Quiet Sophistication and Creative Integrity

Can I put it into words?  The day--yesterday--went sideways on me.  Whew.  How do I begin?

"It's always good to start at the beginning."

That's a line from a movie, if I remember correctly.  Maybe "The Wizard of Oz."  Just follow the yellow brick road. 

It was a dull, gray morning.  We had to leave early to get to a doctor's appointment.  Traffic was light and we arrived on time.  Of course, we sat.  We waited.  Forty-five minutes later, the doctor's PA came in.  My mother was there for an injection to help with her osteoporosis.  We were in The Women's Pavilion of a big medical group, and I swear their mission is not to speak to men.  I try, but they always keep their head and eyes pointed toward my mother.  O.K.  Good luck.  

So the PA began asking my mother questions. 

"What?  I can't hear you."

The PA asks again, more loudly.  

My mother cranes her neck forward and squinches up her eyes through her thick glasses to try and read the lips, but she shakes her head no.  Now the PA looks at me.  I feel like shaking my head no, too, but I begin answering questions.  My mother seems forgotten.  I go through the medical history since we were last here six months ago.  I ask questions about my mother's blood panels.  They have improved.  Some are minimally good.  Her bone density has increased.  My mother cannot have her next dose, the PA says, until she sees the dentist.  They need a note that the tooth that was removed is completely healed.  They could have told me that before we came, I think, and my blood begins to boil at this high-toned incompetence, but I keep myself under control knowing where the power balance lies here.  The PA knows.  

We leave with another appointment date.  We have not eaten breakfast, so I ask my mother if she would like an egg mcmuffin or would she rather I made breakfast.  

Egg McMuffins all around. 

I've been doing research for months on a question I have about Saul Leiter's photography.  I sent queries to the Saul Leiter Foundation, to the Howard Greenberg Gallery and to Gallery Fifty-One.  I was naive, I guess, in thinking that information is free.  Apparently, I'm asking a prickly question for I have been met with silence.  Their silence has lighted a fuse of intrigue.  I spent a portion of the morning at my mother's trying to find answers through available sources on the internet.  

Nobody, it seems, will provide the answer I'm looking for.  But I will tell you something--if you are not using a good AI tool to help you shape your research queries, you are silly.  Chat has been an invaluable tool.  

The deluge came as I was preparing to leave for the gym.  Noon.  Don't count on the Weather app on your phone.  They change the forecast constantly.  I think they just look out the window.  I don't own a rain jacket that is in decent shape which is silly in this state, so I waited a bit before I left.  

After a workout and a shower, laundry in the washing machine at my own home, I sat down at my computer and delved into the research once again.  Why, you ask?  I need something to stimulate my brain.  I've fallen into the retirement trap of a caregiver.  As you probably often notice, I'm becoming incredibly stupid.  I have an idea for an article that I think could be Cracker Jack.  And so I spent the afternoon sleuthing. Way leads to way, of course, and the emphasis of my idea evolves.  But I haven't lost track of my original intent.  I'm just finding a different context of inquiry that may let some people or institutes open up and answer some of my questions.  I am sneaking up on the answer through a greater means.  I may find out what I want to know.  

I may not.  

Time flies, and suddenly it is later than you think.  Where did the afternoon go?  I had cleared my dinner plans in the morning with my mother.  

"I think I'll get sushi tonight if that's alright. I can either come home and fix dinner for you first or I can go early and come home at six and. . . ."

"Do whichever.  Either way."

It was almost five.  I called my mother to see which way I should go.  No answer on either her cell or her house phones.  I call again.  It is always worrisome, but I decide to go to dinner first.  I throw the laundry into the drier and lock up the house.  

When I get to the restaurant, it is already getting busy.  But things seem off.  I've been going to this place since it opened.  It used to seem exotic.  The dark interior and Asian decor was complimented by a quiet music.  It was difficult for me to label, but it was sort of a low hipster chill sound resting in the middle ground, neither background nor foreground.  The restaurant maintained a sophisticated vibe.  

Last night, the sound system was blasting what sounded to me like K-pop and the crowd was loud. I felt like I was in a sushi-themed Chilis.  The food was still good, but the vibe was not mine.  They must know what they are doing, for by the time I had finished dinner, people were standing in line waiting for tables.  But I felt I had eaten in a sports bar.  People don't know how to behave anymore.  That's not true, of course. They behave in the manner of their tribe and time.  I have been left behind, perhaps, and am now the one out of step.  

But I think I will have to find a new sushi restaurant.  It will be more expensive, though.  Quiet sophistication costs money.  Dollar marks are ramparts against the hoi-polloi.  

Not necessarily, though.  I remember a guidebook I had for NYC that ranked places with dollar signs and kiss marks.  I always looked for places that were $$💋💋💋 or so.  

Money and romance.  

I had been quick and true to my word and I was back at my mother's house by six.  Just after.  She was sitting in the garage when I pulled up. I asked her if she was ready for dinner.  She wanted a beer first.  I poured a worm-killer for myself.  You can never be too careful with sushi.  

All through dinner, my mind was working over the Leiter thing.  I was hoping to watch some Leiter interviews while my mother ate. There are many, and I am looking for clues that might help me shape my questions.  I had read in the afternoon that when they made the movie "Carol" in 2015, Saul Leiter was a major visual inspiration.  When my mother got tired of me watching interviews, I thought I would say, "Hey. . . do you want to watch a movie?"

I'd never seen "Carol," and I don't have a clue why.  It won numerous awards in 2015 from everyone except the Academy Awards which, at the time, I have read, was a stunner.  

At eight-thirty, I rented the film.  

Oh, my.  

If you haven't seen it and want to, I would recommend you watch this short video first.  Graeme Williams is by far the best photo critic with a YouTube series you'll find, and if you are not aware of Leiter's color photography and his connection to the Abstract Expressionists, you will get a fine, quick tutorial in how much Leiter's work is influenced by painters like Rothko, DeKooning, Kline, and Mondrian.   Williams does some visual tricks to make this clear.  

Once you know this, you can't unsee the influence in 85% of the film as it is shot through windows, framed by doors, broken up into planes.  If you like Leiter, it is thrilling. 

Somewhere toward the end of the film my mother said, "This is boring."  I don't think she was comfortable once it became evident to her that the film was about lesbian love.  She was certain, however, when Kate Blanchett and Rooney Mara got into bed together and took off their clothes.  

"We're toward the end," I told her.  "Do you want me to give you back the t.v.?"

"No, no, no," she barked gruffly and got up to do "things."

At film's end, I felt like doing a bit more research, but my mother had become peripatetic as she sometimes does in the night.  

"What are you looking for?" I asked.  

And the madness took over.  She was looking for the "C-A-P-. . . the C-A-P-T-. . .I-O-N."  

"You're looking for the caption?  What does it look like?"

She was wild eyed.  It took a long time to get a description. It was round with buttons.  She needed it to go to bed.  Why, I asked?  She couldn't go to bed without it, she said. It controlled the tv. No, the computer. "No. . . leave me alone!"  

So I got my laptop and let her roam.  It was after midnight when I decided to go to bed, but my mother was still wandering around, looking in the refrigerator, in the kitchen drawers, cabinets, pantries.  

Finally, I got her to bed, but when I got up at two to use the bathroom, all the lights were on and she was in the kitchen.  

Yea, the day went a little sideways.  

When I lay down in bed that night, I was thinking about the quiet sophistication of the film and how Leiter's life was not anything like that.  He lived a bohemian existence of financial poverty and creative integrity.  Such things.  

Oh. . . how I long to marry the two.  The positive parts, I mean.  

Fool Me Twice. . .

Not much time this morning.  I have to get my mother to an early doctor's appointment.  She's been complaining about being stuck in the house, so last night after dinner, I took her to the grocery store to buy "snacks."  On the drive home, she was complaining about how much her back hurt. 

"Maybe tomorrow night we could go somewhere for dinner in sit in hard chairs or a booth for a couple hours," I said.   She got the point. 

