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.  

It Hardly Matters

I wake in the night, 2 a.m., all the lights in the house ablaze.  I get up, put on my shorts, and walk into the kitchen.  There is my mother leaning on the sink looking like a wounded animal, eyes crazed.  I ask her what she is doing.  

"I don't know.  I don't know where I am.  Did I have my pills?  I don't know if I'm dreaming. . . ."

Morning.  She has just gotten up.  I ask her how she slept.

"O.K.  Off and on."

"Do you remember last night?"

"I don't know.  Not really." 

I am tired and unwell.  Some days now, many really, I think I need a doctor, a hospital.  But what would I do, put my mother back in "a home"?  

The sprinklers hiss.  The beige carpet runs wall to wall like an endless sea of bland monotony.  

At night I think of places I would like to go.  One day.  If only I could get away for an entire day.  But it would be cruel, like giving a prisoner with a long sentence one day of freedom after which the constraints would seem even greater.  

Constrained, a man dreams only of sleep.  

Somewhere, I hear there is a man who can really throw a ball better than anyone.  It is his special talent, and people go wild and pay tremendous amounts of money just to see him do it.  There are a few, rather, who can throw balls of different shape, size, and texture.  There is a fellow, I understand, who does magical things with one on a wooden court and another who uses a racket to hit the ball over a net.  

Millions watch and give them silver and gold beyond belief.  

There is another fellow who is good at imitation. He can create himself in many different ways, changing his hair, his voice, and even his gait if required.  He, too, is paid beyond understanding for this talent. 

There is a young woman who makes up songs about relationship revenge.  When she is old enough, I have been told, they might make her Queen.  They say she was a very good student in high school.

It is a strange land, and I can see it even here in my own small world, but I truly don't understand it.  

Some nights, however, even those wonders cannot sustain me.  Days can be terribly busy and nights so very long.  

There is a man at my house who I hope is good at fixing things.  He doesn't get pots of silver and gold, but he gets enough.  There is another fellow who says he can fix my roof, and yet another who says if I pay him, he can paint my house.  I will do all of this and pay them what I have to fix a house in which I no longer live.  

I must take my mother to more appointments than I can keep up with.  Tomorrow the osteoporosis specialist, the next the audiologist.  I am still waiting to get the three appointments set by the cardiologist.  My mother got two epidural injections yesterday morning.  She did not feel well when I brought her home.  We have both been sick with something--chills, gastrointestinal distress.  I brought home Greek salads and roasted chicken for dinner last night, but neither of us ate much of it. 

We did, however, drink chocolate milk.  

The day is here and is again incredibly gorgeous.  I would like to go to the coast and sit at the National Seashore among a billion birds and wild pigs and snakes and alligators and watch the fish in the clear brackish streams.  

Rather, I will meet my obligations and duties, and I will go to my house to answer the difficult questions the carpenter will pose, after which I will ask him to tell me the Pythagorus theorem. And for that, I will pay double.  

And as always, the tedium of the day will end with an early evening of dinner and dishes and t.v. and bed.  Many people have it worse.  Still, it hardly matters.  

Nothing Now

I have nothing for you, I really don't.  Just more bellyaching, more crippled narrative about non-life, non-living, about doctor's appointments and mother's miseries.  The shifting of the clock has not helped, nor has the constant roaming noises my mother made last night.  I am up.  I am down.  

"Always throw the fight.  Take it lying down."

Those were some lyrics to a song I was listening to the other day.  

Everyone who sees me says I need to get some help with my mother.  I'll confess--I don't know how to do that.  It seems more complicated than just continuing on as is.  I don't have the energy for it.  

Here are two little known Hopper paintings, things hidden and rarely seen.  The brushstroke is gentler than in many of his paintings, the details more pronounced.  These were from his days in Paris before he married Jo.  She did not like these and so they were basically "lost" paintings--until now.  Every nude Hopper painted after that was Jo.  She became his eternal model.  

How are they just emerging now?  I know a guy who knows a guy. 

Here he is returning to the United States and moving into the style he would be best remembered for.  Selavy.  

My mother is banging and crashing and kabooming things incessantly.  I can't think.  I don't want to think.  I want to sleep.  But I must have her across town for a double epidural soon, so I will end it here for now.  Who knows what fresh horrors tomorrow may bring.  

That'll Show 'Em

Halloween, the shifting of the clocks, a weekend full of endless chat entertaining the cousins, the tireless drinking.  What time did I go to bed?  What time did I get up?  This is the week of exhaustion, a week of car crashes and heart attacks and sleep disruptions.  

