It's Just Hair

I had an eleven o'clock beauty appointment.  It was an odd time, breaking the day in two.  At nine, I was getting antsy, so I decided to take a long walk and shower at my mother's house before getting beautified.  On the walk, I passed a backyard with a pool, so I used my phone to take a snap.  I want to do a swimming pool series badly.  Picture mom and dad lying in pool lounges and a couple of kids jumping into the pool.  I don't know.  I would figure it out.  I'd post-process the shit out of the pictures so that they looked more mythical than this, dehazing the sky, subtle vignettes, bringing some colors up and some down.  The backyard pool just seems a phenomena to me, part of the mirage of The American Dream.  Do you have a pool?  

See what I mean?  

I got to my appointment right on time, and my little gypsy Russian Jew was ready.  My knees got a little weak, but I said, "Let's do it.  I'm not afraid of change."

It takes a looooong time for her to do my hair, and we had three hours to talk.  A little more, really.  There was a whole lotta chopping to do, and she was toning my hair down from a bleach blond to a sophisticated golden.  So she said.  

"How's your mom?"

Yea, yea, that's how almost all conversations start now.  My life, her life.  I asked about her new hip.  It was good, she said, but the other one now. . . .  That's the way that goes, I think.  

My beautician was a wild girl when I met her.  Then she got married and had a son.  The fellow turned out to be a psycho, and he left.  Out of the picture.  Then he wasn't, and there were a couple of years of legal hassles.  Then she started dating a cop from the D.R.  Moved in with him.  Then, at the last moment, they had a daughter, now two.  My beautician is forty-eight, older than the cop.  A bit later, they got married. 

What could go wrong?

I got to hear about what could go wrong.  Like I said, we had three hours.  

I kept my eyes closed most of the time.  On the best of days, I don't like looking at myself in a mirror, and this was not the best of days.  

"You know this, I know, but when women put on weight, they think it is their hair that needs changing."

"You're right." 

"And so. . . here I am."

It is not just the weight.  I've aged.  I was looking pretty homeless, I thought.  A haircut would be just the thing.  

I think I made a mistake.  I don't look any less homeless and not a bit younger.  And the color just looks beige.  I am shocked when I pass a mirror.  What did I do?!?  

No matter, I tell myself.  It is all inevitable.  

Of course, my mother loves it.  She won't shut the fuck up about it.  She keeps sneaking phone pics of me.  

"Stop it!  Nobody ever took my photo when I was better looking.  Now, when I look the worst, everybody wants to make a fucking phone pic.  Just stop it."

I had taken the usual selfie when I got into the car after getting my hair done.  Oy!

Instead of making the evening cocktail when I got back to my mother's, I had a light beer.  You see, I need to lose weight, and cocktails don't help me do that.  And now that Q is down to his pre-high school weight and righteously a practicing teetotaler, I have to do something.  Light beer is really just hydration. 

"I will only drink light beer," I tell myself.  I've been telling myself that for a month.  

I had wine with dinner.  

And then a scotch.  

But. . . then I switched to tea.  

"Atta boy.  Just throttle it back."

My little gypsy Jew made me laugh when talking about the difference between herself and her husband.  

"He wants to talk about things too much."

"Processing?"

"Exactly.  He's going to therapy.  I grew up a poor Jew in Russia.  People don't have any idea what that was like.  We didn't have shit.  I lived in the North Pole for awhile.  People whine about stupid shit without any idea how hard life can be.  We didn't have time for 'processing.'  You just had to deal with things, so when he's 'processing,' I'm like, 'Let's just go fuck some shit up!'"

Now, I'm not gangsta-like at all, but this is going to be my new favorite thing to say--"Let's just go fuck some shit up!"

Kind of like my hair.  It's fucked up.  I'm either going to have to let it grow or get more cut off.  There is another option.  I could find someone to fix it.  Maybe my gal has gotten too old, married, and out of touch to be good at this anymore.  I've been going to her for twenty years or so.  Maybe I need some new hipster gal to work me over.  

I don't know.  

It's not my hair, though.  It's the whole package.  I'll wear a hat and stay away from people until I figure things out.  

I DO need to figure out how to do the pool series, though.  I think it would be sterling.  

"What's the beautician's name?"

"Her name is probably Darlene Fontaine — though everyone in the salon just calls her “Dar.

She’s been doing hair since 1958, swears by Aqua Net and Lucky Strikes, keeps a transistor radio humming behind the counter, and knows every customer’s divorce history before the perm rods are even set. She dyes her beehive “Cinnamon Flame No. 7” every other Thursday and insists your fellow “has marvelous hair density for a man his age.”

Language, Birds, and Riddles

I don't know why, but as I sit here this morning, William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" comes to mind.  So much has been made of it, but I think he was just fucking around.  Speculation about what depends upon the red wheelbarrow is a hoot.  A riddle wrapped in a mystery?  Ha!  That fucker used to be included in every intro to lit book published.  Just to torture students, I guess.  

"I don't get it."

Neither did most of your profs teaching you lit, either.  That's my thinking, anyway.  I feel the same way about his plums poem, "This Is Just to Say."  They are kind of American haikus, maybe.  Street.  

Know what I'm sayin'? 

I get beautified at eleven.  I have trepidations.  I don't kick about it, but I've had some seriously fucked up haircuts.  I've had good ones, too.  God knows how I'll feel about things around two o'clock.  I don't even know if I want to be a blond anymore.  

I don't know what I want to be--I just know what I don't.  It wouldn't matter anyway.  I'm just a recipient.  I can't even talk "hair."  No words.  

I picked up bbq for dinner last night--pulled pork sandwiches and ribs with Mexican street corn, beans and rice, and fries.  More food than we needed.  Today, I am thinking of becoming a vegetarian again.  Not totally, but much more Mediterranean than last night's meal.  I have some tempeh in the 'fridge.  I think I'll look up some recipes for tonight.  

Cha-cha-cha-changes.  

I took my mother to a cardiology appointment yesterday.  9:30 check in for a 9:45 appointment.  We sat.  The doctor finally saw her sometime after eleven.  He asked her how she was doing and said he'd see her in four months.  

One of my mother's down the street neighbors told her some weird news yesterday.  Her grown son went to check on his father, her ex-husband, and found him decomposing in the garage.  Holy smokes.  That had to be a bit traumatic for the son.  

Everywhere I go, the vultures seem to be circling.  

I still believe Trump will be the first to use a nuke.  

How's your weather?  It is consistently five to six degrees warmer than normal here.  There are hardly any birds left.  I looked it up.  "What happened to the birds?"  Oh. . . their numbers have been decimated.  They are not the only species, of course.  Well. . . birds aren't a species.  You knew that.  Class Aves.  I've fallen so far into common usage I don't think I'll ever escape.  But the birds. . . they aren't around so much anymore.  

Except for the vultures. 

Class: Aves (Birds)

Order: Accipitriformes (Birds of prey including eagles, hawks, and buzzards)

New World Vultures (Family Cathartidae): Found in the Americas (e.g., Turkey Vulture, Andean Condor). These birds are more closely related to storks.

