I'm Special

Yesterday was like a fever dream.  I was in it and maybe somewhere else, too.  Living through the day unconsciously, viewing it from a distance watching myself fumbling and stumbling in some exaggerated, contradictory bliss.  

The End. 

No, kidding.  It was not as weird as Saturday and was surely more fun.  Once again, I got out of the house--and people liked me.  Maybe that's overstating it.  Maybe they only liked my camera.  But one guy shouted out of the crowd, "Nice hair," so there was that.  How many times in your life does that happen?  

O.K.  I get that a lot.  I'm special.  Mom's neighborhood ladies always like my locks. Just the other day, the 91 year old came over and ran her fingers through my hair.  

"You're special, alright.  Short bus."

I know, I know, but you have to let me have this one.  I need it.  I don't have all that you have.  I'm living on borrowed time.  

Sunday.  I took care of my mother's meds and breakfast and sat with her for awhile.  Remember the little Missionary boys I told you about?  They did it.  They got my mother a ride to church.  Only she didn't know it.  She doesn't know how to use her phone and didn't see the text message.  A nice man from the church showed up.  Mom was in her pajamas.  

"Brother [So and So] from the church is here!" she said in a panic going to the wrong door.  She expected me, I guess, to get up and entertain the fellow.  Uh-uh.  I pointed her in the right direction and listened to her walker scoot out of sight.  I stayed where I was.  I could hear them talking.  My mother could neither hear nor think.  She claimed she didn't know it was Sunday.  I could hear the panic in her voice.  As much as she complains about not having anything to do, she doesn't want to do anything.  She's happiest when I am cooking and cleaning and doing chores around the house, picking up and fetching and doing laundry, while she sits in her chair.  The idea of doing a thing is something.  Actually doing it though. . . . 

I've met the man several times.  He is nice.  He came to see my mother in the hospital and at the rehab facility as well as here at her home.  There are a couple women from her church who have done this as well.  He would take her to church next Sunday then, he said, and then he said a prayer, or, as Mormons say, he gave her a "blessing."  

Why didn't I go run interference for my mother you ask?  

Because I do it all the time and I don't think it is helping her.  She needs to try to stay "in the game." She has just given up doing anything on her own.  But yea. . . I feel a bit of guilt.  I don't need you to pile on.  

I sat and talked things over with my mother for awhile before I left to go home.  My house.  Where I once lived.  The day was getting on.  I was going to walk and it was going to be hot.  And it was.  Really hot, and I was sweating through my shirt.  And then, out of nowhere, it began to rain.  I was still a mile from home.  It was ok but for my new Hokas.  They were getting soaked.  

A shower.  It was afternoon.  I could go pick up the 4x5 film I had taken to the lab.  I grabbed the Black Cat Liberator camera, and before I left the house, I took a picture of my palms.  I was determined to use the camera now, so I drove out of my way by a little lake in a neighborhood nearby.  It is a small lake with a brick street running the circle around it, big houses lining the other side.  It is an old sinkhole, really, and the banks are steep.  A fallen oak lay with it's roots exposed.  I grabbed the camera, a film holder, and my phone which doubles as my light meter.  

A car drove too slowly by.  Somebody was checking to see what I was up to.  

Photo of the Day #2!

I was certain to take more photos when I got to the photo lab.  It is another hipster area on the border of Gotham, next to a big milk. . . what?  Production plant?  Bottling plant?  WTF would it be called?  All the area around here used to be pasture for miles and miles.  One of the big cattle families, the Lees, owned it all.  Old T.G. and his wife passed away as people will, and the kids began selling parts and parcels, as kids will.  Houses were built and small shops popped up.  At one time, when the city was still small, the airport was very nearby.  I flew to Ohio with my father out of that airport when I was twelve or thirteen, back in the days when you dressed up to go to the airport.  Now the airport is out of town and the old one is private.  The hipsters have taken over the rundown parts, and so, if you have a big assed camera and are clever, there are photos to be made.  

When I got to the lab, though, I couldn't pull into the small lot behind the building.  A hipster pop-up market was going on and the streets were full of funky kids.  Oh boy, oh boy. . . this could be something.  I was uncertain, though.  I didn't think I had the chops to go into a crowd with a camera anymore.  I've gotten old and feeble living with my mother.  I've lost just about all public confidence.  So, I parked illegally in another lot and left my camera in the car.  

When I walked into the lab, the girl behind the counter smiled and said hello.  She knew who I was.  I think it is the hair.  

"About your film. . . ."

Oh, shit.  

