I Like the People in This Photograph

I want to write a bit about this photograph and about "agency," but just before I came to post, I read this, and, holy shit, I just have to share.  

Thursday, however, took things to a new level in Milan Cortina — ski jumpers allegedly injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid in order to fly that little bit further.

Injecting the penis with acid would increase its size and give the ski jumpers bigger genitalia at the point their suits are measured by 3D scanners.

Temporarily enhanced measurements would theoretically mean athletes being given a bigger, looser suit and, like a sail catching wind, could allow them to make longer jumps. Research from the scientific journal, Frontiers, published last October said that a 2cm change in a suit represented an extra 5.8 metres in the length of a jump.

 Christ. . . what next?  I'm thinking. . . before my next date. . . . 

Ha!  I've been waiting a long time for my next date.  Does hyaluronic acid go bad?  And once injected, how long does it last?  This is the same stuff I get shot into my bad knee every six months.  Could one have a big old pecker for. . . whatever.  

Back in the day, before Viagra, there was an older gay man who trained at the gym, a fellow whose wealthy partner had died and left him everything.  He had gone hog wild.  He was flamboyant and drove around town in a little Mercedes convertible.  He liked the younger men.  To wit: he used a vascular drug that he injected into his penis.  When he told us, I flipped.  How in the fuck could he stand sticking a needle into his penis?  But, he said, he would stay hard all night long much to the amazement of his young concubines.  

I once read that African tribes did something called jelqing from an early age.  Perhaps the idea of this came from watching Black kids. . . anyway. . . . 

There is sure to be a hyaluronic acid craze now.  

One last thing--I use it on my face after every shower.  Now it feels a little gross.  

O.K. Onward.  That is a photo from the Cafe Strange.  Cafe Life writ large.  I love going to this place as you don't see anything else like this anywhere in town.  If you want to be a freak and feel the love. . . this is your place.  

But. . . and I will get to my point. . . should I be taking such photographs?  Is it a criminal act?  Is it immoral?  Am I an exploiter?  Am I guilty of objectification?  Should I have asked permission?  

These are all the rage over street photography now.  Many people want to make taking photos in public places illegal.  With the invention of Google Glasses, though, I don't see how that will ever be possible.  In my own hometown, there are cameras everywhere.  You can't prank your neighbor without being posted on Nextdoor or the like.  Everything on the Boulevard is monitored by cameras.  You must be ready at all times, for every moment is your Hollywood moment.  Do something wrong and your image will be all over t.v.  

So, this brings me back to my confusion over the subject/object distinction.  Let me clarify how philosophers make the distinction.  The subject has "agency," meaning it is cognizant, is motivated, is thinking, etc.  The object, on the other hand, does not have agency; for example, my toaster.  So, simply put, I am somehow taking away people's agency by photographing them if you agree with the argument.  I have, essentially, turned them into toasters.  

However. . . to say this about my actions is to objectify me.  In the same manner, you have taken away my agency.  You objectify everyone and everything about which you communicate.  You objectify "the photographer."  

Maybe.  As I admitted in another post, this relationship has always confused me.  

One of my colleagues at the factory wrote his dissertation on animal representation in 18th and 19th century literature.  He was a feminist and applied much of the theory to the depiction of animals.  His argument was about agency.  Animals were objectified and thusly abused.  

It makes me wonder about the subject/object representation in Christian mythology.  Adam and Eve were given agency, then punished for choosing to use it.  Of course an all-knowing God would have predicted that.  And thus, they were punished and forced to live with the knowledge of their own deaths and the deaths of all those who came after them.  

Cool, right?  

Where the fuck is the agency in that?  

I will confess, I hate the fucking term.  It was all the rage with the Woke faction at the factory.  But everytime they denounced someone or their action, I felt they had objectified them, had, in essence, categorized them and stolen the very thing they wanted to promote.  

As I often said aloud, "You can't perform the theory."

Which brings me to A.I.  

Moltbook.  

What is intelligence and how does it develop?  A.I. is problematizing the discussion.  And so some are pivoting a bit.  Feelings are really what agency is all about.  Maybe.  Much of the brain, you see, is not about consciousness but is responsible for monitoring what is going on in the body, such things, as I read this morning, regulating blood gases.  Yea, the brain isn't simply an organ responsible for thinking and cognition.  But feelings, it is proposed, were an evolutionary necessity when, in the given example, the brain recognizes it is both hungry and tired.  Choices must be made, and so. . .  

As I read this, I could only hear that little voice in my head that says, "Nobody gives a fuck about how you feel."  

Which is not true.  Your therapist does, right?  

"How did you feel when you first realized. . . ?"

Television is full of emoting.  So many statements now begin with, "Personally. . . ."

Personhood.  Agency.  Computers may be smart, but can they feel? 

I take pictures of toasters, too.  I've taken thousands of photos of inanimate objects.  But really. . . wouldn't you rather see a photo of some guy jelqing on a street corner as the crowd walks by?  Sure, one may be aesthetically pleasing, but the other has much more meaning.  

Of course, we all want to know how you "feel" about the survivors and the victims.  But you need more information, right?  All of it.  

If A.I. can create a moral universe. . . you know, a systematic hierarchy of values like Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, but better. . . . 

I guess I need to work on how I feel about that.  

What I feel right now watching my mother suffer is that life is a giant shit show no matter what we do.  

For the rest of it. . . just watch the news.  If it ain't objectifying, I don't know anything about any of this at all.  

So there you go Susan Sontag.  They say you were really something when you wrote "On Photography."  You are often quoted.  And oft photographed, too.  But I'm guessing the next topic should be about "consent."  

And, of course, how long it is good for. . . how long it lasts. 

Such Is Life

Delete.  Delete.  Delete. 

I won't share more miserable narrative though that is all I have as life experience just now.  That and the evening meal, the evening's drink.  I made good pho last night.  Soups are always good, aren't they?  Exhausted (and maybe a bit in my cups), I fell asleep sitting up on the couch last night.  I woke to the very end of a PBS documentary on Broadway--"And so the musical is the uniquely American contribution to cinema."  

Oh how I abhor a musical.  

It was 11:30.  I'd had my feet stretched out on the ottoman and my bad knee was crying.  This morning, I went back in my Youtube history to see what all I'd slept through.  Wow!  Two documentaries, two and a half hours.  I'd fallen asleep at nine.  

The weather now is lovely, and I would love nothing more than to enjoy the day, but I will have to go back to the hospital and share my mother's misery.  It is a nonstop, constant complaint now with the no longer silent plea for me not to leave.  This, I believe, will continue for many more years.  Other than her brain and bones and bowels and bladder, her organs are healthy.  

There is nothing to do but envy the young.  

I will leave it at that today.  It is the weekend.  You have the Olympics, the Super Bowl.  I don't have cable, so if I want to see Bad Bunny, I'll have to go to my mother's.  It would be my first time hearing him.  Him, right?  