Old World Vultures (Family Accipitridae): Found in Europe, Africa, and Asia (e.g., Griffon Vulture, Bearded Vulture). They are closely related to eagles and hawks.

We still have Genus and Species.  There are 23 species of vultures.  Don't confuse them with Buzzards.  Not the same.  

Do you know what constitutes a species?  Mating.  But. . . Neandrathals and Homos mated.  You have Neandrathal genes in you.  Science is still catching up.  Lots have changed since I got my ancient zoology degree.  

Lots.  

I can't escape the vernacular.  Which reminds me that I was thinking about language acquisition this morning, the fact that you don't teach a baby to talk, that they simply learn without being instructed in the rules of grammar, and that grammarians don't make very good writers in the main.  They think too much in the subjunctive.  As do I.  

"If I were you. . . ." 

Etc.  

O.K. Duty calls.  I took that photo with my phone.  Ain't that something?  

"My head ain't full of nothing but cats and rocking chairs."

God, he used to be good.  

What Does She See In Him?

Sorry, peeps.  I'm using a lot of the earth's energy doing silly A.I. stuff.  I've been told that what is going to put the brakes on A.I. technologies is energy.  We are running out of enough to let it keep progressing.  All that means to me, though, is that I will get priced out of it.  It will be like fine medical care--only for those wealthy enough to afford it.  Like everything ever.  

But being a prisoner of circumstance, it's all I have to do.  And now, like the Rolling Stones. . . have you seen that shit?  

Shitty song, but. . . everybody wants to be young again.  I'm not the only one doing that.  

That was me on a small bridge with a girl I dated.  

I've been watching "Californication" with my mother.  She told the neighbor.  Lots of titties.  Lots of fucking.  It got me thinking.  You know what makes the show so funny?  It's like a role reversal.  No guy gets to live like that except maybe Warren Beatty back in the day.  Nope.  Whenever I hear about a guy sleeping with a girl, I wonder, "What in the world did she see in him?"  Almost always.  

I know that is what people would think about me.  Have thought.  

"What in the world does she see in him?"

We never think that about a woman.  Women can have sex just about any time they want.  Now I'm exaggerating some, but you know that where I'm headed, the general direction, is true.  Attention is like oxygen.  Women just breathe it in and out without thinking, but a guy lives holding his breath looking for a quick hit of the old O2.  

"Did you see that?  No shit!  That girl just smiled at me!"

Pant, pant, pant. . . get yo'sef some air, boy.  

Mick Jagger probably didn't have any trouble, but I still wonder, "WTF do they see in him?"

This guy's dumb.  This guy's boring.  This one watches football.  This one is into Superheroes.  

Etc. 

I think maybe male and female vision is as different as their sex organs.  There can be no other explanation.  

The girl in the picture and I had a lot of fun for a few years.  Off and on.  I was about 100 years older than she.  She took me to meet her parents.  I think one of them might have been younger than I.  Crazy.  But we would tire of one another and see other people until one day we just stopped.  The wife of one of the biggest builder's in town was friends with my ex, and she was actively trying to set the girl up with an attorney fellow she knew.  So. . . she went that way and I went the other.  

One day, I was stopped at a stop sign and she pulled up behind me and waved me over.  She wanted to hook up again.  

"I can't.  I'm seeing someone."

"C'mon.  We always had fun.  We were always out doing things, laughing, eating, drinking.  My boyfriend wants to stay at home on the weekend and eat sandwiches and watch golf.  I'm tired of lawyer dick."

Well now, that was quite a compliment that thrilled me to my flip-flops, but I'm just not that kind of guy.  

She caused me a lot of trouble later on, but that's another story.  The point of this one is, eventually a woman's vision clears and she sees what a mistake she has made.  

"He's got a fucking Star Wars poster!"

I'm familiar with this, of course.  

I'm seeing my beautician on Saturday for the first time since mid February.  I look bad, scraggly and homeless.  I think I'm going to chop off my locks.  It could be hideous.  Probably will be.  But. . . I will always be able to fix it in A.I. just like the Stones.  I'm a deep fake anyway, just another victim of time and circumstance.  

PMA.  PMA.  PMA.  

I'm not very good at that.  I think too much.  That's what I've been oft told.  I was sitting in an airport after a climb with my Yosemite buddy, and he said that exact thing.  I don't believe he meant it as a compliment.

I replied, "What goes on in your head.  "Chair. . . carpet. . . backpack. . . girl walking. . . airplane"?

He laughed and said, "Pretty much."

He was kidding, I'm sure.  

Right?

You Don't Know. . .

Being an optimist might help protect your heart.

The mind-heart connection: Studies have linked a sunnier outlook to a lower risk of heart disease, stroke and premature death. If you’re not an optimist, here's how to fake it.

This was WaPo.  I didn't get to learn how to fake it because I've dropped my subscription, but it is clear, as always, that the satellites are following me.  I'm always two seconds ahead of the curve--except in money and love.  

I got that far this morning, but I had to take my mother to an eight o'clock pain med appointment.  It is crazy to me that when we walked in, not having been there since January, the nurse or practitioner or whatever she is lit up and said "Hello" using my mother's name.  It is crazy.  I have watched this woman in the office, and she can be a grump, but never to my mother or me.  Today she took my mother's bp and asked some questions.  Then she asked how I was doing.  

"I'm great," I said with my usual eye roll."

As it turns out, this young woman started working in a nursing home when she was eighteen, and she did that for a long time before coming here, both in nursing homes and private care.  

"She's lucky to have someone take care of her," I heard for the ten thousandth time.  I did my usual head bob.  

"You need to take care of yourself, too," she said.  

Don't I know it.  

"I haven't been out of town for five years," I said.  "I don't need someone a few hours a week," and I went into my normal spiel of needing months and years.

"What about a long weekend?" she asked.  I just looked at her.  

"I still do some private care," she said, and she wrote down her phone number on a card and gave it to me.  "Feel free to text me if you want and we'll work something out."

Holy shit, this young girl was something.  I thought for a minute.

"I really appreciate you," I said, "but if I don't text, don't get mad.  I just. . . I don't know."

"I understand," she said.  "But you've got my number.  

The doc came in.  

"How are you little lady?"

He's a swell guy, all metro and manscaped, not a line in his face.  

He looked at her chart.  "How old are you?!" he grinned.  

"I'll be ninety-five in December," my mother said.  I don't know why she didn't just say 94, but. . . . 

"What day in December?"

"The thirteenth."

He lit up.  "That's my wife's birthday," he said.  "She's here right now."

There was a new lady sitting at the reception desk, pretty, blonde (like many of us are), and chatty with a strong southern accent that I took to be South Carolina, but maybe North.  

"She's not 94," I said.  

"No. . . she's not 94."

And that was it.  He sent the script in for another month's worth of very strong pain killers.  

"O.K.  I'll see you next month," he said.  

Cha-ching!

I stopped at the reception desk to make an appointment for my mother.  

"South Carolina or North?" I asked.  She grinned.  She was no kid, but my god she was sexy.  

