I'll warn you now, I've gone mad with making A.I. illustrations of my old photographs, so if you are among those who hate the idea of it, you won't be around long, for you see, I have no life any longer, neither creative nor actual other than the constant anxiety producing care for my mother. I am camping at her house rather than actually living. I've not slept in my own bed for what? Months? I don't know. I manage a few hours away each day now, but those hours are merely a facsimile of life, not actual life itself. I go through the old motions without precision or good technique. I truck two bags back and forth as I travel each day. So, you see, this little Mac laptop is my gateway and lifeline beyond the constant intrusion of agony in the house. I have fewer and fewer contacts now "out there" in the "real world."
I spend a lot of time in the nether regions of A.I. life.
Sad?
I do get out. I see people. I know what they do, how they live. I've been to the gym again the past couple days. People are very curious about what I am doing.
"You've lost weight," they say. That is troubling, for I haven't. I am fat as a spoiled hog, so it is my "manly" physique that is fading, that is all. Illness and stress are pulling me to the grave.
One woman, a very nice woman who looks like a teenager at the age of fifty, monied and full of botox and micro needling with blood, something completely unknown to me until now, a woman who has always been athletic and who has a little child of her own which she did not carry in her body but who is genetically her and her husband combined , a woman who is concerned for me as a casual friend, decided to show me photos of her vacation in North Carolina on her phone. Children, flowers, rocks, waterfalls, food. . . a virtual tour of a mundane life full of money.
Still. . . that moment was a million times better than what I am living now. My head went dead, and I was content to sit on a bench for half an hour watching her scroll and squeal with pleasure saying,
"It seems like you had a very nice time."
She is a nice lady. I like her fine.
I managed to sneak in a lunch with C.C. yesterday. We went to one of the regular places we rotate through. The usual barmaid was there, a very friendly woman who, no matter how long it has been since I've come in, remembers what I get. The bar was fairly empty but for an old gentleman I have seen there before, we two often the only ones sitting at the bar. I told C.C. he looked to be a retired professor, liberal arts. He is small, thin, and hunched with thin, pale, fleshy arms. I engaged him in conversation for the first time. He said no, he was not a retired professor. He was an engineer, but in all his years of working, he had never practiced engineering. He was more of a mathematician, he said. He offered that he had crossed the Atlantic Ocean nearly a thousand times on business trips and the Pacific. . . I don't remember. I said that what I knew of business travel from the conferences I had attended was that it didn't matter where you were, it might as well have been Cleveland.
He turned and looked with his one big, obviously unseeing eye and his squinty small good one and said, "If you've been to Cleveland, you've been to every shithole city in the world."
He was a hoot. We talked about whiskeys. He drank Johnny Walker Blue, but he liked the scotches, too. After awhile, the conversation faded and C.C. and I continued with our own. The barmaid kept filling his wine glass, never letting it get empty. He surely was a regular and a very good tipper. When he stood to leave, we waved goodbye and said something or other. I watched him walk crookedly to the door wondering what might be out there in the world for him.
C.C. and I took the usual photos of our lunches and sent them to our friend in the midwest who used to come with us on our outings.
After a long lunch and a few drinks, I said I had to get back to my mother, so with the stiffness of old men who have sat in once place too long, we hobbled out into the same world our new friend had earlier to whatever might be waiting there for us.
The day was a real scorcher, the "feels like" temperature around 105 they said that night on the local news, and as I walked to the car, I grew heavy with fatigue. I drove back to my house to get my bags and decided I needed to sit for a minute. Two hours later, I woke up and looked at the clock. Holy shit!
Back at my mother's house, as I pulled into the garage, I spied a new four wheel walker, an expensive thing, not the cheap kind they had given my mother at the hospital. Inside the house, the kitchen table was piled with food stuff. What's up, I asked my mother who was sitting in her usual place on her vibrating heating pad. Many of the neighbors had come by while I was gone. One brought her the four wheeler. Another couple brought her food they had prepared and had apparently gone to the grocery store for her as well. One man had put new rubber pieces on her old walker. All this while I was at the gym and then lunch. I was guessing they don't imagine I'm doing much for my mother.
I was still heavy with fatigue. I asked my mother if she wanted some soup. No, she said, the neighbors had brought her some homemade. I made a Negroni and watched the news. No news. Same news. A family of three were killed by a falling tree--including a CHILD! We're still watching with breathless anticipation of hopeful disasters a storm in the Atlantic days and days away. And, of course, Trump.
I decided to make another Greek salad with last night's veggies. Then my mother wanted her soup heated, only it wasn't soup. It was lasagna.
After dinner, I left my mother to "Gunsmoke" or some other cowboy show and came to the computer. Chat wasn't being helpful, though. It doesn't like my images. They violate policies and standards. I argued. It agreed but said still. . . I said there was no nudity, but it replied the people were in provocative positions or were otherwise too young. But it was fickle and inconsistent. I gave it a copy of a Balthus painting and asked it to make it a realistic photograph.
It returned with this.
I gave it this,
In the original studio version of "Stray Cat Blues" by The Rolling Stones, the girl is described as being 15 years old. However, during live performances, Mick Jagger often changed the lyrics to "thirteen years old"
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