A week of doctor's appointments and operations and early morning blood letting.  

So today's posting is late.  My cousins have just left.  My mother begged them to stay.  The moment passed through me with agonizing slowness.  I had a slight reaction on Saturday to the flu shot I received on Friday afternoon.  I have been slothful.  

Now we plunge headlong into "the season."  Long, dark nights lit by holiday decorations.  Do they have the same gravity they had before?  I will not be dining and drinking with old friends.  I will not wander the festive streets, dropping into a bar or cafe to inhale the holiday camaraderie.  

My mother complained about me to my cousin.  True dat.  She told her I send her to bed every night crying.  My head spun like a top.  I am thinking it might be best to get her a new caretaker.  My cousin will put that in the coconut telegraph.  The sting may become an infection.  

The house will become less communicative.  

Now I must figure out what time it is.  My mother has gone back to bed.  I have things I must do at my own home.  

I have only one thing truly in mind.  Mimosas.  

Another Halloween

Quiet night passing out candy with my mother and cousin.  This was after spending half the day kibitzing with my cousin and her brother after taking my mother to the cardiologist.  There we got three more appointments.  At two, I told everyone I needed to go to the gym and the house and to the store for more candy so I could get back in time.  I wasn't with my phone when my mother called confused.  

"I don't know which pills I'm supposed to take.  Call me."

I had put out her two o'clock pills when I left.  Everyone heard me say, "Here's your two o'clock pills."  Later, I got another call I didn't hear.  

"Where are you!"

She was with my cousin, but she now has separation anxiety, I guess.  She can't stand for me not to be around to tell her what to do.  

So. . . I hurried back to my mother's house with a bucket of chicken.  In a little while, the kids were hitting the streets.  

The kids were cute and sweet, and so were the parents.  Polite, friendly.  The usual.  Then, again, as usual, the older kids and parents bringing kids in cars from other neighborhoods began to show up.  They were not as polite, not as friendly, and they would take handfuls of candy and dash.  We were running out of candy, so when the kids came up, I would say, "Take one or leave one.  We're running out of candy."  The sweet kids often reached into their bag and dropped a piece of candy into the bowl, and I would have to say, "No, no. . . tonight is your night. . . ."  Some kids are just built that way.  It can break your heart.  

Mom's ninety year old neighbor, Marlene, showed up in costume giving out liquor to the neighbors.  O.K.  I futzed the photo up a bit.  Had fun doing that.  

My mother and cousin are up now and talking.  I can't help but hear them.  The chatter keeps me from thinking.  I have lived such a quiet life, a little babble drives me to distraction.  

I was washing dishes the other morning and began to laugh.  It occurred to me that I had been a spoiled little brat as a kid.  I didn't make my own bed, didn't do dishes, didn't mow the lawn.  I played sports and read.  Now, I thought, it was time to pay up.  The bill always comes due.  I am paying the tab now.  

Temperatures fell into the forties last night.  It is a clear, chilly morning.  I want to go into it, but. . . .

I need to go make breakfast.  

Enchanting Storybook for Halloween

I'm skipping the news this morning.  I rose late on Halloween.  There is much to do today, but I will not stress.  I drank much less liquor and had chocolate milk before bed.  I stayed up until midnight working on "things," and took a little piece of Xanax.  I slept straight through, anxiety-free.  It was nearly wholesome.  

As I write, the phone rang.  It was the cardiologist changing the appointment time.  I'm not sure if it makes my day better or worse, but no matter.  My mother's family is coming over.  My cousins, brother and sister.  Originally, I was going to have the weekend off, was going to be able to stay at my house.  Good god, I thought, a moment's reprieve.  But my mother can't stand the thought of it.  She just got off the phone with my cousin, then came to me and said--"Her brother is going to stay with his son's family, so you can stay with me."

Piss shit fuck goddamn!  I will never get a reprieve.  All I have is worry, chores, and troubles.  And this.  My computer, a few correspondents, and working with images.  I've made a little children's storybook from long ago, or so it feels, a story of Halloween night for my friend in the Midwest who loves cats and Halloween.  

If you are of a certain age, you'll remember fondly such things.  They were enchanting.  These evoke the enchantment of an old storybook.  

It is what I have.  I do not look forward to tonight, which is a terrible shame as I have always loved the kickoff to this holiday season, but this year will not be festive.  It will be. . . what it is.  