The world is full of hardship and misery, but we argue over trivial things.  There may be thunder and lightning, but it is the pebble that has somehow found its way into our sock that masters our attention.  

Such is life.  

Genius

I love this image.  It is a rarely seen photograph by Garry Winogrand.  You have to have been there and then to make a photograph like this.  I don't live in such a place.  I don't.  Where I live, there are no such scenes.  I look at it with awe and wonder.  

Could I make an image like this with A.I.?

Without a doubt.  

Like Tiki culture, like Hollywood, I can make images and videos of things that never existed.  Total fiction.  Make believe.  Fascinating and beautiful.  

I have tried to do in my life all the things I made believe doing when I was a child.  I have done most of it, and it has shaped me.  There was adventure and romance.  By and large, it has been wonderful.  

But I think I had just as much fun pretending.  

A.I. is make believe.  It is pretend.  If they would take the fucking guardrails off, it might be endless.  

So. . . is that really a Winogrand image at the top, or did I make it up in A.I.?

I once "hand painted" a famous Sarah Moon photograph that I loved using Photoshop.  It turned out wonderfully.  Now it circulates on the internet as a Sarah Moon photograph.  It scares me sometimes.  I think I will get sued.  

I've been watching lectures by Richard Feynman on YouTube.  Funny guy.  How'd he get to be so smart?  

Some people just are.  A college in the northern states, I was just told, is advertising two faculty positions at present, one in English and one in Physics.  The starting salary for the physics prof is $150,000/year.  For the English prof?  $56,000.    

I'm pretty sure the music and art professor positions don't approach the physics professor pay, either.  

After watching Feymman, I watched a documentary on Edith Wharton, after which I watched one on Tolstoy.  Each started out life with more money than a physics prof by far.  

Wharton's and Tolstoy's accomplishments couldn't be much more dissimilar, I think, but both shared something with Feymman and the great composers and great painters in history.  They were all Jewish. 

I kid.  

They all had tremendous imaginations.  But. . . and here's my point. . . they then expressed those imaginations in captivating, and dare I say, "magical" ways.  If you get past the idea that mathematics is about numbers, it is scary in its beauty, but even numbers are abstractions when place together in certain ways, in formulas and theories, are are awe inspiring.  

The same, I think, is true of the abstractions of words, and notes and colors on canvas.  Everybody can do it, of course, but the way Wharton put words together evoked such thought, such feeling. . . . Bach placing one note after another. . . that we all have the same emotional response to the sequence. . . Cezanne's daubs of color next to another. . . etc.  

The common reader, looker, or listener thinks it and feels it without wondering why.  The critic tries to look more closely and explain how the effect is achieved.  But even there, of course, the attempt falls short, for if they could truly explain it, we could all do it.  

Nope.  It is all "magic."

There are lots of musicians, artists, writers, doctors and lawyers and Indian Chiefs. . . . 

But as someone once said, "God made many artists but not so very much art."  Something like that.  

OK.  So I wanted to write away from the troubles of my days for a moment.  The city put up new street lights on my street.  Not just my street.  They have done it all over town.  Every block or two, a new, stylish, old fashioned street lamp cast its puddle of light.  I was afraid that they would put one up that would shine in my windows, in my bedroom windows, and keep me up at night.  They were digging the hole in my yard when I left to go see my mother in the hospital late yesterday afternoon.  When I got home, it and several more were up. 

And they are lovely.  Or, at least, they are not going to keep my up at night.  I am at the point in life where I try not to get upset about the things I can do nothing about but cry and complain.  In truth, I'd already determined that if the street lamp was a problem, I would get a ladder and spray paint the side that was bothering me.  Much easier than fighting City Hall.  

Let me tell you another way to solve the problem.  Not saying I did this, but. . . get some of the spray adhesive and spray it on an offending light. Slowly, over time, dust and dirt will stick to it, and it will grow imperceivable dimmer and dimmer.  

Or, here's a fun one.  Spray paint a wall with it saying whatever you want.  Anything at all.  Ever so slowly, the words will emerge, first faintly, and then. . . . 

I would never do that, though.  Especially not now.  

But a stencil of the face of Jesus really freaks people out as it slowly emerges over the days and weeks.  

So now for the update.  They did my mother's MRI on Wednesday night.  I was in her room when young Cock Robin in his doctor's coat came in to report what we already knew.  

"Now a neurosurgeon will come up to see if you are a candidate for surgery."

All day yesterday, nobody ever came.  She is still not scheduled for surgery.  She has now been in that shitty room for a week.  They've known about the collapsed vertebra since she went to the E.R.  If she doesn't have surgery today, she won't have it until next week. . . BECAUSE. . . the I.R. department, part of the neurosurgical wing, doesn't work on weekends.  

And so my mother lies miserably in wait.  

She wants to go home.  That's the plan. 

And so, my life, even now, is one of a constant service.  I won't bore you with the details.  Not today, anyway.  

I haven't cooked a meal all week.  I don't think I will.  I had a Poke Bowl from Fresh Market last night for dinner.  I put a can of garbanzo beans in with it.  Ten dollars.  If I cooked, it would have been more.  I would have had a lot of leftovers that would have sat in the fridge until I threw them away.  

Oh . . . when they brought my mother's lunch yesterday, it was, in part, a turkey and cheese sandwich.  It was cold and windy and wet outside, and when I left the hospital, I thought I wanted a hot roast beef sandwich.  Maybe a French dip.  But you know what?  Ain't no place in town serving roast beef anymore but for one popular, old place that I do not like.  I find their sandwiches reminiscent of Arby's.  So I went to my buddy's place on the Boulevard and ordered a hot duck sandwich.  Holy Moly. . . man alive. . . such a delicious sandwich, especially on a cold winter's day.  

Went back to see my mother at five.  Ate, drank, and fell asleep on the couch.  I think I spilled the last sips of my tea.  Went to bed near midnight.  

Yep.  Life at home.  I'm back. . . for how long I can't be sure.  But for now. . . .

Home Alone

There is no ever being content or satisfied, I guess.  I don't know.  I spent the first night back in my own home in a very long time.  This morning I'm writing from the old place with the coffee from my expensive burr grind coffee maker.  And it is odd.  Of course, the coffee maker leaked coffee over the countertop.  And Jesus, my house is cold.  A hundred year old wooden house leaks cold air like a sieve.  All the old problems have not fixed themselves while I've been away.  And I trapped a rat that had decided to watch over the place while I was gone.  

It hadn't done a very good job, so. . . the wages of sin. 

I've cancelled my cable long ago, so I have no access to local, network, or cable news.  I'd gotten used to watching it at my mother's house each night over dinner.  

My house is also much darker than my mother's.  

I don't know if I slept all that well in my own bed last night.  

I guess I've romanticized the heck out of my own home.  And so it goes. 

My mother slouches toward remedies for her miseries at the hospital.  She was supposed to get an MRI yesterday morning, so I held off rushing to there.  Later she called me to complain.  She had not had the MRI.  

