November

I feel I have so much to say today that I don't know where to begin, so I'll start here.  I stupidly sent this out to a lot of people yesterday.  It is just as stupid to post it here.  I've by and large given up texting people except in response, which means I am not texting much anymore.  But sometimes you get down and lonely, and you can rationalize doing something because you are forgiving.  

"Forgiving?  Who?  For what?"

You know. . . people for having lives and forgetting about mine.  WTF?  This is part confession.  I'm a confessor as well as a forgiver.  

I'm also a dumb fuck.  Some people felt it necessary to 👍 it.  Alright.  O.K.  I wonder if this one would have been better received?

I should have simply stayed the course and kept my head down.  It seemed innocent enough, but if you recall, I don't deal with rejection so very well which is why I have never asked anyone out on a first date.  

I sat with my phone in my lap as I got the candy into big bowls and sat out waiting for the kiddos to start showing up.  It was only 5:30 when the first family came, mom, dad, and three small children.  They had great costumes and were super sweet.  

And they were the best of the evening.  Shortly after, the crowd began to swell.  But this year, it wasn't the cute, sweet neighborhood kids and parents.  Nope.  Here's some commentary.  People have gone stupid over decorating for Halloween.  My mother's street becomes a theme park sometime in early October, and as someone puts up more decorations, the next has to outdo them.  But it is like advertisement, and the people who showed up last night were interlopers.  It was a whole different Halloween crowd this year.  Cultures collide.  At one point early in the evening, the neighbors came over to comment on what was obvious when a guy in a mask who must have been in his twenties came up the drive alone.  

"We're calling it a night."

"Me, too."

And so Halloween ended early for us this year.  And that was fine.  Neither my mother nor me/myself were feeling so festive this year.  

We had hot dogs and popcorn for dinner.  

Earlier in the day, I took the long walk to the golf course and back.  Just before I got to the golf course, I saw a fellow I've known for decades standing outside the small, funky apartment complex he owns.  Don't picture an apartment complex. It is a collection of five tile roofed funky place built around a garden courtyard.  Recently a For Sale sign has gone up.  He has been taking care of his mother as I have mine.  Sort of.  He lives in one apartment and his mother another.  His son has a third one.  My buddy's father and mother were married when the father passed away.  He owned a lot of valuable land with a partner who legally "stole" it from my friend's mother.  I only know this version of the story as told by my friend.  Here's the part I can verify, though.  His mother married a U.S. Senator who helped raise my buddy.  His mother outlived the Senator.  This time, she did alright.  

She died this St. Patrick's Day.  I suspected she had dies when I saw the For Sale sign on the property's lawn as my buddy said he would sell it when she died.

I stopped and talked to him for awhile . 

"Are you taking care of yourself?" he asked. 

"No."

Of course, he told me I needed to.  I was down in the dumps about my health, but it was good to talk to somebody who had an ear.  I told him about my physical ailments.  He's had them, too.  He'd had several surgeries on his neck and he's still working out and surfing.  It was simply good talking to someone, and when I said goodbye, I was feeling a little bit better.  Funny how that works.  

Returning home down the Boulevard, the sidewalk was packed with families in costume.  In the past, when the village was just that, the retailers would hand out candy to the kids who came by.  It was cute.  Now, though, the Boulevard was just an preview of what I was about to experience that night.  The Boulevard has become a destination for people from all over the tri-county area.  I bumped and jostled my way back home.  

Something very wrong has happened.  

Often, before a post, I have an idea of what I want to talk about, then I'll read the news and that idea is lost.  Today, however, it just fed what I had sort of planned.  From a small article in today's online NY Times:

On a recent afternoon, Lauren Leek stood on a typical London shopping street, in front of a Victorian-era pub and a predictable array of corporate-owned food, drink and retail outlets: Pret a Manger, Starbucks, Joe & the Juice, Subway.

“What we see in front of us used to be culturally diverse. Now it is culturally generic,” said Leek, a Dutch Australian data scientist who is an assistant professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “Most of what we see is the big chains we see everywhere,” she said. “It creates a sense of placelessness. We could be anywhere.”

In her view, "anywhere" is created by an algorithmic standardization.  She gives many examples of the effects of this on everything from restaurant menus to pop music.  She has tracked "the verbal richness of lyrics from over 4,000 songs in Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 hits from 1950 to 2015. Since the early 1960s, Leek found, the range of distinct words has contracted more than a quarter, while the number of repeated lines has increased nearly a third."

In her view, standardization means things get more stupidly alike.  

"Stupidly" is my addition.  

The article made me think of New York City when there were fewer chains and more individualized stores.  For a poor southern boy like me/myself, it was a like going to wonderland.  I returned every chance I got.  

Skip ahead.  Last night after closing up the Halloween shop, my mother and I ate hot dogs and popcorn, I turned the television on.  YouTube.  And this was the first things I chose.  

As I watched and listened, I thought about Q and Sky who moved to the city to live a good chunk of their youths there.  Not together, of course.  But I am envious.  They were brave and fortunate and they will each always have that.  Both moved away, as people do, when they decided to marry and have a child.  Once again, not to one another, but they each stopped at one.  

A few nights ago, I watched this interview with Jay McInerney.  His novel, "Bright Lights, Big City" was the seminal New York City book of the 1980s.  He and the rest of the Literary Brat Pack--Tama Janowitz, Bret Easton Ellis, and Donna Tart--became the young guns of the literary world, Tart receiving the largest advance of any author in publishing history for her novel "The Secret History."  

They were all twenty-something then.  

Don't watch this interview if you aren't familiar with McInerney. and the milieu.  It is long.  But if you do watch it, tell me--do you think he has really given up the cocaine?

When I first went to NYC, it was the city pictured in"Midnight Cowboy."  Q moved there in the 90s while it was still a Brat Pack place.  Sky went only a couple of years after we ushered in the new century.  

My mother left the room while the room while "Columbus and 89th" was playing, so I let the algorithm do it's thing for awhile.  A few songs later, "New Slang" by the Shins played (link) followed by the David Letterman Live version (link), and for deeply buried reasons, I began to weep.  

My mother came back into the room and wanted me to put on "a show."  We've been watching the new season of "The Diplomats" so I put that on.  It was he last episode of the season, and. . . I'm a mess. . . and once again, I got moist.  I'm always a fool for love.

And that my friends was my Halloween.  

Today we usher in the New Time.  It's gonna fuck you up for awhile, this switching of the clocks. My body is already confused.  I think I'll just chill the day away.

I don't look forward to tomorrow.  I have two doctors appointments, and neither is for my neck.  I'm sure my blood panels are going to be an issue, but I've decided to tell the doctor I want to live the rest of my life without being a patient.  I'll try to live with whatever I have as well as I can.  My hero days are done, I'm afraid.  There are things that I am going to have to accept.  

Then Tuesday.  I'm voting for impeachment, but I'm seriously afraid the liberal press has given us a lot of false hope again.  So are they, I think, as they have been trying to pull their punches these past few days.  Tenterhooks.  Pins and needles. 

I have more I want to report about consciousness and A.I. but I have rambled on far enough for today.  I need to make breakfast and get on with things as best I can.  It is supposed to be a rainy afternoon here.  So they say.  I think I'll make pho for dinner.  It will be dark when I do.  

I was inspired by this.  

You don't need to watch this, either.  It is long.  Maybe just watch it for a minute or two.  O.K.  November.