Vertigo

I'm not doing so well this morning.  I've had terrible vertigo for about the last 21 hours.  I was at the gym.  I lay back on a platform to do some crunches and the world began to spin.  This happened about a month ago at the outdoor gym when I lay back to do hanging rows.  Tipping my head back caused the crystals in my inner ear to move out of place, I guess.  As before, yesterday I could not walk straight.  I was in a panic and sat still for a very long time.  Then I staggered slowly out the door and to my car.  Should I drive?  Of course not.  Did I?  Of course.  On every curve and over every bump, I felt the world begin to twirl.  I made it home.  I went in and lay on the bed and tried doing the Epley Maneuver.  Then I lay back with my head elevated and fell asleep.  When I woke, I was still off kilter.  O.K.  What to do?  I called the Ear, Nose, and Throat clinic I take my mother to.  They could see me for an evaluation--in a week.  I was guessing that within the week, this would have all straightened itself out.  I was not fearful.  I was sick, but not dying.  It was not like getting a pain in the gut.  Then I think I am dying for sure.  No, I've had this before, and eventually it goes away.  Why?  I think the crystal dissolves over time.  Didn't I read that?  I think I did.  I've had this problem off and on ever since I got knocked through the air on my Vespa.  Something happened then.  

So now. . . I'm just trying to live through it.  

When I was at my house, I called my mother to tell her what was going on.  "I may have to go to an E.R." I said, just to let her know.  

My mother was in a panic.  

"What about my pills?"

I can't miss more than a couple hours, you see.  She cannot take care of herself in any way.  She is 100% dependent upon my care.  She worries I might go to the hospital in terms of what would happen to her.  

And so. . . . 

There's a big shit storm about the "sexualized" images produced on X.  Oh, people. . . who are you?  

I fear most the Moral Majority.  

And, of course, the Libertines run a close second.  Maybe not too close, though.  

As always, I want to live in Leave It to Beaverland and go to visit the weird from time to time.  I like the weird, of course, and not only because it breaks the "I before E" rule.  But I never enjoy enjoy the other.  I'm like Ozzie and Harriet.  They raised Little Ricky, if you catch my drift.  

I received a text from T last night (except after "C", you know--it may take you awhile to get this one).  He said that the clothing company to which he sent my photos are forwarding them to corporate headquarters for final approval.  They won't be using my photos, of course.  If they like him well enough, they will fly T to L.A. for a photoshoot.  My images will go into the Lost and Found bin like everything else I do.  

Selavy.  

And that, I've decided, will be the name on my "business" card.  And on my website if I can ever manage to put one together.  I just can't decide if it should be "Selavy Photography" or "Photography Selavy."  I'm leaning toward the latter.  

Just a quick (very) mock up of a flyer I would paste in some of the stranger places around town.  Needs a lot of work.  I just haven't had time.  But. . . would I get responses?  Oh--I guess I would need some contact info, huh?  I'll set up an internet phone line if I can figure out how to do that.  Chat can probably tell me.  It can also help me design a better flyer.  It is often smarter than I.  

I couldn't make dinner last night, couldn't go grocery shopping and didn't feel I could cook, so I got us take out.  But now there is not breakfast material in the house, either.  I will have to do something about that.  But the world is still spinning if I look up or look down or turn my head to the right or to the left.  It spins a bit other than that, too.  

What to do?  I may just sleep the day away and hope to get better.  And so. . . .

"Rumble"

I just spent the morning creating a formal portrait of J.D. and Usha Vance in A.I.  Had to try over and over as it couldn't quite get his face right.  When I had something I could use, I posted it and spent part of the morning writing a piece about her pregnancy.  It got to be too. . . much. . . so I deleted it.  

Prudence is the better part of valor today, I think.  My mind is a waste disposal system lately.  

And so. . . I'll stick with the shot of a woman eating meat on a stick.  Nice. 

Still. . . .

What do I have to report?  I think the painters are doing a great job on my house.  I can see why no one painter wanted to take it on.  If I had done it myself. . . well. . . it wouldn't be right.  There has been a crew working on my house for days, caulking, sanding, repairing, priming.  Five women are doing the detail work.  They are all over, way up on ladders, standing on one roof to reach the higher parts of the house.  The crew is all Mexican, and they are lovely.  Now all the windows are covered in plastic.  My walls are mostly windows.  Yesterday while I was there, I opened the shutters and the light that filtered through the plastic was diffused, soft, and lovely.  Hmm.  

Today they begin painting the house color, I think.  This is the men's work I take it.  There were two guys doing some of the small spraying jobs yesterday.  Maybe seven people working in all for five days.  Yea. . . I can see why no painter wanted to take this on.  I'm super happy I didn't try to do it myself.  

I was there when the house cleaners came.  The jefe said they could just skip cleaning this week, so I gave her fifty dollars to go to lunch.  She has only been taking 2/3ds of the money each week since I haven't bee living there, and when she was gone, I thought, "Man oh man alive. . . I should have given her a hundred."  It has been eating at me since.  

