita at hand.  That is a woman, right?  I don't want to be too binary.  

Or agist.  

But, you know. . . that ain't Spring Break, is it.  Just daily life at The Villages.  I should probably head up there and join the fun. 

O.K.  That's enough of that.  

I hadn't slept very well for the past few nights, maybe five hours a night, and so I got up yesterday morning feeling slow.  But I had things to do and I was determined to get them done.  I burned my mother's and my mail that had too much of our personal info on it.  That is always fun.  I pour 99% alcohol on the pile of papers and hit it with a torch.  That stuff is jet fuel.  

Next, I paid my mother's property taxes.  She can't handle that stuff any longer.  I am the worst at this kind of stuff, so she must be terrified.  When I first started dating my ex-wife, she was a young, fun, upscale girl who was spending all her father's money having fun.  But when she moved in with me, she started managing my money.  That is an illustrative story.  She has become one of the money mavens of my own hometown.  So. . . something is the something of invention, and as she transformed, perhaps I will as well.  I have become much more responsible with my mother's money than I am with my own.  I've spent my own money supporting her this year buying all the groceries, paying her bills.  

I'm a good son, they say. 

My mother has been getting letters from some health company in Spanish.  It has her address on the envelope and sometimes her name, sometimes someone else's, and it always says under the house address, "Apt. #1."  None of it makes sense and I fear what might be going on.  So I called the company.  After hanging on the phone listening to the most irritating jingly music "Ev-er," I got some homie who couldn't understand what I was telling him for a very long time.  I started again in my nursery school tone, but he didn't have my mother in his system, and after twenty minutes, I gave up.  

Went to the gym for my new "Age Appropriate" workout, then headed home to pick up the house and shower before the cleaning crew arrived.  I had just finished dressing when they showed up.  The woman who runs the show is really very sweet and we always chat for quite awhile.  But I had to run.  I was off to the bank to. . . do some banking, then a stop at the cool local hardware store for some surfacants.  

I walked into an empty store.  The workers were all sitting and leaning in clusters.  Two of them surrounded a desk by the garden supplies.  

"Hi.  I'm looking for surfacants."

"??????" like a dog you just asked if it wants a cucumber.  

"It helps weed killer stick to the plants."

"Oh. . . yea. . . I think there is a bottle back down that aisle on the top shelf, but dish soap will do the same thing."

One of the fellows walked me back and found the bottle.  Ten bucks.  I hesitated.  They were helpful, so what should I do?  

"O.K.  You guys helped me so I'll buy this. . . but next time I'm using dish soap.  Oh. . . I need some 90% isopropyl alcohol."

The joyless woman at the counter who never smiles barked, "We only have ninety-nine percent."  A different fellow walked me back.  

I explained, "Have you ever heard of a Lampe Berger?  No?"

I told him what it was and how it worked.

"The fuel for it is very expensive, so I wondered what it was made of.  I found out it was ninety percent isopropyl alcohol with a few drops of essential oil, and I thought I could make that myself."

When the mirthless lady rang me up, though, I was just a little surprised.  A gallon was $29.  Still cheaper than the Lampe Berger oils.  

As the maids worked, I decided to go to see my mother, but I had a wild hair.  I stopped at the grocers first and got a head of cabbage and a big load of sliced corned beef.  Right there, for the day, was a basketful of Irish soda bread.  I picked up a pack of Guinness and was on my way.  

My mother had company, so I put down the things and opened a stout.  I poured a little for my mother.  The friend told me I needed boiled potatoes to make it authentic, so I chopped some up and set them to boil.  In a little bit, though, my mother's niece took the lady home (she's blind and can't drive), and I began chopping cabbage.  Olive oil in the big enamelled cast iron pot.  I just cooked the cabbage down and threw in the corned beef.  I dished it up.  It was a hit!  And the soda bread?  Yea.  Never had it before.  Fantastic.  

By the time I was four Guinness in, T called.  He wanted me to meet him and Black Sheep at the Irish pub.  

"You wouldn't believe what's going on."

"I'm at my mother's and four Guinness in, but I'll try to catch up later."

I got home at five. The house sparkled.  I made a Negroni and sat out on the deck.  It was a beautiful day.  But when I finished the Negroni, I knew I was home for the evening.  I was not ready to go out.  I lamented, though.  Here I was free for a bit, but I wasn't joining the party.  Instead, I sit on my own leather couch and drink and think.  God knows what I was missing.  I could have taken my Leica and had some fun.  

But I didn't really care.  You see, that shot of the old guy was all flattery.  This is closer to reality.  Time marches on. 

Sleepless and Cheating

I haven't time to write this morning, so I am cheating like a jr. high school boy.  

By late morning the street is already green with it—hats, scarves, the soft insistence of celebration. Inside the pub, the air is cool still, the wood faintly damp from the early mopping. Glasses stand in ranks. The taps gleam. There is a moment, brief and unrepeatable, when nothing has yet happened.

She is there.

Her name is Aoife. It is said quietly, almost without emphasis, as though it belongs more to the room than to her. She works behind the bar with a natural authority, not asserted, simply present. There is no haste in her, though everything she does is quick.

