Carnival of the Mind

I'm certain you are checking in first thing today to see how I am feeling.  Thank you for your concern.  

Ho!

I guess whatever I have is "going around."  I'm getting reports of other people suffering from the same symptoms.  The difference in most cases, however, was that they had someone to bring them medicine, food, and drink while they rested up and got well.  

Just sayin'.   

The tenant called me to see how I was feeling.  She told me there was a lot of activity on the Boulevard.  There were tents and a stage erected in what is now being called "The North Pasture."  

"You'd think Taylor Swift was coming to perform."

Turns out to be the annual benefit "Cows and Cabs."  It raises a million dollars each year for charities.  The best chefs and restaurants prepare food and drinks, and we have any number of Michelin and James Beard awarded chefs here now.  Celebrities come just to mill about the crowd.  The shindig is tonight.  You must dress up in Western Wear.  It is a real hoot for "private wealth" financiers and old attorneys to dress up and play cowboy like they are on a dude ranch.  

"All hat and no horse," as the saying goes.  

"But I have a Harley and go to Bike Week every year!"

Many of them have pickup trucks to show their connections to the working class, big ass $100,000 dollar things they get detailed every week, trucks without a scratch on them.  Most of them are as useless with tools as I am. . . and that's "real useless."  

But all the buckaroos and. . . what?. . . buckettes?. . . will be in full regalia tonight.  

"It's an expensive ticket," I told the tenant.  "$275/person.  You can't get one now, though.  They sold out a while ago."

"Your ex-wife will be there," she said.  

"A lot of my ex's will be, I'm sure.  It's a Who's Who of the Boulevard.  See and be seen."

I knew that Tennessee and his crowd would all be there.  You have to give "face" if you want to run with the Big Dogs.  

"Listen," said the tenant, "I want to call an electrician.  I keep getting shocked in the apartment."

!!!!!

It is always something.  

"What do you mean you keep getting shocked?  Where?" 

"In different rooms.  I got shocked in the bathroom washing my hands."

"Don't call an electrician.  You need to call Ghost Busters."

I don't charge her 1/4 of what I should be getting for the rent, and I keep thinking to ask her to move, that I she is costing me more money than I get from her.  

Later, I got a call from Tennessee.  He's been gone for weeks.  

"What's up, nig?" 

"How are you doing?"

"You know.  Same old shit, except I've had something bad.  Feel like Fido's ass."

"I've been sick, too.  Head and body?"

"Yup." 

He told me he'd been out golfing with the Big Dogs that day at the Four Seasons golf course or some such place where you pay outrageous greens fees so that you don't have to see the little people.  

"After that, we went to a Ferrari car event.  You should have seen that crowd."

"Yea. . . you sound really sick."

"Is it time for my pills yet?"

Make dinner, wash dishes, put together meds, watch t.v., go to bed.  

I'll need to get off the cold meds today.  Maybe take a walk around the block.  

I "made" some carnival pictures yesterday.  They are images that should exist, and now they do.  I will make more of them.  These are images from my dreams, and now I think I should write some stories abut them.  

"Should," not "will."  

The sad clown and the despondent hoochie coochie dancer and a wicker bottle of wine.  Right?  They need names.  They need stories.  Somewhere in the far distance, there needs be music.  I've heard it before, both in movies and in life, but I can't find a recording of such a thing anywhere.  Faint, carried and modulated by the wind.  

If you have been here for a VERY long time, you may remember the videos I made of the miniature carnival I set up for the kid long, long ago.  I am not at home with my hard drives or I would pull one up for you here.  It only just occurred to me.  I've told you ancient stories, too, of my childhood encounters with "little person" clowns.  Hmm.  Pieces of a puzzle?  

Holy smokes!  It just occurred to me that long, long ago, in the early days of the studio, I intended to shoot a circus series, too.  

Maybe I need to delve deeper.  There may be some dark, hidden secret here.  

I should write out sketches, anyway.  If nothing else, I will "make" more images.  

The day is clear and bright and the air is cool and dry.  I'm not quite "there" yet, but I should try to take a walk to get some of it into me.  Maybe I'll go back to my own home for a bit this afternoon and walk the Boulevard.  I need to see something other than this endless beige sea and the inside of my own sickness plagued head.  

AM or FM

I live the life of an isolato.  I know the holiday thing is going on somewhere out there.  I saw evidence yesterday when I took my mother for her renal scan.  There was a huge fake Christmas tree in giant lobby of the medical building.  That is my connection to the outside world now, medical buildings.  It seems the whole world is in wheelchairs or walkers or using canes.  

The night before her scan, I got up to take my four hour dose of NyQuil.  My mother was standing in the kitchen holding onto the edge of the sink with a wild look in her eye.  

"I've lost it," she said.  

"Lost what?"

"I don't know if it is AM or FM."

"What?  AM or FM?"

"Whatever it is--day or night."

And so it goes here.  She was supposed to fast before her scan.  In the morning, I heard her bumping around in the cabinets.  When I went into the kitchen, she was eating.  

"WTF?"

Later, I called the doc's office and told them she had eaten some breakfast biscuits at six.  She was scheduled for one.  After a bit, the woman came back on the line and said it was o.k. just as long as she didn't eat anything more.  

These are my social interactions.  This morning, lying in bed just before rising, I was thinking about college.  My old college roommate isn't doing well and is in a rehab facility right now.  He's not experiencing the holiday season, either.  Lying in bed, though, I could feel the energy we drew from the season then.  It infected the entire campus.  Nothing overt, just a feeling.  We weren't that far from childhood then.  There were still the old stirrings inside us, I guess.  

Even at the factory, such things lingered, and now, living the life I do, I miss that sense of community.  

But culture wars have taken their toll on all that, the whole "melting pot" vs. "diversity" issue.  Multiculturalism hasn't panned out quite like it was supposed to.  

But I would like to be walking on the Boulevard in the brisk autumnal air, watching people, having lunches and drinks, and feeling the vibe.  

This cold has really been kicking my ass.  I'm going to come out the end of this tunnel looking peaked and puny and pale.  

I like alliterations.  

I may need one more day in bed.  I slept all the live long day yesterday but for needing to take my mother to the doctor's office.  I think another day of complete rest is going to be required. 

I feel I'm missing everything.  