Every day now, I see article after article about how to exercise to stay young and live forever.  There is dietary advice, too.  And now, supplements.  Not just vitamins and minerals and plant extracts.  Nope.  Even at the Club Y where plastic surgeries abound, people are turning to peptide chains.  Hardly any real research on this stuff, but anecdotal evidence shows immediate gains in muscularity and big reductions in fat.  All the boys are already doing testosterone replacement therapies, and the women those combined estrogen/progesterone/ testosterone bundles.  

The thing is, once you are on, you can't get off without resuming your lesser self.  And eventually, when problems begin to arise, and they will. . . . 

There is no staying young forever.  Ask any old person other than those freaks selling product.  I'm allowing my body to run on estrogen the way god intended.  

The other trend is more viscous.  Everybody is learning to fight.  There are fighting gyms everywhere and parents are putting their kids into classes.  I'm sure most kids could kill me now.  My fighter buddy sends me videos all the time.  Cool.  But I think once you get hit upside the head with an iron pipe, all that shit goes out the window.  I don't think most criminals are going to say, "Come on, buddy. . . put up your dukes."  

"Ju-jitsu is good for your brain," one video opined.  I said I would be willing to play brain bowl against him.  

It's a dangerous world, my friends.  I just live in it.  Kind of.  

If you like the weather, vote Republican.  

I'm just saying.  

And so. . . I wonder if the Vance's fourth child will look anything like J.D.  None of the others do.  

That's it.  I'm done.  I'll leave you with a little ditty that I think I can get A.I. to make better.  The world just keeps getting cooler.  

Just a Rant

 

No president has ever profited from being elected president like Trump.  MAGA, baby.  The others were just stupid.  Maybe not Clinton.  He was probably second.  He and Trump were buddies for a long while, you know, when they were partying at Epstein's place.  Now. . . not so much.  

Demolition Man

We have all been complicit, I guess, in the deconstruction of a nation, both left and right--if such opposition truly exists in a postmodern world.  

"Look at the hierarchy, find the assumption, then turn it on it's head."

That was fun in the '90s.  Remember?  Oh, it started in the 60s, but the conservative right didn't grab hold until then.  After that. . . whoa Nellie!  It was a good tool for me, though, in meetings at the factory.  Identifying the assumption.  There is always an assumption in every argument.  

I think.  I haven't been in a meeting for a very long time now.  I don't really use my noggin much anymore.  My role in the world is not to argue now but to caretake.  

"The Brown's called to check up on me from Utah.  They said I was lucky, that I had a really good son."

Yea, yea, yea. .  . it's all luck.  

The painters are working on the house readying it for painting.  That's my other role now, paying people to fix my stuff.  They are making bank, as the kids used to say.  They are doing really well.  It's my zip code.  It basically doubles prices on any home improvement or repair.  I have always believed my fortune was in my house.  Recently, though, I asked A.I., "If you bought a home in the 1980s for $400,000 on a 30 year 4% mortgage, how much interest would you pay?"  It was around $240,000.  Add in repairs over those 30 years.  Your profit margin really begins to shrink.  

My mother has been up for an hour now, and has not quit pushing her walker back and forth from the kitchen to her bedroom.  Back and forth.  She says her mind is gone, that she can't control it.  And so she rambles, paces like a wounded sloth.  She will be better when the sun comes up, I think.  Usually.  But pain and confusion are her constants.  

"They say you're a really good son."

I don't know.  I really don't know.  

I just spent half an hour working with A.I. to compose a piece of music that would score the photo of the little girl.  I did it, but it sucked.  I'll keep trying and maybe some day I'll be able to post it here.  For now. . . 

I made The Donald's portrait, too!

Made Up Redux

I have no time to write today.  My mother has a doctor's appointment this morning.  That's o.k. Nothing happened yesterday in the mundane life of a boring caretaker.  I watched yesterday's NFL playoff games with my mother.  She enjoyed the snows.  Both came down to the wire, so it was o.k. for me, too.  

If you have been coming here for decades, you may remember that I started my own faux-anthropology series in which I problematized (that's the kind of language we used back then) the concept of early anthropological photography saying that those photos were invented and unreliable as scientific documents.  So I made up primitive cultures, too.  

Just like Tiki Culture, in essence.  I'd like to do it again. 

Then I got sidetracked with Lonesomeville, another faux project.  

But I've been inspired to delve into fantasy once more, right from a chair in my mother's living room.  It's as far as I can go.  It is all I can do.  So. . . here, before I load my mother into the car. . . enjoy. 

Tiki Lives

I would let this go, but. . . yesterday driving I turned the radio on, tuned to the university jazz channel, and a song began to play that sounded like a Martin Deny tune. I looked at the display and read "Watiki 7." That was the band. A bit unnerved by that.

Tiki culture survives!

And so.  

I had to make my own pre-missionary hula dancer in Chat.  She is pretty European, though.  Someone was dallying with the natives.  