"Tennessee," she said.  "Sometimes people guess Mississippi."

"You know why?  You rarely meet people from Tennessee.  They don't leave the state."

"It is beautiful," she said.  "My husband grew up just ten miles from me, but he doesn't have the accent."

I wanted to ask her to go out, have dinner, drinks, maybe smooch a bit.  Some people you just like right away.  

She talked to my mother.  "What's your secret?" she asked.  

My mother told her she worked out all her life.  Exercise and vitamins.  

"My son goes to the gym every day.  I should start going with him," she said.  

"How old is your son?" I asked.  

"He's eighteen."

I grinned.  "I was a checking to see how old you were," I laughed.  

"You're sweet," she grinned.  

That doc is sure one lucky guy, I thought.  She's a real peach.  

And so I got my mother back downstairs and into the car.  It was still early morning, a pretty day.  We drove back through my part of town, me looking at all the places I can no longer go.  

Here's a true fact.  Fifty percent of caregivers die before the person they are caring for.  I keep saying. . . . 

I didn't get to read the article. CNN charges now.  I was hoping it would be something simple like an apple a day, but Q sent me the answer--quit drinking.  He's righteous now having given up the booze and loosing half his weight and halving his blood pressure and getting a raise and thinking about buying a third house.  

Try not drinking when you are a caregiver and nothing else.  

Oh, fuck. . . I shouldn't do that.  

Anyway. . . my PMA left me last night.  I'll try some Stuart Smalley shit this morning (link).  

But here I am being all cynical again.  I've had a lifetime of practice.  I'm trying, though.  People who are simple minded live longer.  

See?  It is really difficult.  

Here's something I had to search for.  When I was fixing dinner last night, I heard a beautiful version of "You Don't Know What Love Is" on the university jazz station, and being busy, I asked Siri to identify it.  When I looked this morning, though, Siri had gotten it wrong.  Fortunately, the station posts its playlist, so I just went back and looked it up.  Oh, my. . . there are a lot of versions of this song, but this one strikes to the heart of the matter, I think.  

I know what love is.  Trust me.  I do.  I've just not been so lucky. . . or maybe I have.  

Positive Thinking

I think, so far, the whole PMA thing is working.  I'm trying.  Woke up feeling better than I usually do.  I'm trying to make every moment somewhat or somehow productive whether it is making a meal or making a card.  I made a lot of cards yesterday to mail off.  I made a birthday card that I turned into a video.  A.I. is really something.  It can make things move.  

The card and video got a nice reception and I woke to a sweet voice message.  So I made another video, a step too far, I think, but I am working on no regrets.  Keep moving forward.  

I am looking pretty scraggy.  I haven't seen my beautician for quite some time.  That was her in yesterday's card and video, you know--my little Russian Jewish Gypsy.  She is a bit of a mystic--like so many of you.  She believes in "the mysteries."

The mystery to me is what to do with my hair.  I have fewer options than I used to.  I mean, the hair needs to match my face.  Men used to have it easier with the standard haircut, the Rose's Oil, and the side part.  Always had a comb with them.  Didn't need a mirror.  A couple swipes.  

(link)

I should never have gotten a hair thing.  Brad Pitt and George Clooney knew what's what.  

No matter.  I never complain.  I'll need to see her soon, though.  I need my palm read.  

I'll be productive today.  Shampoo, nail trim, and maybe a new pair of running shoes.  Then, of course, grocery shopping and dinner.  

Somewhere in there, I need to try to meditate.  And maybe I'll have time to check out the tai-chi place.  

A little reading and green tea.  

Q has lost 22 pounds and has the blood pressure of a baby.  He's a happy lad.  That's what good clean living will do for you.  I haven't asked him about church yet.  I hear, though, that it is good for you. 

Maybe I'll try that, too.  C.C. says you don't have to believe.  He's always told me that I can just go there when I get old.  Sundays, holidays, anytime, really.  Between that and the free coffee at Publix, I should be fine.  

Oh. . . there's that old cynicism again.  I'll need to keep that in check. 

What I need to do is quit bugging people with the stupid shit I think of all the time.  I only send it out in the mornings, but I don't always get the responses I feel I deserve.  I mean, I think I'm brilliant. 

O.K.  Time to make mom some breakfast.  Eggs, avocado, toast, Kimchi, a navel orange. . . . 

I'm a hell of a guy.  

Looking for Miracles

I know I've said it before, but times are hard that things are dire--I must work on having a positive mental attitude!  I MUST banish negative thoughts.  

Ommmmmmmmm. 

I wish there really was a gypsy woman I could see.  Someone who could read palms and tea leaves.  Well. . . I DO have books on such things.  You've seen some screen shots of them before.  Maybe I should check my horoscope.  

Step one--I must lose weight.  But there is much involved with such an enterprise, all of it mental.  I used to be a mentalist, I think, back when I had the studio.  Such things.  

For all the joking, this all comes from a very real place.  I'm going to use some terms here that many won't like.  You can cancel me now if you like, or you can skip the rest and wait for tomorrow's post.  The rest of you, just hang with me with an open mind and maybe you'll see what I'm about.  

Since I was a kid, I kind of felt like a King of the Retards and Knuckleheads.  Hold on, hold on. . . I know, but hear me out.  

Yesterday, I didn't get to the gym until very late in the afternoon.  I spent the day doing what I do best--nothing.  I didn't feel like going at all.  I had a kind of food and alcohol illness, I think, having too much of many bad things. 

When I got there, the place was pretty empty.  I walked on the treadmill, then went to the floor to do a little workout.  But I was slow and sweaty and smelled like old pizza.  It is a gym, so of course there are mirrors everywhere.  I looked like shit.  But I struggled on.  

Toward the end, a guy I've seen here for about twenty years walked in.  He's a real knucklehead, a New Jersey fellow with D.R. roots and a street thug look.  We hit it off straight away.  I didn't see him for years, then one day he reappeared.  He'd been sick, of sorts.  He told me he had a liver disease.  He'd had hepatitis from sharing needles, he said.  Now he was trying to get healthy.  

I didn't see him for a long while again.  When I saw him yesterday, I came up behind him and said, "You big guys think you can come in here and do what you want, eh?"  He turned around coming out of some fog.  

"Yea.  I just got some bad news.  The little guy is back."

What he meant is that his liver cancer has returned.  He's had chemo twice, both times successfully, but it has been twenty-one months and now the MRI shows some bad news.  I gave him what I had.  I told him to keep his chin up.  I also told him we are all headed in the same direction and one day when we don't want the news. . . blah blah blah.  

It set me back on my own ass, but he was glad to have someone to talk about it with.  

I've always gotten along with knuckleheads, and yesterday got me thinking.  Sitting with mom yesterday, I related the story.  And then. . . . 

"Ever since I was a kid in school, I have stood up for people.  I was kind of the classroom lawyer in elementary school when it seemed someone was getting the bad treatment.  Oh, I'd say, you can't do that to Bobby.  The kids were like sharks when there was blood in the water, and they were especially cruel to the slow kids.  I got into fights when they would pick on them. 

