The Bill Always Arrives

Summer weather is gone.  Winter is here.  It was 33 degrees when I woke up this morning here in my own hometown.  Now for you who live in cooler climes, this may not sound shocking, but then you have not experienced the cold here in my sub-tropical south.  It is unlike other cold, I promise.  I've travelled far and wide, and I have felt fine in freezing temperatures in other places.  Not Boston, though.  Boston and Chicago were fucking worse than cold.  I assume it is for the same reason as here--humidity.  This cold goes right to your core.  There is no stopping it.  It is what might be called "bone cold."  

There is that, and, of course, the fact that we are not used to cold here.  The streets now look like something in Oslo, people wearing big down coats, hats, scarves, fur boots. . . . 

It can wear my southern ass out.  I don't like to wear long pants and shoes anymore.  

So there is that.  

T. and I were in the gym at the same time yesterday.  He came over with his phone and a big smile.  JP, the professional photographer, has asked to see some of the pics I had taken that day in the studio.  T sent them to him.  He called right away and said, "Wow!" or something like that.  He asked if he could use some of my pics on the website.  He was sending them to the clothing company.  

"Next level."

Made me feel kinda good.  There is nothing really keen about them.  Just a guy in clothes posing for a magazine.  What JP was reacting to, I am guessing, is the treatment, the post-production work I put into them.  I spend a lot of time on a photo to make it look the way it does, more than most.  I have developed my technique over many, many, many hours.  What I do is not obvious, but, I always hope, it is "felt."  I was guessing that JP "felt" it.  

Selavy.  

So, once again, the shit I do is being used--for free!  I give a lot of stuff away and ask little or nothing in return.  

Oh, I shouldn't say that.  After the gym, T and I went to one of those Michelin recommended restaurants that doesn't have a star, an Udon noodle place, and T picked up the tab.  But, thinking back, I think I got the last one.  I like to pay my way.  Hemingway code.  The tab always arrives, one way or another.  The trick, he said, was to get your money's worth.  

In life, I think I have. 

Yesterday, my new color laser printer arrived just before I headed back to mom's, so I haven't set it up yet, but it is just another expenditure in the process of making things I will either store in a tub somewhere, give away, or burn.  I am looking hard at buying another ink jet printer, too.  Expensive.  I want a big one.  Why?  

I'm an idiot who likes to make things.  Some people buy cars, others boats.  Well, I've done that, too.  What can I say?  

But yea. . . I am itching for another big printer.  I need to figure out a way to recoup some of the money.  

They are supposed to pressure wash my house and apartment today.  I pity whoever is doing that.  Were I them, I'd wait for warmer weather, but I don't think the workers have that option.  I hired a "company," not an individual.  I'm paying the boss for "oversight," I guess.  They begin caulking the 100 year old wooden planks on Monday.  That's a job a couple other painters declined.  The contractor building the house across the street said I was wasting my money, that I should have the entire house done in Hardy Board.  I think he's nuts.  My house, built in the 20's, is sided with cypress.  Still, it makes me nervous.  I have nightmares now about owning a 100 year old wooden house here.  I bought a 70 year old house when people still envied such things.  Now, it is absolutely a teardown.  A beautiful teardown.  But I get offers to buy my house every single day from unknown buyers.  They tell me to just give them a price.  They don't want the house, of course, just the lot.  They want to build on it.  People want new things now.  

I doubt the wisdom of staying.  The wealthy gymroids?  As their kids go off to college, they prepare to sell their own homes.  They will move to condos.  Why?  

"I don't need this shit anymore.  We want to be able to lock the door, spend three months in Europe, and come back without worry."  That is what they all say.  It makes some sense.  Many have already done it.  They have condos all over the place, one here in town, one at the beach, one in Tennessee or North Carolina.  I heard the difference between the two yesterday from another wealthy guy at the gym.  Republicans move to Tennessee, democrats to North Carolina.  I don't know if it is true, but it sounds true.  And it makes me giggle.  So much for "opposites attract." 

I can't go anywhere anyway.  My mother will outlive me, I know.  I will spend the rest of my miserable life as a caretaker.  My hillbilly cousin who was coming down to stay with my mother?  She keeps putting it off.  Originally, she was going to be here already.  Now. . . a couple weeks.  Whatever.  She won't stay long, and I won't know how to live in my own house.  Just as I begin to get used to it, I'll have to move back.  That will be for the rest of my time here on the planet, I am almost certain.  In a nursing home, my mother would probably be dead by now.  Here at home, she may be miserable, but she gets stronger and more determined.  

"You're a good son," they say.  

Selavy. 

I will try to begin my notebooks today.  The only way to get better is by doing it all the time.  Yea. . . I'll start today.  Going to buy a little pouch container to put some of the needed things into that will slip into my courier bag with my small notebook so I can be a geek at the cafe over my decaf con leche.  

After Michelin recommended Udon noodles, T and I went to the Cafe Strange for a coffee.  The tall girl without eyebrows was there, not working, but sitting at the bar writing.  T noticed her when he went to the bathroom.  

"The girl with the tattoos all over her legs," he said, had given him a scary look.

"Yea.  You never know."

When we were leaving, T went next door to the convenience store to get some Zinns, so I walked over to her.  

"Remember the photo I took of you?  I saw it in my files the other day.  Almost two years ago exactly."

She looked at me as if I were bothering her.  

"Happy Anniversary," she said.  

"Yea. . . o.k."  I felt like a nerdy creeper and started to slink away.  

"Take my picture again sometime," she said.  

"I tried.  You told me no."

"I probably wasn't feeling I looked good that day.  Try again." 

She looks absolutely nothing like that picture now, her hair grown out, halfway down her back, no eyebrows. . . it is fairly startling.  So. . . I will take her picture again some day.  If she is in the mood.  

I'm too sensitive.  I need more chutzpah.  I should go into every business on "the strip" and ask the people working there if I can take their photograph.  Could be an interesting series.  

"What have you got to lose?"

I hear that a lot now.  It is not comforting.  What can I say?

"Just face the music and dance."

Before they ask us to pay the bill. . . let's dance!

LIfe Goals

You may remember my telling you about the woman at the Physical Culture Club who I've become friendly with.  Her birthday is Friday, so I asked Chat to make me a picture of a dirty blonde female body builder in the manner of a Lichtenstein painting.  Right out of the box, I got this.  Pretty cool, I thought . I will print this out on a good 6x4 inch mat matt matte double sided photo paper with a message on the back.  I'm only doing it because she told me it was her birthday.  She is training for an upcoming Physique Competition.  I find it a silly thing to do, but she has her own demons to contend with.  She's the one who said, "Oh. . . who hurt you?"  Yea.  Been in therapy.  I try not to ask her what her long term goal is.  Most people don't have one.  

Except for those who tell me they want to get married and have children.  I don't say anything.  I just tilt my head and curl my lips.  I mean. . . that's your long term goal?  

"Yea, I saw it in movies and on t.v.  It comes from the Bible."

 I'm not knocking it except as a longterm goal.  I think you need something less. . . attainable?  

"O.K. motherfucker. . . I want to be president of the United States."

There you go.  I believe in you.  

I never had a clear vision or a long term goal, either.  I'm just a cautionary tale, you see.  Whatever I did, do the other thing, kid.  

Still. . . I don't think competing in a bodybuilding contest is something I'd recommend.  Not at all.  

Did I have anything else to opine about today?  

Sure.  Just waste your time going around taking pictures.  That will make your life much richer.  

Or do dangerous things from great heights.  Try to become an olympic bobsledder.  Learn to spell really well.  Take up dancing and see if you can be on t.v.

WTF?  I guess none of it really matters, does it?

"Dad was a contestant on Jeopardy once."

We just need to fill the hours.  

The mass of men lead lives of quet desperation is a famous quote from Henry David Thoreau's "Walden," reflecting how people often live unfulfilled, monotonous lives driven by societal expectations, materialism, and unexamined routines, rather than pursuing their true passions, leading to a repressed inner life, symbolized by "the song still in them". It's a call to self-reflection, encouraging individuals to break from conformity, embrace simplicity, and live authentically to avoid this state of concealed unhappiness.

