Beauty

This is why people once moved to the Sunny South.  This is much the way my own Home State looked when I was a kid.  You can still see some of it not far from where I live along the Banana River.  You needed water and shade--creeks and rivers and big Live Oak trees--if you wanted to be comfortable.  Now waterfront property looks nothing like this.  Developers had a better idea.  You can't replace a Live Oak quickly.  In many neighborhoods they planted the relatively fast growing Laurel Oak, but they don't get as thick and strong and are more easily damaged in their 40 year lifespan.  A Live Oak, on the other hand, may live 300-500 years in a rural setting.  Even in a stressful urban environment, though, they can live to be 200.  

Progress.  

I had an appointment with my beautician yesterday.  I secured my mother for three hours and headed off across town.  She lives in a netherworld of connected highways lined with shops, churches, and health clinics on a large piece of county property surrounded by land filled with big sheds and a hodge lodge of construction equipment.  

All of it was once, even in my adult life, cattle land.  Florida produces more beef than any state other than Texas.  It is also a great source of dairy.  Unknown to most residents now, the streets of the city are named after old dairy and cattle ranchers, families that once owned much of the state.  Once they built the airport and a brand new highway leading to it, the real estate harvest began.  Now the roads are littered with auto parts stores, stand alone restaurants with names like La Familia and El Rancho Deluxe, single story stucco apartment buildings built in the seventies and eighties, megachurches like Iglesia del Dios, large medical buildings, and off-brand grocery stores serving the local population housed in bunny hutch neighborhoods  of low-pitched roofs and carports.  

There was never any county or city planning.  

But I drove my mother's car, the little Corolla.  It is nine years old and has 50,000 miles.  But it has Bluetooth and a cranking a.c. and I have become addicted.  Traffic bothers me not.  Not even the souped up Toyota and Kia low riders with added spoilers, fancy running lights, and stereos that rattle the trunk.   That is what comes to dominate the road as I get closer to my destination.

It had been awhile since I had a beauty session.  My hair was long.  I wasn't sure what to do.  I liked it, but how would I feel in two months?  What did it matter, really?  I go nowhere.  Besides, in the coming days or months I may cut it short again and look like a regular Joe.  

Hugs and kisses and all the catching up.  

"It looks good," she said.  "It needs trimming, but. . . ."

"My hair is thinning," I said.  Indeed, since my mother has been in and out of the hospital, since the reconstruction at my house, since the stress began to kick my ass, my hair has been falling out.  "Do you think it is too thin to go short?"

"It has thinned, but not much," she said.  "You have incredible hair, especially for your age.  Cutting it short would make it look fuller.  But not today.  It would be too much.  You have too much going on to deal with a new look, a new identity.  Wait.  It looks nice.  I'll not cut it much today."

And so she mixed the chemicals and got the foils and the long process began.  She needed to talk, and talk she did.  Everybody's life has drama.  Hers includes her larger family.  She is a Russian Jew married to a Dominican.  Married?  When did that happen?  It must have been a secret ceremony for they weren't last time I saw her.  

I didn't ask.  She'd tell me if she wanted.  

My story is short and simple.  It involves two people.  It is mostly silence.  So I listened.  

A few hours later, I was finished.  My hair was be-el-oh-en-dee.  And as always when she finishes, combed and straight.  It is not the way it normally looks, but it takes a few days to become the messy head I wear.  

We kissed goodbye and I pulled outside her security gate.  I sat on the side of the road.  It was almost seven o'clock.  I didn't want to cook.  I called a hippie pizza joint near my mother's house and ordered a medium house pizza.  It would be ready by the time I had crossed back into town.  

Traffic was light.  Storm clouds filled the horizon.  Half an hour later, I pulled up to the Magic Mushroom.  Ten minutes later, I was back to my mother's.  

"Do you want some pizza?"

My mother made her way to the table as I plated a large piece for her.  Knife and fork.  It was good, but she ate little.  I had mine with a glass of citrusy New Zealand Sav Blanc.  I had two.  And when I was done, I poured a glass of whiskey and turned on the television.  Saturday night.  

My beautician and I talk about shows we watch on t.v. 

"Have you seen 'The Hunting Wives?" I asked.  I'd read that morning it was the most watched show on t.v. right now.  Netflix.  

"Oh my god. . . yes.  How do they have so much sex?"

"I guess I'll make my mother watch a lot of lesbian sex tonight," I said.  

Around nine, I turned it on.  Halfway through, I fell asleep.  When I woke up, my mother was sleeping in the recliner.  I'm tired all the time now.  There was nothing to do but go to bed.  