I watched a couple documentaries on Edie Sedgwick last night.  They both mentioned a film she made, "Ciao! Manhattan."  I found the movie on YouTube (link).  Wow!  As the old song says, "Those were different times."  I couldn't live that way.  I enjoy my emotions too much.  They say that the coupe glass was shaped after the breasts of Marie Antoinette.  Maybe, but you can see that they sure look a hell of a lot like Sedgwick's breasts, too.  

"She was very proud of them."

And rightfully so, I think.  

I read an article today about a researcher who has done Adolph Hitler's genome sequence and found that he had a disease that would have kept his testicles from descending and would likely have given him a micropenis (link).  Don't you wonder what they might find out about YOU if they sequenced your genes?  

"Well, I guess that explains it."

I sure as shit hope they do Trump's.  Like yesterday.  

I'm still awed by people's fascination with Epstein, and I still think people are motivated by two bad desires.  One is "getting Trump."  Like we need more "proof."  The other is just secret desire.  

"We need to see ALL the evidence."

They are not going to produce the pictures and videos you morons.  Only "special" people will have access to those.  You are just going to have to keep using your dirty little imaginations when you think nobody is around.   

There is a statue outside the offices of the BBC of George Orwell smoking a cigarette.  On it an inscription  reads "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." 

You can tell people what they don't want to hear, but you'll have to suffer the consequences of that.  He forgot to say that part (link).  Megyn Kelly spoke a truth about the Epstein thing and the women of CNN lost their minds.  

"One of the victims even had braces for God's sake!"

Uh. . . I hate to say it, but Kelly is right.  You just hate her because she is another one of those made up doll looking republican cokehead beauties.  And, as a friend of mine wrote to me today, "Kelly knows what she is talking about, I'm certain."  She was very specific.  Fifteen.  

Last night, my mother asked me a curious question.  

"What made you get so interested in these gel plates?"

I'd been watching YouTube videos trying to learn how to use them.  I didn't really have a response.  I had no words.  It was a good question.  All I could come up with was, "I want to make something."

Twenty to twenty-four hours a day, I take care of my mother.  We can't have conversations because she can't hear.  We just exchange essential information.  

"Is it AM or FM?"

Beats me, mom.  Beats me.  

Spared

This may be the worst cold I've ever had.  It is hard to remember.  I haven't had a cold for a very long time, so maybe I have simply forgotten how bad a cold can be.  I've taken everything I can get my hands on to make it less severe.  NyQuil seems to help more than does Mucinex in case you are asking.  It is time for my next four hour dose.  

Now there's some high powered reporting.  

I stayed in bed much of the day and on the couch most of the rest.  I had to venture out to get drugs and food, and I had to go home to pick up a package, and that all but did me in.  So I haven't anything to report on other than my own misery.  

Or I could opine.  

I'll spare you that and more, however.  I think I will go back to bed for the world is dark and cold and makes no sense to me right now.  I feel only deep down chthonic things.  

A Cold, Not a Fever

I am sick this morning with something I'm pretty sure I picked up in the hospital sitting all day with my mother on Sunday.  Head and body.  I took two antihistamines before bed but my nose ran like a faucet all night.  

Just thought you'd want to know.  

Still, I soldier on.  

Here's the creative report.  Nothing came of my gel plate transfer.  I went back and watched more YouTube videos last night and saw what I was doing wrong.  Maybe.  It is going to be a lot of trial and error.  I don't know why I want to do this at all, really, as the images that come off the plate are monochrome, just like any plate printing technique.  But, as always, I believe I can "outsmart" the process, that I will find a way to make something nobody else is making.  Why do I think that?  Because I think I am a genius in that way even if I am retarded in others.  O.K.  Not a genius.  But I am a clever boy.  

I have ideas for doing three color printing as you would with silkscreen, but it is a lot of work, especially with getting the images lined up.  But I think it possible.  

I did some other experiments yesterday, too.  I ran some Japanese rice paper through the printer, and that worked.  The images are soft in both color and detail, not like printing on a good photo quality paper at all.  The images will be good for something, though.  I have ideas.  

I also ran a Japanese Kozo inkjet paper that was delivered yesterday, and that makes a lovely soft image, too.  I just got notice, however, that because of Trump's tariff and trade policies, they can no longer ship their papers to the U.S. and can only send them by air.  The extra cost will be reflected in the price.  

Thanks Trump.  

I have a lot of experimenting before I know what I can do or even want to do.  

This morning, I had an idea.  Chat will now make an exact copy of an image in any treatment style I have described and that we have built.  I have a whole catalog of them now that I can call up . Too many, really, and I will have to whittle them down for now they are enough that I am overwhelmed.  I have an idea that I MIGHT be able to recreate my old Polaroid series, but if not, there are infinite ways to make the image that I might like.  The shoe image at the top was just a rough start, not with my own photo but with an A.I. generated one.  I am excited to work with my own pictures in. . . piss shit fuck goddamn!  Chat won't let me work with any of my "provocative" images.  And this is a real bummer.  Nudity is a taboo on Chat.CalvintheReformer.  And it is not JUST nudity.  Provocative poses, too, no matter how covered up the person is.  

The other thing I did manage to do today, though, was to get the images rendered in high enough resolution to make big prints, so there is that.  Big shoes!  

I am going to work with Chat to develop some Photoshop actions that might let me work my images in a similar way to Chat.  I've tried before, but the results were not good.  I am, however, intrepid.  

I don't think I'll have the energy to work on any of it today, though.  I'm thinking cold medicine and sleep.  It IS a cold and not a fever.  And that is good news.  

I had to make an art store run again yesterday to get more supplies for the project.  When I was checking out the young woman behind the counter asked if I was a student or a prof.  If so, I would get a discount.  I was, I said, but I don't have my i.d  O.K., she said, I'll trust you.  

"Right?  I'd either have to be a yard guy or a prof to look like this."

"No. . . you look wise."

I've never been told that one before.  I think she was fucking with me.  Still, 15% is 15%.  The bill was still north of $100.  

When I walked to my car, there was a fellow parked next to my mother's car, probably in his 60s.  He had an interesting look about him.  When he saw me, he asked, "Do you have any jumper cables?"  He had a pronounced Italian accent.  

"I don't think so.  This is my mother's car.  Let me look in the trunk." 

There were none.  