Too many abstractions there, big ideas that are better suited to poetry than life advice.  I think that is where I went wrong.  Fuck Thoreau.  He was bitter and wanted people to be as miserable as he was.  

Just a guess.  

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. . . and watch the parking meters."

Words to live by.  Now. . . I will go and profoundly make my mother's breakfast.  Life is full of meaning.  Enjoy.  

I Wanna Go Back

Who painted this?  I'll give you a second.  O.K.  Time's up.  Nobody.  Yea, this is an illustration I had ChatGPT make from one of my photos.  True.  You may not be impressed, but I find it all fairly fascinating.  

That was done awhile ago.  I haven't been on Chat for weeks now.  I've moved on.  

I ordered a color laser printer from Amazon this morning.  It will be here tomorrow.  I've decided to work with carcinogens again.  I am going to do more transfers.  I am enamored of how they look on the Japanese Sumi-e paper.  I got excited.  My use of the printer, though, will probably be much like my use of Chat.  At some point, I'll not use it any longer.  

Selavy.  

Selavy Photography.  If you have a good idea, I'll photograph it.  

What sold me on buying the printer?  Yesterday, I was going through some hard drive folders that are only labelled by date.  I've been lazy.  Dumb.  Just too dumb and lazy to organize pictures.  So I started with the ones from 2020.  Lots of crap I never deleted.  And then. . . I realized I was looking at my post-retirement, post-Ili life.  Covid life.  

It was inviting.  It was pretty.  And suddenly, it didn't look as bad as I thought it was, especially given what I am living now.  Food and drink and smokes, the videos I made of myself telling stories.  Me in new clothes, hats, shoes.  Selfies every time I got my hair done.  Me at post-Covid lunches with friends.  Me driving into the rural south alone making photographs.  And I realized, for all the bitching and moaning, I was much more content than I realized.  

And so, after an hour or more of looking at files from 2020 through half of 2023, I decided I was going to make a notebook of those years.  I saw it in my tiny mind's eye.  And my imagination expanded.  I wanted to make one from my surf series, too.  There would be lots and lots of notebooks.  There would be notes I had written, things I remember, other writings, pieces of other things, small photos, transfers. . . . 

What the fuck, you say. . . you are going to scrapbook your life?  What are you thinking?  Do you know who scrapbooks?  

Yea, I know.  But Peter Beard did, too.  Andy Warhol.  And many, many writers.  

But don't worry.  I'm sure the mania will only last a little while.  I will never complete them.  I am horrible at collage, so, it may only last a day.  

But, you know. . . I'll have a color laser printer.  

It did surprise me how much I missed that lonesome, melancholy life.  Not lonely, mind you, except for extreme occasions.  I must say, I sent out a whole lot of food and drink photos.  Looking back at them, I was eating really well.  I truly miss takeout sushi on my deck with a bottle of sake.  But man, I was cooking well for one, too.  

I just miss my life.  

I will use small notebooks.  Not so many decisions on a page that way, and I can fill them up more quickly, thus achieving the illusion of progress.  See?  Thinking ahead.  

Can't I call it something other than a scrapbook?  

You know I have one copy of the "Lonesomeville" book that I used to edit before I made the real thing, right?  Never finished making the "real thing."

The finished product was to have a black cloth cover, not white.  I found some inconsistencies in the images that I needed to go back and fix.  There was that, but it was 90% done.  This was just the Pola pics.  Maybe I'll go back and complete the thing now.  Some people I know would want a copy.  

I could make three of four volumes of the digial Lonesomeville photos.  I'd really like to make "A Few Days One Summer" into a book, too.  

But I can't even manage to put together a website.  

I regret all the photos I've never gotten to take, but I have been pretty productive at times.  I just should have done more.  

I got discouraged once and burned about half of my big prints, but I still have tubs and tubs and tubs full.  I'd love to have a big printer again, but I would just keep making prints and have nothing to do with them.  

I'm three weeks into Dry January tomorrow, and three weeks out of the gym.  I went back on Monday and Tuesday.  Holy smokes am I sore.  But, you know. . . I must maintain the illusion.  

"I read.  I write.  I make pictures.  I (used to) travel.  I live in the hearts and minds of people everywhere."

That's my little Anthony Bourdain ripoff.  But, you know. . . I try.  

Onward.  There's a day to be lived, at least for a few hours, and I intend to do it.  

Oh!  I got a bid for painting my house and apartment from a very good company.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  Yea. . . it is "Cha-Ching," but I am going to let them do it.  I look forward to having the house repairs done. . . even though I am not living there.  But. . . I wanna go back. . . . 

Art Kills

Silly effing picture.  Selavy.  I like the colors.  Besides. . . I'm an artist, damnit.  I am.  I have "artistic" thoughts.  

Whatever.  

I printed the photos I cooked up for T on really good 4x6 matte paper.  I put them in an envelope and gave them to him yesterday.  I got a call last night.  His wife loved them.  They are going to send the digital files to the clothing company that asked for them.  

Wheeee. 

They are just silly pictures, of course.  

I took a mat matt matte back to the art supply store yesterday because when I took it out of the plastic, there was a pencil mark on it.  They simply cut a new one.  But while they were doing that, I went a-shopping.  Oh, my imagination runs wild in an art supply store if I let it.  And I did.  And I walked out of the store with a whole bunch of stuff.  I had ideas.  

I bought some big sheets of Japanese Sumi-e paper.  When I tried running it through the printer, though, it wouldn't feed right and kept crinkling.  O.K.  A $30 mistake.  What to do?  I had an idea.  I made a small laser print of a black and white photo and used a blender pen to transfer it onto the Sumi-e paper.  I just wanted to see how it worked.  A blender pen is basically a magic marker without any color.  It has Xylene which is why the image will transfer from one piece of paper to another.  But here's the thing--Xylene is a known carcinogen.  The blender pen smells up a room to high heaven.  If I use them in a closed space for very long, my lips start to tingle and go numb.  I used to make very large laser print transfers using Xylene when I had my studio, but I did it outside.  I'd have headaches when I went home.  I started wearing a mask that was supposed to filter out all the bad shit, the one that looks like a gas mask--which it is, I guess--but I didn't trust it and quit making them altogether.  Now, sometimes, though, I get the bug and make a small one with the blender pen.  

Well--it worked.  Not just "worked," but it made a superior image to anything I'd tried before.  That Sumi-e paper is supper absorbent.  Oh, my. . . now I am in trouble.  My laser printer crapped out long ago and prints unwanted dark lines through the image.  I've done everything I can to clean it, but I've only made it worse.  Now I want a new one.  They aren't SUPER expensive, but they aren't cheap, either, and I only use one occasionally.  What to do?  I can always go to FedEx or Office Depot or similar places and make Xerox copies, but I am too spontaneous, and when I get an idea, if I don't act on it right away, it just gets lost.  So. . . I'm perusing color laser printers on the internet.  And if I buy one, I'll barely use it, I am pretty sure.  

I bought many other things at the art supply store, too.  All I need is a dedicated work space where I can leave everything out and come back to take up the work again when I am able.  It needs to be a room where I don't have to worry about spilling things.  You know. . . what they call a "studio."  

So much of art is toxic chemicals.  The first transfers were done using gasoline.  Leaded.  That led to some pretty bad health problems.  Xylene.  Bad ju-ju.  People moved away from oil to acrylics for health reasons, but the results are not the same.  Even working with beeswax has health hazards.  I've tried using acrylic products to make encaustic blends, but again. . . not the same.  The fellow out in New Mexico who taught me many printing processes lost his kidneys to the solvents involved in traditional printmaking.  That is why he is a major player in the Making Art Safely movement.  

"They" have taken art classes out of the schools.  Sure, pinheads think art is a waste of time, but that is only part of the reason.  Many art processes were toxic, and once they knew, they couldn't expose the kids to it.  

I learned wet plate photography.  It, too, is a killer.  