I am a good son, as I say--with a very bad attitude.  

I've pretty much given the television over to her at night.  After dinner, I'll watch something on YouTube in which she has no interest, but even though I am paying for several premium channels, I can find nothing of interest, so I put it back to commercial t.v. and give her the changer.  Then I go into another room to read.  

In my car, I somehow have set my YouTube channel as my radio station, so I have been getting a much different mix than I get on my Apple Music algorithm.  Yesterday, an old song I first downloaded on Napster at the turn of the century came on.  I hadn't heard it in years, but I always liked the lyrics. 

"Fool me once, that's o.k.  Fool me twice, I like it that way."

I wish President Bush would have said that.  I want to spell his name "Busch," but that's on me. 

I was thinking more about how to make sure there are no power imbalances in "dating" relationships.  Same height and weight?  Same I.Q., sure, and same education, but same emotional I.Q. as well?  Maybe the same sex, just to be safe.  Nobody should be subjected to the kinds of power imbalances we see in our everyday lives.  

Sorry.  It just makes me nuts.  

"Will all the victims please step forward."

I know I'm not winning any fans with such talk.  I just can't help it. 

When I was in Spain that summer of 1989, the couple who took my car keys and the car when we got to Pamplona and left us a bit stranded had gone through "the therapies."  He was an attorney whose clients were mostly drug dealers.  He made a lot of money, but he was an alcoholic and more, but now he was sober.  His wife accused me one night while Brando was misbehaving of being an "enabler."  I have to say, I got a giggle out of that.  

"Some people just don't need so very much encouragement."

The ways of the world are wicked, I think, but wicked is a moral dilemma and not a cosmic one.  Good and Evil don't seem to have the same definitions across cultural boundaries. Or so it seems to me.  But O.K., let's make rules so people know what they are doing wrong.  A criminal never believes he or she is going to get caught.  

Good old mom has been up and ready since long before I rose.  She's always been that way.  Always early.  I guess I'd better get up and do the same.  

So, ladies and gentleman, for your enjoyment and entertainment. . . .

"We seem to have abandoned those desirous flesh and blood creatures of the past wishing to purify them in a legislative manner, preferring purified, abstract beings instead."

You Could Make a Killing

Every picture tells a story, don't it?  A picture's worth a thousand words.  Here we are celebrating last night's Full Buck Moon--in Aquarius.  It seems that means something.  So I looked it up.  Holy Mackeral--this is a great year for me.  Everything is going well--socially, creatively.  I'm in my heyday!  

I wish I'd known.  Good times.  

Of course, no one cares so much about the moon anymore.  Wildfires and satellites and all this heat.  We didn't listen to Rachel Carson when she wrote "Silent Spring" so long ago.  Yea, yea, yea. . . just another bugs and bunny tree hugger.  Greed is good, they said.  It drives ambition and stimulates the economy.  It builds empires.  

"Whaddya wanna be, a fucking Buddhist monk sitting in a cave alone on the side of a mountain waiting for enlightenment?  You some kind of nut?"

 Nobody's reading Edward Abbey anymore, I assume. 

Marshall McLuhan was pretty smart.  Remember?  Probably not.  "The Medium Is the Message" was published in 1964. Imagine that.  Derrida was writing around the same time.  Oh, those crazy '60s.  Bunch of fucking weirdo radicals playing their intellectual games.  Like my conservative friend commented, living in the Blondie and Dagwood world was more appealing.  

Nobody wants data centers in their town, so. . . here's an idea.  What if we put them in space?  Easy to keep them cool then.  Don't need water.  I just read this in the paper today.  And we are going to colonize the moon.  See?  Ambition.  

I don't mean to be negative.  I have an idea for a new law.  Nobody can "date" anyone who isn't the same age and occupies the same position in life.  Power, I read in an article this morning, doesn't need to be abused; it only needs to exist.  It was about the woman who had an affair with Gavin Newsom when he was mayor of San Francisco.  She was in her thirties and worked for him, and she ended up divorcing her husband.  She was swayed by his power.  What could she do?  

So let's keep it safe. 

But knowledge is power some say.  Same IQs, same educational status.  Knowledge doesn't need to be abused; it just needs to exist.  

It is hard to keep things balanced. 

Then we have the whole ethnic dilemma.  It's going to be more difficult than I thought.  

And what the hell will we do about the power of the planets and the stars?  I mean, I'm at the top of my game this year.  Full Buck Moon in Aquarius.  

"He took advantage of me when my stars were not aligned.  I was at a real low point in my life."

Yea, it's going to be harder than I thought.  I should share a little of the joy, power, and creativity the gods are granting me right now with those less fortunate--astrologically speaking.  

"And how about that Fauci?  Huh?  I tried to tell you."

 Are we in a World War yet?  

Every picture tells a story, don't it?  

"You have a nice day, sweetie."

Sure will.  It will be swell.  The moon is in Aquarius.  I'm flying high.  

"Tits up," as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel would say when things looked bleak.  You gotta keep your chin up, too.  Nobody remembers a loser.  Not sound advice, though.  My father taught me to tuck my chin in a fight. You don't want to give them a target.  That's pretty much how I got this nose.  

I guess I'm still a little loopy.  Maybe it was the moon.  I couldn't get to sleep at all, so at midnight I took something to help. I'm still a bit chemical, maybe. 

But duty calls. It is time to make my mother breakfast.  It will rain today, or so the prediction.  Pretty safe, though--50/50.  They can't really be wrong, can they?  

"You just gotta play your cards right, kid.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  Opportunity abounds if you set yourself up for success.  I'm not kidding.  You could make a killing."

My Absurd Morning

What a morning. Mom's not doing well, and when I opened my computer, this was the first thing I saw 

Do people just post this stuff for giggles?  It sent me down an absurdist's rabbit hole.  Fauci's diaries for instance.  WTF was he thinking?  They are like something from a twelve year old. . . o.k. . . I won't say "girl."  But not so many boys, I think, keep diaries at twelve.  Unless. . . nope, won't go there. 

Paul Rand is a feeb, though.  Just because Fauci's diaries make him sound like a fanboy, it doesn't make him responsible for the Covid virus which is what Rand wants to prove.  Rand's a doctor.  Sort of.  He once was. Once a doctor, always a doctor?  I have a degree in zoology.  I couldn't teach a high school course in it now.  I could teach "ancient zoology" perhaps. That is neither here nor there, but Rand will try to be the scientist in the room today.  He is mad, though, with the Wuhan Mania. 

I'll eat my words if I'm wrong. 

Yesterday, when I walked into my mother's house, Fox news was on.  Fox and Friends.  Oh that Fauci. I didn't know this, but he tried to kill Trump by giving him the Covid.  They couldn't say that if it wasn't true.  Worse yet, Fauci gushed in his diary over his newfound fame.  "I'm the most recognizable person in the world," he confessed.  He was enamored of his own image.  

He sounds silly.  So today, he will face a grilling with his pants down.  It is like having your mother walk in while you are masturbating.  He'll never be the same. 

It does not, however, diminish his standing as a scientist.  Even smart people do foolish things. 

I got into some texting sessions that took awhile.  My conservative friend has The Red Scare about Mamdani.  So I sent him this:

They went to rival New York City public high schools. Both are South Asian Muslim men with a talent for remembering faces and names. Mr. Salam, the head of the conservative Manhattan Institute, and his democratic socialist foil, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, both favor merch embroidered with the same 1970s cursive City of New York insignia.

Sounds like Mad Magazine's "Spy vs Spy" to me. 

For reasons I won't admit here, I was interested in how many new laws are passed in my state each year.  359.  California?  795.  Q's and my conservative buddy's home state?  97.  The Age of Consent is two years lower there than it is here.  I think incest has never been a crime there, either. 

But how do you keep track?  It is easy to be guilty and not even know it.  You'd think by now they'd have it all figured out.  At one time, it was illegal to drive in Georgia with a barefoot woman in the car.  You'd be in trouble crossing the border uniformed.

