I got beautified yesterday. Hadn't been since October. I was looking more than a little Wild West/Buffalo Bill Cody. The beautician improved me once again. We talked. I didn't really want to talk all about my mother, but she had plenty of things she wanted to say. So I mostly listened.
Went in at ten, out at one. I went to see my mother. Oy! I finally said to her, "Has there been one good thing that has happened to you today?"
She wanted to know when she was going home. That is her mantra. For me, the question sounds like, "When are you going to spend all your life taking care of me again?"
"You've only been here a few days--I don't know what to say. We have an evaluation meeting on Monday. Probably then."
"I've got another week?"
I could get them to keep her there for over a hundred days, of course. I argued and argued to get her into the Four Seasons Rehab Facility, but. . . .
And so, my day was pretty ruined. I was going to go to the gym after seeing her, but I couldn't manage to pluck up the energy when I left.
This morning, the neuralgia is back. Head to toe agony.
"The pills, the pills."
Driving back from my visit with mother, I heard this song. Yea. Seems true enough.
Yesterday was warm and windy. I sat out in the early afternoon to take in the sun and weather with my mother on the second floor balcony of her rehab hotel. I don't know the root cause just then, but things were feeling pretty old Key West, and I was thinking seafood and adventure.
"I could go for some oysters," I said. "It's the season for them, isn't it?"
I don't really eat oysters anymore because of the dirty bay waters full of sewage and chemical runoff, but especially because of the chance of getting hepatitis. Still, life (mine) is short but memory is long.
"Remember Lee and Rick's?" I asked her. It was a place not far from where I grew up, and I remember going there with my parents when I was young, so, so many decades ago.
"Yes. I wonder if it is still there?"
"I think so."
I got out my phone. Yup. Sure as shitting. I think the last time I was there was in the 1980s.
"I think I'm going to go get some oysters," I told her .
"Take me with you."
The sky began to take on a dark cast as the edge of the approaching front moved in. It wasn't feeling so Key West anymore.
"I wish my friends still lived here. I used to be able to call people on the fly and say, Hey. . . let's go get some oysters, but not any longer.
When I said goodbye to my mother, I was wondering if I really wanted to go. It was easier to simply go home and. . . .
Nope. Determined to break out, I mapped my way to adventure and daring.
I grew up in a bad part of town, but we were able to look down upon the people in the neighborhood bordering the oyster bar. Lee and Rick's is just off Old Winter Garden Road, then a two lane sometimes dirt thoroughfare of diesel mechanics and transmission repair shops. It had changed. Now it was four lanes, but that was all. Old block buildings that hadn't been painted since I was a kid, dirt spattered, oil covered, surrounded by sandy, bare ground lined the new highway.
I missed the turn. I'd gone too far and had to run back through the shanty neighborhood. The hair on the back of my neck rose a touch remembering who lived here and what went on. Neighborhoods like this could be brutal. People still looked at the unfamiliar car that drove down the street. If some young guy smiled, you could take odds it wasn't genuine.
The parking lot was littered with signs telling you that the restaurant was not responsible for whatever happened to your car while you were there. Good to know. I found the austere entrance, an unadorned door with a small, isignificant sign saying "entrance."
"By god, boy. . . if ya h'aint got sense to know how to get in the goddamned restaurant. . . ."
Inside, nothing had changed. Nothing. It still smelled of old seafood. There were two cast cement bars with a deep basin for scraping in the oyster shells. There were tables, too, but nobody was sitting at them. I walked in and took a seat in the middle of the second bar. A big fellow came over and asked if I needed a menu.
"Yea."
Another fellow brought me another and told me to move to the end of the bar.
"What can I get you?"
I hadn't looked at the menu yet, but. . ."I'll have a bucket of oysters."
"How do you want them?"
I like them raw, but hepatitis and all. . . "Steamed. Medium, I guess."
I ordered a beer. He brought it and began to set me up.
"They'll be ready in about four minutes," he said.