One wonders how Picasso managed to live so long.  His entire art career was toxic.  Maybe that is why he had such strange visions, though.  Maybe all the solvents got to his brain.  

Warhol was smart.  He let other people do all the work while he played creative overlord.  It took a bullet to fuck him up.  

The woman who taught me the transfer process had serious health issues.  

Etc.  

I guess there ought to be something saying "Art Kills."  

I watched two Youtube docs on the photographer Daido Moriyama last night (link) (link).  Quite something.  I am familiar with his work, of course, but I didn't realize the outrage his photography incited and how the reaction effected him personally.  He got so depressed, he quit making pictures for ten years.  That made me feel better.  I often feel the need to sell my cameras and quit.  The pictures I make are often not so very "acceptable," or so it seems, and though one tries to bolster one's courage with bromides like "all art comes from the libido" or "art is intrusive" and "art is invasive," and even "art is transgressive," doubt creeps in and takes over.  

After getting the "I love these" from T's wife, I felt the need to send him links to the videos.  You can tell people you don't like commercial photography, but I don't think it registers because that is all they know.  I wanted T to understand there is another way of seeing "things."  I like pretty things.  I love the images of Saul Leiter.  But I like gritty things, too.  And I like making images that can get you into trouble all the way up until they get you in trouble.  And that is why I travel under the radar in the cloak of darkness and mystery and anonymity.  

Batman!

Whatever.  All art is personal.  If I like photos of goofy colored trucks, it is o.k.  I'm going to make a laser copy of it today and transfer it, "to see how it looks transferred."  I'll do this before deciding to buy a new color laser printer.  

But I want to make the "other things," too.  I am thinking of printing up posters and putting them up in certain places around town saying, "If you have any ideas for making weird or strange or otherwise unacceptable photographs, give me a call."  I wonder what would happen?  Or, for the Cafe Strange: "If you put time into your costume and the way you present yourself to the world, don't let it disappear--give me a call."  

Surely there is potential trouble there.  

Today is going to be another cool, gray, humid day.  I might as well be living in Ohio or some other Sinus Capital.  I'll be looking for a crack/meth/heroin/fentanyl fix soon.  

Bullshit.  It is Dry January.  I'm not even drinking.  

Wild Card Weekend

"I take pictures to see what a thing looks like photographed" (Garry Winogrand).  

A near quotation, anyway.  

I've been going through his archived images.  Wow.  A lot of nothing and then some unpublished image like this!

A gem!  What a strange narrative this evokes.  He just kept taking picture after picture after picture.  

I like the dog pic, and I like this one, too.  I spent yesterday afternoon cooking up some sleazy pics and trying to print the out on Japanese Sumi-e paper on a roll.  Trying to feed it through the printer was hit and miss, mostly miss.  The paper is a bit transparent and very delicate, but I want to experiment with the prints, tearing and taping them, spilling coffee and/or oils on them, and whatever else I can do to degrade them.  Such a thing is great fun, but also very time consuming, and, unfortunately, I have little time, so I don't know how far I'll get.  I want to put them all in a notebook along with various small transfers and anything else I think of.  

Winogrand archives again--WTF?!?

Of course, I didn't get to finish anything.  My few hours rolled by and it was time to go shopping for dinner fixin's.  Sunday night spaghetti--sans wine.  Christ, will this month never end?  

I prepped.  I cooked.  Then I cleaned.  I was worn out with it.  I worked longer on dinner and after dinner clean up than I got to work on my own project.  I wanted a whiskey.  

I sat down and turned on the television.  Watched some football.  My mother said something about "they laid out the red carpet."  

"What?  Who are they?  What?"

She was looking at her phone.  Oh. The Golden Globes.  I gave her the t.v. controller and went to sit with my little computer.  When I heard the Globes begin at eight, I went in to make a cup of tea.  I watched Nikki Glazer's opening.  The Times thought it was great.  I didn't.  The Golden Globes used to be a drunken, outrageous awards party.  Now it is as scripted as the Oscars.  I sat through the first award, Best Supporting Actress.  The winner read her acceptance speech from a wrinkled piece of paper in an exacerbated voice.  It was awful, truly awful.  

The Times thought it wonderful.  

Later on, some people won best music or something.  A group came up to accept, but a tall Asian women hogged the mic, crying breathlessly for far too long saying nothing.  One of the fellows tried to say something into the mic, but she karate chopped him in the throat, figuratively, and went on.  What the fuck was she crying about?  It was awful.  

I'm sure the Times thought it was great.  

I went back to my computer to look at the Winnogrand archives.  Were I home, I'd have been working on my scrap notebook of torn and stained things.  

Bitch, bitch, bitch.  

I expected my mother to go to bed, but she didn't.  She stayed up way past her usual bedtime.  Finally, late, she said goodnight.  Yea.  That was it for me, too.  

The temperature dropped in the night.  Now "the world" is grey.  "Grey" because "gray" seems too bright.  It won't be fun exercising outside today, but the flu is rampant here right now, and so the gym scares me a bit.  I had a flu shot, but evidence tells us it is not very effective this year.  So. . . I have a quandary.  

I sent this around to irritate some of my friends far too early this morning with the note that I was hurt by Grok knowing that nobody was interested in undressing me.  Q wrote back something that I will not post here in order to protect the guilty, but. . . yea. . . they need an app called "Burka Body," something to cover that shit up.  

Have you ever seen how much fun old Persia was under the Shah?  

O.K.  I gotta get out of here before I become dangerous.  I don't want to get into ideology.  Ideology always makes you the wrong kind of friends.  

Oops. 

Uh. . . maybe blame that on this (link).  

Character(less)

What do you do when you begin posing questions to yourself that you just can't answer?  Big questions, not the "what do you want for dinner" type.  And not the really big ones like "what is the meaning of all this" either.  Just the real existential questions about what you are doing and why.  Uncomfortable questions that make you wonder who you are and ask you to measure your character by what you do.  

Sure. . . have a drink.  But I can't.  I mean, I could be a quitter, but I still have twenty days, at least, to go.  Given my situation, this has been the hardest Dry January I've experienced.  Every night. . . oh dear god. . . my soul for a little respite.  And I could.  Nobody would know.  But it would be another blight on the record, another thing I couldn't do, couldn't complete.  I'm certain it is good for me.  Positive.  At least in some ways.  Physically, sure.  And mentally. . . you know. . . discipline.  But spiritually, I'm not so certain.  Somehow, it seems, my "character" suffers.  Not the one who sits alone and drinks half a bottle of scotch at night after a sundown cocktail and half a bottle of wine with dinner.  No.  That one needs vanquishing.  Rather, the one who just wants to pop in for a beer and boiled peanuts on a Saturday afternoon.  The one who accepts the offered drink when he stops by to see friends.  That one.  

I'll soldier on.  I don't mind drinking tea at night.  I enjoy it.  I have a really good one that was gifted me by T and his wife for my birthday, and I have been buying tins of it since.  It is an aromatic jasmine tea, the tea leaves rolled into little pearls.  I've learned how many pearls to put into the tea ball to make the perfect cup.  Three minutes of steeping.  The tea's fragrance fills the room.  Two cups from the tea ball always.  It is calming.  It is good.  

And I love to drink scalded milk before bedtime.  I like Golden Milk, and I like milk with cocoa, too, but just milk is lovely.  I'm one of evolution's milk drinkers, one, who like my northern European ancestors, never developed a lactose intolerance.  Reportedly, a cup before bed helps me sleep.  

So, yea. . . breaking the going to bed with a "belly full of rum" habit is good, especially since I spend my evenings alone.  

But I would love to go for a Sunday mimosa later today.  Such a thing may be a "character accoutrement."  

The aged need all the help they can get.  

Back to the questions, though, the "what are you doing and why?"  

Well, I'm taking care of my mother.  Why?  It's just what one should do.  See?  Easy answers.  

But other than that, what am I doing?  I mean, I feel like a pretender, by and large.  