"These people don't like me.  They don't talk to me.  They've moved me to a new room.  I can't find my purse.  I don't know whats going on."

"I'm on my way up."

"Good."

When I got to her new room, two of the women from her neighborhood were there.  They had moved my mother, but it was the same shotgun room with one folding chair and no place to stand.  One of the women had found my mother's purse.  It was in the bed with her.  I'd only been there a few minutes when a doctor came in.  Brand new, just out of the box.  A good looking guy like all the young doctors are now, good skin and teeth, trim and athletic, and cocksure.  He began a litany of all the things that could go wrong with tranquilizing my mother for the MRI, telling her that a kyphoplasty had only a 50% chance of helping. He wanted to know if she thought she could manage without the procedure.  They could give her stronger pain meds.  Of course, my mother couldn't hear most of it and couldn't comprehend what she heard.  She kept turning her eyes to me.  I tried to answer for her, but the doc didn't want to hear from me, so he kept pushing her harder.  

"Do I have to decide right now?" she asked. 

"No."  And with that, doc was out the door.  It had been uncomfortable and mom's guest were now in a hurry to go.  

"We'll let you two discuss. . . ."

I walked them out.  When I came back into the room, mom was telling her nurse she would go ahead with the MRI.  

She had just created a delay in everything, I was certain.  When the nurse left, I sat with her.  

"I just peed myself," she said.  The diaper had not held.  "Get somebody."

I went to the nurse's desk and told them, then went back into my mother's room.  

"I'm going to let them clean you up.  I'll be back later."

It was past noon.  I thought about that Capresse sandwich I'd had the day before.  I decided to get another.  

I was wrong about the kind of bread the mozzarella, tomato, and basil was on.  It was ciabatta, not focaccia bread.  I took my sandwich outside to eat.  

It has been the coldest winter on record here, but this day had warmed, the first day in the 60s for awhile.  This is how it is supposed to look this time of year.  If you don't like this, keep voting republican.  Drill, baby, drill. 

But the sandwich wasn't nearly as good as the one the day before.  It seemed that they had forgotten to put the balsamic glaze on it.  But I knew well that you can never have the same experience twice.  I'm simply still a little lost and could think of nothing else to do.  

When I went back to see my mother at five, they still had not taken her for the MRI, but an hour after I got to her room, the "transport team," arrived.  I told my mother I would call her later to see how it went.  

I did, but she didn't answer.  Just before eleven, though, she called me.  She didn't say anything, and I heard someone talking to her.  Then she said, "Siri. . . call my son."  

"Hello mom."

"Here. . .. talk to my son.  Tell him where we are," my mother said in a panic. 

"You're in the hospital," said the voice.  

"Really?  Where were we before?"

The nighttime madness had kicked in.  

When we hung up, I prepared for bed.  Everything was both familiar and strange. 

It is gray and raining this morning in prelude to another cold front.  I must learn how to manage my time.  I'll see my mother for hours, but for the rest of it. . . I need to be more productive.  

The world is changing rapidly.  When I was in college, a book called "Future Shock" was published.  

"The premature arrival of the future."

We hadn't seen nothing, yet.  

Momentary Reprieve

Nope.  This is not an image from the Epstein files.  The fellow who sent it hasn't been mentioned so far as I know.  This is just a group of kids at a party in the basement of a friend's house, kids having fun.  I've forgotten what it is like to laugh ridiculously and have stupid fun.  No, I can still remember laughing until I couldn't breathe, but it has been years now.  Ili and I were like grown up children sometimes.  I remember my mother telling one of her friends, "They do that a lot."  

Ho!

I post this today to get away from the constant moan this has become.  Nothing new happened with my mother yesterday.  She is still lying in a bed in a shitty room.  They did do a heart doppler thing on her and physical therapy people did come and get her up and walking.  And at my insistence, they did clean her, and I gave her a toothbrush and toothpaste.  And I did meet with the Case Manager and an imperious Palliative Care person.  And last night, the form was sent to IR for an MRI that has not yet been scheduled.  So there was some forward movement, but. . . nothing has really changed.  My mother doesn't seem to be in as much pain as before.  Her heart and kidneys are good, and I think it is possible that she will live forever.  

But with her in the hospital, even with the hours I spend there twice a day, somehow my days are not as full.  I have hours now. . . with which I don't remember what to do.  I have done quite a bit of work around my house, and yesterday the cleaning crew came so everything is sparkling.  I unwrapped my palms as the temps were only falling into the mid-30s last night.  

And for three nights now, I have not cooked dinner.  

Yesterday was, in fact, a gastronomical feast.  O.K.  I exaggerate.  But, while my mother was getting the heart doppler thing done, I went to the Lakeside Cafe at the hospital.  It is not the big cafeteria with the sushi, I so stupidly/bravely had one day (surely made from amputated parts) that actually was not horrible, 

but another, much smaller place that serves no flesh at all.  The hospital is a longstanding one.  It has been here since 1907, first opened by the Seventh Day Adventist as a Sanitorium for TB.  Later, it expanded and became a hospital.  When I was a kid growing up here, it was famous, at least among us kids, for having a psych ward.  These were the days of straight jackets, and tales of escaped lunatics were popular among my crowd.  It is the very same hospital in which my father was housed after his automobile accident long, long ago when I was a senior in high school.  But that is another story for some other time.  

Over the years, the hospital has expanded until it is now a behemoth that covers what must be square miles of town.  Last time my mother was there, if you remember the photos, she stayed in one of the newer building with an expansive window that looked out over the distant downtown.  The place was like a hotel suite.  

This time, however, she is in one of the oldest buildings, probably built in the 1970s and never renovated.  

The old building housing the mental ward was only recently torn down.  

Selavy. 

 In earlier times, when my father was there, this Adventist hospital did not serve meat.  Rather, they served soy based meat substitutes developed at the Seventh Day Adventist college, Loma Linda.  All meals were, as promoted by Adventist religion, vegetarian.  And the food was made fresh for every meal, and at the cafeteria, you could get a breakfast, lunch, or dinner for nearly nothing.  

Now, of course, the food service is farmed out and only very unhealthy, horrible meals are prepared, both for patients and visitors.  

Except for this tiny Lakeside Cafe.  It is true to it's Adventist vegetarian roots.  And that is where I decided to eat while my mother was away.  After a long while looking over the meal choices, I decided on a Caprese sandwich--thick slices of Mozzarella cheese and tomato with basil and balsamic on focaccia bread.  

It was the best thing I've eaten out in a loooong while.  OMG, as the kids say.  It was delicious.  When I go back to see my mother today, I'm sure to have another.  

I'd spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon at the hospital, but there was still a lot of day when I left.  I decided to go to Fresh Market and get some of the groceries I needed hoping to pick up one of their prepared meals for dinner.  I love going to Fresh Market, but it is very dangerous, and so after getting a good organic yogurt and a big organic navel orange, oh. . . I bought some sort of buns for the morning.  I perused the prepared meals. Hmmm.  General Tso's Noodle Bistro Comfort Bowl.  Sesame chicken on a bed of spicy noodles and lentils or some kind of bean.  Onward.  I had a yen for champagne when I walked past the wine shop, but I didn't want to spend $60.  Lamarca prosecco is only good for mimosas, I think, but. . . wait.  Lamarca Luminore.  $21.99.  What the hell.  I'd try it.  