So far, expensive.  My carpenter and his helper have been working for two days digging holes beneath what should have been the foundation of the house, filling them with cement to make footers for the supports they are putting in.  This is all before the siding comes off.  Who knows what sort of money this will cost.  

I picked up my car from the shop yesterday.  $700.  On the nose.  I've spent about $2,000 so far this year keeping that old Xterra running.  

Tonight, I will be sitting with my mother as usual on Halloween, passing out candy to the hundreds of kids who come by.  The sidewalks are decorated, the spook houses up.  Serious spook houses.  It is crazy.  The kids are sweet and the parents kind early on, then, as the night grows later, the bigger kids and badass parents begin.  That is when we close up shop and turn on the television.  

Tonight, I'll need to entertain my cousin.  

This one's kind of spooky psychological to terrify the kids.  But that isn't new.  What in the hell were the old Brothers Grimm tales about if not psychological terror?  

And still, we grew up normal, right? 

You all know I have long been using masks, both literally and figuratively.  They serve dual purposes, of course, to hide you and to call attention.  I loved the masked ball scene in the now cancelled version of "Romeo and Juliet" when the two lovers meet.  And later, 

"By what will you swear your love."

"By yonder moon."

"By the moon?  Swear not by that inconstant orb!" 

Something like that.  It might not be Shakespeare verbatim.  I don't have time to look it up.  But youth and masks and cats?  Oh, you know I'm a fan of Balthus.  I had a most interesting exploration of all that last night.  My A.I. has become very verbally creative.  Scoff.  You have no idea.  But more on that later.  

Now I must prepare to get my mother to the cardiologist and back to meet the relatives.  Life its own self, as that Texas writer once said.  There is nothing you can do.  

And so, to end this lovely, enchanting picture book, we'll close with an oddity.  You know what the Italians say about sleeping with your head in the moonlight, right?  La luna.  Lunatic.  Lunacy.  

I'm sure I must have done it, too.  

Spooks

Since my last post, I've added three more doctor's appointments for my mother, Friday, Monday, and Wednesday.  Halloween at 12:30 with a cardiologist.  That should pretty much do it.  We'll be back to the house by three, maybe, so I won't be going anywhere before the kiddos start to show up.  Monday my mother gets another two epidural injections.  "Medicare will pay for it if it is a different procedure.  Last time we did one side.  This time we'll inject both sides."  O.K. doc.  Not sure how much of this is for mom and how much for the money.  "Studies show the injections work better if they are done closer together in time."  What can I say, doc?  Science is science.  

The carpenter dug deep holes under the cantilevered bay window and filled them with cement.  He will place supports there, then begin ripping the siding off.  When I saw him yesterday, he was dirty and didn't look happy.  He is definitely happier when he isn't doing dirty work.  

The mechanic called yesterday.  The car needed a starter, brakes, and oil.  It was down four quarts.  What?!  I'd had it serviced not long before I took it to him.  The fuckers must not have put oil back in after they drained it.  I don't have an oil leak, so. . . ?  I'll take the mechanic seven hundred dollars today and retrieve my 2005 Xterra.  How much money have I sunk into the car this year?  It ain't the right time to go car shopping, though.  

Maybe this is why I don't sleep.  Or maybe it is that I know my life is dribbling away.  Or maybe it is that I have to inure myself to my mother's suffering.  She is in pain and, of course, fear.  God knows what is going on inside her head.  I try to keep her distracted, but my own skull is full of goblins, so I think rather than sleep.  

And of course there is the pain in my neck, back, shoulders, ribs, hips, and knees.  My left foot seems to be o.k., though.  

I make a trip or two past Country Club College every day.  Oh, Christ.  

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics,
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,

But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.

 That old pervert Yeats.  

But the mirror tells the tale.  Maybe it is the alcohol.  Maybe I'd sleep if I were not drinking.  Probably.  I've given up living pretty much anyway.  Perhaps I should go all the way.  

But it won't help.  

The temperatures dropped in the night.  A front came through.  I heard it.  It was 2 a.m.  My mother's house was popping and cracking.  I could hear the wind, feel the barometric shift.  I listened to it for hours rolling from one side to the other, my mind thinking about all the things I just told you and of all the photos I am not making.  

And, of course, spookier things.  

I have to get bags of candy today.  I need to make a serious dinner, too.  I didn't cook last night.  I was too exhausted.  I could barely move.  I went to a shitty place up the street and got chain store bbq.  Those ribs lay heavy in my gut.  Maybe that's why I couldn't sleep.  