I saw JP's photos yesterday.  They looked like catalog photos.  He knows what he is doing.  I was standing in T's kitchen with he and his wife.  They were saying they preferred mine, but I was having a hard time believing that.  We were framing the photos he has taken from me, and his wife said she wants a print of one of the photos I took of T, a large one that she will frame.  Still, I wasn't convinced.  I thought JP had outdone me.  O.K., I told myself, I mainly stayed out of the way, didn't take nearly as many photos as he did, yada yada yada.  But really, was it a competition?  If you know me, you know the answer to that.  Everything is a competition, even when I haven't a chance of winning.  It is not that I mind "losing," but I couch it in those terms, regardless.  

And so I walk the streets with a camera. . . and lose.  Oh, I like some of them, but. . . . 

I spent part of the day perusing Garry Winogrand's photos on the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Arts website.  Winogrand had hundreds of thousands of images, most of them never even developed.  They are trying to archive all of that.  So I perused.  You know what?  He didn't have hundreds of thousands of good photos.  He had hundreds of thousands of bad ones.  That's how it goes.  But he was recognized for his good ones in his lifetime.  

Saul Leiter, on the other hand, just made photos for himself after a brief stint at shooting for fashion mags like Vogue and having been included in a show at MoMA.  Then, just before he died, he was "discovered."  He was amused by it, or so it seems.  Brought up by a rabbi and having attended rabbinical college, he decided, in the manner of James Joyce, I like to think, to become an artistic rabbi (or, in Joyce's case, "priest").  

Leiter achieved fame in his eighties, having been discovered, or rediscovered, by the art historian Martin Harrison and then the Howard Greenberg Gallery.  He'd been photographing in obscurity for decades, then. . . BOOM!  He became one of the most influential photographers of his time, a time that had, but for the photographs, disappeared.  

Now. . . my favorite Saul Leiter quote. . . because it resonates deep inside my heart and bones.  In an interview for the 2013 documentary, Saul Leiter: In No Great Hurry – 13 Lessons in Life, he said, 

In order to build a career and to be successful, one has to be determined. One has to be ambitious. I much prefer to drink coffee, listen to music and to paint when I feel like it."

In searching for that quote, I found this: 

His friend Henry Wolf once joked that Leiter had a "talent for avoiding opportunities" because he would rather go home, drink coffee, and look out the window than network for his career.

Fuck yea!  The only place you can now see the Leiter documentary is on Apple T.V.  You can rent it without buying a subscription, I think. . . but about that I am unsure.  I saw it when it came out what is now much to my surprise so very long ago.  For a bit, I used to write to ask questions of the curator of the Saul Leiter Foundation, Margrit Erb.  There was something very particular I wanted to know about, but I was never able to unravel the mystery.  Maybe one day.  

Like Winnogrand, Leiter has thousands of unseen photographs, but unlike the U. of Arizona, the Leiter Foundation has not put up a website where they can be viewed.  I'd feel better if I could see evidence that Leiter took thousands and thousands of bad photographs, too.  

Of course, there was Vivian Maier who I helped discover.  Ho!  I'd like to think so.  But when the first photos appeared online before that all blew up, I was corresponding with John Maloof with tremendous excitement emphasizing how great what he had was.  He knew nothing about photography and was looking for help cataloging and scanning it all.  I, of course, couldn't help being here and he being there and me working a job at the factory, and so the emails petered out.  

My point?  That I could be famous one day!

No.  Kidding.  I'm just thinking that you don't have to pursue a career making money being a "professional photographer" to make good things.  

Still. . . I liked JP's photos and wondered how the competition truly came out.  

Self-doubt, of course, is one of my most obvious attributes, and now, minus the evening's "cup of courage," it seems to dominate my waking and sleeping hours.  I am living in the gaping yaw of an incessant void, or, at least, looking over the rim into it.  

I fear playing Falstaff to the King.  

But that's enough of that.  For now.  Let there be light and happiness.  Let there be music.  

Unfortunately, I am not listening to and finding new music here at my mother's house.  Other than in the car, I'm living in a music desert.  Just another of the things now missing from my characterless life.  

Fridays Are For. . .

I need to go to the far off market today and make some pics. . . right?  Or what?  It is going to be a beautiful day.  Yea. . . I need to go.  But here's "the thing," as they used to say in an older parlance--I think that I'll feel guilty.  

True dat.  

You see, I'm kind of worn out.  Oh. . . you hadn't heard?  Ha.  But now the pot is beginning to boil over.  Let me catch you up in case you have just stumbled onto this blog or if you only come for the photos or if you only scan the page without paying attention.  

Have I covered my entire audience?  All three of you?  

Last year, I thought for certain my mother was dying.  I cried many times in the hospital.  I moved her into the nicest rehab/care facility in town.  She was not doing well there, and though it was nice, it was not home.  

"I want to go home," she said.  Of course she did.  And so I took her home and moved in to take care of her.  Good care.  And she got better.  And better.  Good food, of course, and someone to do the work of an entire staff at the rehab facility.  My life was spent for a good part of the year on the road taking her to her many, many doctors appointments.  

She sits.  She moans with nearly every breath.  But she walks now, around the house, bent over like an "L", holding onto things as she moves from room to room, slower than a sloth.  

"Oh! Oh! Oh!"

She burps and farts continuously.  O.K.  I won't go further.  

My own troubles have been plenty.  My house has been under constant repair for many months now.  I'm not only paying for repairs but for everything involving my mother.  I've not used her money for anything.  I've watched my bank account shrivel.  

Still, I've stretched my daily stay away from her house now from two to three to sometimes five hours a day.  Not without consequence.  My mother will call me at three-thirty, four, in a panicked voice.  

"Where ARE you?!?"

I get the hangdog face when I put on my gym clothes in the morning and head out the door.  

If you are still here--I'll tell you what I did yesterday.  

As I was leaving around eleven after giving her her morning meds and having prepared those for the afternoon, having made breakfast and having cleaned, ready now to relieve some of my anxieties at the gym, just as my first foot crossed the threshold, she says to me. . . she says:

"Some day I'm going to need my car."

I tossed her the car keys in my hand.  

"Here.  Take them.  I'll see you later."

It got messy from there.  

I felt anger and guilt for the rest of the day.  

I met the painter at my house after the gym at noon.  Not the painter, really, the guy who owns the company.  I walked around with him and the head of the paint crew looking over the house and the apartment, he pointing out everything that needed to be done.  It was a lot and they could do it, but I could feel the cost mounting with every step.  He wasn't making any of it up.  It is just what needs to be done.  I thought of a Peter Mayle book I read about his buying an old house in Tuscany and having it repaired.  It was hilarious at the time.  

One o'clock.  A shower.  Two o'clock.  I had things to do.  A new pair of "running" shoes.  Hokas were on sale at REI.  I needed to get matts cut for the pictures I'd given T.  And since I'd be on that side of town, I wanted to run to the new photo place that had photo books to see if there was anything new that I wanted.  That was the logical first stop.  

All the books were gone.  "Sorry," said the hipster girls behind the counter.  

Wasted time.

I went to the art supply store and got the cutting done.  More multi-colored hair girls who missed out on going to Minneapolis.  They seemed pissed off about it.  

Three-thirty.  Fuck it.  I wanted to make classic photographs.  I wanted a cafe con leche.  I went to The Strange.  I sat outside, but I was pissed as I didn't have my notebook.  I had a pen and brought out a big napkin thinking I might make some notes.  There was nothing to look at there at the cafe that day.  Three kids came from inside.  They stood by my table for a moment.  One of them said, "Whoa, nice camera.  What is that. . . is it a Leica?"

This happens often enough.  The three kids gathered 'round where I sat.  They asked the usual questions.  Was I a photographer?  What kind of pictures did I take?  My usual response is to ask people who some of their favorite photographers are.  They have no response.  I say I take photos like many of the photographers they don't know, or try to, anyway.  The ones whose photos they never look at.  But the kids were cool and fun.  

"This is our first time here," one of them said.  "We're not from here.  We're from Philadelphia."

"They are," said the pudgy one with glasses and wavy hair falling below his chin.  "I live here.  I go to college."

"What's the weather like at home?" I asked. 

"It's fucking cold," the two from Philly laughed.  