Then in junior high school, there were new kids and new victims.  There was one girl who had cataracts, I guess, something, and she had to wear those big, thick glasses that made your eyes look double size, big heavy glass lenses that always slid down the bridge of her nose.  Technology now, you know. . . nobody has to wear such things, but she wasn't just half-blind, but she was poor, had bad hair, bad clothes, just overall a sad sack.  Nobody would sit by her in class, but I didn't care, and once, on a school bus trip, there were empty seats and aisles all around her, so I sat next to her.  Now here's the thing.  When we left junior high, the last days before we went to the big high school, she wrote me a letter.  I wish I still had it.  It was a real heartbreaker.  She said that her life was lonely and that I was a bright light and that she had always looked forward to seeing me. . . it was a real masterpiece for a girl in the ninth grade.  Once we got to high school, though, I didn't see her much.  Skip ahead.  When I graduated from college and was living in your house without any money, when I was working nights at the factory, I would go to the library to check out books since I couldn't afford to buy them.  And there she was working as a librarian.  No more thick glasses.  Normal hair, normal clothes.  God, that made me happy.  

There was another girl I'd been in school with since the second grade.  Sherri.  She was taller than anyone else in our class, and smart.  She and I were always the last ones left standing in the class spelling bees.  But the kids shunned her and thought she was a tall goony goon.  As always, I was nice to her.  

Skip way ahead.  Senior year in college, like a lot of kids, I was home for Christmas break, and people were getting together.  I saw some kids who had gone to the mouse resort, and one of them said, 'Remember Sherri?  Holy shit. . . you should see her now.  She looks like a model in a magazine.  She is b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l!  And you know what?  She was asking about you!'

And the universe being what it is, I never saw her ever again.  Why?  God hates me, I guess."

O.K.  Knuckleheads and Retards.  They aren't.  There is a sliding scale for each, I think, that we are all on somewhere, just like autism.  I have always felt like the Pied Piper, though, able to attract them.  All those knuckleheads and retards at the old steroid gym, I got along fine. 

Alright. I haven't done a very good job with that, so yea. . . I'm a combo of the two.  But I mean well.  But go ahead, cancel me.  You won't be the first.  

Last night in bed, these things kept running through my head.  I was feeling bad, and at four o'clock, I got up to go to the bathroom.  And then, looking in the bathroom mirror, I thought I need to change the way I'm thinking.  I've been depressed for far, far too long, barely able to move, slow, stupid, sitting on my mother's couch from four or five o'clock until bedtime, going nowhere, doing nothing.  

PMA, baby.  Everything I do will need to be productive.  No more wallowing in self-pity and bad food and liquor.  Move, baby, move.  

If I had time and gave a shit, I'd throw all that away and start over, but I don't have time.  I have things I must take care of. 

Like seeing the gypsy woman.  Maybe she can help.  I don't believe in the mysteries, but. . . maybe. . . . 

We Ate. We Laughed.

Minus the Miralax, this was exactly what I did for my mother yesterday.  Sunflowers, a balloon, champagne, and hot dogs.  And, of course, this card with a sweet message handwritten on the back.  

But not immediately.  In the morning, I asked my mother what she wanted for breakfast.  Nothing.  She didn't want anything, she said.  She'd already eaten some All-Bran.  So I sat with her and coffee for awhile.  I asked her what she wanted for dinner.  

"Hot dogs."

She'd had me buy some at the store a couple days before.  Hot dogs are not the norm.  We have them two or maybe three times a year--4th of July and Labor Day and sometimes, maybe, Memorial Day.  Kinda Monday-like.  But yesterday being Mother's Day and all. . . . 

"I'll be back," I said.  "I'm going to go for a long walk."

"Here?"

"No.  At home." 

And so I packed up and headed off.  And in a couple blocks, the phone rang.  

"Did you leave my two o'clock pills?"

I turned around.  At least she caught me before I got too far.  

Back home, I put on my walking clothes and headed out.  The day was warm.  It was humid.  The churches along the way to the golf course were packed.  One church's crossing guard who sees me on my Sunday walks gave greetings.  By the time I got to the golf course, though, I was struggling.  My knee was killing me.  

Back down a crowded Boulevard, I saw my reflection in the shop windows.  My right knee was bent at least 20 degrees, maybe more, when I stepped.  My gait was fucked.  It was horrible.  More Quasimodo than ever.  Worse, I'd worn a shirt that was everything--except flattering.  My God!  Depressed and in pain, I wanted to hurry away from the crowd.  

But I couldn't.  

Ayyeeiii. . . The Beast!  The Beast!!

Finally, miles later, I was back home with a big mug of sparkling water.  I was soaked in sweat.  I sat down in a non-absorbant chair until I quit sweating.  I was in front of the computer.  I checked my messages.  My Cali buddy sent me this.  

Now THAT was funny.  I copied it to some of my friends.  But it reminded me of something.  All those Steve Martin "Parenthood" kind of movies.  Always the problems of the upper middle class.  

What the hell, I thought, make your own.  

That was it.  That was the life I'd known.  There's MAGA mother, the best in the world.  I liked it, but it didn't really look like a card, so. . . . 

Yes!  Now I was cooking.  I sent these and some other cards I made to people I know.  

"Don't give that to your mother," C.C. said. "You'll confuse her."  

Later, though, I did show them to my mother.  I haven't seen her laugh like that in a loooong time.  I told her I should send that to my cousins.  She laughed and said yes.  

But that was later.  I was now beginning to get a chill from sitting in my wet clothes in the a.c.  The phone rang.  It was my mother.  

"How do I get my t.v. back?"

When I put the t.v. on internet rather than cable, I always have to change it back so my mother can watch endless commercials.  But I'd watched fights and drank until one o'clock in the morning the night before, and I had forgotten to change it over.  My mother can barely work the t.v.  There is no hope of me talking her through the remote settings.  

"I'll be back in a bit."

A quick shower.  Then I went back to the computer to make her the card at the top of the page.  Then a run to the grocers for hot dog buns.  I already had the champagne.  But mom needed Miralax.  I picked up the helium balloon thing, too.  

When I got back and sat the table, it was the spitting image of the card.  Kind of.  We didn't have a marble table and column, but you get my drift.  I toasted the buns and heated the dogs and pulled out the organic non-pasteurized kraut, catsup, and mustard.  I popped the cork and poured champagne.  

It was "like the best meal e-v-e-r!" 

As the kids would say.  

So we did a second round.  

We took champagne to the garage/porch and sat together for awhile.  I checked my phone.  I'd sent a lot of mother's day cards to a lot of people, but I wasn't getting much response.  I'd made something else, too.  

Rather liked that one.  I hope it will play here on the blog.  I don't want to load it into YouTube, and I'm not sure if you all can even watch the ones I do upload, whether you watch them here or there or don't watch them at all.  

But I liked this one as a true bookend to something else I made for "my girls." 

I made four versions and sent them to "the gals."  Oh. . . these got the reception I'd sought.  Lots of positive reinforcement there.  So. . . yea. . . I made another vid. 