"They developed the black and white o.k. but the color film. . . wasn't color.

"Oh, hell. . . I wasn't sure.  I labelled them with little dots long ago when I loaded the holders, but it was so long ago, I forgot what the dots meant.  It's o.k.  Totally my fault."

"No, no. . . it's o.k.  She only did three of the six, so she will do the rest as black and white.  Let me go back and check to see if they are ready."  

When she came back, another woman was with her.  I was cringing.

"Did she say tell that old fool not to come in here again, that we don't have time for incompetence?"

"No, no. . . ."

I told them about the Liberator camera and they were interested, so I went to the car to get it.  I decided to give them the film I shot on the way to the lab, too.  But the sidewalk was full of kids.  I passed a group taking pictures of each other with their phones.  They looked at me as I walked by. 

"Oh, wow. . . cool camera."

"Thanks."  I hesitated.  I wasn't sure I could do it.  "You want to make some pictures?" I asked pointing to the camera.  

They sure did.  

I took them to the side of the building where there was a mural wall.  After the rain, the air was heavy, and later when I got into my car, it said the temperature on the pavement was 102 degrees.  I was fumbling with the big camera suddenly forgetting everything about how it worked.  

"Hold on. . . uh. . . I have to meter. . . this will take a minute."

The kid against the wall said, "No, it's cool, take your time."

I fumbled with the camera, setting the shutter speed, the aperture, and said, "O.K.  One, two, three."

Oh, shit.  I forgot to take the dark slide out.  

"Wait.  Let's do it again."

One two three. . . nothing.  The camera didn't fire.  The kids were standing, looking at me. Sweat was dripping from my hair now.  My shirt was soaked.  

"Something's wrong," said the master photographer.  I struggled to understand what was going wrong.  "O.K.  Let's see if this works."

Finally.  The mirror plopped and the shutter whizzed.  

"Victory!" I yelled in mock celebration pumping my fist sarcastically in the air.  "Anybody else?"

Uh-uh.  

My head was spinning.  Jesus. . . why was I doing this?  Cursed, surely.  Incompetent, probably.  

When I stepped back into the lab, the cool air gave me a shiver.  The day was blindingly bright, the interior room dim.  I sat my camera on the counter.  The kids ooed and aahed as I showed them how it (didn't) work.  I told them my tale and tried snapping the shutter.  It worked one out of three or four times.  There was something wrong with the cocking mechanism, I discovered.  I fooled with it, and if I pushed it in toward the camera, I could hear a little click.  Then it would work.  

The girls were looking at me now.  

"You want to go outside and make some pictures?"

Oh. . . yes they did.  

We stepped out into the sunlight.  I wasn't thinking straight.  I just wanted the camera to work.  I was having trouble loading the film holder into the back of the camera.  The shutter didn't work.  I fucked around again, and again I was pouring sweat.  I felt queasy.  A couple of tries and the shutter fired.  

"OK," I said.  I took the photo, but when I pulled the film holder out, I grabbed the dark slide and exposed the film to the sunlight.  Really?  Was there any other way for me to fuck up?  But the girls were nice.  The other one stepped up.  To focus the camera, I was using my mother's 3x strength reading glasses.  They worked like a charm, but when I pulled them from my pocket, I broke off one of the arms.  

Sure.  There were many ways to fuck up.  

I put the glasses with one arm on and looked down into the viewfinder.  The fell off.  This was slapstick at its finest.  I bent down, picked them up, and tried again.  

Back inside the lab, I left the film with the two of them to be developed.  

"I gave you a discount," the girl said.  I assumed that was because I was "special."  

When I stepped back outside, I decided to walk around back to the market to see.  A woman was sitting on a low lawn chair eating lunch.  She looked up and said "cool camera."  

"Yea. . . let me take your photo with it."

"O.K."

"This will take a minute."

"Take your time."

She got up to help a customer.  It turned out to be her store.  She was a cool hippie girl and it might turn out to be a good photo, but I don't know.  Somehow I had gone blind.  I had gone stupid.  I wasn't really seeing what she was doing when I looked through the viewfinder.  I was thinking about all the things I needed to do to make the camera work.  The one arm glasses fell off my face.  A girl walking by picked them up and handed them to me.  I didn't want to look foolish anymore.  I just wanted to take the photo.  It worked.  Yay!

But I don't think I set the shutter speed correctly.  

I punched my phone number into the girl's phone so she could let me know where to send the photo.  

I walked around the corner of the building into the parking lot market place.  A guy walked up.  Same thing.  Cool camera.  He wanted to know about it.  He was a photographer, he said.  He used to shoot street with a Pentax 6x7.  I gave him the Liberator and showed him how it worked.  