Now it is another Sunday here in the Year of Our Lord.  I will try to get a little exercise and visit my house.  After dreaming dreams of my film Leica, I have brought it with me in hopes of. . . but I've yet to take a photo.  Maybe today, somewhere, somehow.  I have two film Leica M7s and two film medium format Rollieflex cameras.  They sit.  I have many other film cameras, too.  Good ones, both 35mm and medium format.  Mamiya 6x6.  Hasselblad CM.  Canons and Nikons.  Modified Polaroids that shoot 4x5 film.  

They all sit.  

As do I.  

Maybe I'll try for a mimosa this afternoon at the Cafe Strange.  But I don't know.  I may not be as enamored as I was.  Still, a mimosa sounds good.  I am fat and need to keep up my calorie intake.  Mimosa juice she called it.  

Cold water springs, creeks to lakes, rivers that run to the ocean.  Giant rattlers and cotton mouths, fifteen foot gators and snapping turtles that can sever a finger.  Wild hogs that can sever an artery.  Peat fires and quicksand.  At sunset, the sky turned dark with giant birds going to roost for the night.  You could hear the fish jumping.  We'd drive to the beach on two lane roads past vegetable, fruit, and boiled peanut stands on half a tank of twenty-five cent a gallon gas.  We'd surf.  Afterwards, coming home, we'd stop at the little Frozen Gold shack for some soft serve  ice cream.

That's all gone now here in my hometown but for tiny pockets.  There is a bit of it left in my part of town surrounding the old Boulevard. . . but not for long, I fear.  The Greedheads are digging deep.  Everything will look like Trump's paved over Kennedy Rose Garden soon enough.  

But hey--there is still some music.  There seems to be a lot of it, and now, thanks to algorithms and social platforms, you can hear more than ever.  I heard this yesterday driving to my hair appointment.  Zowie!  A nice remake of an old Carol King/Neil Sedaka tune.  It felt like Magic City.  It washed over me like a bit of romance.  

I could use a bit of romance.  

Sitting in the Cattle Pen

Bad news all around yesterday, which was spent in doctors' offices.  Got the results from several tests.  My mother has had many strokes according to the doc.  Her brain shows much scarring.  Her veins turn out to be fine and there is no clot, so the next probable cause is congestive heart failure, the disease that killed my father.  Still over a month away until we can get the test to know.  Same for an appointment with a spine specialist.  

Here's some more medicine.  Good luck.  

My life seems to be spent in medical buildings now.  If you want a real chuckle. . . .  Nope.  It is horrible.  The waiting rooms are full of old people, overweight with swollen legs, braces, canes, walkers, and wheelchairs.  All are accompanied by someone, a spouse or an offspring.  The waiting rooms are filled like cattle pens.  People sit miserably waiting while a wall mounted television spews something inane.  

Spend your hours and days like this and you'll feel all life seep away, for you know there is no hope.  You are face to face with the thing you have tried to forever ignore.  

Somewhere people are laughing.  People are eating and drinking and making love.  

Friday night.  We may be finished for a couple of days.  I pour a drink.  My mother sits, moans, moves things on the table, then tries to raise herself on her walker.  She struggles to the sink, stands, looks out the window, then continues to a cabinet.  It takes hours.  Then back to her chair at the table.  More moaning.  More moving.  There is no peace, no escape.  I am asked to get something, open something, find something.  

My hands tremble most of the time now.  Eight days and I'm still sick.  Others have gotten over this in two, three, or four days.  I can't shake it.  I can't read.  Television is irritating.  I clean the kitchen.  I need to go to my house.  I have packages there.  I need clothes.  

But it is impossible.  

I am supposed to go to my beautician's house today at four.  My mother just called to me.  She is feeling "funny."  She is thinking about going to the emergency room, so I don't know.  I may spend another day in the hospital.  

I need air, sunshine, exercise. . . rest.  

No matter.  Break out the booze and have a ball. . . if that's all there is.  

This is a nice jazz clubby rendition.  Enjoy.  

Family Matters

Diane Arbus with daughters Doon and Amy

I felt well enough to read a bit yesterday after taking my mother to two doctor's appointments.  It took the entire afternoon, but I managed to get a walk in that morning.  

It had been a week.  It was hard. 

I needed to get outside myself, so I did a little research on Diane Arbus.  That is pronounced "Dee Ann."  You must remember, she was raised in wealth and status.  Her father was a wealthy department store owner in Manhattan.  She had a brother and a sister.  Her brother, Howard Nemerov, became one of America's most honored poets.  Her sister became a sculptor.  

Maybe it was genetic.  Maybe it was privilege.  

Arbus lived a strange life.  Researchers have noted her promiscuous sexuality.  

"As a child," according to her biographer, “Diane masturbated in the bathroom with the blinds up, to insure that people across the street could watch her, and as an adult she sat next to the patrons of porno cinemas, in the dark, and gave them a helping hand.” 