I coulda/shoulda sent those to some of my friends whose children are grown and gone, but, I thought, I would need to make another card and video and I was tired from the champagne and the day and wanted a nap.  

When I got up, it was almost time for dinner.  I poured a drink and joined my mother outside.  

"What do you want to eat?" I asked.  

"Oh, Lord. . . I don't want anything."

"Not even soup?"  

"No."

Late hot dogs and champagne had done her in.  So I sat with a scotch and let the day dribble away.  

I didn't make dinner for myself, either, but man, I sure ate a lot of "stuff."  This week old Quasimodo is going to need to change his ways.  

Somehow.  

O.K.  I just checked.  The video won't load, so I will have to upload it to YouTube to post it here.  Drats. 

It won't load here, either, because it is a "short," so if you want to watch it, you'll have to click the link.  Trust me.  It's not a trick.  I'm not like the others. . . I'm your friend!

https://youtube.com/shorts/I1bi0nZhZjk

Wait--I think it worked!!!

MF Day

People in my own hometown are freaking out about a hidden camera in a coffeehouse bathroom on The Boulevard.  

"I've used that bathroom a million times!"

The accused is a student at a local law college.  

That sounds strange--"a local law college."  Most places don't have a law college, do they?  We have two.  Anyway. . . the bathroom was in the little Spanish garden where I went to look at stationary.  Of course people are freaking--"he probably got a picture of my butthole!"

I can almost understand a camera in a dressing room, but a bathroom?  I'd say that would be something to avoid.  However. . . I am posting a photo of a tattooed butt that came across the group text with the Billionaire Boys Club.  They are rockers.  They are at the World's Biggest Outdoor Rock Festival.  Four days, if you can believe that.  The Shock Jock is working.  Everybody is drinking and doing drugs and listening to the likes of this. 

For the past few years, they have been trying to get me to go.  "Bring your camera," they say.  "It's wild."

Uh-uh.  They shack up at Alain's beach condo like a bunch of college kids, drunk and fucked up.  It is the furthest thing away from what I like to do.  But they talk about it for months beforehand.  

Not for me.  I told C.C. at lunch the other day that I am starting to believe I have a phobia.  I don't want to go anywhere with a crowd to watch anything--concerts, plays, movies. . . .  I don't mind a laid back bar or cafe, but I can't do the other.  

All this for some used-to-be bands.  It fucks with credulity, really, such a thing.  

They will come back with boring tales of debauchery told in the spirit of adventure and daring.  

"Oh, man. . . when you tripped over that parking thing, you went down like a stone.  It's a good thing you were drunk."

"It didn't hurt until the next day. I think I broke something." 

"Remember that girl at Denny's?"

I'm mean, I guess.  An asshole, really.  So I told my mother just the other day.  People can bore the shit out of me with tales of what they take as the capstones of their existence.  I won't name who, but yesterday, sitting in the garage with mother just before dinner, a man insisted on telling me all about his step-grandkids.  Good students.  Straight four point ohs.  Got into such and such university.  Majoring in blah blah blah.  These are people I've never seen before, never will, and they went to third string universities. All I could do is grin and nod and bite my tongue.  Why was he telling me all this in such a long-assed, drawn out way, eyes a poppin', face screwed up to evoke amazement.  

When they were gone, I told my mother I was an asshole.  

"I listen to these tales of ordinary existence from people who have never gone anywhere or done anything of note and place against my life measure for measure and think, 'Jesus. . . shut the fuck up!'"

Just a bit of a confession there.  I don't mean to be, but I am.  Or can be.  Those were the things going on in my head, though, and not what I actually said or did.  

He delayed my dinner prep by an hour.  

And then, I stayed up to watch "the fights."  And there I was, as stupid as anybody else, in a virtual crowd in my mother's own home.  I watched like the moron I can be.  From nine until ten, there were a thousand commercials and two and a half minutes of fighting.  There was a lot of shouting and amped up crowd noise as they showed incomplete scenes from fighter's past fights.  Lots of talking and interviews.  

"He's a BEAST.  Two fights ago, he lost focus and was beaten by so-and-so, but he went on to train at a great facility in Vegas and he says he's locked and loaded now.  If he can live up to his potential, this could be a great fight."

Me thinking, "Shut the fuck up.  Who are you talking to?"

Just a bunch of morons I sit in a virtual room with.  

But I didn't give up.  I watched another fight, and then another, and then the two co-main events.  

I went to bed at one.  

I hate myself this morning.  

But I can't.  It is Mother's Day.  I want to be a good son.  I'll make breakfast for my mother.  Wait--I do that every day.  I bought her flowers, but again, I do that all the time.  I asked her if she wanted to go to church.

"Are you going to take me?"

"Sure.  It's Mother's Day.  Whatever you want."

We aren't going to church.  I don't know what more to do that I am not already doing, so. . . .

"You're a good son."

And of course, my very honest answer.

"Yea. . . but I have a very bad attitude."

Selavy.  

Here's my version of "rock on" early Sunday morning.  Now. . . off to sing and dance for ma.  

Here's to all you mothers!

   

A Real Beaut

I've been staring at this blank page for far too long this morning.  Nothing is clicking.  Indeed, I am suffering from a terrible sense of dread and doom.  Don't know why.  Maybe it is the weather.  But I've struggled long enough with trying to make sense of things.  I'm giving up.  

Yea.  I'll leave you with a video of the desk T gave me.  It is a real beaut.  

Notes from Prison

Just received a call from T.  He is on the road.  Didn't leave until this morning.  Sick stomach.  Been down.  Etc.  Like all drive-time calls, he was in no hurry to hang up.  Now. . . my morning is running a bit behind schedule.  Realize my life is routine now, and I've been thinking.  You know how prisoners get so used to being in prison that upon release, they can't function and commit a criminal act that takes them "back home"?  Recidivism in high in the U.S., or was.  I just read that the rates have dropped a lot in the past few years.  But. . . I think I've been "in" long enough now that I do not know how to function on the "outside."  In the few hours I have each day, I am more and more loathe to do the things that once seemed normal to me.  I keep looking at the clock now wondering if it is time to go back "in."  

I think I am now "damaged goods."  

Selavy.  

I took my mother to do some banking yesterday.  As soon as we walked in, the woman who handles her accounts knew her name.  Since I've been with my mother, we've gone to this bank together once.  The woman is very kind.  I gave her some paperwork for my POA, and she said that was a good thing.  She asked if I was still staying with my mother.  

"You're a good son," she said.  

Yea, yea, yea. . . that's what they say.  To sacrifice your life for the life of another, etc.  I didn't mention the prison thing.  

It was early morning-ish when we went to the bank which is on my side of town.  We drove down the tree lined brick streets with the early morning brilliance, then down part of the Boulevard with light and shadow dappling the street.  This is what I no longer see.  This is where I no longer go early mornings to take a breakfast.  The neighborhood looked gorgeous in the early morning light.  