I told him I came here with my parents when I was a kid but hadn't been back in like forty years.
"I brought my wife here on our first date," he said. He was thin and fit and had the obligatory tattoos on each of his arms.
I'm a good listener, or, perhaps, a good interviewer. I found out where he lived, in another dumpy part of town, with his girlfriend, though they've been together twelve years so he calls her his wife. They have three kids, not his kids. She is a little older and had the kids with another guy. He never had any of his own. But he was born in my own village, went to school there. Odd, I thought, his trajectory in life.
Oysters ready, he put the bucket in the trough and began shucking. Shucking steamed oysters is much easier than shucking raw, so he was filling the bar quickly.
I was eating them like a sissy. A real oyster connoisseur squeezes some lemon on them and sucks them right out of the shell. I scooped up a bit of horse raddish on the oyster and dipped it in cocktail sauce and then butter before putting it on a saltine cracker.
The shucker didn't comment.
"I saw you had butterfly shrimp on the menu. When I was a kid, there was a place out on the trail called Gary's Duck Inn. You'd think they'd be known for their duck, but it was a steak and seafood place. At the time, they were the largest purchasers of shrimp in the country, if you can believe that, and they were famous for their butterfly shrimp."
If you don't know:
Butterfly shrimp is a popular, visually appealing preparation method where the shrimp is split open along the back, deveined, and flattened into a butterfly-like shape while remaining connected, often with the tail left on. This technique increases surface area for better coating adhesion (ideal for breading and frying) and ensures faster, more even cooking.
"When Gary sold the place. . . "
Rather than write it on my own here, I'll paste the history from a local newspaper account.
Gary's Duck Inn ,a popular seafood spot established in 1945, inspired the creation of Red Lobster after investors Bill Darden and Charley Woodsby purchased it in 1963. Recognizing the success of the no-frills, high-volume seafood model, they launched the first Red Lobster in Lakeland, Florida, in 1968.
The Inspiration: Gary Starling opened Gary's Duck Inn in 1945 on South Orange Blossom Trail, becoming famous for shrimp and serving celebrities like Dolly Parton.
"Cool, huh?"
"Really? I worked for Red Lobster for twenty years."
"Wow. Did they still serve the butterfly shrimp?"
"They called them something else."
"Well, I'm coming back to get the butterfly shrimp next time."
"You'd better bring someone with you. It's a pretty big platter."
He spread his hands apart as indication.
"How are you doing with the oysters. You still have this many left."
He held up the bucket. There were still a good number of shelled oysters on the bar.
"My eyes were bigger than my stomach," I said.
"I don't want to charge you for the rest of these," he said. "I'll just charge you for two dozen."
And to think I was nervous about coming in. What a guy. And of course, I tipped him 50%.
I'd come out by the Expressway, but I drove home down the old highway past my old neighborhood and the giant Shopping Center that bordered it. It caught me by surprise. It was HUGE, but now it was an eyesore, having been very badly updated, stuccoed, and painted a terrible orange, seeming miles of it. For a long, long stretch, the aesthetics of poverty dominated the landscape, dirt lots and withered or dead shrubs bordering dirty parking lots, people's IQs affected by drugs, inbreeding, and a terrible lack of education.
My people.
It was still early. Back home,I worked on some picture ideas, mere sketches of things I thought about making. Music, drink. . . .
As I've told you before, I spent my life running from that place. I wanted to live in the places I saw in movies and in the glossy magazines. I wanted to fall in love with my own Golden Girl. Some of it had worked out O.K, maybe. But now and then, I need to step over the fence of Leave It to Beaverland and go to Zone 13.
And live to exaggerate the tale. . . to gentle lovers.
This was a real Nextdoor post--kind of. I added the possum. There are many variations of this, but they are always funny. None, however, are as hilarious as the original.
V-day with mom. Then home to make my dinner. I could eat meatloaf, broccoli, and mashed potatoes at the facility with mom--for $25! Rather, I had a pot of meat stew on the stove.
