The Stars Aligned

It worked, I think.  I like it.  Smeary, impressionistic. . . .  shot from the hip.  I have a lot to choose from, but it is going to take time.  And labor.  The photos don't come out of the camera this way.  T wants me to teach him about photography, but like most people, he wants them to come out of the camera just fine.  I suggested he buy a Fuji camera, which he did, because you can funk up the photos with Fuji film simulations right in the camera.  He isn't going to sit down and learn Photoshop and then spend the rest of his life experimenting to find looks he adores.  Most photographers don't.  The commercial photographer we shot with in his studio shops his raw images out for processing.  Many photographers use pre-packaged effects.  That's o.k.  I just don't.  

So. . . it takes a lot of time.  

After having my first day off in over a year, though. . . I was a new man.  People noticed.  Hell, getting away and taking pictures and drinking beer and having dinner was like. . . well, it was like living again.  

"You needed it," they said.  No shit.  Not simply one day, though. I need a life.  

But I felt better yesterday than I remember feeling in a very long time.  And I want more.  I seriously thought about driving back over to Bike Week again today, but you can't swim in the same river twice, they say, and I have found that to be true.  

But that doesn't mean it would have to be worse.  I mean it could be even better.  

Dilemma. 

What I really need to do is work, though.  I will call and order the mulch today to be delivered next week.  Today I will rip out my dead garden and begin giving my lawn it's spring treatment.  But maybe I will go somewhere for lunch today, too.  

And of course a couple trips to mom.  Some days she is doing great.  Other days, not so much.  

I got up at five-thirty this morning and set right to working on pictures.  I worked for two hours and got four pictures done.  This is by way of saying, I've already been on the computer a long while today and so I am going to save the story of the dinner barmaid for a later telling.  I don't have it in me just now.  

I have sent some of the Bike Week/Day pics around to people and have gotten good feedback.  It feels good to be making pictures again with a camera and not just with A.I.  I like the A.I. images, but I know. . . you know.  

I think my horoscope must have been good for a few days because I heard from some people I had given up hearing from again.  Apparently, I'm not yet gone. 

I heard from several of the old factory crowd.  I got texts from the illusive Red and from my young friend in Miami.  My best lesbian buddy wants me to go south on a photo expedition, too.  And my midwest friend has me on a group text with three of our female friends about meeting up at some small seaside town for an art exhibit where everything is projected onto the buildings downtown.  It all warmed the cockles of my sad and shrivelling heart.  

Selavy.  The planets will move and the stars will shift and we will change tonight back to DST, and I'll not hear from anyone again for a very long time.  

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

 I've been sitting too long now.  I must move.  I no longer "keep up with the news cycle," so I have a little more time and am happier.  I think I'd enjoy a weekly newspaper that could tell me briefly what I had "missed," all those things over which I have no influence or control but about which I might feel strongly.  

So it is Saturday all day, and it would be good to have an upbeat song.  Let's try some Portuguese in French.  That might do it. .