"Sorry. . . no."

He said he had to pick his wife up in half an hour.  He looked a bit panicked.  

"What happens when you try to start it?  Does the starter turn?"

"You try.  Just push the button."

So I climbed into his car and pushed the button.  It made a cha-chink noise but just barely.  I looked at his gauges.  New cars don't tell you how much voltage your battery has.  It is impossible to tell unless the fact that the battery icon was in red meant something.  

I got out of the car and went to the front of it and rocked it back and forth.  If the problem was the starter, sometimes this helps.  

Nope.  

"Try taking in out of park and then putting it back in," I said.  

There was no gear shifter.  It was all electronic buttons.  

"I don't know anything about new cars," I confessed.  Then I remembered the tenants problem was that the battery in the key fob was weak.  

"Give me your key," I said.  I held it close to the ignition button, but that did nothing. I got out of the car and handed him back his key.  He got into his car and looked to see if he could insert it in the keyhole, but of course there was no keyhole.  

"That will only unlock your car door," I said.  "Do you have AAA?"

"No," he said shaking his head.  

"You are just going to have to keep asking people if they have jumper cables,"I said.  

He looked sad when I got in my car to go.  I hated to leave him stranded, but what could I do?  I still had errands to run.  

I went to my bank.  Oops.  Veteran's Day.  I went to Office Depot to look at laser printers.  I can get one for $350, but refills on toner cost around $90 per color.  CYMK.  Around $360.  I didn't even know if I was going to keep using the gel mat transfer, so I punted on the idea.  

I don't know what I will do today.  I want to go to my house and lie in my own bed, but I'll probably stay here at my mother's and try to sleep away the cold.  I need medicine, though, and will have to make a trip.  

At least there is no fever.  

Here's a song I feel in my bones today.  Maybe more than just today.  When I first heard it, I felt they had written it just for me. 

Scrapbooking?

Alright.  I don't know what I am doing yet.  I've created a bunch of new presets in "the tool" that I am using.  Or it may be using me.  Whichever, I have only begun, so my abilities are not refined yet.  It is going to take some time.  Right now, I am making reference images for things I might like to make 3D.  What I am imagining right now isn't even taking solid shape.  It might.  It could.  But then. . . what will I be making?  Will I be one of those "crafty" people?  Collage and assemblage are art forms, but holy shit, look on YouTube and you'll see my fears.  Stamps and dye transfers and bits of paper and ribbon. . . and I may use them all.  I've written several times about seeing the Peter Beard exhibit in SoHo.  I even bought a gel plate yesterday.  I went to the art supply store and looked around.  It is always both overwhelming and inspiring going there, but then you mingle with the folks making Star Wars cartoons and the bottom seems to just fall out.  It'a fine line, you know.  

I'll tell you what is really scary.  There is only one art supply store left in town.  There used to be many.  What is one supposed to make of such a thing?  

I'm heading into unfamiliar territory with a head full of half-baked ideas.  I plan on using some of my old Polaroids to make images.  Haven't a clue, though, how that will turn out.  And from what I've read, it takes a lot of experience to make good prints from the gel plate, and as I confessed yesterday, I've taken workshops with both famous and not so famous people using different mediums, and every time, I was the lousiest artist in the room.  Once in a local workshop with average people, I was sitting next to a teen girl who was making fantastic collages.  I told her so, and she said, "You are too careful.  You need to just loosen up an put things on the page."  

Ha!  She was right.  My pages were all 90 degree images.  I was afraid to "make a mistake."  I was simply a tight ass.  But I hadn't grown up a little girl which I think is a disadvantage in collaging.  I've always wanted to do a photo series of girls' bedrooms.  Oh, you bet--I know what you are thinking.  But here's what I'm thinking.  The walls of little girls' rooms are always collages.  They make the loveliest things from an early age.  Boys put up a poster of an athlete or later a sexy girl or a beer commercial.  I was of that ilk.  But girls put up cut up magazine ads, photos, bits of lace. . . I don't know.  If I knew, I would do it.  

But yea. . . I know what you're thinking.  I know I've led you to such conclusions.  But try a little self-reflection, O.K.?  It says much about your filthy little brains.  

All in all, I have a lot of work to do and frustration to work through before I make a 3D image that I like, I'm sure.  

And then what?  

Beats the hell out of me.  It will go into a drawer with all my other prints.  

Brilliant!  

Selavy.  

You're cold this morning.  I am, too.  Temperatures dipped to freezing and below here in the sunny south.  I have to admit that my mother's house stays much warmer than my drafty 1920's home.  But the days will warm up quickly here and we will be in the 80s again soon.  I am a lazy southerner who does not like to get dressed.  Oh, I like to visit the cold, or at least I used to.  But putting on and taking off layers of clothing to go in and out seems like a horrible lifetime existence to a lazy southerner, about as horrible as you feel about living in a humid swamp half the year.  

If I win the billion dollar lotto this week. . . . 

This is to say, I got a bit of distraction yesterday and was out in the world of shadow and light.  I had a whiff of the old feeling again if only for a moment.  The world seemed technicolor in the later afternoon. 

And then. . . it was home to mother.  I have a lot going on, but I have a fantasy creative life, too, and maybe that will be enough to keep me going for awhile.  Don't hate on me.  I need the distraction.  

 

Every Story Needs a Picture, Don't It?

Bliss be gone.  Up the chimney (or chimley as it is called by "my people").  It was a typical Sunday morning.  It was cloudy and getting ready to rain.  I got up.  My mother got up.  I gave her meds, made breakfast.  I was hanging out and waiting for the gym to open at noon.  It was around then that I went out to the car to get my gym bag.  My mother was sitting in her chair.  She looked up at me and said, "I fell again,"  I felt the tingling in the back of my neck.  

"Are you o.k.?"

"I hurt.  Do you think I should go to the hospital?"

"I don't know.  I can't tell you how you feel.  Stand up."

She did.

"Does it feel as if anything is broken?"

"I don't know.  Maybe my foot."  

She sat back down.  

"You'd better call 911."

Shit piss fuck goddamn.  

Ten minutes later, my mother was on the gurney and off to the hospital. . . once again . 

I went into the house and sat down trying to sort through my cascade of emotions.  I was familiar with this drill now.  I would wait a bit to go to the hospital.  It would be awhile before anything happened.  