Ate alone on the deck. Later, I watched a silly cop movie on Netflix with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. I'll never get that time back. Maybe that's why I slept so poorly. That or a million other reasons. I should quit drinking again. I should stay off my computer, and especially quit making those silly movies I've been making that I get such a kick out of. I should quit pissing and moaning about my life and focus.
I will. I swear.
Here's the photo on the sticky paper thing I have to wear at the rehab facility. They take the photo and print it out in nothing flat. I want one. I'd use it. It's like the old dot matrix images from the wayback, but better. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Warhol would have a ball with it.
Wait! I have an idea. I'll be right back.
Well, nice idea, but no dice. I was going to make something but A.I. had other ideas.
WTF?
Oh, well. . . I said I was going to give that up anyway. I think I'll read. I've heard that's a good thing to do. I'll be like one of "those people" who take walks and reads books and recycles.
"Hello, Mona. Your garden looks lovely. How about this weather?"
It was better than the one I had cooked up but decided not to send this morning.
I don't really have anyone to share the day with but my mother for whom I have flowers, a balloon, and a card.
So. . . fuck it. . . there's enough of that. It completely got by me that yesterday was a Friday the 13th until late in the afternoon. Remember from now on, when Valentine's Day is on a Saturday. . . . Or as we used to say in the hills, Valentimes. Yea, that's right. . . just a bunch of uneducated hillbillies.
So. . . mom is doing "great" at the spa I got her into. Yesterday when I went to see her, she was with two of her neighbor friends at a "concert," a man singing karaoke to a room full of people with walkers and wheelchairs, so I left a note in her room and said I'd call her later. She even showered without help, so. . . it won't be long.
"But you said she could stay in that place for 90 days, right?"
Yea. I can't do that. I'm just not built that way. She wants to go home. Who can blame her? Well, I know I do a lot, but. . . .
And actually, as well as she is doing, and as anxious as my hillbilly cousin is to have her Florida time, maybe that will work out. Still TBD.
But for now, I am home. And that is pretty much it. At home or at the rehab center. I'm a veritable shut-in otherwise. Surrounded by the ephemera and tchotchke of my life, of course.
And so, to steal an old Royal British Navy toast with their daily allotment of Pusser's rum, a Valentine's Day ditty--"To Wives and Lovers. . . May They Never Meet!"
Having neither, it doesn't matter to me. Rather, if you are smart and knowledgable and know the reference, "Here's to Esmeralda."
Now I circle the bars on the promenade While the girls in the glass, they're just throwing me shade
Before I begin today's misery, let me say BONDI. What a piece of shit. The entire hearing demonstrated that Congress really is the weakest part of the governmental trinity, a dog without teeth. My favorite congressman comes from my own home state. He is both smart AND a hoot. Here are his five minutes with Bondi. You need to skip ahead to 1:44 in the piece to get where he begins.
But for all the praise she gets for being something other than what she now is when she was the A.G. in my own home state, everybody said even then that she was a political hack, a face lift for the conservative republicans in this state. Everyone said she was a piece of alligator dung from the get-go.
Now to my triumphal tale. My mother. What a gal. She called to cry about being in the most wonderful rehab facility you can imagine.
"I want to go home."
The price of a room in this facility has gone up to $640/day. I could only afford to get her in there if the hospital made the recommendation. Say what you will about me. . . I do have some skills. The rooms are large and clean. The service is almost concierge, and maybe not even "almost." There is staff for everything, and they are incredibly polite. I watched the food staff yesterday as they prepared dinner for each diner, going over their preference cards, noting who was gluten intolerant, who was vegan, who requested this or that, and then they dished it with a delightful flurry showing one another the final product. Therapist come to my mother's room. A few steps away is a comfortable sitting room with a giant t.v. My mother's neighbors came to visit yesterday, she said, and they sat together there. But mom, in typical fashion said with a sneer, "They had that skiing stuff on all day."
Yup. Mom constantly complains.
"How was therapy?"