Her hair is dark, drawn back but imperfectly, so that strands escape and fall along her cheek. She does not correct them. They are part of her, like the way she stands—weight slightly to one side, a subtle curve through the body, not posed, not careless. Her face is pale, though not delicate. There is a strength in it, something withheld. Her mouth is full, the lower lip soft and faintly parted as she concentrates. The eyes are gray, clear but unreadable, as if they reflect rather than reveal.

When she moves, it is without display. She turns, reaches, pours. The gestures are exact, economical. There is no wasted motion, no effort to charm. And yet one watches her. It is difficult not to.

By noon the room has filled. Voices overlap. Laughter comes too quickly. Someone begins to sing, not well. The door opens and closes, opens and closes, letting in brief rectangles of light and cold. The day presses inward.

She remains unchanged.

It is not indifference. Rather, she seems to exist at a slight remove, as though the noise belongs to another register of experience. She hears it, of course—answers when spoken to, meets a gaze when necessary—but nothing adheres to her. The hands continue, the body continues. Pint after pint, each one poured with that same measured patience, the dark rising slowly, the foam settling into a pale crown.

A man leans across the bar, calling her “love,” then “darling,” as if the word itself might summon something. She does not respond to it. Only to the order. Her voice, when it comes, is low and even.

“What’ll it be.”

Not a question, exactly. A formality.

There are moments—small, almost nothing—when she pauses. A glass held just so. A look that lingers half a second longer than required. In these moments, one feels something might be disclosed. But it is not. The pause ends. The motion resumes.

I watch her as one watches a figure in a painting, aware that the distance is part of the experience. She is not performing, and yet everything is seen. The light catches in her hair, along the line of her cheek, the bare forearm as she reaches. There is a warmth to her skin that contrasts with the cool interior of the room, a suggestion of something more vivid, more private, than the scene allows.

At one point she looks directly at me.

It is not an accident. The gaze is deliberate, held. There is no challenge in it, no invitation. Only recognition—of being observed, and of permitting it, briefly.

Then she turns away.

The afternoon deepens. The room grows louder, less distinct. Glasses clatter. Beer spills. The floor becomes tacky underfoot. Outside, the light begins to fade, though it is still early. Time loosens, stretches.

She continues.

There is, in her, a sense of duration. As though she has always been here, or will be. The day passes through her without altering anything essential. One imagines her afterward, when the last customer has gone, when the lights are lowered and the door is locked. The same movements, slower now. The same silence returning.

But this is not seen.

Only this: the crowded room, the rising noise, and behind the bar, the figure of a girl who remains, in some quiet way, apart from it all—present, visible, and yet not entirely given.

Existential Quandaries

It should be the most exciting time of the year here in my own hometown.  Spring Break.  St. Paddy's Day.  March Madness.  The Art Festival.  The Rodeo.  It all comes to a head in the next week.  But I am blah.  I can't even pick out a photo to post.  I don't seem to have a thought in my head which would be wonderful if I were feeling glee.  But for the thousandth time so far this year, I will "change my life."  

I ran into a woman I used to date for a short while, a veterinarian who I stayed friends with.  She put both my dog and my cat down right here in my home.  I had just entered the grocery store and there she was leaning on her shopping cart looking awful, shorter and worn, wearing a back brace.  She looked at me with tired eyes.  

"Last time I saw you, you were getting ready to have back surgery," I said.  She looked exactly like that now.  

"I'm going to have another one," she said.  "This is the fifth one.  This time it is in a thoracic vertebra.  I can only stand for about ten minutes," she said.  

We talked mostly about suicide.  When she put down my dog, it was instantaneous.  There was no shudder, no contractions at all.  The dog was just there one second dand gone the next.  Pentobarbital.  

"Man. . . that's how I want to go," I said.  

"I'll put you down," she grinned.  There was a reason we quit going out together.  

She told me that was the way she planned on going.  She'd hook up an IV and shoot the drug into the line.  "It works so quickly, I'd be afraid I'd pass out before I finished the injection."

I told her I had a stash of pills, but I didn't know if they were enough.  She told me how many I would need.  

"The problem is if you take them all at once, you might puke them up."

"Yea."

I said that doctors die at home using barbiturates, "But I don't think even they can get pentobarbital.  I don't think they are legal in the U.S. anymore."

"Yes it is  It is used to treat epilepsy.  They are cheap, too.  I prescribe them for epileptic dogs."

Holy shit!!!  I will Google today how to give a dog epilepsy.  I need an epileptic dog!  It is the safest, most pleasant way to take yourself out if you don't have access to the other stuff.  

"But that will be a hard day, you know?  Thinking that would be your last day on earth?  I'm sure you'd be thinking 'tomorrow.  I'll wait until tomorrow.'"

She told me she'd thought about it, but had decided that there were still people who needed her.  I almost chuckled.  She meant the people who need her to put their animals down.  

"I still do some good in life," she said without any irony at all.  

And that's the way it goes, I think.  Life is an empty void and we stand naked and shivering on a one foot piece of land, and it is awful and it is horrible, and yet. . . we don't take the leap.  We stand there and stand there until our knees won't hold us and we are tired to death.  That is something like Camus' take on it, anyway.  Like Hamlet, the only real question is to be or not to be.  For Camus. . . is life worth living?  And the answer?  Well. . . people overwhelmingly choose to toil on.  And so we roll the great boulder up the mountain like our champion Sisyphus.  