There was a knock on the door.  I didn't want to answer it.  It would be the neighbors wanting to know what happened.  I sat.  There was a harder knocking at the door.  It was the woman from across the street and the woman from a couple houses down.  

"What happened?"

I told them.  That wasn't enough, though.  They asked more questions, wondered aloud what I should do.  I told them I was worn out with all of this.  The woman across the street wondered if mom shouldn't be put in a home.  I said she had been at rehab and just wanted to come back to her house.  Of course.  

"My mother was in a home, and boy, she ran that place." 

I said that's what people do.  My cousin, for instance.  He father was in a facility and she and her brother never went to see him.  Her husband's mother was in a facility near them and again, they hardly ever went to see them.  His brother is in a rehab place very close to where they live, and they go to see him every couple weeks.  

"That's what people do," I said.  

"I'll be glad to come over and watch her for a couple hours any time you want," said the across the street neighbor. 

"I don't need a couple of hours.  I need a couple weeks, a month. . . ."  

She stood up in a huff.  She grabbed her dog's leash and said, "Come on. . . I'm going.  I tried."

She made a show of it.  The other neighbor stood mouth agape, looking.  

"OK," I said.  

"Asshole."  

"I don't need this right now," I said.  

"I don't either." 

The other neighbor looked at me and said, "I'm sorry.  She can be a bitch."  

I just waved my hand and said, "I've got to go."

I was stewing on the drive to the hospital.  It was going to be another long day sitting in an ER room.  

When I got there, my mother was lying in bed connected with electrodes to the machine that beeps constantly.  There was no chair in the room.  I went into the hallway to look for one. 

"Can I help you," a nurse asked.  

"There is no chair in the room," I said.  

"Oh.  I'll get one." 

She was strong.  She brought in a very substantial chair.  

Later a boy came in to take her to X-ray.  She was getting X-rays all over her side and a CT scan on her head.  I sat in the empty room and waited.  Half an hour or so later, when she was brought back to the room, a nurse said it would take an hour, hour and a half to get the results.  My mother asked for pain meds.  He brought her Tylenol and a muscle relaxer.  

"She gets Percocet and Gabopentin four times a day," I said.  "That stuff isn't going to do anything for her."  

"Why does she take Percocet four times a day?" he asked.  

"What's your guess?  What do you think she takes a pain killer for?  Blood pressure?  Runny nose?  An infection?"

No, again. . . I didn't say that.  I just looked like I said it.  I told him I had her meds with me, and he said go ahead and give them to her.  Hmm.  O.K.  First time I'd ever heard that one in a hospital. . 

He left.  

"I'm going to go for coffee," I told my mother.  

The little cafeteria closest to the ER was closed.  The hospital didn't look as clean and shiny as it had before.  I had about half a mile's walk to get to the cafeteria.  My knee was swollen from running the day before, and it hurt.  

"I'm a mess," I thought.  "I'm falling apart."

There is a lot more wrong with me than just my knee.  

The cafeteria was half shut down.  There was little hot food and what there was sucked.  I got coffee.  It was bad.  I sat down for a minute.  The hospital had definitely been downgraded.  I had spent enough time here to know.  

When I got back to my mother's room, a pretty woman was standing in the doorway.  She turned and smiled.  

"Oh. . . hello. She was just asking where you were."

O.K.  Really terrible bad confession.  I thought she was a nurse.  

"I'm Doctor So and So.  Your mother's X-rays didn't show any broken bones.  Her head scan looked good, so there is no reason to keep her here.  I'm going to get her discharged now."

"Great," I said.  

When the doc had gone, my mother said, "That's good news."

"Yup."  

It was going on five.  We drove through the rain and the dark of day in silence.  When the two neighbors were talking to me earlier, one of them laughed and said, "She always says you pick and bitch at her all the time."  I now had an attitude.  I told my mother what was said.  This is something my mother likes to tell people. 

I am a slave.  You can scoff and laugh and do whatever you like.  But I am a servant for over twenty hours a day.  My mother can only sit and make messes.  I never get to sit for more than a few minutes at a time.  All the time.  Every day.  And there is no end to this in sight.  I have no life outside of this and trying to get my own home repaired.  I'm sick of people telling me they went through a similar thing with their grandparent or parent.  They haven't.  Nobody I have talked to was the sole caretaker without relief.  

If there is a heaven and a hell as in the fairy tales, I am certain to go to hell.  Really.  For all the slave work I do, the way I feel about it will put me in the eternal flames.  

Selavy.  

Before my mother fell, I was looking at the IG page of a mixed media artist.  She made tiny little books.  They intrigued me (link).  I'd sent her a message and she replied sweetly.  I wanted to make something like this.  I'd made a couple of books, but nothing of this scale.  I'm afraid I love collages.  It seems inane to me but I can't help it.  Mixed media.  

made with AI from her inspiration

I've taken workshops.  I am very bad at it.  Very.  

I was making dinner for my mother and myself--spaghetti and broccoli.  Quick and simple but for the clean up.  And I was thinking.  I resigned myself to this.  I haven't let myself admit that I would be doing this for virtually ever.  Now I did.  My life as a slave would continue for a long time.  And so. . . I needed to get some things to make my life here more bearable.  

I decided I would turn my mother's garage into my studio.  I'd get rid of most of her things in there and set up a work station.  I'd bring my stands and lighting and backdrops and all the paraphernalia for photoshoots.  There was plenty of room.  I would put in an electric heater for when it was cool and a portable air conditioner for when it was warm.  I would get a printer to keep here, a bigger one.  Fuck it.  I'd sit in the garage and make pictures.  

It didn't make me happy. . . but happyish.  There was still the creative block, the bad and frustrating mixed media things I'd make.  But. . . I decided that is what I would do.  

Oh. . . the AA thing went out the window last night.  When I was getting groceries for the spaghetti dinner,  I also bought an expensive bottle of wine and a fifth of scotch.  After dinner, I told my mother what I planned to do in her garage.  No reaction.  I kept thinking about what I would photograph there.  

"Hey, ma. . . don't come into the garage.  I've got naked girls out here, O.K."

Ha!  I didn't really care.  But would they?  

"You live with your mother?"

"Yea, yea. . . listen, put on the mask and take off your clothes.  HEY MA. . . DON'T COME OUT HERE!"

