Former Artist

There were lots of things to photograph at the beach this weekend--lots!--but a man with a camera would need to be mighty, mighty careful there, and I wasn't feeling that confident.  But I made a picture book in my head that was great.  I'll never see any of it again.  It is all gone.

That is the way of photography.  It is there or it is gone.  I didn't have the camera out all weekend.  This weekend was another thing.  I can't photograph when I'm around people I know, and Ili doesn't like for me to photograph her at all, so I am a rebuffed former photographer.

I'll need a city alone to myself sometime.

So I am scraping the bottom of a very small barrel to find anything at all to post here.  Don't worry, though, even these pictures will get better with time.  Trust me--there is no other direction for them to go.  I have a couple of pictures to scan tonight from the film camera.  Maybe one of them will be presentable.

Now, after a week of no exercise, horrible foods, and an excess of alcohol, I'm ready to become a healthy man again.  I will lose this sleek layer of new fat that coats me like a newborn baby.  I'll try, anyway.  I'm still limping on a bad Achilles that doesn't want to heal.  But I have strategies and schemes.  It begins today with a big bowl of oatmeal.

After a perfectly horrible week at work, I am prepared for a merely miserable one.  It will be a relief in some ways.  But I have to go protect my job now.  I remain, your former artist. . . .