One might ask, "Does he have free will?"  Great question.  I was debating that with two profs once.  I lost the argument, but it is O.K.  The most reasonable answer, it seemed to me was not that he could choose to roll or not roll the boulder but how he felt about it.  

Hell of a thing, ain't it?

So when I returned from the store, I went out to finish up the last 10% of the mulch work.  I had ordered too much and had to determine what to do with the remaining mulch.  I decided just to spread it out over the driveway.  I put on my gloves and hat and went out and got the pitchfork, rake, and wheelbarrow.  Across the street, the same scrawny guy was working on the curbing.  

"How'd you feel last night?" I asked him.  "I could barely move."

"I slept well.  My legs hurt," he said running his hands across his thighs," but I put two heating pads on them." 

I told him I thought I was getting too old for this kind of work.

"How old are you?"

I told him.  

"Wow.  You're in pretty good shape.  You look like you go to the gym."

"Oh. . . I've got some gym muscle, but it ain't the same as cowboy muscle."

He chuckled and bobbed his head.  We talked for awhile.  Turns out he grew up in a neighborhood that my neighborhood used to fight with.  

"You were the rich kids," he said.  

That one broke me up.  It was called "Crime Hills" and still is.  We were on the lower end of the working class neighborhood scale, but where he was from. . . worse.  They didn't get to eat, apparently, because they were scrawny as shit, but you really didn't want to fight with them because they would never stay down.  They never quit fighting, kind of like the apocalyptic retarded pit bull I like to mention.  

"When did you graduate," I asked him?  

Holy shit!--he was fifteen years younger than I.  

I got back to work with my pitchfork, but whoa!  Everything hurt on the first forkful, mostly in my back, but in my right hand and wrist, too.  That little guy working across the street was working every day, and he told me he had built his own 4,000 square foot house, too.  

"Me and my buddies," he said.  

It was on five acres, and he said he had to work all the time.  

"I could have paid a company $500 to mow, but I wasn't going to do that."

What pleasures he took in life, I don't know, but there he was, the Existential hero toiling on not knowing either Existential philosophers, I assumed, nor Sisyphus.  

But I'll say that having that little fellow thinking I was muscled up made me feel better than the vet did going in for her fifth back surgery.  

I cooked up a beef stew for my mother and her niece that night.  I hadn't eaten a thing all day.  The stew and the wine pretty much set me straight.  

"Not today.  Maybe tomorrow." 

I will need to try to find a little joy here today underneath gloomy skies and bad weather.  

"I can't go on.  I'll go on."

Thank you Mr. Beckett.  

Strange music for a gloomy day. 

Guess you'll have to go to YouTube if you care to hear it (link).  

Cowboy for a Day

The more stuff you have, the more you have to work.  

Unless you have more money than I do. 

Mulch day.  One Saturday out of every year, I spend the day spreading mulch in the beds around the shrubs and trees and in the driveway.  Long ago, I had three driveways to do.  That just occurred to me now.  It took me two days to do that.  But I put granite down on two of them, so I am able to do the work in one day now.  

Makes me feel like less the cowboy than I used to be.  

So did the laborers working all around me.  There was a hillbilly finishing off a poured cement curb with sanders and saws.  It looked like hideous work.  When the delivery truck dumped the mulch, I took this photo.  The little guy was watching me.  Sheepishly, I said, "I have to send this to my buddies to show them what a cowboy I still am."

"If you spread all that you sure will be."

Next door to him there were four Mexicans working like devils clearing brush and cutting trees and throwing it all into two BIG dumpster trailers.  We were all men at work.  

I ate a bowl of cereal and took two water breaks.  By mid-afternoon, I had 90% of the mulch spread--but I was 98% worn out.  I left the rest for today, but I always do that.  

The little guy working the curbing was still at it.  The Mexicans finished up before he did.  I realized they were working on Saturday and probably had Sunday off.  Then it would be another six day workweek.  I was Cowboy for a Day, but if I had to do it every day. . . . 

And so, I don't feel as much like bragging today.  

I still have a lot to do, though.  Did I tell you about my sod lifter?  I write so much in so many different places, I can't be sure.  It is, apparently, an old fashioned tool you can't find anywhere any longer.  Some remnant of the 50s or 60s, I guess.  I lost mine.  I was devastated.  I went to store after store to find another, but with no luck at all.  There is a place called Tractor Supply, though, that sells one online.  It didn't look quite the same, but I have gardens, mine and my mother's, to clear, so I ordered it.  $75.  

Yesterday, getting my rakes and pitchfork and wheelbarrow ready, I found mine hidden in the shed.  Yay! 

 Shit. 

I will clear the gardens this week.  There is a lot of yard work to do, too.  Then I have to pressure wash my brick patio and work some granular sand into the cracks.  T is going to show me how to do it.  

And, of course, the two gravel driveways need to be re-rocked.  

Last night, I could barely walk.  I fell asleep on the couch, but when I went to bed, I could barely sleep.  Didn't, really.  I'll feel like shit today.  