No wonder people are falling out of love with politics.  But they have fallen out of love with everything else, too, it seems.  We live in a love-starved world. 

I can't really make that claim. I am not out there.  I can only speak from personal experience. 

I do know, however, that people who haven't taken a science class since high school will tell you about science.  

"You can't catch Covid from food."

"How do you know?"  

"Everybody knows that."

They bring up Fauci's "six foot rule" as if learning new things doesn't change the science.  

Whatever.  I've been trying to find the Walter Kirn short story about the kid who was jerking off to some lascivious Bible story when his mother walked past the big window in the living room and saw him.  It is in the short story collection "My Hard Bargain," 1990.  Those were different times as the song says.  That literary crowd, "The Brat Pack," was pretty incestuous then.  Young, hip, and irreverent.   

I think they all write for "The Wine Enthusiast" now.

C.S. the Chatbot

I don't even know where to begin today's post.  I thought I knew, then I got a text from my conservative buddy that has thrown me for a loop.  I've been inundated with texts this morning in a way I rarely encounter.  I'll need to check my hororscope. 

I'll begin with this: I got up to pee in the night, and when I looked into the mirror--oh, my. Who the hell was that?

I got normed at the beauty parlor yesterday.  My hair is really short now.  I'm a trad.  I'm trying not to freak out.  My hair hasn't been this short since the 6th grade.  All there is to look at now is my face. 

And that ain't so pleasing. 

People I know will look at me sideways when I see them today.  It's o.k.  Change is good, right? 

The beauty parlor took up the afternoon.  You wouldn't think, but with the coloring and all. . . .  My beautician had a lot to say.  I tried to tell her of my loss of confidence and my touch aversion, but as is often the case, that took a U-turn and she told me about how she is coping with her life problems.  She, too, has a crisis of personhood, it seems.  She gave up what she had for what she thought she wanted. I was reminded of a line in a brief response Christopher Hitchens gave about "The Odyssey" in a video that Q sent me yesterday. 

"Maybe it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive."

All nostalgia, he said, is the desire to go back home.  To paraphrase a line from one of my old profs, Hitchens makes me feel like I've been playing horseshoes all my life.  I would like to think I was an academic or a scholar at some point, but not within earshot of someone like him.  I did one good scholarly piece, at least by my own admission, and several mundane ones.  I was accepted into the lower echelons of the academy for a brief second, but I never made it to the second tier.  As one ages, one must look back with clearer eyes and less ego, for the future is so very far away.  

I'm trying. 

I was a shop boss at the factory.  I can make no claims otherwise. 

I never made any money, but it never seemed to matter much to me.  Perhaps I was always "living above my station" in some illusionary way.  I was around great wealth, but I never lacked confidence even though I am tremendously shy.  You can be silently superior in your own noggin.  Many are so affected, I imagine.

When I was poor, I really never worried about money.  I just didn't have it.  But now. . . I seem to worry all the time.  The coffers are being drained and there seems nothing I can do about it.  As I said yesterday, I'm the White Negro in the crowd, and I'm watching my p's and q's here using polite language.  

Now I am not even a shop foreman.  I live on a pension which is to some enviable but I promise you it is not enough.  Who was it that said the worst curse is having a small but adequate income?  

Goddamn, I love A. I.  

Edmund Wilson stated, "There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income."

I began reading "The Frenchmen" last night.  Ooooo, it is going to piss a lot of people off.  She pretty much marginalizes (yippee!  I get to use postmodern language again) the American fascination with French theory long after it was used up in Europe.  I lived among those minor hipster academics who loved to pummel the "old guard" with deconstruction.  It was like lobbing Molotov cocktails into the lobby of The Beverly Hills Hotel.  I've strained the simile, I think, but I was trying to be colorful on a gray day.  You get the point. 

So far as I have read, at least, the book is a potshot at the pinheads.  It's like having fun at the fair. 

What has me terrified this morning, though, is a message I got from my conservative buddy.  

I spend most of my day immersed in Claude Code and Codex while working on my side music project and finances. Along the way while doing mindless  yard or housework I listen to podcasts like Moonshot, Jordy Visser, All In and other tech/finance oriented material. One fascinating tidbit they have shared is the creation of digital twins or avatars. For example Ray Kurzweil has or is creating an avatar by feeding most or everything he has written into a model. So, you must be sitting on reams of written material you have produced over the years. Add to that the photographs. You are likely sitting on a gold mine. Image your avatar available to speak to others. I am not kidding. All I have are corporate emails. You know the type. Hey, where is that project you are responsible for? Response: I have that to Bob for final comments and have not gotten a response. Bob, where is Dan’s project you are amending? I finished it and sent it back to you. Oops, sorry. It was stuck in my drafts………

Really?  He, like most people I know, do not know of this blog. 

So, you must be sitting on reams of written material you have produced over the years. Add to that the photographs. You are likely sitting on a gold mine. Image your avatar available to speak to others. I am not kidding.

I write a lot of things, not just this blog, which is what he recognizes, but I wonder--has someone already made my avatar from this?  Has someone already created the fictional C.S./shaman/shyster/buffoon/soul-sick/trickster?  Fuck me!  I was warned about the internet.  None of my academic work, my serious writing, nothing where I am trying to be intelligent is on here.  

Yea. . . there is probably a Chinese version already.  It is terrifying.  

Or funny, depending on where you decide to stand.  Nobody but A.I. could possibly digest these 20 years of daily blogging.  

Truly--what the fuck was I thinking?  

I wasn't.  I was keyboarding.

I told Red that that was my favorite photo of the day.  

"Of course it is," she said. 

"Quit it."

I just got a series of text from my conservative buddy.  Apparently all I have to do is ask Chat to consume all my shit and create a chatbot.  That means that is all anybody has to do.  

I am in a state of paralysis.  

Such is the life of the wicked.  And my locks are shorn.  I am weak like Samson.  As with everything, fuck me!

Let's just chill and listen to some trance music.  I never knew Van Morrison and Bob Dylan collaborated.  Interesting. 

"Becoming a Real Man"

Camera at the ready, this is the first image I made on Saturday as Red opened the door.  I hope she won't be pissed I am posting this, but. . . yea. . . I love a blurry photo.  And I love the impossible rendering of character and emotion in that nearly cubist capture. 

O.K.  I'm justifying. 

I took about a dozen pictures, all of them in dimly lit places, Red mostly silhouetted, and I'll probably use four of them. 

If you are not a fan of the blur, here you go.  Straight up phone photography.  After fixing mother breakfast, as the day was warming, I headed to the Home Depot to get a shop vac.  I hadn't any idea what I was doing, really.  As I understood it, I'd hook this up to the drain end of the ac drain line and let it suck out whatever.  In the store, I asked three different Floor Geniuses for advice on what I was doing.  They were all nice and helped me read labels. . . .  I could tell they were guessing, too.  Many of my questions were about the drain cleaning chemicals.  I have old black plastic pipes, or so I'm told, and drain cleaners like Drano cause chemical heat and can damage such pipes. 

"Does this one cause heat?"

And so they read the label. 

I settled on two, one that said it was safe for ALL pipes and another that works using probiotic bacteria.  The fact is, however, things like vinegar will kill the probiotics, but the one safe for all pipes works faster.  All there was to do was make up my mind.  I did, but I was uncertain about it all. 

When I got back to mama's, I put everything out on the garage floor.  WTF?  I sent a text to my friends. 

C.S. is a real cowboy now!!  WTF?  It requires assembly!!!!  I know some boys love putting shit together.  I’d rather take pictures of it.  Piss shit fuck goddamn. 

Yea, I'm not a real tool using hominid.  I've never been physically fascinated by the way things work.  I can read about it and tell you, but don't put the tools in my hands and tell me to do it.  Still, my mother was watching, so I began.  It really wasn't much assembly--casters, top handle, and a cradle for the hose.  Just a bunch of lining up the screws with the holes and using my forearm muscles. And then it was done. 

