It is the end of summer, the very last day, and I wonder how you enjoyed it. I hardly noticed as every day is nearly identical for me now. But the temperature here has dropped five to ten degrees, and the shadows will begin to grow longer, and we are coming to my romantic season. Romantic in the emotional sense. I am not expecting intense affection with or from another person. I would if I ever got out of my mother's house. I could still be a charmer, I think, but that may just be a sentimental memory. It doesn't matter anyway. My choices in life are limited now.
Still, I want to enjoy the shortened days, the long shadows, the extended sunrises and sunsets.
But the other thing has me in a panic. I have been waking in the night believing I am dying. Of course it is true. We all are. But I have to get up to try and escape the darkness of the room and of my tainted brain. It is anxiety bordering on full out panic attacks, I think. I am trapped only allowed to care for my mother. I can't even imagine what would happen if I had to go to the hospital. She can do nothing on her own. I despair of ever living in my own house again with my own time and my own things. None of you can imagine this. It is impossible. But it is a reality under which I am withering.
And there is nothing I can do.
"I told you before, you need to get help. There are companies that will come in. . . ."
But let me get away from this talk and back to the whole. It is the last day of summer, and I went looking for appropriate songs. I know many, but I couldn't think of them. There is a Van Morrison song, I am relatively certain, that moves from the end of summer to autumn, but on my life, I cannot remember it. So I Googled "songs of summer." There are plenty of lists. I even went to Rolling Stones top 100. Wow. There is a lot of music I have gladly missed. Cardi B (?) and L'il Naz were on there separately and together three times. I'm not proud about not knowing those songs. I just don't care.
And that made me feel kind of sad. I need to be back at the factory where kids can keep me informed. They are a great source of popular wisdom with which I am losing touch. Have you ever watched any of those videos coming out of The Villages? Yea. . . that is what I'm talking about. Living in a fantasy time bubble where they needn't be troubled by things contemporary or new. I can't believe they haven't made a hit television series about it yet, a kind of "The Prisoner" thing where you can't escape.
Yea, yea, yea, I know. It's an old tv show from the '60s (link). But it is as bad to not know the past as it is not to know the present. Nobody, of course knows the future. Well, except for that one thing we must not think about.
Something fascinates me about today's picture, but I can't put my finger on it. It is an old photo that I had never cooked up until a few days ago. Now I keep going back to look at it. It is a much better photograph than the ones of the little pixie I posted yesterday. People get goofy when they know they are being photographed, but a photo like this is a photo of unconsciousness. Is that right? We can't know what the woman is thinking, but we can see the results. We surely wonder what she was thinking earlier in the day and earlier in life. She is a projection of her choices and the cultural forces that helped her make them. She is perfect in her way. If we knew her, she would surprise us, I'm certain. People are complex. This outward projection is simply that and all the photo captures. Pure surface.
But the water is deep.
That photo was taken in the last month of winter. It was my one day trip out of town this year.
Well, this is a mess of a post. I blame it on being up for an hour in the middle of the night. Such a thing is new to me. I've never had trouble sleeping before.
I want to go home.
"Forget about it."
Most of the summer songs I could remember were about summer coming, not going. I've posted Sly and the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the Summer Time" far too often, and Chad and Jeremy's "Summer Song" too, I think. So I'm going to end with a real pop tune, the one that played over the credits at the end of "American Graffiti." I know, I know, I should play some Harry Styles or L'il Naz, but. . . .
"Hey, you kids get off my lawn!!!"
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