"What are you doing here?"

"We came for a big punk festival." 

"Really?  Which one?"

I didn't even know they still had punk rock festivals.  They told me the name.

"Where is it?"

They told me it was out east on the highway in a warehouse.  

"Sure sounds big," I scoffed.  "A warehouse?  Must hold, what? a couple hundred people?"

They squirmed and struggled with embarrassed laughs.  The chubby one said, "I think most of it is in a field."

One of them pulled out his phone and showed me the poster ad for it.  

"Who are you looking forward to hearing?"

They named some bands that were "big" that I had never heard of, but they had "death" or "violence" or something in their names.  

"Are you set with party favors?" I giggled, then realized I sounded like a pusher.  

"Yea."

"You guys are going to be a mess. What do you do in Philly?"

"We're in college."

"And your here?  Hasn't school started yet?"

"Monday.  We fly home and go straight to class."

"Well, fuck it.  Nothing ever happens on the first day of class anyway.  'Hi--tell us your name and a little bit about yourself!'"

The kids were laughing.  

"Then they will give out the syllabus and tell you there will be a syllabus quiz next class, so. . . ."  

A girl in a black poodle skirt and boots walked by and went inside.  The boys had been standing around me for a long while now and it was getting awkward.  They were beginning to shuffle stances from one leg to the other.  

"Do you think she is going to the festival?" I asked.  The kid named Azcar, the "leader" of the group, looked after her, then in a minute said, "I think I'll go find out."  Then his partner from Philly said, "I think I'll go see if she has a friend."  The chubby one followed.  

Four o'clock.  I still had time to go to REI.  

The fucking shoes were not on sale.  I put them on.  They felt good, so I bought them anyway.  

I went home, got the things I needed and put them in my mother's car (I was driving the Xterra), and said shalom to my little nest.  

Friday night.  

When I got to my mother's, she was sitting in the garage.  The morning's actions remembered, the guilt and anger still lingered.  I went inside, got a Guiness 0%, and came out to sit with her.  The morning didn't come up.  

After dinner and the news, I gave her the remote.  

"Here, watch what you want."

I cleaned up the kitchen and went to the living room to read.  In a little bit, my mother said there was nothing on as she passed through on her way to wherever.  I got her eight o'clock meds and went in to sit with her.  

"We could watch a movie," I said.  I scrolled through my list of "maybe" movies I'd saved.  

"The Longest Week."  2014.  Never heard of it.  Jason Bateman, Olivia Wilde.  The trailer looked good.  I put it on.  

Holy shit. . . this was just what I needed.  The first half, anyway.  Great photography, good cinematography, witty dialog.  It reminded me of a Woody Allen movie shot by Wes Anderson.  Why had I never heard of it before.  Oh, yea. . . 2014.  I was in the studio day and night.  

My mother said, "I'm going to bed.  Goodnight."

Of course this took twenty minutes.  I paused the movie.  When she was gone, I put it back on.  

And then. . . it kind of tanked.  The Wes Anderson shots seemed gone.  The witty repartee took on a romcom flavor.  The plot complication became predictable.  Then Bateman got hit by a truck on his Vespa.  This was going to get interesting, I thought.  He's going to have to deal like me.  

Nope.  He ended up with a bandage above his eyebrow.  The movie never got better.  But oh, that first half was marvelous.  I would watch that again.   

10:30.  Check my messages.  Other people's lives are better than mine.  So it would seem.  Everyone trying to figure out which side to join in Minneapolis.  There are no heroes there, no good guys, just bad ones.  There is no way to root for anyone.  Partisans.  A plague on them all.  

Bed and restless sleep.  I shouldn't drink so many fluids before bed, but rather than whiskey. . . . 

And now. . . do I go to the market?  If I do, do I tell my mother?  

These are the pathetic concerns of my life.  I'm only here to make you feel better about yours.  By comparison, you know?  

And yet. . . my life is better than the lives of a majority of the people in the world.  

"Hey, ma. . . whataya want for dinner?"

Frustrated

Up at 4:30, so I'll probably bungle this one up and down.  If you want to stick around for this one. . . it is up to you.  I do know, however, that once people get out of the habit of coming here every day, they pretty much forget about coming back.  I'm sure in some ways it is a relief.  For my part, though, I need to keep posting for the people who are junkies for human grief, misery, and sorrow wrapped up in a nice sugar coating with a sometimes treat inside.  

And so. . . away.  

I'm staying away from the shooting thing.  Too many knee-jerk reactions, or at least enough that I need not contribute.  I need to take a "wait and see" approach.  I've written my take to some people, but even there I feel I may have reacted too quickly.  

I DO know, however, that there are some slogan words I am sick of hearing.  T-shirts, bumper stickers, placards, memes. . . this is not the way to make an argument, I think.  I'm tired, for instance, of hearing the word "justice" over and over and over again.  What IS justice?  

Woe is me, though, there I go opining.  

I will say this. . . I was pretty sure Nic Zapko was a lunatic fraud and was making up all her ASL hand gestures for the deaf.  I never hear what any Minnesota public official is saying when she is on the screen.  She is like a manic dwarf chimera on meth who is invisible to the people in the room, something that only emerges like a hallucination to television viewers.  If she IS real, I have just learned how to sign "bullshit" and "get the fuck out."  

Hate on me.  I don't care.  

The photo at the top of the page is a 1950's photo from the Cafe Strange taken just a few days ago.  That is the 6'2" loon who is willing to kibitz with me now when I go in--much to my surprise.  I hadn't seen her in many, many months, and she looked different to me when I saw her.  Had she had surgery or some chemical peel on her face?  But when I got to the front of the line, I realized what it was.  

"You've changed," I said.  "I just realized what it is."

"My eyebrows," she said.  

"No. . . the music."

She usually plays the worst punk rock screaming shit music in existence, but today she had on something that sounded like '50s pop.  

"I'm catching up with you," she laughed. 

"Why?  Did you have a birthday?  You ARE getting a bit long in the tooth.  Yea. . . of course your eyebrows."

"I'm thinking about shaving them."

It appeared to me that she already had.  

"I have to bleach them every other day."

Oh.  

She had added metal balls to either side of her nose too, so it appeared there was a rod running straight through.  

"I used to suggest shaving off eyebrows to my students," I said.  "Then they could paint them on according to their mood.  You, for instance could paint them on like this when you felt in a shitty mood."  

I made the shape with my fingers above my eyes. 

/ \

I got a laugh.  

Now we were getting along, and I had my Leica, so why not ask to take her picture.  I'll get to that.  But I'll admit all day long that the picture would be ten thousand times better if she was looking over her shoulder back at me.  It really could have been something.  

Yesterday was beautiful, and it was lovely to do my exercise outside at the park.  I do a sequence of body weight exercises, then walk and run a half mile loupe coming back to start all over again.  But I couldn't run.  My knee and hip had been killing me for days.  They are just done for.  Worn out.  So. . . I need to consider myself lucky just to be able to walk the loop, which is what I did.  And it was pleasant.  Fuck it.  What can I do?  A couple days ago, I went to the grocery store by my own home.  The parking lot was full, so I did the thing I've been doing sometimes and pulled out the handicap parking hang tag I got for my mother.  What the hell, I think, I should definitely have one, too.  And with the bad knee and hip, getting out of the low rider Corolla is agony anyway, but since I was parking in the handicap spot, I really milked it in case anyone was watching.  Which they were.  The cousin of my ultra-rich once upon a time girlfriend was walking by the car just then.  He looked over and said hello.  

"How's it going?" he asked in a friendly way.  

What could I say?  

"As you see."

"Well. . . time marches on," he grinned in passing.

Indeed.  

And so, as I did my exercises, I remembered to be kind to myself.  

I had plans for the day.  Big plans.  I wanted to buy a new pair of Hokas at REI because they were on sale, the very ones I wear.  Then I would go to the art supply store and have new matts cut for the photos I have given T.  Then I would go to the Cafe Strange with my camera and continue making pictures every day now that I was the guy who got the ear tattoo shot in a far off town.  Then I would go to the Viet restaurant and get a container of bone broth for making pho for dinner.  