Of course no visit to Fresh Market is over until you've toured the giant candy display.  Chocolate peanut caramel cluster.  Yea, yea, yea.  

I took the groceries back to my house and put things in the fridge.  The house was, as I said, sparkling.  I took the sheets I'd wrapped around the palm trunks and put them in the wash.  I looked around.  It was almost three.  What to do?  I couldn't remember.  So, creature of habit. . . .

I sat outside with a decaf latte and wrote in my journal.  The cafe was nearly empty.  I finished writing on the very last page of the journal.  That one was done.  I put it back in my courier bag, took my coffee cup inside, then drove across the street to the liquor store.  

When I got home, it was not quite four.  Again. . . what to do?  I took the prosecco from the freezer, popped the cork, and poured some into a coup glass.  I went to the deck to sit outside.  

Holy smokes!  You can go right ahead and judge me if I am wrong, but that was as tasty a prosecco as I've ever tasted.  It was more than drinkable.  It was--dare I say--quite good.  It had been a very long time since I took a photo of my drink to send around, so I took the picture.

But, sadly. . . I no longer had anyone to whom to send it.  People are not interested in me anymore.  

Such is life.  

I sat with one glass and then another as the temperature began to dip and I began to feel the chill.  

Not quite five.  Fuck it.  I took the General Tso's out of the refrigerator and plated it, covered it, and put it in the microwave.  How long had it been since I'd used the microwave?  I took the plate and the champa. . . uh. . . prosecco. . . to the t.v. room, put it on the wooden tray, and turned on the television.  

I know I've already said it twice, but this was a three "holy smokes" day.  The General Tso's was delicious.  

There I was, in my own home, eating and drinking in the old places.  My head was spinning with distant familiarities.  

Dinner done, I cleaned up.  I washed the glass and serviceware and hit the disposal.  Nope.  It just hummed, gummed up, I guessed, from months of inactivity.  I have a tool somewhere to use under the sink to turn the gears to get it working again.  But I wasn't ready to look for that, to bend and twist under the sink. . . . 

I locked the kitchen door and drove back to the hospital to see my mother.  

I think I might stay at my house tonight.  I will need to tote things back there.  I will need supplies.  And it will be a little weird, I think, but yea. . . I will go back to my house, I think.  I'm afraid to get used to it because I don't know what is coming up, but for the while, I need to be in my own home.  

Everything is weird.  Everything is sad.  But for a moment, there was food and drink and a lovely afternoon.  

Everyone, from time to time, needs a reprieve.  

Even those who don't deserve it.  

Nothing Good Can Ever Last

Every night for three days, the temperature has dropped lower than predicted.  It wasn't supposed to freeze last night.  It did.  Nothing seems to be going right.  

No shit?  

Did I tell you about the E.R, fuck up?  I'm not sure.  My mind is a gumball machine right now.  I had a call from somebody in E.R. on Monday night at nine.  I called back the number the woman had left, but as always, it went straight to a mechanical voice. . . yea, yea. . . I remember writing that yeseterday now.  Here's what I haven't reported.  I called them back at 9:30 yesterday morning, the time they apparently wander in to work.  

"I just wanted to let you know that the X-rays show your mother has a collapsed vertebra."

WTF?!?  This was the X-ray done on Saturday, the day my mother went to the E.R. and the made for t.v. doctor wanted to discharge her without having seen her after mom lay in a bed for four and a half hours.  

But wait--it gets better (worse).  They didn't know my mother was in the hospital.  They hadn't been informed she had been admitted, so. . . "We haven't sent this to her management team.  I will do that now."

What a fucking shit show this has been.  

I sit around my mother's room for hours and only see her nurse.  Yesterday I was told the attending physician was in a meeting with staff until eleven going over the patients' charts, then they would make their rounds.  

"What time?"

I just got a sad shake of the head for an answer.  

So far, I have only seen mom's E.R. doc, and then only because I was. . . "adamant."  Last night, I was told that "tomorrow" mom would have an Interventional Radiation appraisal.  The IR docs are the ones who perform the kyphoplasties.  Meanwhile my mother lies in bed.  We try to talk, but she can't hear me and she keeps falling asleep.  But I am so burnt out, I do, too, sitting up in the little folding chair.  My eyes just go shut and I am gone until my head falls.  

"You look tired," my mother said.  I've looked in the mirror unwillingly.  Yea.  I don't look so good.  I feel myself running down, feel the internal collapse.  

When I left my mother's room last night to go get dinner, I told her I loved her and said I'd see her tomorrow.  

I was hardly out of the parking garage when my phone rang.  It was my mother.  

"I've lost my notes," she said in a panic.  "I don't know how to get out of here.  How do I get out?"

"You are staying there," I told her.  

"I am?  Oh.  I don't have any food.  What am I going to do?"

"They are going to bring you dinner."

"They are?  Oh. . . I'm so confused.  Stay in touch."

Another piece of scaffolding fell inside.  

I went to an "upscale" Mexican place and had "street tacos" and a skinny spicy Margarita.  This place makes the best in town, and I drank it down.  The tacos came, but I could barely eat.  I ordered another Marg.  I let them take my plate away and sat for a bit with the thousand mile stare.  Finally I got up, painfully, and limped slowly to the car.  I felt I could lie down on the sidewalk and go to sleep. 

The tenant texted a photo with the message, "The light is still on."

I was confused.  What light?  Was the my attic light?  I'd been in the attic that day cleaning my a.c. lines.  That wasn't my house.  What the. . . oh. .  . then I got it.  A strange fellow lived in that house with his little dog.  He looked a bit like Gandalf.  He was an artist of some repute who worked for The Big Mouse.  His house sat far back from the road near the canal.  I think the house is probably older than mine.  He lived alone and no one had ever seen a visitor, so who knows how long he lay before his death was noticed.  It is very sad, especially to me who doesn't even have a dog and knows I could suffer a similar fate.  But that was a couple years ago.  Since then, the house has sat empty, the shrubs growing up to obscure it.  Rumors have it that coyotes have taken up residence there.  A contractor down the street looked it up wanting to buy it, but he said it was held in a family trust.  A few months ago, the tenant told me there was a light on in the second story window.  And there it was on again.  It is very odd.  If you were a person who believed in spooks. . . . 

When I walk down the hallway to my mother's hospital room, I see she is on the floor of the dying.  These are all old people who lie in bed unmoving, mouths open.  I don't want to see it anymore.  

My mother wants to know what is going to happen because the case worker was asking her where she would be going when she was discharged.  I told her it depended on how much care she would need.  I have no idea yet.  