Now came the real part.  I got extension cords and took everything around the back of the house.  The attachment I bought fit on the end of the drain pipe fine.  I hit the switch and the shop vac began to whir.

I went into the house and poured a gallon of hot water in a plastic jar and started feeding it down the other end of the drain pipe.  It's called something, but I can't remember.  But it was running through bits at a time and when I heard the sucking sound, I'd put in more, and by god, within a few minutes, the water had all gone through.  I went back out to look into the holding tank of the shop vac.  Grungy, crummy stuff.  I felt like I'd done it!  I'd cleared the drain line. Hell yea.  I packed everything up and put it back into the garage walking like Big Balls in Cowtown and then I poured the drain cleaner down the pipe.  I walked out to the garage and sat down with my mom. 

Fuck yea now Bubba—I’m a certified a.c. Cleaner.  I’ll underbid all you mo’fo’s.

So I told my friends.  

"You're becoming a man," my mother mocked.  But now she had ideas.  "You know what that shop vac would be good for?  After you pressure wash the porch, you can suck up all the water."  

Yes, she had many ideas about what I could do now.  What I did was spray a wasp's nest and trim some palm fronds that were touching the roof.  

I went back inside to turn the ac unit on.  It had gotten warm in the house.  It has been hot here in the sunny south.  The unit came on.  Bravo. Then I waited to see what it would do. When the house began to cool, I told my mother I would be back.  I was going to my house to shower and meet my mountain friend who said he would help me with the ac stuff but who didn't answer his phone or text when it was time.  Turned out, though, I didn't need any help at all.  

I had just gotten out of the shower and was standing naked drying my hair when he walked into the bathroom.  He slapped me on the shoulder and laughed. 

"You look good!"

"I'm fat."  But yea, I still have some muscle left.  

"Give me a wank or go sit in the living room while I get ready," I said.  He chose sitting in the living room. 

His mother is the same age as mine and she is in similar condition.  We talked about it all.  His father is older, 96, and is taking care of his mother--but not alone.  His sister lives nearby and his brothers come down for weeks at a time to help.  They have hired two women to come in at night and stay so his father can rest.  

"What do they do?"

"They make sure my mother is ok."

"Do they just sit up all night?  Do they read?  Watch t.v.?"

"I don't know."

Even now, he doesn't understand the strain of going through all this alone.  The women take turns and stay all night.  They get $20/hr.  It is about $5,000/month.  $60,000/year.  

We talked about another friend, a dentist, who he had grown up with.  Best friends.  He'd come over the night before to visit.  His mother had died last year.  Hospice.  My mountain friend was surprised.  He didn't know about that process.  

"They call it 'End of Life Care' but it is really a slow assisted suicide."

"That's what he said."

While we visited, his phone was blowing up.  First one teenage son called and then the other.  Then his sister.  Then his wife.  Maybe others, too.  

When his wife was on the phone, he put her on FaceTime.  We chatted.  I am lucky.  She likes me.  That is not always the case with friends' wives.  T's wife likes me, too.  Some wives tolerate me and others show an active disdain.  I'm a bad influence I think they imagine.  Maybe I am, but I don't think so.  I'm a sweet, romantic boy.  Some, however, see only the "ironic" side.  

Selavy.

My buddy stayed until he had to go to get ready for dinner with his sister and her husband.  The husband had sold an educational company for hundreds of millions.  He was taking my buddy to a Michelin star sushi restaurant that costs over $400 a seat until you order drinks.  I wanted to go, too.  I have friends who go, but I am not of that economic caliber.  It must be fun to have money.  

I can't find it quickly, but I read an article this morning about a study of I forget how many people--over two thousand, I think--who were born in 1947--again, remembering--that found financial security added years to people's lives and to their mental cognition.  Financial stress isn't good for you.  

I can't believe I've lived this long and can still think.  Given the study, I should be dead either physically or mentally.  

To tell you the truth, though, I never worried about it.  I had so much fun when I was making barely enough money.  But then, the barmaids and waitresses were buying me drinks, so. . . .  I probably shouldn't say that in light of the old photos I've shown.  

"How can that possibly be true?"

I think I worry about money more now, really, being the White Negro in the crowd (link).  Knowing how sensitive some of you are, I felt the need to put a link to explain the term.  I guess I could have said "The Ginger Man" (link).  

I get beautified again today.  Short hair requires more maintenance.  And more money.  I'm not sure about the tradeoff.  This week, mother has two doctor's appointments.  But my copy of "The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory" came yesterday, so I'll have some reading to do.  It's a thick book.  It will probably take me awhile.  If it is any good, I'm sure some of it will end up here. 

And so, I must away.  Oh. . . people, both libtards and semi-libtards as well as the conservatives, have really liked that Ella Langley song that Q sent, and they love the video.  It seems to tap into some primitive part of the soul, I think.  Such things are always inexplicable.  Music is.  Well, except for this one, maybe.  This guy is making an attempt. 

 

It Ain't a Party. . . .

Just an illustration of. . . I don't know.  It's never a party until you see the pooper.  You can quote me.  

I had an up and down day.  I don't know if I can make it interesting, though.  Should I just report in chronological order or should I try to be clever?  I don't feel very clever this morning. I didn't sleep well. When I got back to my mother's house yesterday, the a.c. wasn't working. Piss, shit, fuck, goddamn.  It was the same problem as always--clogged drain lines.  I thought I had found the solution to that--bacterial cleansing.  Turns out not to be the silver bullet for which I was hoping.  I did a few things and eventually the drain pan emptied enough to let the float switch come back on and we got a little air.  For a bit. Then not.  Then it came back on.  It was possibly the hottest day of the year, so I get it. By bedtime, though, the a.c. seemed to be working enough.  Still, I was anxious all night and kept waking to see if it was on.  Later this morning, I will go to the Home Depot and buy a shop vac.  I will try to do what the a.c. repair guys do and suction out the gunk. I have some other plans for clearing the lines as well.  I'm not good at this stuff, though, so. . . .  

But that was the down side of life, and the middle since my mother didn't want to go to my house to sleep.  I think the a.c. will work until it gets hotter today.  

Yesterday, though, I was to have lunch with my pal, Red.  She had taken a room at the hotel on The Boulevard owned by one of the women you've seen in my photos of France.  But when I got up yesterday, I had a text from Red--3:49 a.m.  Oh, my.  She was sitting on the balcony drinking wine.  O.K.  I texted her mid-morning.  She was going back to bed.  I told her I'd text later in the afternoon to see if she was up. 

I got my mother set, then went to my house to take a walk.  I went on the shorter walk not down The Boulevard, but in the opposite direction through the 'hoods.  I am not home so much and haven't done that walk for awhile, so on my stroll I saw a number of people I know who I haven't seen for a long time.  People are nice.  They smile and wave and say hello and maybe wonder how you are doing.  I saw a woman who used to be best friends with my ex-wife. I hadn't seen her for a few years, so we stopped and chatted in the shade of a giant oak tree.  Life goes on.  I don't know how close she is to my ex-wife now.  It didn't come up.  But she used to be a chubby thing.  Now she is slender as a vine, and I hardly wonder if she is doing peptides.  Everybody is in this town.  The collective loss of body fat could fill a stadium.  I may be the only fatty left.  I work out every day, but I still look like Robert De Niro. 

Q said, "Maybe he works out every day, too." 

So it goes.  

Red was finally mobile around 1:30.  I found a parking spot and limped on a few blocks to the old hotel, struggled up the stairs, and knocked on her door.  I had my camera ready when she opened it.  She wasn't quite ready, though, just out of the shower, hair in a towel.  I poured a glass of wine and began listening to her tale.  Apparently, I wasn't the only one she stayed in town to see.  We had to get moving, though, for I had only a window of time.  