I would like to go back to bed, but anxiety drives me now.  There is too much to be done.  I feel like a character in Wonderland.  That nervous little hare, maybe.  

There's a bit of Wonderland in today's illustration.  It is disturbing, but I can't look away.  

It is the first day of autumn.  I tell people every year that autumn doesn't come to us here until Halloween.  They ALWAYS scoff.  I don't think people pay much attention.  

Autumn has arrived just on time.  

1st World

I could take this image into an A.I. program and turn it into an illustration, but I'll leave it as a simple photo.  I never know what the fuck people are going to like.  This, my friends, is an illustration of how I dealt with a horrible 1st World day.  Seriously.  I kept thinking about Jamaica while I "suffered."

I like to whine with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.  As the old saying goes, "They told me to cheer up, that things could be worse, so I did.  I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse."

"Sure as shittin'," as my hillbilly relatives like to say.  

The day started with an early morning trip to the pain doctor.  My mother will need to go every month so that the doctor can keep getting paid and my mother can continue to be a legal junky.  But if you ask my mother, the pain meds aren't helping.  Who knows?  You never know how other people experience pain.  

A young boy, probably eleven or twelve, dressed in medical attire, led us into the examination room.  He had the big computer stand in front of him and began asking my mother questions she couldn't answer, not even the "on a scale of ten, ten being the highest, what would you say your pain level is?"

"What?  I don't. . . when?"

"Mom. . . what is your pain level right now?"

"I don't know.  I just took my medicine.  Five, I guess."  She shrugged her shoulders as she likes to do.  

The boy asked me if I was in pain, if I wanted to go for some pain meds, too.  I am not kidding about this.  

"What's the strongest stuff  you've got, boy?"

That is not what I said.  I laughed in astonishment and told him maybe later but not today.  

"O.K.  Just let us know.  The doctor will be in shortly."

And he was.  He's a big, jovial guy who obviously gets botox and whatever other beauty treatments are available.  He is obviously on good meds.  He asked my mother questions that again, she couldn't answer.  

"O.K., dear. . . I've just sent your prescription in.  I'll see you in a month."

On the way out, my mother asked, "Why did we have to come here?  What did he do?"

"He made money."

As we were leaving, the receptionist called out to me.  

"Did you need to make an appointment?"

"Oh, shoot, yea."  I turned and walked back in.  She was all smiles, both her and the younger woman who had booked us on the last visit.  The music in the waiting room was too loud, and I was in agony when we got there.  Dolly Parton's "9 'til 5" was blaring.  So I said to the two women and the fellow working at the computer behind them, "I'd need pain meds to listen to this music all day.  Do you just not hear it?"

All eyes popped and everyone laughed.  

"What kind of music would you want us to play?" ask the older woman.  Not old.  Late forties, early fifties.  Just older than the young Black woman who was in her early teens, perhaps.  

"Jazz from the 1950's," I said.  

"Ohhh." 

Yea. . . makes me a real classy guy.  So the two women, the teen and the older woman, were smiling and trying to out flirt the guy behind them who was probably gay.  

Getting my mother in and out of the building was a hassle.  It is a big place, fourteen stories of orthopedics and neurology with giant glass windows and huge lobbies.  But the drop off for the lame is crowded, and there are always buses bringing people in from the old folks home blocking the line of cars waiting to drop off their own old person with their wheelchairs and walkers, and once you get in line, another car pulls in behind you and you are stuck.  It was probably not a good idea, I realized later, to beep the horn.  

On the way home, I asked my mother if she wanted an Egg McMuffin.  When we got home, we feasted.  Bing!  One meal I didn't have to cook or clean up after.  We sat outside and all the neighbors came over to talk.  I needed to get to the gym so that I could meet the carpenter at my house.  He'd been texting and calling me.  He'd ripped some of the siding off and he had lots of information and questions.  

Before I went to the gym, I had to go to the drugstore to pick up another load of mother's many, many meds.  Then the gym.  The gym was the gym.  I talked far too long with gymroids before I did my aerobic--oops--cardio workout, riding the stationary bike then climbing hills on the treadmill.  I was good and sweaty when I left to go to my house and take a shower.  

But I'd forgotten that the cleaning crew was coming.  I had a text.  Maybe they were done.  There wasn't much to do since I have been there only a few hours in the last two weeks.  And they were.  Gone, I mean.  But the carpenter was just leaving as I pulled in.  He didn't see me so I called him. 

