Frustrated

Up at 4:30, so I'll probably bungle this one up and down.  If you want to stick around for this one. . . it is up to you.  I do know, however, that once people get out of the habit of coming here every day, they pretty much forget about coming back.  I'm sure in some ways it is a relief.  For my part, though, I need to keep posting for the people who are junkies for human grief, misery, and sorrow wrapped up in a nice sugar coating with a sometimes treat inside.  

And so. . . away.  

I'm staying away from the shooting thing.  Too many knee-jerk reactions, or at least enough that I need not contribute.  I need to take a "wait and see" approach.  I've written my take to some people, but even there I feel I may have reacted too quickly.  

I DO know, however, that there are some slogan words I am sick of hearing.  T-shirts, bumper stickers, placards, memes. . . this is not the way to make an argument, I think.  I'm tired, for instance, of hearing the word "justice" over and over and over again.  What IS justice?  

Woe is me, though, there I go opining.  

I will say this. . . I was pretty sure Nic Zapko was a lunatic fraud and was making up all her ASL hand gestures for the deaf.  I never hear what any Minnesota public official is saying when she is on the screen.  She is like a manic dwarf chimera on meth who is invisible to the people in the room, something that only emerges like a hallucination to television viewers.  If she IS real, I have just learned how to sign "bullshit" and "get the fuck out."  

Hate on me.  I don't care.  

The photo at the top of the page is a 1950's photo from the Cafe Strange taken just a few days ago.  That is the 6'2" loon who is willing to kibitz with me now when I go in--much to my surprise.  I hadn't seen her in many, many months, and she looked different to me when I saw her.  Had she had surgery or some chemical peel on her face?  But when I got to the front of the line, I realized what it was.  

"You've changed," I said.  "I just realized what it is."

"My eyebrows," she said.  

"No. . . the music."

She usually plays the worst punk rock screaming shit music in existence, but today she had on something that sounded like '50s pop.  

"I'm catching up with you," she laughed. 

"Why?  Did you have a birthday?  You ARE getting a bit long in the tooth.  Yea. . . of course your eyebrows."

"I'm thinking about shaving them."

It appeared to me that she already had.  

"I have to bleach them every other day."

Oh.  

She had added metal balls to either side of her nose too, so it appeared there was a rod running straight through.  

"I used to suggest shaving off eyebrows to my students," I said.  "Then they could paint them on according to their mood.  You, for instance could paint them on like this when you felt in a shitty mood."  

I made the shape with my fingers above my eyes. 

/ \

I got a laugh.  

Now we were getting along, and I had my Leica, so why not ask to take her picture.  I'll get to that.  But I'll admit all day long that the picture would be ten thousand times better if she was looking over her shoulder back at me.  It really could have been something.  

Yesterday was beautiful, and it was lovely to do my exercise outside at the park.  I do a sequence of body weight exercises, then walk and run a half mile loupe coming back to start all over again.  But I couldn't run.  My knee and hip had been killing me for days.  They are just done for.  Worn out.  So. . . I need to consider myself lucky just to be able to walk the loop, which is what I did.  And it was pleasant.  Fuck it.  What can I do?  A couple days ago, I went to the grocery store by my own home.  The parking lot was full, so I did the thing I've been doing sometimes and pulled out the handicap parking hang tag I got for my mother.  What the hell, I think, I should definitely have one, too.  And with the bad knee and hip, getting out of the low rider Corolla is agony anyway, but since I was parking in the handicap spot, I really milked it in case anyone was watching.  Which they were.  The cousin of my ultra-rich once upon a time girlfriend was walking by the car just then.  He looked over and said hello.  

"How's it going?" he asked in a friendly way.  

What could I say?  

"As you see."

"Well. . . time marches on," he grinned in passing.

Indeed.  

And so, as I did my exercises, I remembered to be kind to myself.  

I had plans for the day.  Big plans.  I wanted to buy a new pair of Hokas at REI because they were on sale, the very ones I wear.  Then I would go to the art supply store and have new matts cut for the photos I have given T.  Then I would go to the Cafe Strange with my camera and continue making pictures every day now that I was the guy who got the ear tattoo shot in a far off town.  Then I would go to the Viet restaurant and get a container of bone broth for making pho for dinner.  

Rather, when I got home, I dallied.  I forget now what I dithered with, but it was definitely dithering.  Part of it was working on photos I had taken the day before.  I put a load of laundry in the washer.  I took a shower.  And then it was three-thirty.  Piss, shit, fuck. . . What to do.  

I cut out shoe buying and matt cutting.  I went straight to the cafe.  I wanted to make some classic photographs.  I would, too.  I was ready.  

No Fear!

I am usually not there this late in the afternoon.  It was a different group, a different crowd.  Working the counter was a young girl who has somehow become more of a woman in the last year, the dark haired girl in the girl band who I was always wanting to photograph with her bleach blonde twin, in the kitchen of the cafe where they used to work together. . . somewhere in my past.  

I never did.  

Now. . . here she was again.  

"Hey there," she said familiarly.  

"Can you make a cafe con leche?"

"Sure."

"You remember?"

"Yea," she grinned.  

There I stood, camera in hand.  I could see the small kitchen through the open archway, the lighting stark and perfect.  Just ask her, I kept saying. . . just ask her.  

"Here you go," she said smiling, cafe con leche in hand.  

"Thanks," I said.  

I took my coffee outside.  

Piss shit fuck goddamn.  

Outside there was a beautiful, long blonde sitting with a tattooed man.  Perfect picture.  They looked at me as I passed and my sphincter tightened.  At another table sat a big and heavy--I don't want to say 'fat'--man, looking like Burl Ives in a colorful shirt and a little porkpie hat.  He sat with large woman with colorful hair and tie-dye.  They were probably both in their sixties.  Shit piss fuck.  