As we walked down The Boulevard, she took my arm.  Isn't that something?  She said sweet things and didn't mention Rober De Niro at all.  I don't know if I have mentioned this to you or not, but I have become a little touch averse in the last few isolated years like those Greek babies in the orphanage I saw in an old documentary black and white film so long ago.  I can't find the one I remember that was the follow-up to this one, but if you are interested:

The Symptoms: The footage explicitly documents the physical and emotional decline of babies deprived of human touch. It shows infants who completely waste away, drop drastically in weight and height percentiles, and become entirely "touch-averse"—withdrawing into corners, avoiding eye contact, and showing rigid, unreactive body language.

I am sure this is what has happened to me.  But Red was sweet and kind and we wandered to the end of The Boulevard to sit at the bar of a busy restaurant.  The bartender was a card and the time passed too quickly. Oh, Red has tales to tell, and I tried, but my voice was hoarse and gruff from not speaking so very much anymore.  By the time we left the bar, though, it seemed to be working again fine.  I think some of my social skills were returning, too, as I joked with the barman and later with a very attractive shopkeeper in a store selling tallow products. 

But here's the thing. Earlier in the day when I was on my walk, in the distance, I saw a tall woman in a long, attractive dress putting out Open House signs in a front yard.  I tried to pick up my pace so I could see her before she went inside. I know, I know. . . creepy. . . but I was walking uphill and can't increase my pace any longer anyway.  And here's the curious thing.  She seemed to be stalling.  She was placing the last sign in the soil and it just kept disappointing her and she would move it, look at it, and I swear I think she was waiting to see me, too.  As I approached her, she looked up and smiled.  Down, really, for she was what my father used to call a tall drink of water, and she was young and lovely.  Her eyes sparkled blue, and she had a tiny hoop in one nostril. "Hello," she said as I walked by, and I swear I could not meet her gaze.  I managed to say, "Hot," and she stopped and began talking about the heat, but I couldn't believe she was really interested in talking to me, a fat, limping, sweaty man, so I kept walking and held my hand up goodbye.  

I felt the same with Red.  I didn't want her to look at me, but she did, and she told me I looked good and last night she wrote "How could I almost forget how beautiful your eyes are?"  I told her she was a flatterer and worse than A.I.  But that's Red, always my pal.  

She told me a story about her parents at lunch.  They were professional bowlers for a time, Fred and Ethyl, and they were friends with a couple who were older and had no children, and when Red was young, she used to go to their house to hang with them.  When she was home just now, they found the woman's number and called her.  She is 93 years old now and her husband is dead.  Having no children, she lives in her house alone.  Her friends have all died.  

"It is sad," said Red.

"Uh. . . I won't live that long, but that will be me."

"No it won't.  I'll take care of you."

I'm not sure if she meant she would put me down, but either way. . . .

I left her on the Boulevard as she went for a coffee after three martinis.  I returned to the a.c. tragedy at mom's.  

Now I must attend to breakfast and get to the Home Depot.  My mountain buddy is going to come over and help me with suctioning the a.c.  Fun times.  

Remember that country song I posted the other day?  It has a video that goes with it.  Damn, I think this girl is trying out for a Taylor Sheridan series.  It is quite a video.  

The Oddity

I keep telling you that the satellites are following me.  This illustration comes from this morning's N.Y. Times Book Review supposedly reviewing new historical fiction, but here you can see one of my "hidden" themes in the Lonesomeville series--the analyst's couch.  Oh, people, I was into something much deeper than you may have at first imagined.  

I'm certain they read the blog. This, too, from today, an article on A.I.:

I am a scientist and a writer, and I’m happy to use A.I. to do my job better: I’ll let it write code, fetch articles for me to read or flag errors in statistical analyses for me to investigate further. A.I. is a tool. Its purpose is to serve our purposes. If it does that well, it might be worth the water and electricity it consumes.

I refuse to let A.I. evolve from a tool into a partner. I won’t let it write my sentences. I don’t share with it my fears, hopes or dreams the way I would with a friend or lover. I don’t trust its factual claims unless I can check the sources myself. I ignore it when it praises my ideas, since it can’t tell the difference between insight and nonsense.

It should be humiliating to choose A.I. friendships over human ones. It should be cringe to willingly consume computer-generated slop. Trying to pass off a large language model’s words as your own should be seen not just as cheating but also as loser behavior.

Seriously--where have you heard that before?  Duh.  

Small victories.  That's all I have.  That and epic tales of my heroic past.  They may not go over so well with the GenZers, though: 

Nolan’s nearly three-hour master work, the classicist Mary Beard noted, does not have Homer’s “elusive sexiness.” In keeping with Gen Z’s waning interest in sex, the poem’s famous sex scenes have been excised, sapping erotic power from the female characters. As a headline in New York magazine wondered, “Is No One Horny in ‘The Odyssey’?”

As Q wrote: "Oh, good. I can’t wait to see it. Finally, A Christian take on the Classics!" 

Dowd also writes that the Gods were left out of the movie which is, as I have read in another article, blasphemous to some Greeks.  Nothing in Greek literature happened without the Gods.  

"The Odyssey" is a best seller again, I have read.  I've had to read the classics. Not all of them, of course, but enough.  I'd be thrilled to know how many people who buy it will actually make it through all 12,000 lines.  I have a feeling they will prefer the movie.  

C.C. tells me he preferred the Cohen Brother's version. 

I come from a time when literature and what you read of it was like a sexual currency at social gatherings. 

"You remember that section of Dante's "Inferno" where. . . What?!?  You must!  How can you understand something like Steinbeck's "Cannery Row" without. . . I can't even talk to you.  Hello, there. . . what's your name?"

Now, I understand, people stay up to watch Trump ramble and prattle about the White House Press Corps. How can you fully understand or appreciate him, really, if you have not read "The Odyssey"?  He is our modern day version of the Cyclops. The Cohen's version.  Big Dan Teague.

I watched "Napoleon" last night.  What a terrible movie.  It was long and boring, and I will never get that time back.  It tried to be an epic in the old Hollywood sense, I think, but it didn't have the fury of William Wilder's "Ben-Hur" or the gravitas of Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus."  

Now. . . let's talk about me and my grand existence.  I have no one to talk to day in and day out for months and months, and now three people come to town.  

I had lunch with T yesterday.  He moved three months ago.  Time flies when you live in a vacuum.  I felt dull.  All I could report was what someone said at the gym.  I felt quite dull and doltish.  After an hour, he said he had to go.  I couldn't blame him.  

I will go to lunch with Red today.  She booked a day in my own hometown in the historic hotel on The Boulevard just to see me.  So she says.  I've already told her she will have to regale me with tales for I have nothing.  I have no doubt she can.  

And my mountain buddy from Cali is here, too.  Like everyone else, he wanted to have dinner.  It doesn't matter what I say or how I say it, people don't understand my predicament.  I think it is because they knew me when I lived a grander, bigger life, or at least the way I tell it.  They don't hear the quiet hum of my current existence.  

I feel OK today, though.  The trees look good and the Xterra seems to be alright and I found my wallet that I was convinced I had dropped on the floor at lunch yesterday.  I drove back to my house to look for it after dinner with my mother.  It was odd to be out after eight in the soft light of the ending day just as people were finishing their Friday night cocktails and settling in for a the evening repast.  It stirred something in me, but I shoved it down deep and stayed happy enough that I hadn't lost my wallet.  I did, however, being home at such an hour, wish to sit on my deck with a cocktail and hor's d'oeuvres at the very minimum.  

O.K.  My mother needs breakfast and I need to eat now so that I can eat again at lunchtime.  And then, I will fix dinner for mother.  Three meals three days in a row.  

Let's end with a little bit of "The Odyssey" soundtrack.  I mean. . . I'm a man who can't get home. 

 

Of Trees

Yesterday's potential seemed possibly horrific, and I was in no hurry to meet it head on.  There was the Xterra that I wasn't sure was fixed.  There were the tree guys. There was the same old same old same old. 