"We didn't do anything."
"How was breakfast?"
A shrug. "The bacon was greasy. The toast was cold."
"What did you have for lunch?"
"I don't remember. Nobody knows how to work this t.v."
"What do you want to watch?"
"Put it on Fox."
Of course. I did.
"How did you do that?"
I showed her.
"You need to bring me my walker from home. This one is too high. They tried to adjust it but it doesn't go any lower."
So I went to her house and got her her own walker. When I brought it in, it was EXACTLY the same model and same height.
"Oh."
BUT, HERE'S THE THING!!!! After lying in bed in a diaper with a wick thing between her legs, she is scooting around on the walker as well as she was at home, and she is going to the bathroom on her own. No kidding. . . she won't need to be in rehab long at all. Oh, she couldn't tell the social worker the year or the day, and she couldn't repeat the three words she was supposed to remember, but the heart, lungs, and kidneys. . . .
So, we'll be back to our old ways in no time. I'll get to move back in with good old mom and start my 24/7 duties all over again.
👍
"You're a good son."
She hasn't a clue about where the hospital wanted to put her.
I shouldn't have put the little nubbins of horns coming out of her head. It is just a joke. It is a reflection of my own shortcomings, not hers. Just illustrative. Meant to be funny.
Me? Oh, it is kind of you to ask. I looked into the mirror this morning and noticed my hair is thinning. I always had a wonderful head of hair. The stress may be taking it's toll. The neuralgia continues, of course, and the great and terrible fatigue. I couldn't face cooking yesterday so I ordered takeout sushi from a place on the Boulevard. It is hit or miss, and I have quit eating there, but it was on the way home.
When I plated it out, I had great hopes, but they were quickly vanquished. The sushi was soft and slimy. I am lucky I didn't get sick, I think.
Such is my life. Friday. I think I'll party.
Ho!
I'm in no mood to leave the house. I must start preparing for returning to my mother's.
If you didn't read yesterday's post, I would advise you not to read this one, either. Maybe you can just come for the pictures. I've enjoyed turning myself into a creature/character. Here I am morphing back into a more recognizable form, half me, half creature having escaped for the moment, but. . . dying? That is how it has felt.
My body has given up. There are pains I can't explain. I lay in a tub of Epsom salts yesterday and could not get up. After the water had drained, I lay there for what must have been an hour, chilled, weary. . . .
Every day now, I am faced with death. Not my mother's. Nope. My own. My mother will never die. And each day and each night, I think I will just take the pills.
The last two days were a struggle. First the hospital was going to release my mother. Her/my problem, not theirs.
Have you ever seen anyone screaming at the ticket agent at the airport thinking that the agent is on his or her way to a board meeting to discuss customer relations? Yea, right? It doesn't help. It does no good. So. . . I read the room, said what I needed to say, told them what I could and couldn't, would and wouldn't do.
When my mother first went to the hospital, the palliative care person talked to me about putting her in hospice care. Yesterday when I went to the hospital, I was told they were sending my mother to a nursing home. Do you know what a nursing home is? That is the place where they send you to die a miserable death. At the last minute, however, they arranged to send my mother to the place I had wanted her to go, the place where she was before, the nicest rehab facility in town.
That is me at the top of the page having received the news. All good. I told people who asked and they were glad.
I sent an informational text to my mother's hillbilly relatives and got a message back that they had talked to my mother and she wanted to go home. I started to reply, but decided not to.
Ever again.
I got a message from the facility admissions person that my mother would be in room 222. I drove over to see her. She wasn't there yet.
"They are going to transport her over at 6:30.
At 7:30 I called my mother.
"How's your room?"
"They are just taking me down to transport now."
"Oh. O.K. Call me when you get to your room."
That call went badly. Very, very badly.
"I want to go home," she cried.
I'm not proud of my response.
"Go ahead. Go home."
"Can I?"
"Sure. Just tell them you want to go home. I'll check on you in a few days to see how it's going."