But the day turned hot, 97 degrees in the late afternoon.  The entire calendar has to be moved one month forward now, I think, a 13th month added, the first month cancelled.  The planet is warmer, and though I have hope that with increased oil prices consumption will go down and, as in the time of Covid, the world will begin to heal, that hope is small and I feel this is the new norm.  Still, the day was gorgeous and the air was dry so that the heat was not at all oppressive, at least to me.  I love the summertime dry heat of the west.  It is the sickly humid heat of southern summers that weighs down on one like a wet wool blanket.  

By four, having avoided going anywhere, I decided to go back to mother's.  Travis had dropped off a book for me, "The Art of Fiction" lectures of James Salter.  I would take the book back to my mom's, make a cocktail, and sit in the dry heat of the garage porch and read.  Salter, of course, was my dissertation topic, but since his death, I haven't kept up with any Salter publications, so this was a surprise.  

I have pretty much sworn off afternoon cocktails, but yesterday I made a rum Negroni and began to read the introduction by John Casey.  It was a good introduction, an enviable one, and it brought out a number of emotions all at once.  In it, he mentions people with whom I was once, long ago, personal acquaintances.  One night I went to dinner with my dissertation director to the house of another prof who was a friend, somehow--I no longer remember-- of Salter.  That night in his giant house on a hill overlooking a rare valley at dusk in my own home state, a house with large rooms decorated in the manner of a large French villa, we ate jamon and cheeses he had just brought back from Spain and drank his good wine, his beautiful, sad wife darting in and out and about the room as we talked.  His life was in turmoil.  He had taken a student along to a conference, and a scandal had broken.  Both he and his wife wore the pathos of it.  I understood him and wished only to succor her.  It was Nedra and Viri to the core, I felt, in Salter's most lovely book.  

That night, though, we talked literary and the prof gave me Salter's home phone number.  

"Be careful," he said.  "Tell him I gave you his number and that you are doing your dissertation.  But he can be churlish.  He is a VERY formal man."

I did meet Salter in a reading in NYC at the 92nd St. Y, but it was obvious he didn't care for me.  There might have been reasons.  He had given one of the worst readings imaginable, a bad story from his new short story collection.  He admitted afterwards that it had not gone well.  He read after Michael Ondaatje who set the bar high, and he had ducked well under it.  But, I had waited until the line had gone and was the last to step up.  Still, Q was second to last and the two of them got on like thieves, so I have to assume it was me.  

Yea. . . I never used the number to his Aspen home phone. 

 Casey is a good writer, and I felt myself longing once again to try.  When I was cleaning out my old desk, I found an email I had written to the members of my department at the factory when I was the new floor foreman.  It made me sad.  It was a lovely letter written not in the manner of a factory administrator but in the manner of someone who could emulate the work of a writer.  I read the letter that someone else seemed to have written with profound envy and great guilt.  Once upon a time. . . . 

My new desk has inspired me to write rather than type, and I am quite surprised by how hard it has become.  You cannot edit on the fly.  Once the ink hits the paper, it is done, and of a sudden the art of letter writing, a lost art by and large, becomes apparent.  One must think, as in a chess match, many moves ahead.  One sentence must connect to the next.  Syntax must flow.  Every stroke of the pen is of consequence.  

I am sure it is good for the brain, and I will continue in my own pathetic way hoping to improve.  In truth, I have never really been a letter writer.  The art was never lost by me.  It was simply undeveloped.  

Much like my handwriting which is in large part why I never wrote letters.  It is illegible.  My manual dexterity is only good with sporting things.  I've always envied the women I know who are such fine and lovely scribes.  I save every note they write to me.  They are, if nothing else, a very visual art.  

What should I call what I do?  These are notes from prison, I guess, now, at least.  The photo at top is from my one day trip out of town in the past few years, that time I was given leave.  Don't know when that will happen again.  

Oh--one last thing.  Q wrote me yesterday: "You do know that Mudcrutch song is Tom Petty, right?"

Oops.  I did at one time, but I didn't yesterday.  Darn.  There are just a whole lotta things I don't know anymore.  

Wrong Side of the Road

I mentioned Ed Ross in a post the other day.  After that, I went on a search for some of his images.  Travis has a limited edition book Ross put out.  I never got one.  I've chosen this image today because it was one of his early successes.  That is not him on the bike, but it is the bike, I think, he died on.  He was driving from San Fran to Yosemite, a trip I've made innumerable times, to make some pictures.  On one stretch of road, he gunned it to pass the cars ahead.  Just as he did, the car in front of him pulled out, too, and Ed was run off the road.  I don't know how fast he might have been going, but when he hit the tree, it was the sudden stop that killed him.  

Nice way to start the post, eh?  Yea.  But I am surrounded by death and dying, and Captain Outrageous has died, too.  They credit him with starting the 24 hour news cycle.  If you weren't around when CNN came into being, that is exactly what it was.  News anchors reported news from around the world.  You couldn't sit and watch it all day because it was fairly repetitive.  But it was news.  There are NO 'round the clock news stations now no matter what they say.  There are only channels with commentators who interview other people about what they think about a chosen thing.  

"Trump claims that the war is over.  Joining me today are a panel of experts. . . ."

Etc.  

CNN's first anchors, by the way, were a Black man and a woman.  That was groundbreaking.  

I liked Turner when he won The Americas Cup in a 4-0 sweep in 1977.  The CNN thing. . . yea.  I thought it odd when he married Hanoi Jane, but he sure made up for everything when he began giving his money away to charities trying to save the planet.  

For reasons I don't yet understand, he bought most of southern New Mexico.  It is the most godawful place I've ever been.  But he did.  Stay tuned.  

I checked on my old college roommate/b-ball partner/band member/colleague yesterday.  Not the best of news.  

Mom keeps ticking, but every night is madness now that must be quelled.  

T left for his new home this morning.  I didn't see him for days before his departure, so I called and left him a message.  Didn't hear back.  

The tenant leaves tomorrow.  At that point, no one will be checking on me to see if I am still around.  Bereft of companionship. . . . 

I've still got mom (to speak in the post-grammar vernacular).  

As I told my old roommate's wife, though, I can feel the Life Force drain from my body every day now.  It is like the faucet in my mother's bathroom I need to repair or replace.  The slow drip drip drip has accelerated.  The parts are just worn out.  

Maybe I should, as so many billionaires are doing, invest in some longevity therapy.  Red light, infrared, proper protein, anti-inflamatory, gut health, careful surgery, compression, hot and cold, dietician. . . yea.  

"Uh, I have to tell you son. . . that ain't living.  That's something else entirely."

From this morning's NYT:

It was just over three decades ago that the Hall of Fame third baseman Wade Boggs did something remarkable, possibly unmatched in baseball history. For much of his career, Boggs’s routine for bouncing back after games — his preferred postgame recovery modality, in the parlance of modern sports science — was pounding cans of Miller Lite. And according to Boggs, during one flight from Boston to Los Angeles in 1994 (or possibly 1992 or 1989; the dates are understandably fuzzy) he drank 73 beers.