"Here, let me take a photo of you."

He was working the booth with his wife.  

"She used to be a model," he said.  

"Does she want to make a picture?" I asked him.  

Indeed she did.  

The I surprised him.  I told him to take it. I metered and helped him set the dials.  He framed it up, I pulled the dark slide, and he hit the shutter.  

Nothing.  

I fooled around with the camera for another five minutes, his wife standing, waiting.  Finally, it worked.  

"I hope I didn't move out of focus," he said.  

"O.K.  Let me take one just to be sure."  

"Do you want both of us?"

"Yea, that would be good."

I pulled out my glasses and put them on my face.  They fell to the ground and the other arm came off.  By now, I just expected everything to fail.  I was giving up.  I just had to laugh.  I lay the glasses on top of the viewfinder and did my best. 

Some boys came up to their booth and asked how much for a Guns and Roses t-shirt.  

"Six fifty," said my new friend.  

"Would you be interested in buying one of these," one of the kids said holding out two t-shirts.  My new friend looked at them.  

"How much for this one."

"Eighty," the kid said.  

Wait a minute.  Six fifty wasn't $6.50?  

"I'm going to pass on the $80," my new friend said. 

"That shirt is six hundred and fifty dollars?!?" I exclaimed.  

He nodded.  "Comps online are $800."  

"Holy shit!  Do these tweekers have that kind of money?"

"I don't know.  This is my first market.  I have shirts for sixty, fifty, forty and look at this, a 1980s Adidas shirt in good shape.  Only thirty."

He told me he had a line of Christian t-shirts and he usually worked church things.  What?  Oh, man. . . he'd said earlier we should get together and shoot.  I already had ideas for his wife.  Christians?  

"Is this your whole gig?" I asked.  

"No.  I am a server in a restaurant.  I just do this to pay the rent.  I try to make two thousand a month.  

I've been out of touch for a long time, I guess.  What a world.  

I punched my number into his phone, said I'd be in touch, and took the big assed camera back to the car.  As I put it away, I decided to take all the film I'd just shot back to the lab.  Then I had another idea.  I grabbed my big medium format Fuji GFX with the Leica 135mm lens on it.  I wanted to show my new friend. . . and take a photo of his wife. . . because I wasn't sure that anything I had done all day was going to turn out well.  

And so, the color photo at the top.  

I was slick with sweat when I got back into the car for the last time.  I was weak and worn out.  That camera is heavy and my back was hurting.  My knees.  My hips.  My nerves.  

But I had been in the center of the ring all day.  Nice camera.  Nice hair.  

I decided to stop at the cafe on my way home.  I wondered if my little mimosa friend would be working.  

She was.  We chatted, caught up.  Things were still pretty much the same for both of us.  She was still making jewelry.  I told her about the $650 t-shirt.  She shook her head.  I told her I walked by her shop on the Boulevard and looked in the window one day, but she wasn't there.  

"I'm in the back," she said.  Making jewelry.  "Just come in and ask for me."

"Yea, I thought it would be creepy.  Your boss would be like, who's the creepy old stalker."

"Don't be silly."

We talked about her silversmithing.  And then the price.

"You mean if you made me a bolo tie, it would be three thousand dollars?"

"Sure."  

"I'll have a French soda."

She made it fine. 

I sat down.  I was beat.  There was no way I wanted to go to the grocery store, shop, go back to my mother's and cook and clean.  No sir, no way.  I'd have to think of something.  Soup.  Chicken soup.  I'd drop two eggs in it.  And some bone broth.  Was it really bone broth?  

When I got back to my mother's, I made a Campari and soda and collapsed.  I told her my dinner plans.  She was fine with that.  I pulled out my phone and asked if Kettle and Fire was real bone broth.  

Oh, indeed it is!!!  This is the stuff T left me.  It is one of the few brands you can buy that is actually bone broth.  Look it up.  Use no other.  

The soup was good and healthy and easy.  I think I'll make it ofen.  

So, my friends, there is the tale.  What weekend.  It was almost like having a life.  I will have some 4x5 film to look at this week.  Even if they are shitty, I am going to keep using that big-assed Liberator for awhile.  And if I make any good photos with it, I may have John Minnicks fix whatever is wrong with the cocking mechanism.  

It is Monday the start of the last week of Spring.  Sunday is the solstice.  Summer.  Can you imagine?  It is already a hundred degrees outside.  

Sometimes I listen to new music.  Here's a nice start to this last week of Spring.