So maybe I don't play "Big Balls in Cowtown" this year.  Still, I did what I have done before.  I'm still Cowboy enough for that.  

The leaves and pollen fall like rain.  Cars left outside are covered in a golden yellow powder.  The streets are lined with oaks in my own hometown and the gutters are full.  

And still, no birds.  

I made a delicious pho last night, though, and I am making a beef stew for my mother and her niece tonight.  The promised rain has yet to come.  Tonight they now say.  

My weekend alone was more a serf's than a sultans.  I think I looked like Friar Tuck pitching that mulch.  

So here's the song for this year.  "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford," a man who looks like he never did a day's labor in his life.  

Rather than "Cowboy for a Day," I'll let you watch a show I watched with my grandmother in Ohio every afternoon.  I'm sure it scarred me for life.  If you don't know what I'm talking about. . . well, now you will. 

13

I was going to spend Friday 13 at home by myself.  I was looking forward to that.  It's time to start a new regimen, water, fruits and vegetables, reading, writing, arithmetic. . . the works.  

That didn't happen.  

I took my mother to the cardiologist mid-morning.  We were out by noon.  It was the last day for me to deal with a CD that had come due at the bank that hassled me about using my Power of Attorney status months ago.  I called the bank on speaker from the car with my mother to see if we could take care of things over the phone.  

Nope.  

Could I come in alone and do the deal?

The lady on the phone would have to check and call me back.  

I drove my mother to the drug store to pick up a prescription.  McDonalds was across the street. 

"Do you want a hamburger for lunch?"

I have eaten at McDonalds more times in the past few months than I have in the rest of my life.  I got a Big Mac, fries, and a coke.  

We took it all back to my mother's house and ate.  I knew I shouldn't, and afterwards came the regret.  

The bank lady called back.  She needed a copy of my PoA.  She would have "her team" take a look, and since the CD matured on Saturday, I would be able to come in Monday afternoon--afternoon only because they would need to prepare the documents--and take care of it.  

"You should have a copy of my PoA on file. I gave it to you last time."

"No, I don't have it.  Can you make a copy and email it to me?"

My mother doesn't have a scanner, so I said I'd have to photograph it with my phone.

"Oh, no . . . that won't work.  Can you bring it in for me to make a copy?"

Piss shit fuck goddamn.  These people have worn me out.  

"What time do you close?"

"We are here until five."

I was going to the gym from my mother's house.  I had my gym clothes in the car and I decided to change.  Big mistake.  The room had a mirror.  I looked like those pictures of old, fat men on European beaches.  You know the ones I'm talking about.  That Big Mac was sitting heavy in my gut. 

I sat with my mother until my cousin came back from shopping.  It was mid-afternoon by the time I left.  

Gym.  Home.  Shower.  I'd have to hurry to make it across town in Friday traffic to get to the bank before it closed.  

I was going to make pho for dinner, but I hadn't gotten to the store.  I stopped at the good Greek place for takeout chicken and salad.  But. . . . 

I got a text from my conservative friend.  He was in town.  Could I meet him for a drink? 6:30?

I got home just before eleven.  Friday 13.  

Now I am up and waiting for the delivery of sixteen tons of mulch.  I feel like shit.  I just want to go back to bed.  I think I need rehab.  

Tonight, though. . . home alone.  

It is notable that none of my nights out have been with women.  Think about that for a minute.  

The girl in the picture at the top of the page gave me her phone number.  She wants to make pictures.  Not that one.  The one with her back to the camera.  Yea.  I haven't reached out to her.  

Here's the girl I should have married.  I swear if we met, we'd have been a match.  I can just tell.  She could have ruined me.  I know exactly how it would play out.  I'm a sweet boy and would have gotten trampled all over.  Instead of me, though, she was with the dick playing guitar.  You can tell just what kind of guy he is.  You can tell just what kind of woman she was.  She left music and bought a coffee shop in Canada.  I thought for awhile about going there.  I wanted to meet her.  Just to see.  

I saw her in concert in a small place just after her first album came out.  Been obsessed ever since.  

"Women's Lib"

She told me, "The one who dies with the most toys wins."  

Girls and their toys. 

Girls will be girls, I guess.  That's what they say. 

We've come a long way from the old neck massagers of my mother's era. 

These were actually advertised in the old Montgomery Wards catalogs.  $4.99.  The Relaxer gave "a deep, penetrating massage."  Bennies in the morning to get you going, "mother's little helper" to cut the anxiety, cocktails before dinner, and barbiturates at night to calm you down.  Does anyone think the '50s and early '60s were boring?  

And yet, with all that, ennui was rampant.  

Then came "Women's Lib" and the gates of Hades were opened.  Now look at the mess we've gotten into.  

Sorry.  I was just trying to connect with the photo.  I wonder if the Google God will ding me for this one.  

I went out with the gymroids last night.  It was a bigger crowd this time.  We were going to the good beer garden to sit outside, but the rain closed it down so we went to the Irish Pub across the street.  It was the first time we'd been there in almost a year since my Miami friend had her graduation party there, the last time any of us were there.  