Rather, when I got home, I dallied.  I forget now what I dithered with, but it was definitely dithering.  Part of it was working on photos I had taken the day before.  I put a load of laundry in the washer.  I took a shower.  And then it was three-thirty.  Piss, shit, fuck. . . What to do.  

I cut out shoe buying and matt cutting.  I went straight to the cafe.  I wanted to make some classic photographs.  I would, too.  I was ready.  

No Fear!

I am usually not there this late in the afternoon.  It was a different group, a different crowd.  Working the counter was a young girl who has somehow become more of a woman in the last year, the dark haired girl in the girl band who I was always wanting to photograph with her bleach blonde twin, in the kitchen of the cafe where they used to work together. . . somewhere in my past.  

I never did.  

Now. . . here she was again.  

"Hey there," she said familiarly.  

"Can you make a cafe con leche?"

"Sure."

"You remember?"

"Yea," she grinned.  

There I stood, camera in hand.  I could see the small kitchen through the open archway, the lighting stark and perfect.  Just ask her, I kept saying. . . just ask her.  

"Here you go," she said smiling, cafe con leche in hand.  

"Thanks," I said.  

I took my coffee outside.  

Piss shit fuck goddamn.  

Outside there was a beautiful, long blonde sitting with a tattooed man.  Perfect picture.  They looked at me as I passed and my sphincter tightened.  At another table sat a big and heavy--I don't want to say 'fat'--man, looking like Burl Ives in a colorful shirt and a little porkpie hat.  He sat with large woman with colorful hair and tie-dye.  They were probably both in their sixties.  Shit piss fuck.  

But it was when I sat down I saw THE THING.  She had dyed her hair a red that would make Lucille Ball envious, bright and startling.  It was long, and she had done it up in a beautiful partial pony tail on top with the rest pulled up and loosely held by a beautiful ivory and gold Asian hair stick.  Her face was paper white, her lips deep, dark, dramatically red, her eyebrows bold.  

That was just the beginning.  She wore a see through black lace and lattice top that hugged the top of her arms just below her pale, bare shoulders and a black push up bra.  Her black skirt stopped mid-thigh and her black, lace stockings came to her knees, the two a counterpoint to her screaming white thighs.  She was shoed in ankle high black boots.  She sat with two friends, a boy and a girl, neither made up in any way.  The contrast was truly startling. 

I couldn't stand it, but there was nothing to be done.  

A truck pulled up and a fellow in baggy work pants and a t-shirt covered by a brief denim jacket got out.  He was on his phone and paced back and forth too near me talking big shit to someone about, I took it, a car detailing thing.  I think it was some kind of protective coating, I don't know.  But he was bugging the shit out of me due to his proximity.  

I have a very large "personal space."  What do you think, Dr. Freud? 

Finally he finished and went inside, but within minutes he came back and stood near me.  

"Nice camera," he said.  

"Thanks." 

"Old school film?"

"No.  Digital."

"Wow.  They kept the same look, huh?  Cool." 

"Yea." 

"Are you a photographer?" 

I always hate that.  

I shrugged.  "Everyone is now, aren't they?"

"He-he.  I used to, you know. . . I had a film camera . . . I fooled around, but I'm dyslexic, and I'd get. . . you know.  I tried playing guitar, but I'd forget the chords, and. . . but you. . . you're an artist."

He had a funny, incomplete way of talking.  

"You see that over there?" I nodded to the girl with the red hair.  "That's art.  Do you know how much time went into creating that look?  You don't do that in a minute.  The hair, the makeup, the clothing, the shopping, really, and finding. . . that's art.  If I had any balls, I'd go over and ask her if I could make pictures of her."

He looked over, then looked back at me. 

"Do you want me to go over and ask her?"

"No.  When I was younger, I might, but now I'd just look like a creepy old guy with a camera."

"Yea, I'm fifty-two now. . . I know what you mean.  I'm a skateboarder, you know. . . and when I go out to the skate parks. . . all that cement. . . do you skate?'

"No."

"You're a surfer.  No man. . . I don't mean to, you know. . . you're just sitting here. . . you're not my therapist or anything. . . ."

"Oh, I could be for a hundred bucks."

"I've got to go inside and call my daughter to make sure she knows I'm here," he said.  

Then he came back.  

"You've done a lot of things, I can tell.  You have stories.  What's your name again.  I can't remember names for shit." 

I was getting up.  

"Yea, man. . . I gotta go."

"Yea, we'll talk. . . you've got stories to tell."

I was slow limping back to my car.  I was leaving behind. . . how many good photos?  The place is a nut shop full of visually strange characters.  My insides were falling as I climbed into the car leaving all of it undocumented.  

I drove to the Vietnamese restaurant to get the bone broth.  They were on a good corner, an interesting corner where the light can be sharp and there are plenty of hipsters going to the big Asian Market just down the block.  Getting out of the car, I grabbed my camera.  

Nothing.  Nobody around.  4:30.  I went into the small restaurant with a few early customers, a lesbian couple and a guy sitting with his friend who had a pile of rasta hair piled a foot high on top of his head.  The Asians sat at a table near the kitchen, an old woman in heavy, whorish makeup and two men.  I was hardly inside when they looked at me and said aggressively, "Can I help you?"  I'm a friendly guy, but they never smile at me here.  

"I'd like to get a container of the chicken bone broth."

Every time I say this, they look at me like a dog who was just asked if it would like a cucumber.  

Five minutes and five dollars later, I was out the door.  One day, I expect, they will just tell me, "No.

I walked around outside for a bit looking for something I never found.  I was back to my mother's at 5:30.  I had the pho ready at six.  Pho is an easy dinner to make if you have good bone broth, and it is always good.  I cut boneless chicken into bite-sized pieces and mixed them with sweet and sour sauce before I put them in the pan.  Six minutes.  Noodles boil ready in seven.  Garlic, mushrooms, scallions, into the boiling broth, then the cooked chicken.  Ready to serve in a few minutes.  Noodles, chicken, broth and veggies, avocado and bean sprouts.  

After dinner, I put on some YouTube stuff.  My mother is getting shitty about what I watch, so I have taken to turning it off and giving her the controller.  She sees this as an insult somehow, maybe because I leave the room.  I can't stand to be around the shit she watches.  

"You'll be glad when you can get back to your place, wont you?" she said with something akin to anger.  

"Wow.  That's not fair.  I have a life. . . had.  Do I miss it?  Sure.  But I take care of you. . . and now you are going to be shitty to me because I might like to be back in my own life again?  That really isn't fair."

I left the room stinging with. .  what?  Guilt, or anger?  It was too complicated to try to untangle.  

Later, when she went to bed, I put on a movie I really shouldn't have watched.  "Train Dreams."  If you have watched it already, you will understand.  It is adapted from a Denis Johnson novel.  Spare.  Stark.  Reminiscent, I felt, of "First Cow."  Good movie, maybe, but too much for me, hitting too close to home.  

And then to bed with many, many regrets.  Will I ever make those photographs?  They are there waiting for the right genius.  If I were younger. . . . 

Almost the whole movie is contained in this song.  A condensed version.  Almost.  

Recharge

I had one thing in mind yesterday--get the hell out of Dodge.  I was hesitant, though.  I have forgotten how to leave town.  I have lived the year within ten miles of my house.  Ten miles on the outside.  Mostly within six.  It was all stop and go.  Just deciding what costume to wear was a hassle, and that only meant shoes.  After leaving the house and going back three times, I finally pointed my mother's car in the direction of the interstate.  Oops.  I needed gas.  There are no gas stations around town anymore but the megastores with a dozen or more pumps.  I made a turn to go to one, then regretted it as there was no way to get out of the lot going in the direction I intended, so I had to backtrack nearly to my own neighborhood.  Half an hour here, half an hour there, I finally was on the interstate.  

Oh, my, though. . . bluetooth is fun.  This was my first roadtrip in which I could play music from my phone.  No depending on fading signals, no futzing about.  Boy oh boy--I was living in the 21st century.  