But it was when I sat down I saw THE THING.  She had dyed her hair a red that would make Lucille Ball envious, bright and startling.  It was long, and she had done it up in a beautiful partial pony tail on top with the rest pulled up and loosely held by a beautiful ivory and gold Asian hair stick.  Her face was paper white, her lips deep, dark, dramatically red, her eyebrows bold.  

That was just the beginning.  She wore a see through black lace and lattice top that hugged the top of her arms just below her pale, bare shoulders and a black push up bra.  Her black skirt stopped mid-thigh and her black, lace stockings came to her knees, the two a counterpoint to her screaming white thighs.  She was shoed in ankle high black boots.  She sat with two friends, a boy and a girl, neither made up in any way.  The contrast was truly startling. 

I couldn't stand it, but there was nothing to be done.  

A truck pulled up and a fellow in baggy work pants and a t-shirt covered by a brief denim jacket got out.  He was on his phone and paced back and forth too near me talking big shit to someone about, I took it, a car detailing thing.  I think it was some kind of protective coating, I don't know.  But he was bugging the shit out of me due to his proximity.  

I have a very large "personal space."  What do you think, Dr. Freud? 

Finally he finished and went inside, but within minutes he came back and stood near me.  

"Nice camera," he said.  

"Thanks." 

"Old school film?"

"No.  Digital."

"Wow.  They kept the same look, huh?  Cool." 

"Yea." 

"Are you a photographer?" 

I always hate that.  

I shrugged.  "Everyone is now, aren't they?"

"He-he.  I used to, you know. . . I had a film camera . . . I fooled around, but I'm dyslexic, and I'd get. . . you know.  I tried playing guitar, but I'd forget the chords, and. . . but you. . . you're an artist."

He had a funny, incomplete way of talking.  

"You see that over there?" I nodded to the girl with the red hair.  "That's art.  Do you know how much time went into creating that look?  You don't do that in a minute.  The hair, the makeup, the clothing, the shopping, really, and finding. . . that's art.  If I had any balls, I'd go over and ask her if I could make pictures of her."

He looked over, then looked back at me. 

"Do you want me to go over and ask her?"

"No.  When I was younger, I might, but now I'd just look like a creepy old guy with a camera."

"Yea, I'm fifty-two now. . . I know what you mean.  I'm a skateboarder, you know. . . and when I go out to the skate parks. . . all that cement. . . do you skate?'

"No."

"You're a surfer.  No man. . . I don't mean to, you know. . . you're just sitting here. . . you're not my therapist or anything. . . ."

"Oh, I could be for a hundred bucks."

"I've got to go inside and call my daughter to make sure she knows I'm here," he said.  

Then he came back.  

"You've done a lot of things, I can tell.  You have stories.  What's your name again.  I can't remember names for shit." 

I was getting up.  

"Yea, man. . . I gotta go."

"Yea, we'll talk. . . you've got stories to tell."

I was slow limping back to my car.  I was leaving behind. . . how many good photos?  The place is a nut shop full of visually strange characters.  My insides were falling as I climbed into the car leaving all of it undocumented.  

I drove to the Vietnamese restaurant to get the bone broth.  They were on a good corner, an interesting corner where the light can be sharp and there are plenty of hipsters going to the big Asian Market just down the block.  Getting out of the car, I grabbed my camera.  

Nothing.  Nobody around.  4:30.  I went into the small restaurant with a few early customers, a lesbian couple and a guy sitting with his friend who had a pile of rasta hair piled a foot high on top of his head.  The Asians sat at a table near the kitchen, an old woman in heavy, whorish makeup and two men.  I was hardly inside when they looked at me and said aggressively, "Can I help you?"  I'm a friendly guy, but they never smile at me here.  

"I'd like to get a container of the chicken bone broth."

Every time I say this, they look at me like a dog who was just asked if it would like a cucumber.  

Five minutes and five dollars later, I was out the door.  One day, I expect, they will just tell me, "No.

I walked around outside for a bit looking for something I never found.  I was back to my mother's at 5:30.  I had the pho ready at six.  Pho is an easy dinner to make if you have good bone broth, and it is always good.  I cut boneless chicken into bite-sized pieces and mixed them with sweet and sour sauce before I put them in the pan.  Six minutes.  Noodles boil ready in seven.  Garlic, mushrooms, scallions, into the boiling broth, then the cooked chicken.  Ready to serve in a few minutes.  Noodles, chicken, broth and veggies, avocado and bean sprouts.  

After dinner, I put on some YouTube stuff.  My mother is getting shitty about what I watch, so I have taken to turning it off and giving her the controller.  She sees this as an insult somehow, maybe because I leave the room.  I can't stand to be around the shit she watches.  

"You'll be glad when you can get back to your place, wont you?" she said with something akin to anger.  

"Wow.  That's not fair.  I have a life. . . had.  Do I miss it?  Sure.  But I take care of you. . . and now you are going to be shitty to me because I might like to be back in my own life again?  That really isn't fair."

I left the room stinging with. .  what?  Guilt, or anger?  It was too complicated to try to untangle.  

Later, when she went to bed, I put on a movie I really shouldn't have watched.  "Train Dreams."  If you have watched it already, you will understand.  It is adapted from a Denis Johnson novel.  Spare.  Stark.  Reminiscent, I felt, of "First Cow."  Good movie, maybe, but too much for me, hitting too close to home.  

And then to bed with many, many regrets.  Will I ever make those photographs?  They are there waiting for the right genius.  If I were younger. . . . 

Almost the whole movie is contained in this song.  A condensed version.  Almost.