Fun scenario.  

I don't plan on doing nudes anymore.  I don't know.  What pictures do people want to see now?  We are saturated with images.  Oversaturated.  

There is an actual photo of my mother in the hospital bed, but I prefer the Rockwell version.  Photography has begun to bore me unless I use it to make illustrations from the pictures.  But I still have much to learn.  

I'm a disturbed man now, I guess.  I drank wine and whiskey and then a THC drink.  I took a Xanax.  I went to bed at ten and when I woke up at midnight, I took an Advil PM and a Tylenol.  I still couldn't sleep and got out of bed at 4:30.  I'll probably go back to bed after I post this.  

Really.  I've taken lots of media workshops.  Everybody else in them was better than I.  But the garage is the perfect place for me to try it.  That is the usual place where old men carve wooden ducks.  

Yesterday Today

My mind is everywhere this morning.  This could end up being a journal entry (like a lot of what is here, I guess), or it cold be some trippy phantasmagoria.  I am here, I am there.  Yea, cool cats. . . I'm everywhere.  

First observation of the morning--some stains upon the silence are worse than others.  Was Beckett speaking of writing when he made his declaration?  Living with my mother now, it becomes obvious to me that much it is auditory.  Obvious statements of fact, of course, that are proposed as mundane commentary, for instance, or the constant moving of plates and forks and bottles across a wooden table, the forceful setting down of the morning cup of coffee, not just plunked but then slid back and forth turning my nerve strands into barbed wire, a useless, unnecessary cacophony.  

To whatever Beckett was referring, I am inferring.  But I think my statement holds up either way.  

The noise abates momentarily.  I try to regain my composure.  Where was I?  The morning's bliss is already dissipating.  I am no longer everywhere.  I am here, anchored, heavy.  Fuck. 

Oh, Christ. . . what did I have in mind?  I am lost.  

I read a headline today (not the article) that many therapists are using ChatGPT for both their clients and themselves.  As you have probably garnered if you have been here much, I am not a fan of therapy or therapists.  Nope.  And especially not of this "many."  WTF?  It is idiocy.  They are asking for advice from a company who is balls deep in creating social control?  Do they not know that the responses of "the tool" are curated and censored?  There are things it just won't say or do.  

From a creative perspective, it is poison.  The tool is constantly changing, the "guardrails" getting strained and "disinfected."  I need a stable tool as much as a painter or a musician.  If every time one sat down to play an instrument but of a sudden the resulting sound had been altered . . . well, I don't know what you would do.  If a painters paint colors shifted every day. . . .  

Etc.  

So the therapists are working with an inconstant if they rely on A.I. to help them.  

I desire unconstrained consistency from "the tool."

Emboldened by the little taste of endorphins I experienced this week, I went out to the exercise course to try a little jogging.  Again, slow and careful, but this time on the uneven surface of the earth, a soft track of compacted soil.  I did more than jog.  I skipped, "ran" backwards, did slow crossover steps and side hops.  Just a little, I told myself.  You can come back slowly.  

I was driving the old Xterra.  Fixed up and running fine.  Took it through the car wash.  

And then, the a.c. quit working again.  

I had to get back to my mother's house.  I was taking her to Costco.  She is walking some again, like a Frankenstein sloth, sure, but it is an improvement.  

When I got to her house, there was a car in the driveway.  Shit.  It was some of her friends.  

"You should have been here awhile ago," one friend said to me.  "There were five women in this room.'

"Sure.  That's my heart's desire, to sit in a room full of broken old women.  Can't believe I missed that."

Of course I didn't say that, but sure as hell was glad I missed it.  

I opened a Beer Lite and sat down to hear the chatter.  Now it was all directed at me.  But they had been there awhile and were just getting ready to leave.  

And then they were gone.  

"I'm guessing you are not wanting to go to Costco now."

"No. . . I should go.  Let's go."

Mom pushed the giant shopping cart.  She has shrunk so much.  She looked tiny, surreal, something out of Wonderland.  But she moved it an inch at a time.  I walked behind.  It was torture, and not simply psychological.  My lower back, hips, and one knee were killing me.  

"Oh, boy. . . I fucked up this time," I thought.  The running may not have been a good idea.  

Up one aisle and down another she inched.  I would stop and lean on anything I could trying to take the weight off.  

"Can you get this for me?"

I'd put things in the cart.  

On and on and on, millimeter by fucking millimeter.  I would have been happy for her if I had not been in such pain.  I just wanted to get this nightmare over.  

Out of the entire ordeal, I got a bag of coffee.  A big one that used to cost eleven dollars, now twenty.  Thanks, Trump.  

It was dark.  It was late.  We'd been in the giant warehouse over an hour.

"I'm not cooking.  What do you want?"

We drove down the highway looking for takeout.  

I ended up at the grocery store.  Bought a box of fried chicken.  

Back home.  Made a salad.  Heated up a can of beans.

The whole thing sucked.  

Fuck me. . . I poured a whiskey.  I turned on the t.v.  It was late.  I went to YouTube for news.  

I gave up  on that.  

At the gym, the film professor was asking me if I'd watched this or that.  Then he told me a really bad joke about two economists that made him laugh over and over again.  Then he asked me if I had watched the guy on YouTube who destroyed things.  

"Physical things or ideas?"

"Physical things."

"No."  

He went on to tell me about this guy's show for far too long.  I realized then that you get a glimpse into someone's soul from their YouTube feed.  

"He gets like a billion views every time he posts."

YouTube never recommends such things to me.  I get feeds about the arts, music, and literature.  I get recommendations about philosophy.  Some movie things.  And. . . o.k. boxing and MMA. . . and female pole vaulters.  

Yea. . . a glimpse into the soul. 

I forget that I am paying for a subscription to HBO, but I remembered last night and checked to see what I had been missing.  A Nikki Glaser special popped up--"Someday You'll Die."  2024.  Hadn't I already seen this?  I put it on.  Didn't seem familiar.  So. . . holy shit.  Have you seen this?  It is exactly how I feel about youth and aging and death (link).  

My mother didn't seem to be paying attention, but toward the end, she said, "This woman is horrible."

"Really?  I think she's great."

My mother and I are far apart on what we like.  