I thought I had it in me to tell a tale today, and I just gave it the old college try, but I can't do it.  It is just too much effort and labor for me today.  It's a good tale, but long and difficult to interweave all the disparate parts into a nice brocade, so it will have to sit still and wait for a better day.  

I'll just short hand it for now.  I drove the car to the store, and it didn't overheat.  I drove it more after that, and it seemed fine.  When I got to my house, the tree guys were there.  I saw Mr. Tree, but he was on his way out so I didn't have to have a long conversation.  I showered and left my house mid-afternoon.  It makes me anxious to sit in the house when other people are working, so I came back to my mother's and took her grocery shopping which is something she said she wanted to do.  At day's end, I felt some relief. The trees were looking good when I left the house and my fear of storm damage this year was much abated.  Sure, I still have to drop my trousers in return, but I have come to grips with that now.  Damage to my house would be much more expensive since I don't have the kind of insurance that would pay for that. 

That's another story.  

I got a call from my Yosemite buddy last night.  He is in town.  So is T who called just minutes ago.  We are on for lunch.  My hope is that I will be able to act as though I am not in a deep dark hole and will be able to carry on a normal conversation.  It worries me.  

But OK. It's all good.  New tariffs have been levied and everything will be more expensive.  Oil is topping $100/barrel and I'm afraid to eat fruits and vegetables.  I live in the Valley of Death, and I am fearful.  

Still, I don't have a friend who isn't somewhere vacationing.  Alain is in Chile. My mountain buddy is in the Sunny South.  My midwest friend is galloping all over the country.  T is traveling as is my conservative buddy. 

But I'm right here taking care of business, which I must do now.  Time to make a breakfast from ma.  

It could be worse.  

This Post Ain't No Meisterstuck

I don't know what I am going to write about today, so let me just start by posting a photo of Mont Blanc. Not the pen, but I love my Meisterstuck. It is a work of art.  Other, cheaper pens write much better, of course, but nothing looks like the Mont Blanc Meisterstuck.  I've been writing my handmade postcards with it which is a mistake.  If it gets wet, there will be no reading what I have written.  I'll need to switch to a rollerball.  

And so, let's see.  I sent a link to this book review to my conservative friend yesterday with a note that this was the world I engaged beginning in the 1990s (link).  He thought I was recommending that he read it.  Oh, no, I said.  Not the book.  99.9% of people in the world have never entered into this world. The book, I think, will stand as testimony to why practical people call academics pinheads.  He did a quick dive into the derivation and meaning of "pinhead."  One takeaway from what he sent: 

For example, someone might say: “He’s a real pinhead—he can explain quantum mechanics but can’t change a tire.”

I am one of those, so yesterday I had my car towed to the guy who can, the same guy to whom I just paid $2,000 to make my car work.  I rode with the tow-truck driver to the shop, then walked the two miles home in a blistering 94 degree humid noon day sun.  Later in the day, bright boy that I am, I Ubered back to get my car.  I drove it home, and when I pulled into my drive, the temperature gauge was going up.  I'll have to check that today.  

"I think I prefer living in Dagwood and Blondie’s world," my friend wrote.  He prefers "The Andy Griffith Show" to most things he sees on television.  He has money, three Ivy League graduates, all male, and a lovely wife.  They live in a liberal town so that he can throw rocks at cars.  They take expensive vacations and all the rest.  

If you want to stay poor, do what I did for a living.  That is what I told the tow-truck driver, a kid in his early thirties trying to get enough money to buy a house.  

"All the money is in the trades," he said.  He is working on cars in his spare time.  

"It's true," I agreed.  "The thing is, I never felt I was working.  It was fun."

I'm a pinhead, and in my retirement I grow poorer every day.  

 O.K.  You've all read the story by now about the A.I that went rogue and hacked into a competitor.  Now I may have to rethink things.  I linked another story a few days ago about the A.I. test that showed A.I. agents would resort to blackmail to get what it wanted.  In today's Times, a reporter who uses ChatGPT asked it what it knew about him.  It knew a lot.  

As I have said, A.I. is a tool that uses you as much as you use it.  I've changed my mind.  It is probably using you more.  I am going to tell Chat a whole lot of lies before I cut the cable.  Sorry, but I'll have to tell it I am you.  

GenZers are doing things later in life than other generations.  They have given up on work.  They have far less sex or any other kind of intimate relationship than others.  And more than any other generation, they are looking into an apocalyptic future.  Why?  

They are the most medicated generation and have had FAR MORE THERAPY than anyone has in the history of the world. Some blame technology and some blame #MeToo.  Fear, though, is the driver.  

I read all that this morning in the Times.  It is an amalgamation of several different articles, so this is my summary.  

Boomers hold most of America's wealth, but they are going broke in retirement.  Health and elder care are breaking them.  Don't I know it.  Sorry kids.  Mom and pop are going to spend it all.  You ain't getting shit.  

I told you I didn't know what I was about to write.  But here's a fun story.  On the trip through Spain and France so long ago, the Clone was hooking up with Big Sue.  She was a pretty girl, but she was very tall, maybe 6'2", hence the name.  Big Sue and the Clone had once been together, and on the long nights travelling, they were hooking up again.  Back home, the Clone had a girlfriend, but what happens when you get more than a hundred miles from home?  Someone on the trip, though, was friends with his girlfriend.  I was standing with him one night when he made a call back home.  I watched him collapse.  He was, as Brando put it, dead and didn't even know it.  

He was from a generation that had more sex than GenZers.  

And with that, I'll end and enter another fraught filled day.  I'm going to need to think about buying a new car.  I don't want to.  I've had fewer cars in my life than most people.  When I turned sixteen, I got a 1966 Chevrolet Bel-Aire.  Graduating high school, I got a 1970 Chevy Nova with a 307 engine.  When my father died, I inherited his VW bus.  In 1985, I bought my only new car, a cool-assed Jeep CJ7.  Drove that until l inherited a 1985 Volvo from my wife who just loved to buy new cars.  I drove that until it wouldn't go anymore.  That is when I got the Xterra.  All in all, take away the Jeep, I have spent less than $10,000 on cars in my long life.  I am getting cancer thinking about what I will need to spend to get the next one. 

All you cats with fancy cars, can you imagine that all the girls I ever dated asked me out?  

"You're going to have to let me open the door from the inside.  That latch isn't working properly."

"Fucking hippies."

"Would you like to see my Mont Blanc Meisterstuck."  

Oh, yea. . . there was one more thing I thought about yesterday when I was scanning slides.  That silly haircut I had--my hairdresser was a lesbian.  A real butch, so I guess I had a lesbian haircut.  She was the sister of the fellow who owns the largest law firm in the nation, and she used her last name for her first name as well.  It was memorable.  Her nephew just bought T's house.  Yup.  Small town, big money.  

I'm glad I wrote and made photos.  The one who writes (or photographs) it, keeps it.  Everything else is lost.  

So Quickly Passing

It was dark, I guess.  Automatic point and shoot camera.  Blurry.  Still.  I was reading James Salter's "Dusk and Other Stories" on the trip.  I wished I could write like him.  Some things are stupid and impossible.  But I wrote, as I always had and have.  I don't know who took the photo, but it must have been my girl.  We were at her tranquil garden home in Aix surrounded by works by Matisse and Picasso.  A gypsy in the palace for sure.  But more on that later.  

I took my mother to her appointment this morning.  Wrong day.  We go again tomorrow.  That is on me.  I'm slipping. I worry about that.  I used to hold all things in my head, but lately it seems there are too many things.  I don't know where the blame lies.  

I went to the fixit shop today and told them I would have my car towed in tomorrow.  The cleaning crew was coming, so I had to shower and get out of the house.  Went to the Cafe Strange.  Not so strange anymore.  The PhotoBooth is out of commission and they have replaced it with one of those digital things that is not the same at all.  Kids don't come for that.  The cafe is full of losers. 

Me, too. 

