It is just past six. The world outside is dark. I was "down" yesterday. I was sure I had some terrible disease and not just a reaction to the antibiotics I have been taking now, in one form or another, for over a week. My digestive system was terrible. I felt nauseous for the entire day and only ate a bowl of oatmeal and a navel orange. Perhaps that is why I was weak and trembling. I don't know. I was certain it was the onset of Parkinson's. I felt terrible when I called my mother in the afternoon to tell her I wouldn't be able to make it over. After dark, I opened a can of soup and had some crusty bread. That seemed to help. And before bed, I made a cup of hot Golden Milk.
While house ridden, I sat at my computer with the idea of selecting some photos for a website. It is an impossible task. I am sure I am enamored by photos that others may not get or like. I imagine that they are probably right.
I opened a file that said "Lonesomeville Pola Selections." Oh my god. I haven't looked at some of these for years. I would not be able to go through all the Lonesomeville portraits in a day, and the "selection" took me over and hour. I was thrilled, by and large, by the images I have not seen in a good long while. Made almost 20 years ago, they have weathered well, I think. And I have ten thousand of the old Polaroids that I have never worked on. The weight of that overwhelms me. The terrible thing, though, is that I can never show many of them. A whole lot of them. They are verboten. They are honest and true and collaborative, and they are beautiful, terribly, terribly so, but no one, I think, would show them. It made me weep. Almost. As I scrolled through them, though, I imagined a room full of large prints, 24"x36", hanging on the walls of multiple rooms in a gallery. But who would buy them? If seen altogether, say one hundred of them or so, I think there might be private collectors who'd pay the desired price. A one day showing, perhaps, of invited guests. Yes. . . that is what I would do.
Sure.
My hands trembled. Was it emotion or was it a disease. I was definitely overwrought.
I decided to switch to travel photos. I had a folder on a hard drive labelled just so. I began at the bottom of the alphabetic stack. "Yosemite." As I scrolled, I recalled the moments. There were Yosemite photos spanning many years. Most of them, however, were merely personal. There were friends and girlfriends I knew at the time, wonderful memories but nothing for a website. San Diego. I was there for three days at a conference staying at the Coronado. I hadn't much time to photograph. One, maybe two, photos I might use.
San Francisco. Years and years of San Fran. I hadn't looked at them for a decade or more. Holy Fuck! Street photography. I don't remember taking so many photographs. But I remembered each picture as it came up, the where and when. Early century, film and nascent digital. I was alone. Mostly. There was one trip with a girlfriend, but the rest were just me revisiting a city I loved, walking the streets, shooting from the hip, making memorable images of a time and place. Early cell phones. Different clothing styles. They seemed to make a time capsule. The hours passed, and I knew I was too attached to make the right choices to show an anonymous public.
"Don't overthink it," was my forgotten mantra.
"These are better than anything you see being published on IG or YouTube today," I told myself.
But I couldn't be sure. I am too fond of my own lazy talent. I cannot be objective. Moreover, I can't take rejection. What, I wondered, if I were the only one who liked them?
It was the ending of the day, and I had made no choices. I had only looked on with curious awe and wonder. I have a powerful imagination, and in the end, I had emerged the victor, my genius finally regarded.
I still had many, many folders to get through. My imagined website was already grossly overpopulated.
My nerves needed calming. I poured some coconut water and lay down in an Epsom Salt soak. I have become like a Victorian woman who needed baths to calm her nerves. As I neared hysteria, I remembered hysterectomies. That wouldn't solve my problems.
Maybe.
Dark. I was more relaxed after my bath, but weak and limp, too. No calls. No texts. The sick and diseased, I thought, were to be forgotten. It is too much a reminder of the things we don't want to think about. Sunday families ensconced in their lives, the weekend closing, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and a little family television.
I needed the t.v., too. But it seems there is now a dearth of adult shows. Super heroes, vampires and zombies, terrible and shocking murder t.v., inane comedies. I watch YouTube for a bit, little bits of politics and travel, some art if I am lucky. I make some tea, then turn to the channels I am paying for, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Hulu. . . how did I end up with so many? Apple has a series--"Sugar." Colin Ferrel. I like Colin Ferrel, so I turn it on. Hmm. Not kid stuff, at least. Weird in some ways, though I have problems with some of the post production they have done. It is o.k., though, for a sick, tired, maybe diseased man alone on Sunday night. It is o.k.
I make a big cup of hot Golden Milk at nine. I will go to bed at ten. I am tired. All I want to do is sleep. I clean the kitchen, prep the coffee maker for morning, turn off lights as I go. I brush my teeth. Am I worried? Sure I'm worried. There are two kinds of people, and I am the wrong kind right now.
"If there is anything you need. . . ."
O.K. What the fuck. They gave them to me in the hospital. I take a Xanax. I'm tired of the anxiety. I turn off the lights and lie down. I try to be grateful. I make my pleas. Then I think about the photos I looked at in the afternoon. If I started from the beginning, back in my college photo days, I could make a series. My voice is no good for narration, though. Could I narrate and then have AI do the voice over? Is that a possible thing? Probably. Surely. I could see it in my imagination's eye. I could hear it. Holy shit, people would go mad for it. Should I stay anonymous? If they didn't like it, if nobody liked it, I'd have my cave in which to hide. But how could they not? It would be brilliant. But then I thought of some of the few interactions I have had when I have shown some of my work in online photo groups. There are haters, many, many stupid haters whose joy in life is other people's misery. No, the whole thing is a bad idea. I don't want to deal with people. I don't do it for the money nor for fame. I just make the pictures. I've made some good pictures over the years. Nothing commercial. Nothing bright and crystal clear. Nothing for the masses. So why do I want to appeal to the masses now?
But my mind is being taken over by fatigue, and soon I sleep.
Will I feel better today? It is beyond sunrise now. I must keep living with intention. I will spend an hour culling photos from San Fran for the website today. Then, depending on how I feel, I will take a walk and think about upcoming projects. I have many ideas, but some of them will only get me into trouble. People, I feel, would not understand my intentions.
Or. . . maybe they would.
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