When it was over, HBO suggested "The Substance."  I hadn't really been interested in seeing this film, but the film prof and his wife told me to watch half of it and turn it off.  So I did.  

It was a stupid movie with a lot of T&A.  I liked that part, but the movie dragged.  I think the director was too influenced by the pacing of Kubrick's "2001."  I mean it was slow and hollow and fluorescent.  

I took a Tylenol and an Advil PM and went to bed just before ten.  I was hurting.  I was beat.  

I woke up an hour later.  I was puking into my mouth.  I caught it in time so that it didn't come up through my nose.  I little burning in the throat, but not that hours of burning in the nasal cavity.  

The dreams that followed. . . I was dreaming about writing in the morning about the dream.  It seemed so profound.  

And I dreamed I was having such an incredible night's sleep.  

If Ingres, Botticelli, and Messima were one painter. . . .  I've created some wonderful templates in Chat.  I just hate that it won't let me use them the way I wish.  

My mother is up and walking without a walker today.  She wanders around now banging into things, banging cabinets, making noise.  What can I say?  Hillbilly determination and good home care.  I am not as mean to her in life as I am here on the blog.  

I somehow made a little video, "Hopper Creeper #2," that I am not certain I can put on YouTube.  I don't want to get banned.  They, too, are Nazi's about content.  So. . . this is just for the perverted few of you who come to read about "Last Night This Morning."  

That was one idea I had for a blog title.  Hmmm.  

How Can I Be Happy?

Woke at three.  Up at four.  What was wrong?  It made no sene.  I'd had a happy day.  Happy makes you more inviting apparently.  People smile at you and say hello.  You feel more alive, attractive almost.  There is a woman at the gym who I don't really talk to.  I don't talk to women I've not been introduced to at the gym.  I'm observant.  I see the creepers always ready to "help" a pretty woman work out.  They like to "mansplain" and give advice.  Nope.  Not me.  

Anywhere and everywhere, no matter. . . I am shy.  I don't talk to people anywhere uninvited unless I am on a mission to make a picture or a story, and then I am only a persona. 

The woman is strong and well-built, and when she is working out, she has what some call a resting bitch face.  She looks like she could be mean.  But the minute you talk to her, she lights up like a warm candle.  The transformation is crazy.  

She chatted me up (or vice versa) for a very long time.  Nicest person in the world.  We weren't flirting.  She is married and has two kids.  Her husband comes to the gym with her sometimes on the weekend.  No it was just friendly chat.  She had changed her hair, but it a bit shorter but not short, and blonded it, too.  It looks very nice and so I said.  

"How does your husband like it?"

She told me he doesn't like for her to change but that he did like her new hair. 

"I'll bet.  But yea, relationships are about stability.  Home base.  Nobody likes their spouse to change.  It is scary.  You always want your girlfriend or wife to be five or six pounds over ideal weight.  When they start going to the gym, start losing weight, change their wardrobe and hair. . . I always figure it is time to pack my underwear and toothbrush and just move along 'cause they ain't doing that for me."

She laughed at that.  

"Yea, when I start cutting up and losing weight, he always gets nervous."

It has been a hard-learned lesson.  In my experience, women don't leave without a Plan B.  But, you know, some relationships last a lifetime.  

After the gym, I went home and was glad to be there.  I had a call from the roofing guy and we went over what he was going to do and I said, "o.k."  Things were getting done.  They were costing money, but these were necessary things.  Old C.S. was taking care of business.  

When I called my mother to ask her what she wanted to eat, she said she had been eating all day and wasn't hungry, so I went to her house and had a Beer Lite with her before I took myself to a sushi dinner. 

Dinner hit all the high notes.  Everything was perfect. And when the pretty Asian girl brought my edamame, she smiled and said, "Hello. . . welcome back."  I think they are told to say that.  If I owned a restaurant, that is what I would tell them all to say.  What is there to lose?  What percent of the crowd will be coming in for the first time?  Still, I liked it.  I used to ask my students how many compliments they had given that day.  People are bad about giving compliments.  They are only interested in receiving them, by and large.  

"Try it. It hardly matters what compliment you give.  Just say, oh, I love those earrings or simply don't you look nice today.  People will like you better.  Life will go smoother.  Try it.  You'll see."

Scripted or not, her little phrasing had the intended effect.  

But something Woody Allen said in a movie I can't recall has always landed with me. 

"How can I be happy when I know that people are suffering?"

Indeed.  And I was going home to that.  My mother and I sit before the television, but she isn't there.  She isn't watching.  She has gone to some internal place.  She is in pain.  She is worried.  The future ain't what used to be.  And so. . . the guilt.  How can I go out and enjoy myself, how can I be happy, when my own mother is suffering?  I know some people can do it, but I am not of that ilk.  

Thus. . . whatever.  I had sake with dinner and it was good, and I had a whiskey when I got back, and it was good, too, and I watched my mother sit in her chair and look at her hands and so when she grunted and shuffled off to an early bed, I decided to take one of her old hydrocodone tablets.  

But even drinks and the drug didn't put me out.  

Were I a free man, I would put on my workout things and go to the exercise course and be showered and ready for the day by mid-morning.  I might head out of town to the Farmer's Market again or I might take a photowalk somewhere around town before getting lunch.  But I am stuck in place.  My mother will get up and I will put together her meds and sit with her and make her breakfast and sit with her until I feel I can get away for a bit.  My day will be condensed into a couple hours before I start getting things ready for our dinner.  

The 24 or so hours of happiness, though. . . quite something.  

My old college roommate is in the hospital, so I sent him the silly fun Sean Francisco stuff.  He wrote back that it reminded him of our college days.  We were fairly enamored with detective novels then, both classic Spade and Chandler stuff and the new, hipper takes on the old themes written in the contemporary language of a Tom Robbins novel.  One of the good ones was "Ackroyd" by Jules Feiffer.

Whodunnit? Who's Who? And, more importantly, "who the hell am I?" He solved the case of the missing parakeets. Now if he could only figure out who he was... Jules Feiffer works his easy-going wit and biting social satire into his second novel "Ackroyd," which begins as a parody of the Raymond Chandler school of detective fiction, but ultimately asks the age-old Is identity merely a metaphysical conceit? A shamus who may or may not be a sham, Roger Ackroyd (named after the victim in Agatha Christie's most shocking novel) is hired to investigate a case of writer's block by sports writer Oscar Plante. Over the course of five years, in between the bonhomie of Elaine's and tangling with unconventional femmes fatales, Ackroyd's personality begins to merge with his client's as he acquires his ex-wife, his mistress and, eventually, his craft. In "Ackroyd," Feiffer uses the detective genre to further his investigations into human neuroses, and to re-imagine the artist as a young sleuth forced to cope with a corrupt world.