It made a difference.  

Past the factory town, over the great river. . . much was changing, forests cleared, new housing and apartments and shopping centers spreading like a great plague, then, further up the road, the jungle forests again as I passed through the counties.  

The temperature was warm for this time of year, pleasant but troubling if you allow yourself to think about it.  The sky was blue, the temp near 80, the sharp semi-tropical winter light slashing down like a razor.  This year, I was determined to use its drama and its loveliness.  

I pulled into a parking lot a few blocks from the center of town.  Just then, my phone rang.  It was T.  He told me he had just gotten the pics from JP.  He wasn't keen on them.  

"My wife said she liked yours better.  I think we are going to send those in with some of his."

I haven't seen JP's pics yet, so I don't know, but that was nice validation before I grabbed my Leica and headed off for a day of photo fun.  Really.  Just fun and a little nervousness, too, for street photography in a small town. . . well. . . you stand out in the "crowd."

There was no "crowd."  The sidewalks were mostly empty.  But the town, in part, is a scenic dream on side streets and certain alleyways.  I limped.  I snapped.  I breathed in the air.  For a few blocks, it was a movie set waiting for actors.  It is, in part, a college town, a prestigious small private college just larger than Country Club College a few blocks from the city center.  I hadn't thought about it, but students are not back in school yet, so there was none of that, and it seemed Tuesday afternoons were sleepy.  

I had memories of places.  I was invited to participate with a famous photographer in her workshops years ago.  I would drive up to her place with the big effing studio her husband, once the town's mayor, had built for her.  He dealt in antiques and would go to old hotels and houses that were being torn down and take out all the valuables to sell in his shop--old glass door knobs turned purple, pine flooring, old double sash windows, mantles, wrought iron. . . etc.  I'd been there many times over the years buying things for my old bungalow.  Ili loved the town, too, and we used to go up together just for fun.  She loved the record store there and the homemade candy and ice cream shop.  We would eat at a Cuban restaurant and drink a pitcher of sangria.  Her father was an attorney who used to come to the courthouse here and bring her when she was a kid.  We went to the wedding of my secretary here, I remembered as I walked past the place where she asked me to take her photo in her new "going to a wedding" dress.  

Wives and lovers. . . . 

I walked from one end of town to the other, down the main street and around corners down side streets, then back.  I wanted to walk a particular "artisans alley" again thinking I might get something to eat.  But. . . Dry January is not conducive to travel.  I would want a glass of wine or a beer with lunch but I couldn't or wouldn't, and it would, truly, kill the joy.  Dr. Oz and RFK jr. had just come out with a statement that no alcohol was good for you, but I think while alcohol may not be good for you, no alcohol is bad for you.  There is more to health, I think, than prescriptive existence--and I say "existence" rather than "living."  A glass or two of wine with lunch on a travel day to a pretty town. . . that is "living."  

As I cut back through the alley, I saw women--all women at all tables--sitting under umbrellas eating lunch with big glasses of wine, and I thought, "How lovely."  Then I came to a table full of younger, tatted women chatting up the younger, tatted waitress.  I passed them by, then thought again.  Fuck it, boy. . . get some cajones.  

I went back.  I stood, probably awkwardly, an old man with baggy Chinese shorts and a t-shirt, with long bleach blond hair, a stubley beard and a growing belly--AND A FUCKING CAMERA--with a wavering, broken voice and uncertainty, and said, "Uh. . . I like the tattoo around you ear.  Never saw that before.  Can I take a picture."

Really, that is it, verbatim.  I don't know.  What else do you say?  

One of the women at the table said, "The ones on her arm are great, too."

"Yea. . . the one around her ear is really unique," I quavered.  

"Sure," said the tatted waitress.  

Of course, nervous, I fumbled with the camera, blind, unable to focus the fucking rangefinder, thinking for sure I was fucking it up.  My hands were shaking. 

WTF?  I've become a true feeb.  

But the thing was done.  I had done "the thing."

That was good, I thought.  I could do more.  I will.  I will do more.  Just. . . quit being such a feeb.  

Back at the car, I decided to drive out of town to see what I could see.  Down the main street, past the good art museum, a really good one, past the empty college, then through the usual small town litter of restaurants and shopping centers and discount stores, car dealers new and used, truck and trailer lots, etc.  

There was the old Motel I'd photographed so many times, the great old sign for what was once a 1950s Holiday Inn, I think, on a state highway before the interstates were built, converted.  I have a great photo of the sign before it was damaged by a hurricane.  I'd stopped when it was damaged and talked to the new owner who was renovating the old motel, he said.  Now, the sign, still damaged, said, "New Owner."  It was a flophouse for drug addicts and criminals, $35 a day.  

That was that. 

Onward, out of town, to the junction of Hghwy 17 and State Road 11.  I took 11.  Oh, my, I was driving through country, some untouched, but much of it rich horse ranches breeding jumpers and show horses, big drives leading to huge mansions surrounded by pastures, some sitting on big, untouched lakes.  It looked lonely, spooky, even, but I realized that I was only miles out of town on a highway nobody travelled.  I didn't see another car for miles and miles and miles.  I passed things I should have stopped and photographed, but per usual with the unknowing and unwilling, I told myself I would stop and get the photo on the way back.  Onward.  And onward.  My batteries were recharging.  There were the big cranes that live nowhere around my town, five feet tall, flocks of them.  What had I forgotten this year?  What had I not experienced?  What lost?  

And then, driving back, I saw none of the things I said I would stop and photograph.  Of course.  

When I got back to my house, I downloaded the photos, just to get that done.  I would have no time to look through them much before I had to go back to my mother's.  But I wanted to see the ear tattoo.  

Disappointing.  It is not a good photo.  But it was a testament to a bit of chutzpah.  I'd asked.  I'd not been rejected.  I could, perhaps, do it again, even in the era of suspicion.  

There are a hundred or so other photos to look at.  I'm sure they won't be all that.  But. . . I did make some pics that T and his wife liked better than the ones from the catalog photographer, so at least there's that.  

If you are taking those backroads through the sunny winter south. . . a little traveling music.  

How'd You Celebrate?

So. . . how'd you celebrate January 6?  I didn't hear a peep from my republican buddies, so I figure they all went to a party to which I wasn't invited.  

I mean. . . really. . . who are you going to believe, Trump or your lying eyes?  

I tried watching the new Ricky Gervais Netflix special. 

Meh.  

I tried watching the new Dave Chapelle Netflix special. 

Meh. .

I watched "Killers of the Flower Moon."

👎👎👎

Maybe it's just me.  I mean. .  . I finished watching the latest season of "Emily in Paris" last night.  Wasn't wild about it, but I didn't mind.  Kinda like watching "The Mary Tyler Moore" show, I think.  

I saw an opinion piece in The Times this morning.  I didn't read it.  I was just fascinated that old "Caught with His Pants Down" Toobin is kinda back.  And it made me think of Anthony Weiner.  I wondered why there was nothing about him in the Epstein Files.  

Remember those?  That was a loooong time ago, before Venuzuela.  Try not thinking about that. Try not to worry about your 401-thing and all your savings.  Try.  

I know you think I'm obsessed with that sex pillow.  I'm not.  I'm obsessed with having someone to use it with.  Oh. . . my kingdom for. . . .

Anyway, I found the DIY one 

O.K.  I'll quit it.  I swear.  I am a child, truly.  These things just break me up.  Nobody else, I know.  My friends never respond.  

That's a stretch.  I don't have any friends now.  Just mom, and I haven't shown her any of that.  She would, I know, have a response.  

What's a day without some Post-Photographic Reduction, or whatever I was calling it. 

I usually have a 35mm lens on my Leica when I go out street hunting, but yesterday, I put on a 28mm.  Fascinating, eh?  Well, for the first time, I loved it.  I think I'm going to leave that on the camera for awhile.  

Scintillating.  

