L'Etranger

Sometimes digital photo colors seem shallow and other times they just seem to pop.  It's all in the exposure and processing, I guess.  

Nothing about these pictures attracts me but the moody colors and the fact that I haven't anything else to show you right now.  After Friday, I'll probably have to fall back on A.I. again.  

Went for a walk down the Boulevard Easter Sunday morning thinking it would be empty.  I was wrong.  Every restaurant was open and packed.  Crowds coming from the big Catholic Church at the eastern end of the street.  I felt as if I should have dressed better.  But I saw incredible things that I can't even mention here for fear of sounding like a criminal voyeur.  By and large, though, it was something.  

Two brand spanking new women's shops have opened on the Boulevard, and on Saturday there were about fifty thousand teenaged girls strolling about in skimpy, provocative dress.  Then I saw a line of young girls on the sidewalk stretching for many blocks waiting to get into Brandy Melville, a "one size fits most" teen shop, I guess.  

The other store is a high end lingerie shop, I think.  The Boulevard is getting dangerous.  I can't even tell you.  

Who knows?  If I get teleported, I hope it is to the Boulevard and not to a Waffle House or iHop.  As Lou Reed so famously said, "It takes a whole lotta faith to get by."

After the Boulevard stroll, I cut back through what once was the Black neighborhood.  It has become, however, increasingly gentrified.  I wanted to pass by the many Black churches on Easter Sunday to see the crowds and to hear the music.  This stuff won't be around for much longer, I know.  Not here, anyway.  One of the churches is 150 years old, and I was sad as I walked by knowing it would not have a congregation much longer.  

When I got back to the house, I worked on the garden for a few hours, sweating like a drunk trying to dig out these impossible runner roots from some insidious kind of palm my neighbors planted that pop up in my yard.  I finished breaking the sod lifter handle and almost broke a big, thick shovel handle, too.  

I'm getting too old for this shit.  But, Cowboy that I am, I was able to dig them up.  

By three, I was headed to my mother's with big chocolate bunnies and wine for dinner.  We crossed the street and ate with the neighbors--baked ham, sweet potato casserole, green beans, and a fried rice salad followed by sweet potato pie.  Southern as all get out.  It was a good meal, but I have to work harder than I like at these gatherings to keep the conversations going.  There is a delicate art that lies somewhere between saying too much and saying too little.  It takes concentration and a spiritual energy.  

So when the evening was over some three hours later, I was exhausted.  

Back to my own home to collapse on the couch knowing my time here is coming to an end.  I can't shake the shallow, empty sadness with which I am plagued.  

But today in what is sure to be a rainy afternoon, I will drive to Grit City to see my old colleagues for Happy Hour.  About this, however, I am unsure.  I feel myself a great disappointment right now, unfit for public consumption.  I have thought about it recently and believe I would be unwilling to consummate a physical relationship out of embarrassment.  I couldn't submit another person to such horrors.  

And so the isolation grows.  

Hey, have you heard that 20% of the world's oil is shipped through the Straight of Hormuz?  That's right.  And did you know that the "war" has caused oil prices to surge?  

Every fucking news story starts or ends with this bit of information.  WTF?  It is obvious for whom news broadcasts and print articles are made.  

But they will not say that our president is insane.  See?  They know that needs not be said, that it is a well-known fact that is understood.  You'll neither see nor hear that statement at the beginning or end of any news piece.  They could be sued for saying that, but there is no law against behavior unbecoming of a president.  Isn't that something? 

Now we know, however, that we are oil junkies, that we have a needle with an oil line shoved deep into our veins.  The show "Landman" becomes biblically prophetic.  Nothing works without oil.  It is not just driving around town in your Fast and Furious inspired car.  Every part of your life is dependent on oil, your food, your drugs, your homes. . . all of it.  

Yea.  The world will fight over oil.  And I think Trump will be the first to drop The Big One.  

The draft is coming back, kids.  It's coming back for you.  

O.K.  I'm done whining and playing False Prophet.  There's a new movie you should see.  Camus was an existential playboy, so they say.  Surely you've read, "The Stranger."  It will leave you emptier than a Beckett play.  But I do not believe that is the life that Camus led.  He liked cafes, smoking and drinking and making love.  Revolution and rebellion were romantic endeavors.  He was a Sartrean Everyman bringing Existentialism to the people, more palatable and tasty.  He was the philosophical equivalent of James Dean.  

Now "The Stranger" hits the screen.  You'll have to read the movie, though, if you do not speak French.  Or, as I have recently heard, you can buy those earbuds that will translate the movie for you.  I think they are expensive, though. 

From the Times review: “Existential ennui is not exactly fun to watch (or, one assumes, easy to perform), yet a meaningless life has rarely looked this beautiful.”

One thing that confuses me, though.  Why is the movie titled "The Stranger" and not "L'Etranger"?