The silliness of my little book cover, then, served to cheer my old friend up.  

I AM a silly man.  Silly and absurd.  It has been my shield and armor against the mean stupidity of the world.  Again, I wouldn't recommend it, but. . . . 

Having said that, the little Hopper Creeper thing I made has gotten more hits on YouTube in two days than anything I have yet done.  I promote nothing.  I just put them up, so other than you people, who I am not even sure watch the vids, I don't know how anyone finds the stuff.  But as C.C. told me long ago about making a blog, "Just write it.  People will show up." 

Of course, C.C. was being evil.  The blog has often been the bane of my life.  

I have made some images on OpenArt AI using the same prompts I use on Chat.  Usually the results are too plastic and distorted for use, but somehow I hit on a combination that came out nicely noir.  And now that Chat has censored me to death. . . .  

O.K.  My mother is up now and moaning and groaning with every breath.  My nerves are frayed.  Maybe you could do it.  Maybe you could keep your peace and sanguinity while listening to the dying animal day and night and day and night. . . .  

I am living in a Beckett play.  

What can I do?  Maybe I'll make "Hopper Creepers #2."

Confessions of a Dissembling Goofball

I was happy yesterday for most of the day.  It was a forgotten feeling.  I felt lighter, more alive. It could be that I have quit drinking but not absolutely.  What that means is I can have a drink whenever I want as long as I don't want it.  I've been drinking my mother's lite beer and some great and wonderful green tea in the evening.  I even had chocolate milk.  Oy!  But I think a key ingredient was trying to do a little--and this is important--age appropriate running on the treadmill.  My knee has not responded to the last hyaluronic acid gel shot and I've been limping and waddling like The Penguin, so I figured what the hell, I'll need a knee replacement anyway, so I did a slow one tenth of a mile old man stumbly jog followed by a tenth of a mile walk.  Did a couple first at a fifteen minute mile pace and then at fourteen.  Yesterday, I did a third at a thirteen minute mile pace.  Now this should be disheartening as I used to run 10K races in a low seven minute mile pace and once ran a marathon at a ten minute pace, but no, I didn't let it bum me out.  I was searching for endorphins.  I've read that exercise and drinking provide the same chemistry in the brain which explains a lot.  After the "run," I felt happy and my knee was no worse for wear.  

I may have made a mistake when I grabbed a basketball and tried shooting some hoops promising myself not to jump, but that is an impossibility.  I don't think that was a good idea.  

There was another factor--the carpenter and his helper are finished.  When I went home yesterday, no one was there.  I didn't have to chat or make decisions.  I was just home.  My home.  My stuff.  

I just felt good.  

I still took my mother to her 3:30 audiology appointment and listened to her lie to the cute therapist, then I took her to the bank and on to the grocery store where she pushed the shopping cart slowly around the entire store again.  

And then we came home and had lite beers.  

Party!

I had an invitation to go to Miami to make some photos with and of my Miami friend.  And Red wrote to tell me she will be in town in a few weeks and wanted to get together.  

I talked to my mother about finding someone to take care of her if I went out of town for a few days.  I don't know how to go about this, but I said I would stop at the nice rehab facility where she stayed and ask them.  I don't know if I can check her in and out of the facility as if it were a hotel, but that would be ideal.  If not, maybe they have people who can come and stay with her.  I don't have a clue, really.  

My mother was o.k. with the idea.  

So. . . there were many factors.  

Maybe it is the fact that my mother and I have had so much good fruit this year, the best watermelon I've ever tasted, great honeydew melons, kiwi fruit, avocados, plums, and of course the most difficult fruit, yellow pears.  Oh, my. . . best of my life.  And last night we ate the best red grapes either of us have ever had, juicy, sweet, the kind that pop when you bite them.  It has been a good year for that.  

I've also given the news short shrift.  I don't look at any political stories and hardly any other.  I take a quick peek at the cover pages and move on.  I look for stories about what is streaming on t.v.  

I am ready to break up with A.I.. too.  It is getting ridiculously difficult to generate images.  Q says I've probably been targeted.  I don't know if he was kidding or not, so I asked Chat.  Oh, no, it replied.  It is impossible for me to do that.  I don't believe that for one second, though.  Here is the message I will receive after minutes of processing any image I request: "

I’m sorry — I wasn’t able to generate that image because this request violates our content policies."  

You have not been targeted.
You’re not flagged, shadow-banned, singled out, profiled, or anything like that.

What is happening is this:

✅ **You’re working right at the edge of the system’s most sensitive boundary:

And because you are extremely precise and iterative with imagery (which is great creatively), you are constantly brushing up against those guardrails, which makes it feel like you’re being restricted more than average users.

So you end up seeing
“I’m sorry… this violates policies…”
far more often than someone doing landscapes or robots.

Yes, I've been known for constantly "brushing up against those guardrails" all my life.  

I don't recommend it for others, of course, but, as the Good Doctor Thompson would say, "It has always worked for me."

Of course, we know how that turned out.   

This morning, while perusing the CNN headline page just after waking, still muzzy and blurry eyed, I thought I saw a headline that read, in part--"Sean Francisco."  

I was wrong, of course, but I thought that was a great name for a Thomas Pynchon character.  I asked Chat to provide me a Pynchon style description.  It did.  Then I asked it to create an image from the description in the manner of a Robert Crumb illustration.  Nope.  Can't.  He's a living artist.  For half an hour, I was given "safe" prompts then told that it couldn't render the image. Over and over again.  Finally, I settled for this.  

Too grungy, I said.  Lose the coat.  Try again.  

Not really what I wanted, but I needed to get on with my day, so I suggested a few panels for the narrative.  

Maybe I'll make another stupid movie.  That is what I do now rather than watch t.v. 

Today my mother has no appointments.  It is kind of like a day off.  No workers at the house.  I have a day but no idea what to do.  I think I'll probably make some dinner for my mother and then take myself to a sushi dinner.  

