Too Long in the Void

 

I didn't sleep last night.  Hardly, anyway.  What goes wrong?  One night you are having pleasant dreams that make you happy, then, a few nights later, the darkest things come out.  Perhaps I spend too much time alone, too much time in my own head.  I need to get into some other people's heads for awhile.  Trouble is, I'm turning down invitations left and right.  I lie, I make excuses. . . "oh, man. . . I'd love to, but I have this thing with my mom that day."  Etc.  I become paralyzed.  I'm like the Rain Man now.  Why do I need to be home at night?  Why do I need to be anywhere at any time?  I don't even go to the Boulevard because parking is difficult.  I'm not shitting you.  Every day, each minute, my life becomes smaller.  Soon it will fit inside a shoebox.  Or should I say a whiskey bottle?  

I'm haunted by memories.  I'm tempted to send messages into the ether, but the consequences might be too great.  

It was not always so.  I used to travel easily.  I couldn't stay home.  Nights were filled with adventure and romance.  But time and circumstance have eroded more than my looks.  My vision is failing from looking too long into the void.  

I just needed to write that this morning.  A little drama.  I think I'll be able to go back to bed before sunrise.  I'll sleep better today in daylight.  

There are fun things.  Adobe just updated Photoshop and Lightroom with some wonderful new tools.  Photographs will never look quite the same.  I've only just begun to explore, but the way I treat raw images has already changed and I have barely had time to scratch the surface.  

I think Photoshop might catch up to the stuff you can do with your phone camera one day.  

I'm going back and reprocessing old files, too.  I'm still stuck back in 2012.  NYC.  Bobbing, weaving. . . making photographs. 

That was a Saturday in SoHo.  I've read it is nothing like that any longer.  You can see the temptation to make photos there, though.  It is like somebody made a movie set that just kept going and going and going.  It was such fun.  I don't know why I never shot video.  This is the only one I ever took, and I think I did it by mistake.  I think I just hit the wrong button.  But I wish I'd made a real effort to document the street.  It is a mystery to me now.  But everybody who lived there probably thinks the same thing.  

I go to the beautician today.  Late.  I've already told my mother there will be no communal dinner tonight. I'm pretty sure I will get takeout sushi.  The weather is changing here and we are about to get that first autumn weather.  I will have to crow to my friends as I always tell them autumn comes with Halloween here.  Not before.  Never before.  

The night I bought the Vespa, Ili and I watched "The Blob."  We'd been listening to the song for days, laughing and dancing.  It was a crazy happy time.  I'll try not to get drunk and send her the song this week.  That would be stupid.  

But it is difficult.  Really, really difficult.  

This year, I'll be a blond for Halloween.  It's quite a look.