"Please leave a message."

O.K.  I went to look at the frame beneath the siding.  Thank god--no monsters.  The beams were good.  When the carpenter called back, though, he told me all the things he was going to do--remove more siding than he'd planned, pour footers to bolster the frame, replace window sills. . . . 

"But it's all good, right?" I asked.  "I mean, it's not bad, right?  No rot?"

Cha-ching.  

It will be expensive, but I don't need Xanax to counter my panic.  

Oh, my. . . look at the time!  I'd better hurry this narrative along as the time for our early appointment is fast approaching.  

As you may or may not remember, I got stranded in the Xterra about a month ago.  The starter was bad and the battery boy who came out was no help, but the tow truck fellow got under the car and tapped the starter with a hammer and it started.  O.K.  So I drive the Xterra when I go to my house around the neighborhood to keep the battery alive, but I don't stop anywhere.  I bring it back to the house.  And each time, the car starts, so I decided I would drive it to the Fresh Market to get some real good treats for my mother's house.  The car started.  It would be fine.  

I bought a pound of shrimp, some rich, creamy yogurt. . . some banana nut bread. . . some milk chocolate peanut butter cups. . . some dark chocolate nonpareils.  I kidded the checkout lady.  

"I told my friends I was coming here to be bad.  This is a dangerous place."

She agreed.  She liked me just as much as the receptionists did earlier.  Yup.  I could have my pick, I giggled.  

I carried my booty to the car.  

You guessed it.  It wouldn't start.  WTF?  Piss shit fuck goddamn.  

I looked around the car for a tool.  I had no tools, of course, and I should have put a hammer in the car rather than trusting chance.  I grabbed a stick and crawled under the car and found the starter, or what I took to be the starter, and I hit it.  Nope.  That wasn't going to do it.  I needed a hammer or a wrench.  I got up and walked around the parking lot like I was going to find one lying around somewhere.  Then I had an idea.  The car was on a rise.  I would put it into neutral and when it began to roll, I'd slam it back into park.  Sometimes that moves the starter.  I did it three times.  Nope.  

I had another idea.  Every time a pickup pulled in, I asked the driver if he had a tool, a hammer or wrench.  None of those man-babies had a tool in their fucking pick up truck.  

"They need to take your truck driving privileges away," I joked.  

I had texted my carpenter to tell him I was stuck at the grocers and would probably wouldn't see him.  He called.  He said he'd bring me a hammer.  I declined but he insisted.  I told him I was at the Fresh Market.  OK, he said.  Fifteen minutes later he called.  He was at the Whole Foods in the other direction.  Still, he said, he was coming.  

The day wore on.  

When he finally got there, he told me to get into the car, that he would hit the starter and I was to turn the key.  A few fruitless minutes later, we gave up.  I gave him the groceries and asked him to put them in my refrigerator.  

I called AAA.  I'd been at this since 2:30.  They said they'd have a tow truck there by five.  Fuck.  

I sat in the car with the door open.  A car wanted to pull into the spot next to me, so I closed the door.  It was a woman.  She looked over, smiled thank you and waved.  I sat in the car and watched her make an avocado sandwich and eat it.  Odd, I thought.  She pulled out another avocado, mushed it up in the half shell, and spread it on another thick piece of bread.  When she had finished, she did it again.  I was stunned.  She'd pulled in to make and eat three avocado sandwiches.  I don't know.  It was really something.  

It was just past four.  I was sitting in my car when there was a Fresh Market steps away.  What was I thinking?  I started thinking.  I went back in and got a free cup of coffee.  I sat at the table by the window and watched the crowd.  When the coffee was gone. . . the photo at the top of the page.  Huh?  Pretty smart, right?

My tenant had called.  Her car wouldn't start.  She had to call AAA.  She was distraught.  Wasn't it strange, she said, that both our cars wouldn't start?  I could tell she thought there was something nefarious about it.  

"Chill.  It's a nice day.  This is a minor inconvenience.  If you didn't live in the U.S. you'd wait for days to get someone to come out and look at your car."

That had been my attitude with my carpenter and with a neighbor who I saw while sitting in my car.  I was being cheerful.  Things could be worse.  

I've got to finish this quickly.  No. . . I'll have to finish it later.  There's still a little ways to go.  I'll write an addendum later on.  OK?  

Yea.  