The place sucks.  I had a Guiness and said I had to eat but wasn't eating the shitty fare there, so four others decided to join me at the good Italian restaurant a few blocks away.  Dinner turned into a circus as people passing by joined us then wandered away.  The famous judge brought his wife and son and sat with us, too, and I told him about my camera/court/State Attorney's fiasco and asked him what to do.  He shrugged, told me the "justice" system was fucked, and said I could do a couple things but it wasn't going to do any good.  

"You're just screwed," he said.  

"I would have liked some lube," I quipped.  

But there it is.  There is too much crime to handle, apparently.  The courts have been overrun.  

There were plates of food we all shared and many bottles of wine, and once again, I threw in my card with the others and for the fourth time in just over a week paid $120 for a meal.  It was never the meal, of course.  Two nights in a row, first the Brazilian barmaid and then the Clown Show.  

I'm staying in this weekend.  I'll make a pho tonight and early in the morning, sixteen tons of mulch will be delivered to my drive.  O.K.  Not sixteen tons.  But I will have to spend a day moving it by myself once again.  

I'm getting too old for this shit.  

Oh. . . I know you have been worrying about my laptop situation, so let me put your minds to rest.  I restarted it and now it is working fine again.  I think it wanted to install the new OS.  So I did the same to my big desktop computer where all the photo processing magic happens, and everything has gone haywire.  It just doesn't work now.  I can't update my massive collection of Adobe products and my passwords don't open up things like Chat or Grok now.  It is a Safari problem, I think.  Apple.  It used to be the friendly company with the motto, "Do no evil."  

That was then.  This is now.  Apple is now the monster that ate New York. 

And that is what I've got for you today.  I have to get ready to take my mother to the cardiologist early this morning.  It is going to be a lousy, rainy weekend, so they say, and I want to get myself settled in for some serious alone time.  How much longer I will have that is not quite known.  

I must warn you, that is not the end of The Girl Show.  Nor of Bike Week in general.  I don't think I'll be making any new photos this weekend, so this is what you get, a stain on my otherwise pristine career.  

And so. . . . 

Girls, Girls, Girls

Went out with Tennessee for dinner last night.  We ate at the Mexican restaurant because he wanted skinny, spicy margaritas.  We ate at the bar, of course.  The barmaid was from Brazil.  She was pure Portuguese though, with the highest cheekbones I'd ever seen.  I couldn't quit staring at them.  

"Are those real?" 

"What?"

"Your cheekbones."

"What?  My cheekbones?"

"Yea.  They look like implants."

She lit up.  "Nobody's ever said anything about my cheekbones."

She stuck around and talked as she made drinks.  Bartenders are like dancers.  They know how to make money.  T talked her up.  She wants to make photos with me now.  

T's my Pimp Daddy.  

Truthfully. . . I don't have much desire to follow up with these women.  I do, but I don't.  I kind of like the freedom of events and making pictures in the streets.  

I might as well use up the stage dancer photos.  I like them, of course.  They tell a story about who we are, where we live, why. . . .  People have different reactions to these images, but the story here compels me--the posture, the audience, the tats.  One day. . . . 

What can I say?  It was a biker town, a biker crowd.  This was a place of worship.  I understand, but I'd like to take photos of the rabidly religious, too.  If they were only having a festival near my own hometown that is so impossible for me to leave, I would go.  When everyone in your hometown looks like the Cleavers, a photographer could just about give up.  Oh, a photographer can take pictures of his cocktails and dinners and objects around the house, and he can chase after shadows and light, but only so many and so much.  But what he really wants is a shot at something shocking or bizarre.  Not always, but please, oh lord, give him a shot at the spectacular on ocaission.  

Especially if he's lived too long in isolation.  

Yea, I got out of town, and for a few moments they were dancing and a prancing and I was doing what I could.  I think I made a lot of photos for my very few hours out.  

If I had a studio now, I would just ask people with "a look" to come for a portrait.  I'd hand them a card and tell them they looked awesome and to come just as they were right then.  

Oh. . . I have so many fantasies about what I might shoot if I were this or that.  

"I want to take your picture, but I want you to think about a question as I do."

And I have a hundred questions to ask, some philosophical, some about memories, some seemingly inscrutable.  

"Why can't you just do it on the street?"

Yea, I know.  I told you I had fantasies.  You might not know it from reading me, but I am really very, very shy and full of self-doubt.  But that is a secret a lot of us keep to ourselves, isn't it?  

O.K.  I'll wrap it up before the laptop dies again.  I did o.k. today, though, and still have 35% of my battery left.  But the tiny computer fan has been running the entire time.  

Everything grows old.  Time and circumstance.  

George Shearing was a piano player, but he lets the vibes have this one for a long while.  

Just Crows

I know.  This isn't the promised lady show.  I've decided to hold off on that for a minute.  I woke up at four this morning which is the new five.  I had to make a decision.  Get up or try to fall back to sleep?  Y'all, as we say in the Sunny South, have been there.  You try to fall back to sleep but your mind begins to race about all the things you need to do or the troubles of your time or you harken back to darker days, romances gone wrong, etc.  

I decided to rise and shine.  

I put on the coffee, then I made the day's first mistake and read the news.  That certainly takes the shine off the day.  