When I hung up (in anger), I told myself I was done. I was over it. I thought about taking off on a trip. I am dying, I thought. She is not. I need to see one last thing.
It was time for bed.
I'm more in control today, but something in me has snapped. One day, if I'm around, I will tell you about my relationship with my mother. It is a hard tale. But I won't tell it while she lives.
So it may never be told.
I want to do something other than care for my mother. I don't think I have so very much time left. Parents shouldn't outlive their children, but my mother is determined to do just that. And why not? But she has shortened my life, I believe, considerably. I have an offer to go to Japan in March. I want to go to Japan. I want to go to Miami and shack up in the Four Seasons for a week, lie by the pool and drink Margaritas. Maybe I'll sell everything and just rent a place in Key West, wander the island, a tropical Quasimodo, until my final day.
Sitting is hard now. Getting up is worse. Moving is excruciating. It has happened quickly, but that is how it happens, isn't it?
Did I show you what I looked like last year on my birthday? Yea. Look what your god has done to me.
Do not read this post if you are not up for misery and suffering. Things have, unbelievably, taken a turn for the worse. So. . . I urge you not to go further than this.
On the other hand, I know for a fact that some people are enjoying my turning and twisting of fate. I sent this to a longtime friend the other day. You needn't watch more than a minute or so to get the idea.
Do you know what he wrote back?
"You used to be like him"
Well, I wasn't. I didn't have a plane, didn't have money. But. . . "used to" is the rub.
Selavy.
People got married to people they loved. They had children. They went after that old American Dream. I tried, but I fucked it all up, I guess. But while they were taking their kids to soccer practice and arguing with their spouses about the things spouses argue about. . . I wasn't. I didn't have children, so I didn't have to be like Brando, the ultimate absent parent.
Now, I think, mamy enjoy my suffering the wages of my "sin." The thing is, there just wasn't much sin, just fun.
Now--and I'm not talking about any one individual but a whole host of my married friends--they wonder if HRT will put the passion back into their lives.
"Absolutely," I say. "It's the magic bullet."
People are nice enough. From time to time, someone will ask how I'm "holding up." They offer encouragement. "Is there anything I can do?"
I'm not being critical. If it sounds as if I am, I am not. I am pretty certain I wouldn't even offer that because I know I am incapable of doing much to help other than telling a few jokes, etc. I might be a little bitter, but I am not criticizing.
If that makes sense. Depends upon your mood when you read this, I think. People do want to tell me that they went through this with their parent/grandparent, etc. They haven't. Nobody who tells me such things has gone through this without help all on their own. There are certainly others, but I've not met any of them yet.
Yesterday morning, I went to see my mother. She was pretty out of it, so I stayed a bit and then told her I would come back in the afternoon. At two-thirty, I got a call from her. I was napping, so I only heard her message at three.
"Are you coming up today? I can't find my charger. O.K."
I called.
"I came to see you this morning."
"Really? I don't remember."
I got dressed and drove to the hospital once again. My mother was up and more alert. We chatted. The physical therapist had come and had her use the walker in a circle in the room.
"That's not a walk," she said, and so he took her down the hallway and back. The doctor, she said, had come to see her. She couldn't recall their conversation.
In a moment, a woman came into the room and introduced herself as a Case Management worker. My mother was being discharged, she said. Did we need homecare?
"What?"
"We can arrange for someone to come in a couple times a week to help your mother."
The adrenaline dump.
"What are you talking about? My mother needs to go to rehab until we see how much care she is going to require."
Nope. The physical therapist had written she was ready to go.
"So," I said pointing to my mother, "you think she can take care of herself?"
"That's not really our concern after she is discharged. It is up to the family. . . ."
I was pushing down my anger as hard as I could, but my eyes had sharpened to combat mode.
"Fine. It's up to you. I'm not taking her home, so what are you going to do, wheel her out to the curb?"
This went on a bit longer, then she said she would have to talk to a supervisor.
"Right."