So. . . no more NPR.  You know I hate that. . . but I haven't been able to listen to it for many years now, for the most part.  My favorite thing has been "Science Fridays."  Have you ever listened?  That was better than good.  I will miss that awfully.  But, I think, NPR did it to themselves, just like the dems and Minnesota Walz.  My Marxist buddy is responding to Trump's invasion of Venuzuela with Marxisms.  You bet, Bud.  Let's not win everybody over to "our" side.  Let's just be strident.  

"C'mon, man. . . learn how to read a room."

I've come to realize, though, that he is somewhere on the spectrum.  I guess we all are somewhere on it, but he's quite a bit further along.  

I just want to take pictures.  Better ones.  I'm trying now every day.  

I'll keep trying.  

I'm Only Guessing

I don't know where to begin (or end) this morning.  I've been awake since 2:30, though I stayed in bed.  I couldn't sleep.  I thought I was supposed to sleep better when I stopped drinking.  The only thing that has happened so far is that I miserably want a cocktail at the cocktail hour.  This has been the hardest Dry January yet.  I don't feel any sharper mentally.  I am still a broken mess physically.  Spiritually?  I can only say I have attained no enlightenment and I sure as hell ain't attaining internal peace.  

So what's the point?

You know.  Discipline.  

I'm sure I feel better.  I just don't know it.  

I finally got out of bed at 5:30.  At least, I thought, I'd have some moments of peace.  Really?  Not on your life.  My mother got up right behind me and hasn't quit shuffling back and forth through the room on her squeaky walker since.  

"Serenity now."

I didn't call the home care for the elderly place yesterday.  I will today.  I did manage to get some things done, but most of it was a bust.  I texted a painter T recommended and he is going to come by my house to take a look.  Cha-ching!  He won't be cheap, I am certain, but I am not going to be painting high up on ladders for days anymore.  

Or many other things.  What I want is a driver.  Not all the time.  I just want to take photos out the car window, so I need a driver for that.  They would drive my car, so it would only be their time I would need.  Who would like to be my driver?  Should I take out an ad in the paper?

"Paper?  WTF are you talking about?  What paper?  Are you fucking daft?"

The flu epidemic is at a 25 year high.  I'm flu-averse.  Paranoid, really.  This is the flu that kills old people.  I guess I'm not really ready to go yet.  Reality check.  I haven't been going to the gym, though I may go today.  The gym is the place to pick up bacteria and viruses.  It is second only to schools.  O.K.  And nightclubs.  

Yesterday, when I got to my house, there was a crew putting in a new gas line for the house under construction across the street.  My street is very narrow and their trucks--many trucks--were blocking both entrances to my mulched drive.  I'm cool, though, and I parked at the apartment.  As I was walking back to the house, I saw that they had dug a six foot deep, four foot wide hole in my front yard.  

"Hey man," one of the crew addressed me.  "Would you mind if we put our drill in your driveway."

Still cool, "Sure, no problem."

I went inside to change into my workout clothes when I heard a siren coming down the street.  Then another.  When I finished dressing and went outside, there were four cop cars, two fire engines, and one ambulance blocking the road.  I stood and watched from the end of my drive.  People were coming out of their houses to see what was going on.  The medics took the stretcher (?) from the back of the ambulance and went into my across the street neighbor's house.  One of the workers came over and said, "Heart attack.  One of the fireman told me."

Wow.  The fellow across the street is younger than I am, but he has had a bad heart for a long time.  He is a bum, a drug dealer, and a lout, but he got in with the woman who has lived in that house her entire life.  It was her mother's, but it was her grandmother who had all the money.  She left her granddaughter a bunch of properties and some gas rights on some land out of state.  The Lout gave her two children who are retarded in most ways, and he thinks he's The Man.  I always wave and say hi, but if we talk, I try to use the 30 second rule.  He's a big guy and dangerous in the way of retarded pitbulls.  Talking to him is not enlightening and is hardly entertaining but for the character analysis you might put into one of your stories.  

A fellow who rents half of an old duplex on a big piece of property around the corner rode up on his bicycle.  He is kind of a bum.  He washes windows for a living, but I think he lives off disability pay.  Maybe he had been in the service.  Again, I am guessing, but I know that he always looks like more of a bum than I.  Hands down.  

He wanted to know which house they had gone to.  I pointed to The Lout's.  

"Probably domestic violence," he said.  I was thinking the same thing, but I told him what the worker said.  He nodded and rode off.  

A woman from down the street walked up and stood with me.  I can't tell how old she is.  I don't know if she works.  She lives alone, I am pretty sure, with two big dogs that she walks by my house.  Sometimes she waves and comes to say hello and can be very chatty, but other times she doesn't even look.  I think maybe she is bipolar, but I only have her brief encounters to base that on, so don't take it literally.  The thing is, she is kind of attractive, and I think she might like me.  I'm a bit of a nut magnet, so it is possible.  She is not thin, but. . . I don't know.  Something about her.  

"What's going on?"

I told her the heart attack story.  We stood looking at the house across the street.  

"I see you got a new roof.  It looks nice."

It looks nice?  What?  

"Oh. . . yea. . . I have a lot still to do.  I'm calling a painter today.  And I still have to re-rock and mulch the drives, then I will tackle the garden."

She looked concerned.  "You're not moving, are you?"

"No.  I like it here."

"Good.  Me, too."

I was getting a vibe.  She's on her meds, I thought.  I looked at the smooth skin of her face. Surely MedSpa.  Her hair was dark, not her natural color, I thought.  How old was she?  I couldn't tell.  Forty?  

Just then, the medics rolled out the stretcher (?), but it wasn't The Lout on it--it was his daughter!  She looked white as a sheet and was crying out.  I've known her and her brother, of course, since they were born.  Not "known," really, but known of them.  They are both simps, I think, but I have been told they are going to college.  Well, everybody does now, and everybody graduates.  It's the new rule, so I am not really surprised.  But she is, by all appearances, a bad girl.  She wears the sluttiest costumes I have ever seen.  She was a fat girl who got skinny.  Drugs, I assume.  And the boys would come and park down the street to pick her up.  They'd call her on the phone and she would come running out in something showing her hoo-hoo.  The boys didn't dare go to her house.  NOBODY is allowed in the house unless they are fellow druggies.  The cops are often at the house, and one day they were there when a tow truck brought her wrecked car.  One late night, I guess. . . but I am only guessing.  I'm just saying that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.  

The Lout followed her out.  He didn't look very concerned, but he was miffed that everyone was standing around looking, I guess, and he mugged me, crouched, and acted as if he was taking a picture, and indictment to us all.  My blood boiled quick, and I almost yelled "Fuck you you drug addict moron," but I only got the "Fuck" out when I remembered the bipolar woman standing next to me.  I was still trying to figure her out.  

So nothing was clear except there was no heart attack.  The Lout looked over and said, "She had a seizure."  Hmm.  O.K.  So why the four cop cars?  

The woman from down the street said, "It was nice to see you," and turned back in the direction of her house.  I got into my Xterra and tried not to back over the two policemen standing in the street behind my drive like entitled pricks.  I had to go the long way 'round.  

I worked out in the park's outdoor gym, walked and stumbly old man ran, and came back home.  I'd been gone about an hour, I guessed, maybe a little longer.  The fire trucks were all gone, but there were still two police cars there.  Seemed weird they would hang around for over an hour because of "a seizure."  Something else was surely at hand.  

By this time, the big drilling machine was in my driveway and trucks were parked all along the narrow street.  It was not a peaceful day.  

All that to say. . . I didn't do everything I had planned.  After I showered, I worked on more of the pictures I had taken.  You have to take photos if you want to be a photographer.  That's the rule.  But. . . if you want to be an artist. . . . 

Still. . . it is all work.  

I need a driver.  Hell. . . I need an assistant, plain and simple, and a studio, too.  Why didn't I become famous and have all that?  Why didn't I marry the ultra-rich girl and become funded?  

The answers to these questions can only be guessed at.  I'm certain we can chalk it up to a character flaw.  

But I am only guessing.  

Much to do today, but I have gotten an early start.  If it weren't for mother, I'd have it all done before noon.  As it is. . . . 

I really don't know, but I think the woman down the street was giving me vibes. 

Still, I'm only guessing.