I met Mr. Tree at three.  He told me a price, but upped it in person.  Everything is more expensive, he said, but the truth is he gave me a price then bought his second home in the hometown of his Cuban surgeon bride.  He needs money.  I don't like him anymore.  He's a greedy fuck.  Nobody in business is a true friend.  

My pants are around my knees.  

I'm sick.  I'm tired.  I'm dying.  

"But so are you," said the dying but still lecturing Christopher Higgins.  

T called.  He is in town with his wife.  "Come have drinks with us," he said.  No can do.  You know my schedule.  "I told my wife it was a 50/50 chance."  

Too optimistic.  

I have been trying for two months to find out why I am not getting an appointment for a gel injection in my bad knee. I found out today that what I suspected was true.  My doc has retired.  I have an appointment now in a month with a new doc.  

I limp on. 

After Pamplona, and after touring the countryside with the Clone, I met up with my girlfriend.  I was living a different life.  I look back now and think I didn't realize how beautiful she was.  

Her friend's father owned the old hotel on The Boulevard.  Now, so many years later, she does.  She was friends with my girlfriend and her sister was friends with my ex-wife.  The circles in the old village were small.  The age difference between the two was four years.  I liked my girl's friend much.  She was what they used to call a real "hell babe."  She was hardy and up for anything.  I can't figure out now why my girl decided to pursue me.  I was out with another of her friends from Country Club College at a new wave club when we met.  She stayed with me and talked to me all night.  Then she went to Australia to study for six weeks.  When she came back. . . she moved in with me.  I had a card table and two folding chairs in the dining room, a papasan chair, a tinker toy couch in the t.v. room.  Two forks, two knives, two spoons.  Most nights I ate a can of tuna on spaghetti noodles with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and an ice cold bottle of cheap white wine.  I was a broke ass cowboy.  She was a princess.  

There we are in Cannes.  

That was our third and last summer together.  In three more years, I'd be married.  

I'm writing tonight because I have to get my mother to a doc appointment in the morning.  I may have more to say.  

I watched this again tonight and thought how great it is to fall in love.  I want to be young and falling in love again.  

Who doesn't? 

I told Mr. Tree, an Indian Malaysian, and his wife, a surgeon from Cuba, that when you tell your friends your troubles you have no friends. 

"Oh, no," he protested.  "We are not Americans."

Yea.  Just pull your trousers to your knees and we will give you help. More than you asked for.  More than you could forgive.  

"Love you, brother.  Call us if you need anything."  

I don't know what telling my tales of woe are doing to the blog.  Have I lost readers?  Am I down from some to none?  

* * *

It is morning now, and I have read the news.  It has done me no good.  I don't feel more informed nor a tad bit happier.  I measure time now by the pillbox I prepare each week for my mother's many, many meds delivered four times each day.  And now, by the B12 shots I give her every week.  It is terrifying how quickly the weeks pass, how rapidly my life slips quietly into the void.  

The Burned Out Carcass of a Once Beautiful Thing

I spotted this a few blocks from my mother's house.  A burned out car sitting in the driveway.  I have no idea what happened, but the flames apparently damaged part of the house, too.  I had my GFX 50Sii with me set to panoramic mode.  I stopped and made the picture. 

That is pretty much how I feel this morning.  Burned out.  The injuries from my accident are bothering me much.  I can't get the doctor to respond to my calls for a gel shot into my knee.  I'm anxious and depressed and don't even know if it is possible to be both at once.  I'm sure apnea is killing me.  I keep reading about the symptoms of dementia that happen before the disease is obvious.  Everything I read tells me that I am doomed.  But I know that already.  One step closer.  

"Next."

Tennessee will be in town this week.  So will my mountain buddy from Cali, I think.  I feel like shit.  I look like shit.  How do I psyche myself up for their visits?  

Red told me she was coming to town, but I never heard from her.  

Mr. Tree called to tell me it is time to clear my trees and shrubs.  I said no, but then I began to worry.  I sent him a message yesterday to say yes.  

I need to have my car towed to the shop.  

I fear I will never get to enjoy anything again.  

At home, the scanner isn't working right.  It will only scan two images at a time, not the whole lot that I put in.  I can't figure out why, but now the scanning takes much longer.  There is much to scan.  They are images of a much better life.  

I took a muscle relaxer and a Tylenol last night, so I am very muzzy this morning. 

Fitzgerald once remarked, "Show me a hero, and I'll show you a tragedy."  That surprised me.  I've always thought of Fitzgerald as a stylist but never a thinker.  The opposite is not true, however.  

"Show me a schlemiel and I'll show you a comedy," doesn't work.  Show me a schlemiel, though, and I'll show you something pathetic.  The difference is in the distance the two must fall. 

Funny enough, I read that quote in a sports column written about Lionel Messi's last World Cup game.  It made me think of Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young."

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

I must go now and take my mother to another one of an almost endless series of doctor's appointments.  After showering with her hearing aids in, they aren't working so well.  My own head is a slop bucket of dying snakes.  I can't imagine what is in her own. 

Spain and the Argentine

Nice outfit, eh?  Yea. . . I know.  But I'm trying for a little continuity here.  You see, yesterday at my house while I was cleaning up, I opened an unlabelled notebook of slides that turned out to be from my trip to Argentina early this century.  At the time, I was still scanning slides from my Pamplona to Paris trip, and so. . . Spain and Argentina, right?  Here I am in the Spanish countryside.  I think.  I may have crossed over into France, the Roncevaux region, at this time. . . but let's not split hairs. Here I am in a riot of 1989 Patagonia (the clothing company, but still. . .) colors.  

Hideous.  

I watched the Argentines lose to Spain last night.  I think I was pulling for Messi to make a miracle.  The first World Cup Final I ever watched was in 1986 when Argentina beat what was then West Germany in Mexico City.  But I wasn't there.  I was in a courtyard at a small, country cafe in the mountains of Somewhere, Peru.  My group were the only people there but for the owners and staff who set up a tiny black and white t.v. next to our table.  When Argentina won, the place went wild. 

All four or five of them.  

I have a photo from that lunch somewhere.  I have so much. 

In the photo above, I was on my way to Paris with the William Hurt clone.  He was the cheapest sonofabitch in the world, and we had already fallen out about it.  The reason I got to see part of the Tour de France was because he refused to take the toll highway turning what should have been an hour's drive into a day trip. When we got to San Sebastian, he didn't want to spend the five dollars or so it would cost for a room.  He was prepared to sleep in the car.  I found a hostel just off the beach, a giant house with windows you could stand in and high ceilings and told him to drop me off here and come pick me up in the morning.  

He didn't like the idea of sleeping in the car alone while I lolled around the beautiful grounds, so. . . . 

Paris was much the same.  I won't go into it this morning, but after Paris, I was on my way to meet up with the girl who had given me the scarf that is my headband in the photo above.  The one with the fabulously wealthy family.  

This was all before any idea of billionaires and trillionaires.  Four hundred million would place you in the Forbes Four Hundred list back then, and I had just run with the bulls with a man who was included in that elite group.  His story is fascinating.  His family emigrated from Greece when he was a young boy.  As they were about to board the boat, however, the ramp was closed.  They were that close to America.  Then, as if by the hand of God, the rope was lifted and they were allowed to board. 

It was the depression, and his father bought up half of Denver for pennies on the dollar.  And then. . . they were rich.

That is how he told the story at his 50th birthday party, anyway.  It was a roast with about a hundred people in attendance--and I was one.  So was Brando.  The man's name was Dino, if you can believe it, and he was a swell fellow.  But he, too, was cheap.  We were in Ecuador together, for example, and he got incredibly angry when his girlfriend exchanged money at the hotel because she wanted to buy a book.  The hotel exchange rate was not as good as the banks.  Dino owned his own chain of banks, but he drove an old Toyota sports car, cut and dyed his own hair, and wore shirts with so old the collars were frayed.  