Now it is 5:05/6:05 and the sun is far from coming up.  What to do?  My little laptop is suddenly not able to run on battery for even two hours.  It heats up and the fan runs most of the time.  It is "old" in computer years.  I bought it in 2019.  Still, I don't have the urge to spend money on a new one.  If I were to update everything I need to now, I'd be spending close to ten thousand dollars.  Maybe choosing to pursue pictures in the digital age was a mistake.  "They" have me by the balls, though.  My laptop will no longer run the newest version of Photoshop.  How about that?  

I type and watch my battery percent drop prodigiously.  Maybe I should have stayed in bed.  

The boyz at the top of the page have the right idea--make a robot out of scrap.  Nothing digital, nothing mechanical, just pieces from a junkyard stitched together.  Only two things can stop The Bumblebee.  You'd know this if you watched enough 1950s and '60s B horror movies--electricity and water!  

Dragging the shutter with these two turned out awesome.  Tell me that ain't Omar Little from "The Wire" reborn.  

I think the weather is what troubles me.  It was 90 degrees on March 10 here in my own hometown.  That is about fifteen degrees above the norm.  There have been no birds this winter and there are hardly anything but crows here now as we approach the spring.  I suddenly have terrible allergies and am constantly sneezing and blowing, eyes and throat itching.  But to the local t.v. news people, it's just, "How about that--it's beach weather this week!"  No mention of the coming disasters, not a hint that these are "End Times."  

But what can you do?  I've been telling my friends that sure as shittin' somebody's going to use a nuke.  It seems more and more likely every day.  Whatever happened to the neutron bomb?  Well. . . depending on what you read, they were dismantled in 1996 OR the U.S. has a stockpile of them.  

The people die

But the buildings? They stay.

Neutron bomb, everybody wants one.

Neutron bomb, the pentagon's got one. 

Drop it on those dirty Euro peons.  

That sung to Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn theme song made famous by New Suburbans.   I could put the "Tell me Ronnie are you going to use your Raygun," line in, but it would age the thing.  The navy kids from the nuke school that was here used to love to dance to that song.  They were near crazy for it.  

Welp. . . welp. . . you little welp. . . my battery has fallen into the teens, and though, as Epstein would say, that's a lovely place to be, I'm going to have to wrap it up.  

Maybe I should have used color. 

Gomer

I have a dilemma.  I don't want to post all my BW pictures in a few days, not knowing when I will be out to make more again, but I don't want to drag out my BW adventure forever, either.  I have three good pictures from this stage event and a couple more "backstage," and they should all go together, I think, but. . . then I'll be back to looking for pictures to post on a blog that has for a long time relied on photographs.  

And so. . . I will choose to eek them out.  And it isn't all girly pictures I have, either.  I did pretty good at Bike Week.  

So we'll set the "stage."  I wanted this to look as much like the Playboy in the Jungle scene from "Apocalypse Now" as I could.  Here are the early Gomers taking photos with their cell phones of the PG to R Bikini Contest.  Boys will be dogs, as they say.  It can't be helped.  It is genetic.  It is God's plan.  While we label both men and women "human," they are not the same.  Obviously.  

Men have less genetic material.  

I'll go out on a limb and say this is essentially a MAGA crowd, though I didn't see any of those hats.  Odd, I thought.  But hats there were, and that is what separates me from the throng.  That and my assumption that I have more estrogen than they.  

I figure my mix of hormones is about that of my lesbian photographer friend.  She likes my pictures and disdains lesbians.  She married a "straight" woman, and that is where all her crushes lay.  She has been in touch recently asking some camera advice and says we still need to go down to her hometown in Okeechobee on a photo adventure.  Scares the shit out of me, but yea, we should go.  

I should go anywhere, though. 

The faux-stripper show wasn't much.  They didn't give each girl enough time to show their talents.  Mostly they were standing around while the goofy MC yacked.  You know what they say--give an asshole a microphone. . . and one day he could be president.  

One day, though, it could be she. 

The Gomers got to applaud for their favorite girls, and the field was narrowed to three.  The awful part was that the other girls didn't get to leave the stage but were made to line up behind the favorites.  It was already a done-deal, though.  There were no surprises.  Everyone knew who was going to win, who would be second, and who would be third.  

When the girls came off the stage, the earlier energy seemed to be all gone.  

Date night and the next morning, you know?  

For the rest of the day, the only women we saw under forty were the ones serving drinks or the few who were dancing on platforms trying to get some kopeks. Mostly we saw people hopelessly clinging to some movie version of a Brando bad boy biker. 

Not my dead ex-friend.  The other one.  

Oh, lordy, I should post those other photos, but I will wait.  My days ahead look to be filled with essential duties, not art.  And so. . . . 

Another Gomer gawking at the girls.  But wait. . . what?. . . is that Gomer wearing a hat?!?

Hey, You

Truth or Dare.  It's time to TRY and tell the story of the barmaid.  What the hell time is it, anyway?  Waiting on the sun.

No matter.  Some stories are timeless.  Not so sure about this one, though.  

We decided to drive down the coast to a restaurant in another town.  But oops!  I made a mistake.  We had passed the restaurant I was talking about miles before in another town.  I hadn't been to the coast in so long. . . .  It didn't matter, though, because T and I were not talking about the same restaurant in the first place.  