Boggs was in his mid-30s at the time and still reliably batting well over .300, which would be exceptional even for a pro player in his late-20s physical prime, but he was also playing in a different era. Suffice it to say that in modern baseball — a power game predicated on tape-measure home runs and 100-mile-per-hour fastballs — there’s no way Boggs would bat above .300 at an advanced age with 73-beer hangovers. Pro athletes now, especially older ones, are more like round-the-clock recovery droids who occasionally play sports. They’re not guzzling Miller Lites on those cross-country flights; they’re drinking cherry juice for the melatonin to get ahead of the jet lag and wearing Normatec compression sleeves on both legs to stimulate lymphatic drainage and reduce inflammation.

Today, top athletes make about 30 times as much money as did Boggs, so they can afford to do what they do, but I ask myself--would I rather live like Boggs or Lebron James?  Who was it that pitched a perfect game on acid?  Oakland Athletics pitcher, I think.  Lunacy, I know, but sooooo much more intriguing.  

Captain Outrageous lived a bit of the Vida Loca.  Now we have Elon Musk, et.al.  

And Trump.  

What do I have for you today that might go with this post?  Well, as Clint Eastwood says as the John Huston character in "White Hunter, Black Heart":

"Sometimes you just have to do the wrong thing."

Sounds like Tom Petty, but it ain't.   

Breaking Routine, the Daily Report

What a day.  This will be a report.  

It began with my mother getting ready to go with the neighborhood girls to lunch at Olive Garden.  I think I must have complained about not having a life or something.  Sure.  So they got together and said they would take my mother to lunch.  I stuck around the house until ten.  They were picking her up at eleven, so I would just be back from my walk before she left.  

Then the gym.  I went to the "boom-boom room," to warm up with a total body workout before hitting the weights.  Tennessee was already there and I thought I would see him, but when I came out, he was gone.  

"He said he'd come back here before he left," the shock jock said.  

"The Talker is gone," said one of the ladies.  

Hmm. Maybe he got a call.  I don't know, but I had said something to him the day before about going to get an early Margarita for Cinco de Mayo.  He'd said yes with his lips, but his eyes weren't certain, so maybe he was ditching me.  It was OK with me.  He has one more day in town, and he has been busy for the past week packing everything up.  Maybe I'd hear from him later. 

When I got back to my house, I took a shower and sat at my new desk.  I wrote a note to T and his wife on my old stationary.  I've had it forever, but I didn't like it anymore.  I have rarely used it.  Then I thought to make some postcards.  My midwest friend sends me postcards from 'round the world, so I would get one to her first.  I printed up that picture of the salt marsh on one side of some 300gm cardstock and then flipped it over and printed the backside with postcard markings. 

I wrote a note, addressed it, and put an old stamp on it.  Cool.  Then I made another, more dangerous card, for Q.  I would have to put his in an envelope, though, so I went into my office desk drawers to get one.  Crazy, but none of my envelopes would hold a 4x6 postcard.  

I didn't want to sit in the house all day.  Indeed, I wanted to change my routines altogether, and I decided to go to a little French bakery just off the Boulevard for a late brunch.  The day was gorgeous and I was feeling pretty free.  

Halfway there, I remembered the postcards.  Selavy.  I'd have to mail them later.  

I grabbed a sidewalk table and ordered an egg, ham, and brie croissant.  It was after one.  The Boulevard was fairly busy, but it was quiet on the sidestreet.  Hardly anyone passed by.  

When I finished eating, I walked around the corner to a beautiful little Spanish courtyard that led to the Boulevard.  It had once housed four upstairs apartments, and at one point in life, I was thinking of trying to rent one, but the properties became too valuable and were turned into offices and shops.  The stationary store was there, up a beautiful little outdoor stone stairway.  The courtyard had once held a small fountain, but now it was all bricked.  

When I entered the shop, the owner was sitting at her desk.  

"Hello," she said.  "You look like you are on a mission."

"You've had this shop a long time," I said.  

"Thirty-six years."

The woman was an acquaintance of my old moneyed girlfriend's family, and indeed, I think she is the one who bought my last stationary.  But I mentioned none of this.  

The owner showed me some things in a book, different styles and paper tones and weights, and of course, the different fonts.  Then she said, "I do have one company who is having a fabulous sale.  The stationary is on 300 gm cardstock and is engraved, not simply printed.  It is at a 50% reduction until. . . oh. . . May 15.  They include the plate."

On sale, 50 cards and envelopes were $175.  I told her about the new desk that had inspired me, but I was kind of browsing, so. . . .  

"Well, the printed ones are always available and they are nice, too."

We chatted for awhile longer.  She is a nicely contained woman, and I was reminded of those years when I was "recognized" by Village Society.  Not part of it, but "known."  I had always loved the genteel surfaces, the honeyed tones, the elegance of the rooms. . . Gatsby-itis.  Whence I came, it was a true Wonderland.  

Now that old society has been replaced by something new.  There was always money.  Now there is more money.  It's not Palm Beach money, but it is inching closer now.  

When I walked back out on the Boulevard, I wondered what to do.  I was breaking routine, breaking habit, but I didn't want to waste the day, so I decided to go back to my house and finish working on some projects.  

I got a call.  It was my mother.  She was back from her lunch.  

"What are you doing?" she asked me.  "I've been home since one-thirty.  I'm bored."

"Good to know," I said.  "I'll call you when I get bored."

"What?"

"Nothing.  How was lunch?"

"I had soup and salad.  It wasn't any good.  The others had meals, but I didn't eat much."

Good old mom.  I told her I was doing "stuff" and that I would see her in a bit.  Somehow, though, the magic of the day seemed to have disappeared.  I made more postcards and then worked on old images in files I hadn't touched for a decade or more.  

NYC, 2012.  I walked around with a big assed Canon with a 24-105 telephoto lens taking pictures in the street.  Nobody paid any attention to that then. 

The images seem like miracles to me now.  

I hadn't heard from T, and it was getting time for me to head back to mother's.  I looked at the postcard with the forty-one cent stamp.  Wait.  How much to mail a postcard now?  I went to the computer to look it up.  Seventy-one cents, it said.  Jesus.  I'd mail everything tomorrow.  

The tenant came over to ask me if I wanted her to bring over some cookies that night.  She leaves on Friday for her own homestate to help her mother with her grandmother who turns 107 on Saturday.  Being sole caretaker for her grandmother, the tenant said, has ruined her mother mentally and physically, and she can't wait for her daughter to come relieve her.  

"Huh," is all I can ironically muster.  

I grabbed the makings for Margaritas, Cointreau and tequila.  I'd have to stop at the grocers to get limes.  

When I got back to my mother's house, she was sitting in her usual chair in the garage.  

"Do you want a Margarita?" 

"Sure." 

Cointreau and lime juice in equal parts, then tequila to equal the combined amounts.  The juice of one lime was perfect.  I took the glasses out. 

"Wait.  I need to make a picture."

I sent my lousy phone snap around to friends: "Mom, me, and Margaritas.  Happy Cinco."

As we drank, a fellow walked up the drive.  Salesman.  He wanted mom to replace her old aluminum windows.  

Nope.  

"We do roofs, too.  I see that you are about ready for one."

"Really?  She just got this one about four years ago.  I guess we'd better call the company and tell them."