I came back to my mother's house because this is where my own meds and supplements are and because there is no food or other necessities in my own cupboards.  My refrigerator has only an onion that has been there forever and packs of film.  I poured a scotch and sat on the couch.  I turned on the television in which I had no interest and fell asleep.  

Another frozen morning.  I will go to the hospital in a little while and see what's gotten fucked up now.  

My response to the tenants text: "I just want to go to sleep forever."

"Don't say that." 

The Horror

I am crumbling.  This seems too much to do alone.  I'm falling. . . falling.  

5:00 a.m.  I had been having trouble sleeping and had gotten up to pee not because I needed to but because I needed to get out of bed for the moment.  I was sitting on the side of the bed when the phone rang.  There is only one number that will ring through on my phone after ten o'clock.  It was my mother.  

"Where are you?!"

"I'm at your house."

"Where am I?"

"You are in the hospital."

She said people had come into her room asking her if she had an attorney.  She rambled on not really coherent.  They asked her, she said, about her cardiologist.  More rambling.  

I was beginning to piece things together.  She had been complaining that she felt like she was getting congestion in her chest.  While I was there last night, a tech came in and gave her an EKG.  Later that night, I had a message on my phone from someone in the E.R. asking me to call back.  They wanted to give me the results of some tests.  I called the number I was given, but once again, it went straight to a recorded message saying that the office wouldn't be open until Monday morning.  

I will go to the hospital in a bit.  It has been a real shit show so far, and now I am haunted by my mother's plea.  

"Don't let me get lost in my mind or my body."  

There is nothing I can do but suffer with her.  I feel as if I've had a stroke.  My body isn't working right.  My mind is slow.  Everything in my life is breaking down and I no longer have the energy to keep up.  

Maybe it is the February moon.  I have always thought it to be my friend, but such thoughts are silly.  It is just another one way alley.  

I sit in a dark and empty house on a stupidly cold winter's night, the full moon still hanging low in the western sky.  I feel the enormity of all things beyond me, the uselessness of endeavor.  

Blue Moon

I don't want to write, but I don't know how not to.  The routine of the last year has been disrupted and so I hold on to that which remains to steady myself.  I'm walking around in circles right now not knowing, really, what to do.  I think forward.  I think back.  Everything looks old.  Everything looks new.  

Brief update. . . I guess.  I sat with my mother in an E.R. holding room for four and a half hours.  They took blood and urine, but she never saw a doctor.  Fed up, I got the nurse to see what was going on.  The doctor who had never seen her had issued discharge orders.  

Spontaneous eruption.  

To put it mildly, I called bullshit on that.  

In a few minutes, a perky blonde in weekend jeans and sweater who I'd seen running the hallways with a stethoscope draped around her neck just like the t.v. doctors popped into the room with a sly smile.  She liked being doctor.  She blithely explained to me that my mother's bloodwork and urine analysis was o.k.  She had no reason, she said, to keep my mother in the hospital.  

"So. . . you've ruled everything out.  You know she has not had a stroke, that none of her vertebrae have collapsed, that the injection of Prolia she had this week has not caused a catastrophic reaction."

"Your mother says she doesn't have back pain," said the doc, "and there is no blood test to determine if she has had a reaction to Prolia."

My mother lay in the bed helpless.  I pointed.

"So it is your determination that she is capable of taking care of herself and you can just put her out on the street."

"I don't have any reason to keep her.  I need a reason."

I gave her a whole bunch of reasons.  Her shit eating grin drooped and became frozen.  I was pretty sure, though not positive, that I could demand that she be examined by another doctor, that there was some federal law that I could object to her being discharged.  It was a vague memory from all the visits from case workers in other hospital stays.  I wasn't certain, of course.  

"O.K.," said the perky blonde with the hanging stethoscope, "I'll admit her."  

And with that, she was gone.  

Five hours on, now.  My mother knew we had been talking, but she couldn't make out the words.  She listens and makes up what she thinks people have said now.  She looked at me with painful eyes.

"I can't go home," she said fearfully.  "I hurt so badly."

"They are going to admit you," I said.  "They are going to take you upstairs.  I am going to go so that they have no choice.  They can't just wheel you out to the curb, but I don't trust this doctor.  I'll be back in a few hours once you are in a room, O.K.?"

"Oh, honey. . . I know.  You go do what you have to do. . . . "

My head was spinning.  I headed back to my house.  Another shit story, but in short, the gas company had torn up part of my lawn to run a gas line across the street to the house under construction.  They said they would put the yard back together, but two weeks later, they hadn't, so I called.  The day before, a guy in a truck threw down some pieces of brown St. Augustine grass that looked like shit.  "Make sure to water it twice a day," he said.  "I was lucky to find any sod at all.  This should come back.  Just keep watering it."

"It's going to freeze for three days," I said. 

"Yea."

I had come home to water the dead sod.  

When I got back to the house, I had a phone message.  It was from the hospital, a Dr. So and So saying that they needed some information to admit my mother and to call back.  He left a number.  I called it.  It was a general number with an automated "If this is an emergency . . . if you know your party's extension. . . for hours press. . . to hear these options again. . . . "

I pressed a number.  Nope.  I called back and pressed another.  Finally, I got a human.  Never heard of Doc So and So.  

Fuck it, I said, if they want more info, they can call back . 

I got another call from the hospital pharmacy.  They were checking on my mother's many, many meds.  We went through them all.  

"So my mother has been admitted?"

"Yes."

She gave me the room number.  

I was uncertain about a couple of the meds, though, and I had to drive back to my mother's to look at the labels on the bottle and call the pharmacist back.  

At five, I went back to the hospital.  This hospital is huge taking up a very large swath of town with multiple high rise buildings for different diseases.  They have a famous Children's Hospital which is huge.  My mother, however, was in the original hospital wing.  It was old, nearly decrepit.  When I got to her room, I had to squeeze in.  It was a shotgun room, small, depressing.  I had to move equipment to go get to the back wall to grab a folding chair.  My mother barely opened her eyes, but she moved and moaned and said she hurt.  Water kept leaking out of her, she said.  They had to take her out of her pajamas.  She babbled.  

A nurse came in.  I asked for an update.  My mother had gotten X-Rays.  Had she seen a doctor?  The answer was unclear.  She thought that maybe Hospice was going to come in in the morning.  Nothing seemed settled.

I sat with my mother.  She told me that she heard all the things I'd talked about with the doctor at noon through the speaker just now.  Her eyes were opened but she looked confused.  She closed her eyes again, not in sleep, but something else.  I stayed with her for a couple hours, then told her I loved her and would be back in the morning.  

Driving back to my house, the temperature was dropping, the wind blowing in giant gusts.  The sky was cloudy, but suddenly in front of me the moon broke through.  It was big and full and spooky.  

"Siri, when is the next full moon?"

I have palm trees that I worried about.  It will be well below freezing for three days, they say.  I thought that these palms were Canary Island Palms, but it isn't true.  I have taken photos of them to multiple nurseries and nobody knows.  I've tried to find them online.  When I bought the house, I was told they were freeze resistant, but now I worried.  I'd gotten an idea while sitting in my mother's hospital room--I would wrap the ball trunks of the palms in sheets.  That might just help.  