We were on Highway 1 and had to cross the bridge over the river to get back to the coast.  It is a lovely river and the bridge is high so that you see miles of river and mangrove from a god's view.  It was late in the day, a beautiful golden hour, and I nearly wept from the beauty of the thing I had seen most of my life but now not for a very long while.  

But that is not the tale.  

There are two restaurants in town that you can never get into without a wait, and tonight, the lines wrapped 'round the buildings.  T had never been to one of the two, the one with the rooftop seating, and that place seemed less crowded, so that is where we went.  

"I've got to piss like a racehorse," T said as he went to find a restroom.  

"How long did they say the wait was?" I asked man standing out of line against the wall."

"I don't know," he said. "I haven't gotten to the hostess yet."

The line was at a standstill, so I walked ahead to see what I could see.  What I saw was T talking to a barmaid.  He saw me and pointed to two empty seats at a small bar.  

"Is it O.K. if we take these two?" T asked her.  

"Honey, you two can take whatever you like."

Cha-ching.  $20.  Boom.  This girl knew what she was doing.  She was a moneymaker.  

We were seated next to the station where she was mixing drinks. 

"You two can watch me make drinks all night."  She said that without ever stopping.  She was making drinks for the entire downstairs restaurant, and as the waiters and waitresses put down their orders, she would glance and mix without pause.  She was a perpetual motion machine, but it didn't keep her from talking.  

"What can I get you?" she queried.  

T got a chocolate tequila martini.  No kidding.  I was shocked, too.  I had the usual Negroni.  

She brought the drinks and two menus.  

"Can I bring you starters?"

"Pan seared scallops wrapped in bacon sounds good?" T asked me.  

T's a talker and the girls like him.  I'm a listener, and sometimes in the past. . . . 

It was the usual thing--how long have you been working here, blah blah blah.  Then. . . "Are you married?"

"I'm getting a divorce," she sneered.  

"Kids?"

"Three."

WTF?  She couldn't have been over 19.  

"Wait, what. . . you have three kids?"  I was astonished. 

"We were only going to have one, but that guy couldn't pull out of a driveway," she quipped.  She said she was 30.  

"What?!?!?"

The couple sitting at the bar next to us apparently knew this, and the woman looked at me and said, "Can you believe it?"

"No."  I looked at the barmaid who hadn't stopped mixing drinks for a second.  The servers came cautiously to her on tiptoes like nervous cats, and I could tell they weren't messing with her.  

"Oops," she said looking me in the eye, "that wasn't right."  She grinned and kept mixing.  

"Three kids and a job.  Do you have a lot of support?"

She frowned. "Not really."

"Where are your kids tonight?"

"With my ex."

"Wait.  You are getting a divorce and have an ex?  How many times have you been married?"

"Just one.  I already consider him my ex."  She sneered.  

"Well what did you like about him when you met him?"

"I met him at A.A.  We were both court ordered."

"Oh, sure. . . there's a formula for success.  It's pretty weird you went to A.A. and are a bartender.  Is it hard?"

"Oh, no.  I drink. I've had two DUIs since then."

T and I were just shaking our heads and laughing.  We'd finished the scallops and the best pesto pasta I'd ever tasted.  

"Do you guys want dinner?"  

We took her recommendation, a seared tuna steak on a potato pancake with edamame and crunchy noodles.  We ordered wine.  

She worked and we chatted.  Dinner came out and holy smokes, the tuna steak was huge.  It was a good call.  

While we ate, she mixed, but she was up for talking.  

"I can top that," she said in response to one of our queries.  "I'm a felon."

My head spun.  

"For what?"

"Xanax."

Holy shit.  It was the whole catastrophe.  I looked at her for any signs of rough strife, any hint of criminality, any telltale signs.  Nothing.  Her face was benign.  

"Do you have a lot of support with the kids now?"

"My mother watches them once in awhile, but she's not really into it."

"Brothers and sisters?"

"Not really.  I was adopted."

There it was!  It was genetic.  

Chat chat chat.  Then T did what he had been doing all day.  

"This guy is the best photographer I know."

"Really," she said offhandedly.  

"Yea."  He picked up his phone.  "Do you want to see some of his work?"

"Uh. . . sure."  Again offhandedly.  

"I don't know,' I said shaking my head, but T already had the phone pointed in her direction.  He was scrolling.  She looked at me and said, "Wow. Those are great."

"Thanks.  Wanna make some pictures?"

She quit mixing for a minute and punched her name and number into my phone.  Yea. . . she wanted to make some pictures.  

T said, "Let me see your phone."  He looked at her name, then typed something into his.  In a minute his eyes were popping.  He'd found her Instagram page.  He put his phone under the bar and turned it to me.  Yea. . . our girl was no church lady.

One last drink for the road.  The bar was incredibly stocked.  They had seemingly everything in the liquor store.  I ordered a scotch.  When she poured it, she just looked me in the eye and grinned.  Yea, it was a good pour.  

Dinner done, the check always arrives, and it was a good one, but I had no objections.  Dinner had been great and the company even better.  The price never matters as long as you get your money's worth.  I felt I had and tipped accordingly.  

"What nights do you work?" T asked her.  

"Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday."  

"We'll be back."