He just grinned.  I kibitzed with him about putting on a roof that lasted 22 years.  I talked about the price of Pella windows.  Turned out, that is what he sold.  

Somehow the conversation turned.  He had been in the service.  Iraq.  When he got out, he went to engineering school, he said, but he realized he needed to be outside, so. . . .  He asked what I did.  Then he told me about what he was reading.  He'd just started reading Kafka.  

"Oh, man. . . I think the last story in the collection is "The Hunger Artist."  That's a great one."

I did a quick explication of the thing.  He told me about what else he had been reading, and that he had a love of Plato and Socrates.  We talked a long time.  His partner who was working the opposite side of the street had come back to the car, so he said he needed to go.  

My mother was not drinking her Margarita, so I said I would.  As I poured it into my glass, she said, "Leave me a little." 

Then the ex-soldier from the Iraq war, the salesman, the reader, came walking back up the sidewalk.  He wanted to tell me he had enjoyed talking with me and wondered if maybe we could talk more as he read.  It was a little awkward, of course, but I said sure and gave him my phone number.  

When he was gone, I told my mother, "See?  I'm a hippie.  I can get along with everyone." 

"You sure can talk," she said.  

The tenant came with the fresh baked cookies.  They were awful.  Vegan, gluten free, low sugar. . . they felt like sand in my mouth.  I ate half a cookie but no more.  They were truly nothing a cookie should be, sweet and fatty and full of flavor.  

I made two more margs. We all sat out until the bats were flying, then with the last light, we went inside.  

And that was it.  That's my tale.  

My morning starts with an HVAC fan that won't shut off, even when I turn it off at the thermostat.  I have to call the repairman.  

It's always something.  

Mark Kozelek didn't get "famous" until he was in his forties.  Imagine such a thing.  Red House Painters, then Sun Kil Moon.  Then solo, he blew his own career up.  He may have been a real asshole.  So some say.  Some of his music, though. . . .   It is the stuff I used to hypnotize "my subjects" in the studio. 

Oh, shit--addendum!  I left out an important part.  After the first marg and meeting my new boyfriend, I told my mother I wished there was a good Mexican restaurant nearby so we could have tacos.  She said there was a Taco Bell up the street. Really?  I hadn't had Taco Hell this century.  O.K. I'd get some.  

I got a lot of them.  We ate them all.  I have to tell you, though, there isn't a lot on a Taco Hell taco.  But at least this morning, I don't have Taco Belly.  

The Tale of the Drawers

Just one of the things I miss seeing in my restricted life, a brackish marsh on the coastline.  When I showed this to my mother, she said, "Did you take that today?" 

"How in the hell would I have taken this today?  I can't go anywhere."

"Neither can I."

And there it is.  That is how she feels.  O.K.  

I spent most of yesterday--which means my few hours at my own home--taking things out of the drawers of one desk and putting them into the other.  I had to go through things one by one.  Mostly.  One drawer held little wooden animals, another Hot Wheels cars.  I never go in these drawers, so there were some surprise memories.  One drawer held five eyeglass cases.  One had a pair of RayBan sunglasses I must have forgotten about long ago.  Another held an old prescription pair, and yet another reading glasses.  

I found postcards I had thrown into a drawer.  A whole stack were from my friend in the Midwest who does nothing but travel now, postcards from all over the world.  There was another stack from Q's old girlfriend, the one he took to NYC oh so long ago.  She was a real pip, smart for a twelve year old, and I envied him her.  All the postcards and letters were from the time she spent in India.  She was living the hippie Vida Loca, or should I say the Veda Loca, then.  She came to see me a couple of times when she was in my own home state, then nothing.  Q still stays in touch with her.  I think she lives in that den of inequity, Berlin.  

There were little notes on torn scraps of paper from Ili that broke my heart all over again, and there were reunion messages from Sky.  

And there were small, dangerous things from my own secret past, thrilling notes from girls in that period after my divorce.  

There were a few cards from Q when he was an infamous disc jockey in places far and wide.  

I found my old iPod and its accoutrements.  The thing felt lovely in my hand.  1990s stuff.  I hooked it up to its charger and plugged it in.  I'll see today if it still works.  I haven't turned it on in this century.  Can't wait to hear what is on it. 

And pens.  Oh, my . . . I used to have a fetish.  Mont Blanc Meisterstuck pens, both roller ball and fountain. And there were ink cartridges.  I loaded one in, but the nib was dried.  I squeezed some ink through it and it wrote a bit, but I am going to need to soak and clean that nib before it is right.  Waterman fountain pens.  Two.  Some antique Parker pens, and two or three mechanical pencils.  

And about fifty other pens of different types.  And boxes of pencils, brand new #2s. 

Then the jewjaws and jibjabs, little Buddhas, a whale's tooth, a shark's tooth, and some carved faux-ivory things.  An elephant's hair bracelet.  An ostrich egg.  A carved and painted Arab slave.  Some tintypes I made at the turn of the century in Oakland with a fellow who also taught my tragic old friend, Ed Ross, the Apple Corporate attorney and photographer extraordinaire.  

There were tiny image transfers I had made and framed photos of my mother and I last century.  And there were photos from much of my old life.  

Then. . . oh, my. . . folders and folders of paperwork.  Tax forms and statements going back to forever.  Home insurance packets.  Car insurance packets.  Checks I apparently never cashed.  A photocopy of my birth record of some kind, some photostatic thing.  The title to my old Volvo in my ex-wife's name.  Did I ever own it?  Probably not.  The transfer of title of my old Jeep.  Stacks of medical records from my accident.  All the financial shit required when I retired from the factory.  Overwhelmed as always, I stuffed it all into a big wicker basket and closed the lid.  

Other things.  I whistle flute from Peru.  Old photos I bought from markets.  

It took a long time, but when I had put my hands on everything and had decided where they would go in the new desk, I sat down, turned on the lamp, and wrote some things.  It felt lovely.  Everything looked perfect, or at least interesting, so that now I want to go through every drawer and shelf in the house and make my home art again.  The aesthetic arrangement of elements.  I have always bought odd things that have caught my eye, but I have left them untouched for years.  Ili did not like my past and I was scared to do anything with them out of fear.  She threw away so much of my old stuff.  She wanted to erase my past.  

Who can blame her? 

If only I could spend nights at home working on pictures and writing letters, and, and, and. . . . 

I will go there today, though, and be productive again.  Not creatively yet, but in emptying drawers and determining.  

If I had my life to live over again. . . . 

And the music.  You know I have very eclectic tastes.  Last night, I saw a bunch of 1950's t.v. recordings of Billie Holiday, a wonder that they still exist.  The one here is remarkable for the music.  Her voice was an instrument, of course, the phrasing of notes, but this band assembled here. . . omg, as the kids used to say, they are the embodiment of excellence and restraint, leaving room for one another, not running through the scales but playing just what should be played.  This performance, and the others, were years before Miles Davis' iconic "Kind of Blue" which set the standard.  But listen and you will see what I mean.  

Aesthetic intelligence.  Oo-la-la.