And in a little while, the supervisor came in. She was no more helpful than the lackey had been. They are used to having the power, I know, and use it on people unprepared to argue. I'm positive she looked at me and saw another lawn maintenance man who used to be a surfer DOOD. And that is where we start. In an officious tone I am all too familiar with, she begins to tell me it is not their responsibility. . . .
I wave my arms. "None of this is your responsibility. You are just living off the proverbial corporate tit. But when it comes to compassionate care? I'm not taking her home. I can't do this. I can wash her hair, scrub her back, prep her meds, cook, clean, fetch and chaufer, but I can't do this. I have no idea how to do this."
I pointed to the catheter that was running piss through a tube into a glass container.
The woman's face changed.
"I didn't know she was on that."
"She was put into bed with a diaper and never gotten up the entire time she has been here. They tell her to just go to the bathroom in her diaper. I need to know if she is going to be able to use the bathroom by herself again. She needs to go to rehab so we can try to get her back to where she was before she came in."
The conversation changed. I told her I had put in a call to the palliative care person who had suggested Hospice just last week.
"Oh, no. . . no. . . ."
She said she would go back and try to get her into rehab.
Nice. But I have no idea how this is going to turn out.
When the woman left, my mother said, "I couldn't hear what you all were saying."
And that is where I am. That is all the help I will have in the coming. . . how long?
My entire being gave up. Neuralgia has taken over my body. I don't know if it is psychological or if the stress has brought on whatever evil disease that lurks inside us all. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything.
When I went to bed, I decided I needed something stronger than Tylenol. I took a hydrocodone. An hour later, I was lying awake in bed feeling exactly as I had. I got up and took a Tylenol P.M. An hour later, I was lying in bed awake and thinking the same hideous things I had hours before. I got up and took a Xanax. I thought about taking everything I had in my cabinet. I wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. There was nothing in life to look forward to at this point. No help. Only strife. Fuck me, I'm tired of dealing with everything all the time. I don't care anymore. I just don't.
I am up late this morning with the drug blues feeling no better than I did. My entire body hurts. There must be a cause, but I don't have a clue and I don't want to go to a doctor. I've been watching my mother, and I would rather take the pills than do what she is doing.
So. . . if you are here, I told you not to read this at the top of the post. Never has life been so dire, so bleak.
People send me words.
"Stay strong ! You have no other choice ❤️"
Oh. . . but that is not true, is it? It really isn't. But thanks. "Just keep taking the beating," is what I hear.
I appreciate everyone, of course. People are swell.
This was my celebratory meal, this and another batch of hospital sushi. I was really partying. I spent yesterday's birthday just as I spent my first one oh-so long ago--in the hospital with my mother.
When I got home at the end of the day, there was this .
Sort of. There were no Roman arches, of course. But I was so exhausted, I truly thought I would puke. There seems to be a limit for the human body and psyche. Mine, at least.
After lying in a hospital bed for ten days with a collapsed vertebra, no one doing anything but feeding and cleaning her, my mother finally got in for an operation. I got to the hospital at 8:30 not knowing what time the procedure was scheduled. Good news, they said. Ten o'clock. At nine-thirty, they wheeled her down to the staging area. And there we stayed. At one, they took her in for surgery. I went to celebrate my birthday like the party animal I am with sushi and pizza. In an hour or so, they called me to let me know the operation was successful and that they had returned her to the staging area. So, party over, I hustled back to the small holding pen.
And there we stayed waiting for transport.
"You are in cue to be taken back to your room, but the cue is long and there are only a few people working in transport, so I don't know how long it will be."
At four-thirty, I couldn't stand waiting any longer. I woke my mother.
"Do you know what today is?" I asked my mother.
"No."
"It's my birthday."
"Oh. Happy birthday."
I had been sitting in a folding chair in a dark, crowded room watching her sleep for many, many hours. I told her I was leaving, that I would call her later when she was back in her room.
I got one birthday card, the same one I get every year offering me a free drink on my birthday at Bradley's Saloon in Palm Beach. They are very sweet.