That's about "all I got."  Other than the pho I made last night.  Delicious.  Made with the bone broth from the Vietnamese restaurant.  The jalapenos were hot, though, and my mother couldn't eat it.  Said her mouth was on fire.  

I wish I had more to offer, but nothing interesting really happens here in my mother's house.  Am I tired of spending every Friday and Saturday night here with mom?  Spending every single night never going out?  

I don't think I can watch any more television.  I'm nervous, anxious, and, frankly. . . scared.  

"I'm not the man I used to be."

Sure, sure. . . and that may be a good thing.  

And so. . . I'll leave you with music--a live performance of "Adventures in Paradise" by the Watiki 7.  Enjoy.  

"And if I die before I wake. . . "

Exotica

Late Friday afternoon.  The house has been pressure washed.  I've hooked up the new color laser printer and run some tests, then made sheets of small images for transferring to my new notebook starting in January 2020.  I have a little time before I need to go back to mother's, so I pack up my new art materials and head for the cafe.  I order a cafe con leche, then sit down to begin.  I'm no good at it.  My effort is terribly jejune.  Not even adolescent.  I need the help and advice of a teenage girl.  By and large (to generalize) they have panache for such things.  Even my writing there is clumsier than usual.  But I work at it knowing that is the only way to improve.  

Then it is time to go.  I don't call my mother to ask what she wants for dinner.  She never knows.  She barely eats dinner now.  She snacks.  What I really want to do is go for sushi, but. . . .   What then?  Not pizza.  I decide on Mexican.  There is a little place up the street from my mother's house I've never tried that has been there forever.  When I get to her house, I ask her.  She shrugs.  I go.  I buy two dinners and three tacos.  It is WAY too much food, but that is my M.O.  I am back in a flash and lay the food out on the table.  Nothing is good.  Everything sucks.  I throw over half of it in the garbage.  

Selavy.  Just another Friday night with mom.  

I am anxious.  I have many concerns.  The house.  My health.  My mother's health.  But mostly I worry about my health and the draining away of whatever life I have left sitting on my mother's couch.  I want to drink the night away.  I am more than tempted.  I decide to take a Xanax, for I feel myself going.  I take it with one small sip of whiskey.  Fuck, that is good.  But no.  I sit on the couch and wait for the drug to relieve my death spiral.  

It takes awhile.  

I make a cup of good jasmine tea from the little pearled leaves.  I drink four cups over the next hour.  Some calm descends.  I turn to YouTube.  I go down a rabbit hole of Tiki culture.  Fascinating.  Totally fabricated, totally Hollywood.  A mishmash of "exotica" goes into creating the alternate reality that takes over the imagination of Americans after WWII.  I am taken to museums to look at masks from Polynesia, Melanesia, South America, Africa.  There are similarities.  The appeal is the "primitive" which is associated with a freedom of the libido.  I search for old films of Hawaiian dancers before the Hula was corrupted by Christian missionaries.  Couldn't find any.  But I am enamored of the cult of Tiki, especially because it is a fabrication that never existed but in the imagination.  It is an escape from actuality.  I want to escape actuality so very badly just now.  

We visit the famous old Tiki bars.  The drinks were invented by one man, Beachcomber Don.  He was Filipino.  The drinks were mostly rum drinks from the Caribbean with many added ingredients,  mostly sweet.  But lots of rum.  The Zombie.  The Mai Tai.  The Beachcomber.  The Singapore Sling.  The Pain Killer.  The Missionary's Downfall.  

Tiki was a perfect antidote to the life of the typical American businessman in the 1950s.  On Friday afternoon, he could drift away to an imaginary foreign land where barely clothed women brought him strong drinks and did a little dance.  

I'm a fool for make believe.  

I stuck with tea.  

When I had friends in Key West before the condos and cruise ships came, there was a place just outside of town where the locals went to eat but mostly drink called the Hukilau.  You would bring your own fish and they would cook it.  They made a drink called The Hurricane, and customers were limited to one.  No one knew exactly what was in it other than eight shots of rum, but reportedly (I never had one) you couldn't taste it for all the liqueurs that were included.  I used to dance the hula and sing the Hukilau song for many years.  

"Hukilau lau lau lau, do the Hukilau lau lau lau lau."

Something like that.  

One of the oldest and most famous Tiki bars left in the U.S. is in Ft. Lauderdale called the Mai-Kai (link).  When Dry January is over, and if my hillbilly cousin ever comes, I want to go there for a drink.  I'll call my Miami friend to come meet me.  

One of the most famous Tiki bars is at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco called The Tonga Room.  I've meant to go many times, but I never have.  If San Francisco ever recovers, I want to go.  I can't believe I never did.  

And so. . . that was my night--bad Mexican, Xanax, a tongue full of whiskey, and the history of Tiki.  

Tell me now--does life get any better than this?

I took another Xanax before bed, just to be sure.  And so, with the sound of Martin Deny and "Bali Hai" echoing in my ear and imagined scenes from "Adventures in Paradise" in my head. . . . 

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.