In the cold and windy moonlight, I wrapped sheets around the base of each palm running tape 'round and 'round several times .  I walked back into the house I haven't lived in for so long.  I had no idea what to do.  I poured a whiskey from a bottle that had been sitting in the "library" cabinet for how long now?  I took it to the deck and sat as I used to in a remembered past.  I watched the limbs of the tall trees dance.  The whiskey tasted better like this just the way it used to, just me, the whiskey, the trees, the cold, the wind, and the moon.  I thought about my mother.  I thought about all the things I would have to take care of one way or another.  It was a lot to think about.  

As I pulled into the driveway at my mother's house, I felt a sudden rush of guilt at how I had felt for a long time now pulling into her driveway, the old depression and dread of walking back into a sad house of misery.  Yea. . . so much guilt.  The house was empty, of course, but more than that.  And now, once again, I was wondering if my mother would ever see her things again.  The old pain and sadness welled up into my throat and eyes.  My mother's things.  My mother's life.  

I clenched my jaws tightly and squeezed my eyes and pushed it all back down.  Not now.  

I had hardly eaten all day, but I wasn't hungry.  I made popcorn and opened a beer.  I sat down wondering what to do.  The tenant called and we talked for a bit.  Then I turned on the t.v.  I'd read a good review of the movie "Blue Moon."  It was rentable on Netflix.  Eight-thirty.  I could watch it and go to bed.  

Now I must face the day.  When I woke, it was 24 degrees, 14 with the wind chill factor.  Coffee.  The news.  I don't know what to do.  The routine is broken.  I needn't put my mother's meds together.  I needn't see what she wants, needn't make her breakfast, needn't clean up whatever mess she made in the night.  I stand in empty rooms not knowing what to do.  But there is plenty to do, I know.  I just don't feel like the man to do it.  

911

Another bleak adventure.  Just called 911 as I began to write.  My mother was in great pain and could not get out of bed.  I will get dressed and follow her to the hospital.  I don't know where this will lead, but I don't think this is the end.  I will be busy.  

Just to say.  

Le Mots d'Amour

If you don't like the conversation, change the topic.  O.K. . . of what shall I speak?  

The cold?

ICE?

The troubled times in our land?  

T.S. Eliot, Stephen Wallace, or Robert Frost?

It doesn't matter.  I can't think.  I can't get the smell out of my nostrils.  Clamnity surrounds me.  

It is Friday.  The temperature will reportedly drop forty degrees today.  I don't think I will go for sushi.  What then?  What dinner shall I cook? 

I must distract myself as much as possible.  I watched a doc on Carol Doda last night.  Half of it.  She was a real hoot, bright, funny, self-effacing.  The interviews with her are charming.  But the language of academia was killing me, tired and frayed with the same worn memes.  Have you heard of the patriarchy?  Apparently, it is a thing.  It seems to have invented a way of looking at women, if you follow the rhetoric, called the male gaze.  If these seem overly broad reaching terms to you, well. . . you probably need to go back to school.  You probably need to have your vocabulary resized.  It's all part and parcel of colonialism and, by extension, orientalism.  This is because the west was powerful and centered everything around Europe, and later, America.  The attitudes of males in the rest of the world. . . well. . . you know. . . don't speak.  God loves the Moors, you know, as did those Modernist painters who stole their images.  Not just the Moors, of course.  It was a grand theft on an unbelievable scale.  Intimacy beyond objectification.  

And so it goes.  

If I adopt the homosexual gaze. . . is that a thing?  Let me Google it.  

Of course there is. . . only it is called "the queer" or "the gay" gaze: a perspective in media and art that centers LGBTQ+ experiences, challenges heteronormative views, and offers authentic representations of queer desire, identity, and relationships, often contrasting with the traditional "male gaze" by exploring intimacy and connection beyond simple objectification, while also describing specific non-verbal cues like eye contact used for identity recognition within the community. It's a way of seeing and being seen that normalizes diverse experiences and subverts traditional power dynamics in storytelling and social interaction.

Intimacy beyond objectification.  There you go.  See?  But first one needs to understand the relationship between the subject and the object.  That one, in truth, has always confused me.  

I guess the true artists were those portrait studios from the 50s and 60s.  Olan Mills.  

I wanted to make the image diverse and inclusive in the spirit of today.  The boy definitely has that yet to be recognized gay gaze. . . but he's beginning to wonder.  He'll find out when he goes to Harvard.  Or the priesthood.

I can't help but be subversive, though.  I can't be sure as there is no science on this, but I think it might be genetic.  

Well, there you go.  That should do it.  It's been fun, a good comic relief from grim reality.  But I must get back to it.  

I should have made the little girl look like Alfred.  I missed an opportunity there.  

Don't Worry Too Much (It'll Happen to You)

 My mother had a very bad night on Tuesday.  I broke down.  By Wednesday late morning, I pulled myself together and fixed what I could.  There is more to be done today, but I am feeling I can deal.  Yesterday was my father's birthday, but I hadn't tine to remember.  I remembered this morning and felt guilty.  I'm falling apart inside and out.  A song I used to fall asleep to every night proclaimed "Time's the Revelator."  

Yea. 

I tried to watch "Sinners" last night.  It began with a simpleton's narrative about the devil and music, poorly written to appeal to morons, I thought, but I tried to stick with it.  Then, in the very first scene, the supernatural took over.  I don't need supernatural fictions to scare me.  Real life is more than enough.  Why people are fascinated by such things escapes my understanding, but it is a real popular genre as you all well know.  I got maybe five minutes into this most nominated Oscar movie before I checked out.  Let me know if it gets better.  I don't care, though.  I have other things to do.  

I did watch a number of YouTube videos on the Weimar Republic.  Some things surprised me.  The Neue Gallery in NYC is one of my favorite places.  If you haven't watched "Babylon Berlin," in the original German. . . well, maybe you've been watching horror movies.  

Or The Weather Channel.  If you like this stuff, keep voting Republican.  Climate change is just another liberal hoax.  

There is so much I need to do, and I have so little energy for it.  I dream of Magic Mountain, some retreat or asylum where the days recede unnoticed while you take gentle walks or sit in a rocker with a comforter in your lap.  But care is sterile and too expensive now, only for the very wealthy.  

I listened to music last night and thought about people's objections to A.I.  Amplifiers, then reverb and distortion peddles, then synthesizers, digital sounds, raves. . . none of those sounds human or natural.  A.I. music is just a further reach.  You'll see.  One day, that is all there will be.  Nobody but old drunks will go to bars to hear some tone deaf fool with a guitar and a mike playing Jimmy Buffet tunes.  

If you had just a minute to breathe
They granted you one final wish
Would you ask for something like another chance?
Or something similar to this?
Don't worry it's alright, it'll happen to you
As sure as your sorrows are joys

For those of you who missed 1971.  