The road home is always the road home.  My first day out had been a pretty good one.  I was full with it now.  We drove through the dark to the interstate half an hour away through moonlit southern prairie and pine.  T put on some music and we recounted the day's highlights.  

Bike Week.  What a concept.  What a freak show.

What a girl. 

Leap into the Future

I'm sitting in my chair buzzing.  The time change, of course, but I didn't handle it well.  Go to bed earlier or later?  I don't know.  I did what I often do on beautiful Saturday's and sat inside for a large part of the day.  It was coming on two when I finally drove over to see my mother.  I feel guilty leaving my cousin there alone with my mother so much, and so I was dripping with it yesterday.  I stayed for an hour and told them I would be back later.  I went to the gym, then home for a shower.  

And a nap. 

I woke up around five-thirty.  Shit.  The day had gotten away from me.  Not me.  I was fine. It had gotten away from the caretaker.  I didn't have anything to make for dinner.  I would have to go to the grocers, so I decided that I would go to my mother's after dinner.  That is what I told myself, but I don't think I was actually convinced. 

Still, I had the makings of a plan.  

I made a Rum Negroni and sat out on the deck.  Perfect weather.  The neighbor across the street was blowing leaves out of his pebbled driveway just as he had the day before.  Not an intellectual, not a thinker, he likes things that make noise.  He walked around in a marijuana and beer stupor as usual shouting out instructions to some unseen person in that volume of the hearing impaired.  That is what happens to people who like noise, I think, loud trucks and power tools and the like.  

Fortunately, he's gotten a battery powered one, so the volume wasn't quite that of a gas powered blower.  I had to give him that.  

Halfway through my cocktail, the neighbor next door came over and sat down.  This is not so very common and occurrence, so I figured something was up.  He asked how I was doing, so I launched into my sad and lonesome narrative concerning the life of a sole caregiver and the stunning pleasures of being home for a bit.  Just then, my favorite dog came loping up, a giant, blond labradoodle.  He's the most solid boy you could imagine.  Patting him is like patting a slab of granite, but he looks you straight in the eye and smiles--I shit you not--and appears to be talking, then he'll put his head in your lap and lean heavily in.  He's just a big old lover dog.  

The son of the owner was walking him, a kid in his twenties.  I'd seen him the day before I went to Bike Week.  He and his father were going over that day, too, so I asked him if he had fun.  He'd gotten food poison that night, he said.  

"Did you eat carnival food?"

He had to miss the next couple days of going over.  

"I thought about going again today.  Saturday should surely be the show.  I guess tomorrow will be everyone leaving."

"Yea, Sunday isn't much.  People are partied out and going home."

He stayed and talked a long time, and when he finally left, my neighbor said he had to go.  It was after six, and I still needed to go to the grocers.  Reality creeped in, so I called my mother.  

"I got jammed up here, mom.  I don't think I'll make it over tonight."

Guilt.  I don't believe in it.  It is a terrible thing.  

But I am surely driven by it.  

At the grocery store, I decided on a T-bone.  I spied one that was cut more like a Porterhouse with a big hunk of filet, so I thought it a big score.  

Brussels sprouts and a baked potato.  Not baked.  Microwaved.  

It was after seven when I sat down to eat.  I had taken a chance on a bottle of red I had never tried before.  It was a terrible choice . 

A little scotch.  A little t.v.  Off to bed.  It was only ten. 

I woke at midnight.  Oh-oh.  I decided to take a sleep aid.  

When I opened my eyes, the room was bright.  But when I looked at my old 1970s analog LCD screen radio clock, it was just before seven.  I hadn't changed the clock.  It shouldn't be this light before seven.  Spring ahead, and now it was eight.  None of this made sense other than that DST is a horrible thing for the body and the mind.  I'd fucked up and would pay the governmental price.  Nobody likes changing the clock--but we do.  This alone should tell you something about democracy and the power of elections.  This simple example alone should tell "the people" that what they want doesn't really matter if it doesn't coincide with what lobbyists are paying for.  

Democracy at work.  

So there is the Xanax and there is the day and there are my plans which already seem shot.  I promised myself I would work in the yard today, would rip out my dead garden and put weed killer on the lawn.  I went to the university ag website yesterday, and I am already a week behind schedule.  Gotta be done.  Fertilizer at the end of the month.  

But all I want to do is go to the giant Farmer's Market around the "famous" lake in Gotham and keep practicing and experimenting with my camera.  Maybe I will give up thinking about studios.  Maybe I'll develop a new way and a new interest.  

"Go, Buddy, Go!"

But my mind and body are swampy just now and the day could easily get away from me.  It already has.  We've time warped into the future once again.  

Boy. . . I've got pictures to show you, but now as many as I originally thought, so I am going to show some restraint and not post them all at once.  They won't last so very long, not the best ones, and I'm still tinkering with post-production, so. . . I'll hold off.  

Besides, I still have the story of the kooky barmaid to tell one day if I ever get my head on right.  Not today, though, that's for sure.  

Funny thing about my photos, I'll confess.  The crowd was more than 80% male, but the majority of my pictures, I think, are of women.  Don't know how that happened, really.  Beats me.  But I'm sure. . . well. . . we will eventually see.  

But today. . . in the spirit of old hillbilly and redneck bikers, let's play something apropos.