The rest were mostly the perfunctory "Happy Birthday! Have a great day," text messages from people who keep electronic calendars. I don't care, really, as I don't keep one and never know anyone's birthday, by and large. Late in the day, birthday almost done, the sweeter, more heartfelt wishes came.
I wondered how I'd spent my birthday last year, so I went back and looked it up. It was Super Bowl Sunday, and I spent it pretty much the same way, alone with my mother for whom I was caring. But for this.
In the afternoon, I went for a mimosa at the cafe. Waiting in line, I used to take mirror selfies and wonder how I could look so good in the mirror and so bad in pictures. Looking back, though, I kind of collapsed inside. Was that only a year ago? Man. . . I don't look much like that anymore. This year has taken its toll. I think I still could look a woman in the eye then. As a matter of fact, the girl who made me mimosas on Sunday, though the bar was not open, flirted with me a bit, or at least she did in my journal.
I can't look a woman in the eye anymore. It is too obvious to me what she sees.
I looked up my birthday horoscope.
Born February 9 - This can be a highly creative year, and personal magnetism is strong. Your attractiveness, tact, and ability to go after what you want without stepping on anyone's toes, all contribute to your success. A positive attitude and an enterprising spirit takes you places. You are a person who is very committed to what you believe in--and sometimes very stubbornly so! You are a true artist at heart--creative to an extreme and occasionally nervous if you are not channeling your considerable artistic talent constructively.
Compassionate and concerned, you care much about others but often come across as detached. It is very important that you finish the projects you start-- which is not always easy for you--in order to feel content and satisfied.
February 09 Aquarius at Their Best:Uninhibited, compassionate, wise
February 09 Aquarius at Their Worst: Troubled, irrational, moody
All true, I thought. It is crazy. When I read someone else's horoscope not my sign, I know absolutely that is not me. How do they do it? Surely it must be true.
Though it does merely say I'm a true artist at heart, and not that I am a talented one. There is always a caveat, I guess.
So that's it. Almost. I wore my phone battery out sitting with my unconscious mother, and I decided to make my picture move. Pretty cool.
Oops. In order to get it onto Blogger, I had to take it into iMovie and make it compatible, so. . .
Found out yesterday that my mother goes to surgery today, only ten days after she was admitted to the death ward with a collapsed vertebra. For ten days, she has has been left to lie in bed. It has been a tremendous shit show. I still don't know what time she goes to surgery. I will have to go up in a bit to see if they have set a time.
I have a beauty appointment at one. Ha! It is not my day.
I watched the Super Bowl last night. Maybe it is just me, but. . . meh. First time I have heard or seen Bad Bunny. It was quite a production, and I like reggaeton music well enough, but. . . celebrate as they will, I DO believe that it will cost dems in the upcoming elections. Why? A chorus line of booty dancers twerking, Bad Bunny grabbing his junk over and over again. . . and then reaching out for a female child who is smiling up at him like a survivor. . . etc. There was just too much there that some independent voters will not go for. It may have excited the youthquake, but they are not serious voters, at least not traditionally. Didn't seem like the right thing to do for the midterms, but maybe that was the whole idea. The NFL is not a liberal corporation, you know. I just don't think the halftime show had a wide voter appeal.
But I'm no savant. Don't mind me. Bad Bunny jelqing onstage is the norm now. And I never did enjoy the halftime marching band.
In other news. . . I have no other news. I'm exhausted. My only real movement this weekend was my twice a day trips to the hospital. My mother is up and down, sometimes there, sometimes elsewhere. How much care she will need after this operation, I don't know. I just know that I can't get on with my own life, and I feel guilty for even thinking about that.
I do need a beauty appointment, though. Haven't been since mid-October. My beautician may not want to see me if I am a no show again. I was supposed to go the Saturday my mother went to the E.R.
Right now, life is a cabaret, old chum. . . just not the one I desire.
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.
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.
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. . . .
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.
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.