 

Time

Things have just gone wrong.  I can't do it alone any longer.  There isn't a shred of levity left.  Things will have to change.  

There is nothing else to say.  I've got to figure something out. 

Life Ain't No Cabaret

Little time to write this morning.  I dicked around too long making a cabaret video that is hurried and not what I desired.  Still. . . having spent the morning. . . I'll post it here.  

Things are swell.  Spent most of yesterday toting my mother to and from doctors and pharmacies and grocery stores. Today, I have to be home by noon to do a walk around with the painter.  

It is supernaturally cold.  Temps will fall into the 20s for a week.  That is unheard of here.  But the sun will shine, so there is that.  

Plans for today?  I will develop Holga film.  Maybe I'll even make new pictures.  TBD.  

And still, everything makes me nervous.  I haven't read the news today.  Have I missed much?  

No time, though.  Watch the video, and. . . hate me if you will.  

No, No, Quasimodo

I'm going back to using a Holga camera for a bit.  It is so unserious I'll take photos of anything.  No pressure.  I'll develop the film myself unless it is color.  I might do color, too, but there is a quick lab her in town for it now, so. . . . 

I am going to go back to Dry January this week, I think.  Damp turned to wet very quickly.  I want too much to celebrate "life," to have some fun, but I have fallen back into the same old pattern of feeling deprived of life and sitting on my mother's couch knocking back too many whiskeys before bed.  It is that which I had intended to slow down.  

"Whoa Nellie!"

The thing is, I had lost some of this monstrous belly, and now it is creeping back on.  I am limping badly now as the shots no longer help my knee.  I lean when I walk.  Bad back, the typical gait of old men.  I'm tired of feeling like Quasimodo, and I felt I was gaining a fresher face not as screwed up in pain.  

Women pull their children close to them when I walk by.  Fathers stare threateningly.  

Do I exagerate?  Well. . . this is not a news report.  

News report?  You can see whatever "news" you choose to believe anymore.  Since we admitted long ago that there is no truly neutral pov, what the hell, right?  Objectivity is impossible, even in A.I.  

In a postmodern world, everything is equal in its unreliability.  We live in a world with facts devoid of truth.  

Other than personal.

There are clouds and potential rain today.  I am not psychologically fit for such weather.  It depresses and yes, even scares me.  Heaven is sunny weather.  Hell is whatever is happening in Ohio.  

Brighter notes.  I put my deck back together yesterday.  Small start.  There is much to do, but I don't seem to be able to do more than an hour at a time.  That's o.k  I don't want to spend my days working manual labor.  Small bits, but not days.  I am going to buy granite rocks to place on the ground around the house where the work has occurred and then decide if I want to buy bags of rock or have it delivered for the driveways.  I'll have to ask T about this one.  But today I plan to develop some old film from my Holga camera along with the roll I shot yesterday.  I don't expect anything to be marvelous, and that is the bonus.  I want to get back to making some tangible images, too, using my new laser printer, Japanese paper, transfers, tape, fire. . . whatever.  

Photography Selavy.  If you want to get weird. . . I'm your boy!

Thank you. . . and goodnight.  

A Moment Home

The world is a scary place.  Gaza, Iran, Minneapolis, and weekend nights in Downtown Gotham, just a few minutes away.  People are jacked and crazed.  WTF happened?  

Dana White, TRT, MMA, muscle crazes MAGA, and--TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP!!!!

I'm guessing they give testosterone injections to ICE and Border Patrol agents.  They just don't act right.  But the protesters I've seen in the million videos from Minnesota are not the peaceful protesters of before.  They are not part of the Thoureauvian/Ghandi/Martin Luther King protests.  Today's protests look nothing like that.  No sit-ins.  No hunger strikes.  

As I've heard so many times about the conflict in the Middle East, "a curse on both your houses."

I am tempted to post a Christopher Hitchens piece here, but I'll leave it to you to search for his views on Islam and the Koran.  I'm afraid I see echoes of this in the conflict in Minnesota.  

To wit, the little portrait I post today.  Oh for gentle peace and quietude.  A hot beverage, the space to make things away from the ravages of circumstance.  

I went to my own home yesterday.  For the first time in forever, there were no workers there.  The carpentry and the siding and the roofing and the painting are all done. The house was imbued with a lovely peace and beauty.  The house and the apartment and the space between.  Everyone had done a wonderful job.  There is still much to do, but it is all stuff that I can do by myself.  There is the mulching and re-rocking of the drives, the pressure washing and filling in the gaps between bricks with a polymeric sand on the patio off the bedroom, the taking up the walkway from the driveway to the deck that has been uprooted by the camphor tree and the levelling of the path with soil, replacing the stones and planting mondo grass around and between, the tearing up of the garden gone wild and figuring out what to replant. . . oh, there is plenty of work to be done, but it is grunt work that I can do alone.  

I decided to cook my mother's dinner at my house.  I haven't cooked there for nearly a year.  Small red beans and pork in the Instapot.  Yellow onions, salt, pepper, red pepper, and 3/4s bottle of a cheap red wine.  I went to the grocers and got it all, then, setting it to pressure cook, I took a long walk for the second day in a row, the only exercise I was confident in since getting the bad vertigo.  

When I walked on Friday, as usual, I cut across the campus of the Country Club College.  Do you remember what a Friday afternoon on a college campus is like?  The joy is palpable.  And seemingly on this afternoon, Country Club was a women's college.  They were everywhere, tall and thin and athletic, relaxed and laughing and smelling of recent showers and sundries.  The sun was shining and the air was perfect.  Good God, it was a day to be alive.  

On Saturday, though, it was a different scene, something out of Girls Gone Wild.  I don't know the reason why, but scantily clad girls roamed around in thong bikinis, some carrying towels, others just straight up cruising.  As pleasant as it might have been, I was feeling myself an intruder and kept my eyes averted not wanting to look like. . . well, anyway. . . . 

Across campus and onto the Avenue of Mansions bordering the lake.  A hundred walkers on the sidewalk, throngs of people headed for the famous Boat Tour.  On to the golf course, cutting through the grounds of Casa Feliz, designed by James Gamble Rogers in 1932, and on to the Boulevard.  

It was jammed.  Across the park in the pasture, the Farmer's Market was still alive.  Long lines formed in front of a breakfast restaurant, something I have never understood.  The sidewalks bustled while many of the weekend hoi-polloi picnicked in the park.  I heard a voice call my name--"Hey professor!"  It was Black Sheep, tall and shining and casually preppy as is his natural state.  Small talk, then onward.  I decided to avoid crossing the campus once again.  

Back home, I smelled the cooking meal.  I dropped half a carton of Epsom Salts into the tub and turned on the hot water.  I poured a Lagunitas IPA I had picked up at the grocers and sank into the hot tub.  Oy.  