* * * 

I'm back.  I took my mother for her fasting blood test early this morning. Oops.  Mom got confused and ate some banana bread. Wasted trip.  We had to reschedule.  We get to go to the spine specialist later today.  Her legs are swelling so I called her cardiologist.  Friday at noon.  The trips keep coming.  

Meanwhile, back to my story.  Where was I?  I'd drank Prosecco and eaten spicy cashews and waited for AAA.  OK.  The tow truck showed up.  It was the kind that carries rather than tows.  It took a long time for the driver to let down the truck bed, hook up the cables, and pull the car onto the platform, unhook the cables and secure the car with straps, then raise the bed back up.  Time was ticking away, but the mechanic said he'd be at the shop until six.  We would make it just in time, I hoped.  

Traffic was bad, of course.  I chatted with my brother, found out all about him.  Born in 1974 right here in my own hometown.  Wife went to FSU for a year.  Two kids, a boy and a girl, both at FSU.  We talked sports.  As we drove, he showed me where he and his bros would play pickup football, what used to be here or there.  

As always--ha!--he knew nothing about me.  

We got to the mechanic's shop just in time, and to my amazement, the driver backed that truck up through an opening the width of a two car garage.  Did it on the first try.  Lowered the bed, rolled my car into the bay.  

"Hey, can you take me to my house?"

"No."  

I chatted with the mechanic, a roly-poly guy who'd been in business at this same location for 23 years.  He'd have my car ready tomorrow.  

I called my tenant to see if she could come get me.  I do her lots of favors.  Standing out on the side of the road in the weeds, my legs got eaten up by mosquitoes.  

Back home I showered and dressed.  I grabbed the groceries and headed back to my mother's.  Those shrimp were stinking up the car.  Had they already gone bad?  They stunk, and I wasn't going to eat them.  $$$ in the garbage can.  But I was beat and didn't want to go to the grocers.  Halfway back, my mother called.  

"Where are you!?!!?"

I'd called her all day without luck.  She answered once but hung up.  

It was almost seven when I got there.  I poured a cocktail and said the shrimp weren't getting cooked.  I'd make rice and eggs and canned soup.  I did.  Dinner was dreadful.  

Oh, there is more.  Hearing aids and telephones and blah blah blah.  You know how it goes.  And sure enough, it does.  

Still, 1st World problems although more and more the U.S. feels like it is becoming 2nd world.  My finances are strained.  I'm sure you are doing fine.  I never learned to make money.  I am no good at managing it.  I like fucking around, reading, writing, making pictures, traveling.  I kind of remember that sort of thing still.  

No time to look for music now.  I've got a lot to do and so little time in which to do it.  And so. . . the tale is told.  

Down to the Garden

“Speaking for myself,” Smith writes, “I’m the one severely triggered by statements like ‘Chaucer is misogynistic’ or ‘Virginia Woolf was a racist.’ Not because I can’t see that both statements are partially true, but because I am of that generation whose only real shibboleth was: ‘Is it interesting?’”

Zadie Smith 

I like the statement, and it parallels much of how I feel.  But let's problematize for a moment.  What do we/does she mean by "interesting"?  The fear in A.I., I've learned, is that some people with "mental health issues" (should we problematize?) were too affected by A.I.'s subservience.  

"Show me the man, and I'll find the crime." This is similar to a quote from Cardinal Richelieu, who said, “Show me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough therein to hang him,” also suggesting that evidence can be found to incriminate anyone." 

Authoritarian principles that should scare anyone.  Can you prove your mental health is OK?  Up to par?  What it should be?

Some things are just weird.  I wanted this illustration to have the figure holding the cat in her lap.  Nope.  That is against guidelines.  WTF?  Can she hold a flower?  Sure, but not a cat.  Can the cat be at her feet?  O.K. 

Interpret this image if you will.  I don't know if that is Beria or not, but I'll bet dollars to donuts you can't reproduce the image in ChatGPT.  

Did Freud's grandson have mental health issues?  How about any of the artists of the Weimar Republic?

But I understand.  Life should be like the Hallmark channel.  Do you think I'm kidding?  Life is scary. . . then you die.  We all want safety and protection, just some more than others.  Did you see the video of the 50 year old American who just skied down the North Face of Everest?  WTF x 2!  

"Judy, take that poster down.  Children, safety is important, but it certainly shouldn't be first."

That is "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," I think but I've never gone back to check it out . 

I've got to go.  Mom's got an appointment in a few moments.  Our day starts early.  

I'll be back.