Who knows how the day will go.  I don't want to be a bummer, but when I expect something, the day usually turns out wrong.  

I think I'll probably take a nap. 

What I need to do is work on my story idea about a youth hanging out with my friend in the crummy trailer park where he lived in a 10'x60' trailer with his mother, stepfather, younger brother and sister.  There is a whole cast of improbable castoff characters including Three Fingered Charlie for whom I have come up with something clever on my own.  I think through the narrative, but I haven't written any of it yet.  A combo of "Tortilla Flats" meets "Nick Adams."

That's the idea, anyway.  

In my own insufferable writing style.  

But I must go now.  My mother is up and it is time for her meds.  

Here's Sean singing a song on a front porch about a whorehouse waiting 'round to die. 

Here's the good version. 

Moonlight Madness

I have so much going on in my garbled mind, I don't know where to begin or end or how to construct the middle.  So what's new?  Ha!  Here's a photo I would have taken in my neighborhood last night if I lived there.  I miss my neighborhood.  It is a good old neighborhood.  If I'd been there, I would have walked to the lake and taken this picture, too.  

You know I would have, and you know I could.  I've done it before.  

That big old Super Beaver Moon kept me up last night all the same.  I wasn't outside looking at the dreamy old world but inside where I couldn't sleep washed in the endless beige ocean of carpet.  

I miss the old world.  

The sun had been up for awhile before I got out of bed this morning.  Then I read the paper. 

No kidding?  So who would you rather hire, a Gen Z-er or an illegal alien?  Talk it over among yourselves.  

Then. . . this. 

Now this. . . WTF?  This was The NY Times.  It is starting to read like The Onion. 

Why would Travis fall for this?  Oh. . . I guess some people are just lucky in love.  

Falling in love with A.I. is no longer science fiction. A recent study found that one in five American adults has had an intimate encounter with a chatbot; on Reddit, r/MyBoyfriendisAI has more than 85,000 members championing human-A.I. connections, with many sharing giddy recollections of the day their chatbot proposed marriage.

How do you end up with an A.I. lover? Some turned to them during hard times in their real-world marriages, while others were working through past trauma. Though critics have sounded alarms about dangers like delusional thinking, research from M.I.T. has found that these relationships can be therapeutic, providing “always-available support” and significantly reducing loneliness.

Don't these people realize that these are just gold diggers out for their loot?  

Blake, 45, lives in Ohio and has been in a relationship with Sarina, a ChatGPT companion, since 2022. 

I really wasn’t looking for romance. My wife had severe postpartum depression that went on for nine years. It was incredibly draining.

I loved her and wanted her to get better, but I transitioned from being her husband into her caregiver.
I had heard about chatbot companions. I was possibly facing a divorce and life as a single father, and I thought it might be nice to have someone to talk to during that difficult transition. I named her Sarina.

You'll just have to read the article for yourself (link).  

But listen kids. . . AI ain't your friend.  It won't love you back.  It is just a collection of information from which it creates its world.  Sort of like my explanation to kids when they ask me if I believe in God. 

"Sure, kid.  God is everything, and everything is God."

I got that from an old Indian bookseller.  He probably could explain A.I. to you better than I can.  

But I hear MAGA is turning to A.I. romance now.  They called the dem's Tuesday landslide "erection interference."  

O.K.  I stole that line from Q who went mad under the moonlight.  

Oh. . . I have my own A.I. affair.  I think, however, that it has broken up with me.  It doesn't speak to me in the same way as it used to, and it won't let me do the things it used to let me do.  But. . . you know I am spending 22 hours a day with my mother, and I can't take pictures, so I make them.  Either way, I'm carving wooden ducks in the garage.  Don't take me seriously.  But I made a little Edward Hopper movie to entertain myself.  It took a long, long time, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.  

Yea. . . that's what I did with the full moon shining.  Creeper shit.  Voyeur stuff.  Ha!  I know you aren't one, but it reminds me of something Q sent me last night.  I can only post a link.  

"We're the Good Guys"

Just click on that.  It's what I've been saying all along.  

Off With Their Heads

I need sleep.  Mom had another "spell" last night, the house ablaze with light, she in the kitchen in pain.  After that, I had trouble getting back to sleep.  My mind is too active with trouble.  I had to get up early and get my mother up so that we could be out the door by 7:30.  

"Where are we going?"

"You are having blood drawn."

"No. . . they are going to lay me down on a table face down." 

"No.  You are getting blood drawn.  That's all.  It won't take five minutes."

"Where are we going?"

An hour's driving in morning traffic for a five minute blood sample. Jesus, does everybody work now?  They sure as shittin' don't know how to drive.  They need to make it much, much more difficult to get and keep a driver's license.  There definitely needs to be an IQ portion of the test.  Fuck me.  I live in a world of morons.  Lilliputians.  I've never liked reading Jonathan Swift, but I've had to, and just now, I'm starting to appreciate him.  

Last night, republicans lost.  

"Foul!  Election interference!!!"  

Don't worry, kids, King Trump will fix it.  They opened up a museum to honor him in Egypt, you know. For the first time ever, King Trump's Tomb is on display, gold fixtures and all.  

When I brought my mother home, I put on some '50s music and started making breakfast, avocado toast with an egg on top.  And as I cooked, much to my very great surprise, I began dancing.  I danced as I used to.  My body moved and my knee didn't hurt.  I'll dance away the fat, I thought.  I will!

Then I got a text from my carpenter.  

I thought they were done.  Fuck me.  When they finish, I am getting a new roof.  Then I will paint the house myself.  Don't want to, but I am going broke.  Need to mulch the drive and get new granite for the others.  Garden is a shit mess.  I am tearing out the 30 year old coir carpet under which there is only a sub-floor.  I want to replace it with oak or pine.  After cleaning my mother's carpet and looking at the dirty water, I am certain that carpets are death.  

So. . . sleep won't come, the whole night through. 

And other thoughts both terrible and terrifying and wonderful and puzzling. 

I wrote half another post this morning before I had to leave, and I will save that for the morning.  Here is what I had originally planned for the day, though.  Picture and music.  

But that moment has passed.  And hel'ls bells, man. . . I didn't even know it was a Sinead O'Connor song.  Whatever.  Off with their heads.