A soak, a shower and shampoo.  I was limp as I dried and put on my clothes.  Dinner was made.  I needn't hurry.  I took the rest of my beer to the deck to sit as I used to oh-so long ago.  I watched the squirrels and birds and thought about the missing cats that used to come and loll about together for my amusement, now gone.  

I thought about taking a phone pic of my beer as I used to make pictures of my drinks and send them to friends.  I realized I really didn't have anybody to send them to now.  Life had changed radically in the past year.  Where had it gone?  Where had my life gone?

And then something occurred to me.  I was thinking things that I don't think at my mother's.  The entire process was different.  Different synapse were firing, or so it felt.  I was relaxed.  I wanted to sit and watch the sun sink, watch the sky turn flamingo with the dying light, eat my dinner before the television sitting on my big leather couch, then decide how to spend my evening.  

Yes, I remembered how it used to be.  

But I had to get the Instapot to my mother's house.  Her cleaning lady had been there.  It would feel fresh.  As I began to drive away, the tenant pulled into her driveway.  She walked to the car.  

"Smell that?" I said as she stuck her head inside.  "You want to come have dinner at my mother's?"

I made the jasmine rice and opened a bottle of wine.  The tenant showed up in half an hour.  I put on some music and we ate and talked, the three of us, until eight.  I poured a scotch.  

And then the night became what it has been this past year.  My thoughts turned.  I prepared my mother's meds.  I sat on the couch and turned on the television.  

"Your a good son.  She's lucky to have you."

By nine-thirty I was bored and exhausted and began to get ready for bed.  

I'd like to spend my days with that lady in the atelier.  And nights.  I would cook good meals and there would be beer and wine and whiskey, and the days would be pleasant and lovely, and. . . . 

. . . turn it down low and grab a book. . . it is liquid, not solid, a new kind of Muzak that won't get in the way, won't intrude, requires nothing. . .  

Everybody's Got Something

I had a better day yesterday.  I was able to take a walk.  The painters are very close to finishing up.  After my long limp, I soaked in the tub and decided to go for sushi before going home to feed my mother.  T called.  The gymroids and others were meeting at a bar I don't like for Happy Hour.  He said he would pick me up.  

"Oh no," I said.  "I'm not up for that.  I still need quiet and gentle.  I'm going to go get sushi at five, then I have to get home to feed my mother."

"I'll meet you for sushi," he said.  

Man. . . I love sushi.  Tuna kobachi, miso, steamed edamame, and lots of hot sake.  I have to admit my taste for sake is for the cheap stuff that they serve hot.  I've had expensive sake, unfiltered and filtered, cold, and I prefer the cheap stuff.  I guess it is like preferring chicken chow mein at a cheap Chinese restaurant with a bowl of the crunchy noodles you put on top.  That is where my parents would take me on vacation.  If you know, you know.  Green tea was exotic.  

I like the cheap hot sake.  

After dinner, though, the night went to shit. I won't report on it. No need. 

"Ain't nobody got time for that!"

But, as a result, I didn't get up until eight.  My mother's house cleaner comes in a bit, so I need to hustle and get things ready.  

The sky is overcast, but it will not rain.  I cannot complain.  My conservative friend in North Carolina wrote, "You have hurricanes.  We have ice storms.  We are waiting with hot cups of coffee."

Everybody's got something.  So it seems.  

Tremors and Time

I sat still all day in a chair.  It seemed to help. I could walk a straight line as long as I didn't turn my head quickly.  No sudden movements.  O.K.  

"Hey ma, I feel a little better.  I'll go get your meds and some things for dinner.  I'll be back."

I was fine driving to the drugstore.  Waited behind another car at the pickup window for a long time.  My turn.  No, said the voice in the speaker, there were no prescriptions for her. 

"She said the store called for her to pickup a prescription."

After a long while, the voice came back to tell me her Percocet couldn't go out until the 27th.  Nothing to be done. 

Down the road a few blocks to the grocers.  I got out of the car, grabbed a cart, and felt fine.  Inside, I ran into one of the twins I've known for decades but haven't seen much since Covid.  Something happened to the two of them and they don't go out or have anyone in any longer.  They live a hermetic life now.  But here, in the store, we talk.  I'm doing fine, then I laugh and shake my head.  Mistake.  The ground shifts beneath my feet.  

I finish shopping and go home to make dinner.  I start the jasmine rice and broccoli and cut up the chicken and put it in a bowl with bbq sauce.  I wash my hands and go out to sit with my mother in the open garage.  It is a pleasant late afternoon.  

"Look at this weather," I say.  I'm thinking of the weather everywhere north of us.  Late afternoon sun, 70 degrees.  

The pretty woman with the two big dogs is walking across the street.  She waves and crosses over to see us.  One would never guess her age, but it is beginning to show as it will.  We talk about many things.  She works for a bank, and has worked from home for years.  Now they want her back in the office a few days a week.  She doesn't like it.  

"Sure, who wants to get dressed?" I laugh.  "I worry about that.  I don't think any of my dress up clothes still fit."

She says she had the same problem.  

"This butt isn't going to fit into these anymore," she laughs sardonically about trying on her old clothes.  Indeed, that is where she is "aging."  Not much, but noticeably.  My gut, her butt.  

The dogs want love, give kisses.  After a long while, she takes her leave.  

"I'm glad she stopped," my mother says.  "She's a nice lady."

I go inside.  The rice and broccoli are ready.  I put on the chicken.  Six, seven minutes.  The small pieces cook quickly.  

Six o'clock. We watch the BBC news as we eat.  The world, it seems, has not improved since yesterday.

We finish dinner.  I put on the Evening News from one of the networks.  News delivered in a fever pitch.  It is much different than on BBC.  They are, it is obvious, pitching to a different audience.  Everything is repeated at least three times.  First they show and tell you what they are going to show and tell you in the opener.  Then they show and tell you briefly before each story as introduction.  Then a frenetic reporter in the field shows and tells you as quickly as possible knowing they have under a minute to get it all in.  Breathless.  That it is made for a dumb commercial audience is obvious.  As are the commercials.  

I clean the kitchen and leave the t.v. for my mother.  In another room, I go to my computer.  I did not go to my house this day, so I text the tenant to see if the painters had finished up.  They hadn't.  Wow, I say.  That's a lot of work.  

My mother goes to bed early.  I watch t.v. for a bit, the new Frankenstein movie.  I'd watched the first half the night before, but now it bores me.  I start to get ready for bed before ten.  I sleep through the night.  

A new day.  Seems just a continuum.  "Lives of quiet desperation," I think.  Where does that come from?  I can't remember.  I think of all the people I am losing contact with as I sequester with my mother.  People just dissolve into the ether.  The months slip by without a trace.  Sometimes I reach out.  Sometimes someone else does.  The inside of my mother's house is a time capsule where it barely seems to move.  There are necessary routines, the meds, the meals, the news. . . .  

As I write, I feel little tremors.  The walls and floor shift slightly.  It is not over yet.  Another day of stillness, I guess.  One day it will all be stillness.  There will be no routine, no meals, no news.  Nothing will move, nothing at all.