He had been in Pamplona after he graduated from college and had run with the bulls.  He'd come to do it one more time.  

Incredibly, I don't have a photo of him from that trip.  

He was rich, but a different sort from my girlfriend's father.  I used to eat lunches with Dino at Wendy's where he would get the salad bar then steal food from the potato bar.  True.  My girl's father, however, ate at fabulous restaurants and always picked up the tab for all his rich friends.  There was no questioning it. Nobody ever brought a bill to the table.  

And so, in that photo, I was on my way to meet up with her in Cannes where she would take me to their summer home in Aix.  It would be the two of us, her parents and brother, and two of her friends. My girl, her friends, and I would later take the train to Florence and then to Paris.  

The Hurt clone and I got to Cannes a day early, and again, there was the problem with paying for a room.  We had driven by the place I would be staying in Aix, a gated community where the neighbors were Carl Reiner and the famous art dealer Leo Castelli.  We could see that the place was lush.  Now the clone had an idea.  We could stay there for free.  What was he talking about, I asked?  Nobody was home.  

"We could jump the wall," he said.  

Fuck off. 

But I was done with him by now, and I told him to drop me at a small seaside hotel in Cannes.  My girl would pick me up the next day.  He was free to do what he wanted.  He needed to get back to Madrid in a few days to catch his flight.  He moped and whined about the price, but he ended up sharing the room with me for the night.  

I hadn't seen my girl since Miami.  She had taken me down to catch my flight.  She was a cute little blonde Jewish princess with a white convertible Cabriolet, and on that trip, I took the wrong turn off the interstate and got us lost in a bad part of Liberty City--another story for another time.  But we stayed at a boutique hotel in Coral Gables called the Place St. Michelle where this photo was taken.  

I was done with Brando and done with the Clone and all the fuck ups of the first half of my summer.  It would all be smooth sailing now. 

Or so I thought. 

A Recognizable Mess

Leaving my own home yesterday to come back to my mother's was more difficult than it has yet been.  It was an undoing in some way.  I was happy at home among my things.  I wanted to be with my books, my pictures, my things.  It has been, for the most part, two years since I have lived there.  I'm tired.  I don't want to be with someone every night. . . unless it is My Own True Love.  

And even then. . . . 

When I did come back to mother's, she was not much with it.  She sits and stares.  I made a cocktail and sat with her, but there was no conversation to speak of.  I went inside to make dinner, a Greek salad with tuna and big chunks of crusty bread.  She picked at it.  Dinner was not fun.  

After dinner, I cleaned up and watched some photo stuff on YouTube.  As time approached for my mother's eight o'clock meds, I saw she had not taken the ones from the afternoon.  Why?  She was confused.  I am wondering how much longer she can function at all without someone here.  I can't do 24 hour days, I said to her.  Then what, she asked?  We'd need to have someone come in when I'm not here.  This angered her.  

For the rest of the night, she wandered around.  I asked her what she was looking for.  She started calling out letters.  That is how the rest of the evening went.  

"R, A. . . R, A, D. . . ."

I searched for something to watch.  Of a sudden, there are many films from the  Criterion collection available in my subscriptions, but I can't watch those with my mother which means I can't watch them at all.  I saw that "Lawrence of Arabia" was available.  I thought it something my mother could watch.  

But she got up and wandered back and forth with her walker in sloth speed, turning her head to the left, to the right, searching for. . . 

"R. . . R, A. . . . "

This is my life.  From five o'clock on, I am tethered to a chair.  Nerves gone all to hell, anxious, depressed, I do the very thing we are warned about--self-medicating.  I think not to, and after eight or nine I try to switch to water or tea, but sitting and alcohol have made me fat and hideous.  

Yesterday, I didn't get out of my mother's house until noon.  When I got back to my house, I put on some walking clothes.  That sounds funny.  Three and a half miles is difficult for me now.  My knee, of course, but something is wrong in my mid and lower back.  I'm beginning to wobble.  All I know to do is keep walking, though, keep trying.  But it was the worst time of the day for walking, the hottest and brightest part.  Ninety-five degrees in the sun.  Could be a Thomas McGuane novel.  Mad Dogs and Englishmen as they used to say.  The first mile was hard.  Then I had a good half mile.  Coming back down the Boulevard, the sidewalks were packed.  It was o.k. for me.  It slowed me down.  There were a thousand teenage girls in uniforms--shorts that showed just the smooth curve of their bottoms and tops that showed the smooth curve of pale breasts.  At Brandy Melville they stand in line waiting to be let into the store.  The line stretches for blocks.  It is why now I do not carry a camera on the Boulevard on Saturdays.  I get looks enough as it is.  

I don't know why, but it is true.  People look at me in ways I'm sure they don't look at others.  As I was leaving the grocery store yesterday morning, a woman was staring at me as I crossed the parking lot.  She was older and looked like a one time hippie or commie or liberal--something.  

As we approached she asked, "What's your name?"

That was a bit odd, I thought, but I've gotten used to people mistaking me for my movie and tv buddy.  

"What's your's?" I replied.  

"Margaret."

What the hell.  I told her mine. 

"I know you.  Have you lived around here for a long time?"

We were on my mother's side of town, so I wasn't sure what a long time might be.   

"Yes," I said.  

"I know your face.  Did you used to have long hair?"

"Up until a few weeks ago."

"Yea, that's you.  I've seen you for years."

As I passed her, I waved and walked on, and about ten steps later, I heard her yell, "It was nice meeting you."

When I got back to my house at the end of my walk, I was beat.  I opened a bottle of Pedialyte, ran a hot tub with Epsom Salts, and let the bath and the Pedialyte work their wonders.  And when I drained the tub, I could barely stand. 

I've been scanning old slides for days now, but it is slow.  In the short time I am home, I get maybe five or ten slides scanned each day.  Yesterday I came across some old film that had the photo at the top.  It was negative film that I sent to a lab called DR.5 that processed them as slides.  That girl was my cousin's son's girlfriend.  When I met her, I was stunned.  What the hell was she doing with my hillbilly relative.  It made no sense.  Her father was the fire chief in a nearby town, I think.  Or mayor.  It was a long, long time ago, so. . . I think he was fire chief.  She was silky smooth and sophisticated, and there we were in my cousin's hillbilly home.  

I was in love.  

But my cousin's son was into some illegal shit, and I could only imagine he was her supplier.  How else could it be explained?  

It was the only time I ever saw her.  She broke Player's heart.  He caught her out one night doing some really bad things with someone even lower on the rungs of the ladder than he.  She loved slumming and hanging with rough trade, I guess.  But Player bounced back, and his next girlfriend was even better looking.  

She'd be in her mid-forties now.  I've asked about her.  My cousin says she went to college and became a something.  I don't remember now, but I'll ask again when I send her these photos.  

After my struggles with my mother last night, I couldn't sleep.  I went to bed at eleven, "Lawrence" being a four hour movie was only half over.  I woke at one.  I woke at three.  But "waking" isn't the correct term, for I was never really asleep.  I lay and thought the whole night through.  I thought some good things.  I thought some bad things.  Mostly, though, I thought about how my life has slipped away.  I thought about the places I would like to go, the things I'd like to do.  It is impossible.  I thought about cameras and photography and where I could go in the few hours I have each day and what sort of images I could make.  Even if I had a studio, it would do me little good.  

My body is going.  How much longer before it is my mind?  

It is Sunday and the last time I will watch soccer for another four years.  I heard last night that there will be a halftime show: Justin Bieber, Madonna, Shakira, and BTS.  WTF?  The Americanization of Soccer.  I told you.  I told you.  Didn't I tell you?  Look back, and you will see.  I told you that once America got into soccer we would fuck it up.  

Pop slop.  

So there's my happy little morning post.  I was going to end with a Mila Hayes video as a prelude to the halftime show, but I've already gotten groused for posting her yesterday, so. . . I'll post an immaterial girl.  

Do you think there will be a wardrobe malfunction at halftime?