Arbus offhandedly reported that she began having sex with her brother, Howard, when they were children.  They continued their affair through their adult lives.  

At the age of thirteen, she flirted with her future husband, Allan Arbus, who was a penniless employee in her father's department store.  He was eighteen at the time.  Against her parents' wishes, they married when she turned eighteen.  Allan became a fashion photographer for awhile before he turned to acting.  He eventually got a role as Dr. Sidney Freedman on the t.v. show, "M.A.S.H."

Diane became her husband's photo assistant on fashion shoots.  She was reportedly a talented painter, but she said she hated it.  She did, however, fall in love with the camera.  In 1941, Allan gave her a Rollieflex camera as a gift.  

She gave up fashion and took to the streets.  

Allan and Diane's marriage was an open one, each of them having multiple affairs.  Diane once reported that she would have sex with anyone who asked for it.  She would frequent porno movie theaters and offer to give patrons "a helping hand."  

She met the artist Marvin Israel who encouraged her photography.  He was married, but Marvin and Diane became lovers.  Eventually, she and Allan moved into separate apartments.  They had two daughters, Doon and Amy, who lived with Diane.  Allan continued to support the family.  Diane's reputation as a photographer grew.  

Diane famously said that, "What you notice about people is the flaw."  That became the hallmark of her photography.  She was drawn to freaks, and as her career progressed, she became more intimate with them.  She often would spend days or weeks with them.  In some cases, she slept with them.  

Although she was gaining fame for her photographs, she was having trouble making money.  Marvin Israel would not leave his wife and was losing interest in Diane.  He began sleeping with her daughter, Doon.  

"Arbus, obsessed, tried distracting herself with other men and, occasionally, women. [S[he participated in orgies, slept with her photographic subjects and even solicited strangers for sex."

Arbus contracted hepatitis and her health began to fade.  She was afraid of aging and treatment for hepatitis was aging her badly.  She suffered from depression.  

In 1971, she had a sexual encounter with her brother, Howard, on last time.  Two weeks later, at the age of 41, she committed suicide.  

Doon was in Paris at the time.  Richard Avedon flew over to give her the news.  By default, Doon became the proprietor of Arbus' work.  

“After Diane’s death, Marvin and Doon socialized and traveled together as a couple,” Arbus' biographer Lubow reports, though Israel continued to live with his wife.

Arbus repeatedly said during her lifetime that all families were "creepy" because they offer such an arbitrary sense of belonging. Children don't choose their parents, but the accident of consanguinity forges bizarre, everlasting bonds.

A year after her death, Diane Arbus' Aperture Monograph was published and her fame as a photographer skyrocketed.  To date, she is considered one of the most iconic photographers of the 20th century.  

* * *

I didn't know any of this when I studied her work as a photo student.  Nobody was making such pictures then. . . or now.  I saw the exhibition of 100 of her early unpublished works in 2015 at the Met Breuer, the former Whitney Museum, with Ili.  It swept me away.  The largest presentation of Arbus' work is on display now through August 17 at the Park Avenue Armory.  Nine more days.  Obviously, I won't be able to go.  I have family duties to attend to.  

Last night, I lay down for the first time in a week without taking any cold and flu meds to make me drowsy.  I had crazy dreams.  Some were wonderful.  I'd watched a bit of "Man in the Moon," at the suggestion of Red.  Then I watched the remaining episodes of "Sirens" on Netflix.  Some of my dreams were sexual.  Such were my reading and watching habits, I guess.  Any time I would wake in the night, I would think of my Leica film camera and what I wanted to do with it.  It was the most pleasant night I've had in. . . how long?  

I feel better today.  Some of the illness still lingers, but overall, I think I can function somewhat normally again.  

Doctors appointments again today.  I won't trouble you with that.  It is Friday.  Party!

My Happy Place

That sucked.  Let me try again.  When I was a teen, my world was shit, so I decided to live in my own fantasies.  I read.  I went to movies.  I listened to music.  I guess that is what many teenagers do.  Once I went away to college, my life changed for the better.  And it seemed to just keep getting better all the time.  Holy Christ, I did everything I'd ever dreamed of doing.  

"Fairytales can come true, they can happen to you. . . ."

My life is shit now.  I want to live in a dream again.  But it is not as when I was a teen with nothing, no responsibilities, no money, no debt, just dreams.  

"When the rent comes due and the roof falls through. . . . "

Still, I have to turn my back on reality.  It is too much.  I understand why old people watch the Hallmark Chanel now.  But here's a secret you mustn't tell.  I am happiest when driving my mother's Toyota Corolla.  Funny, huh?  But it has good a.c.  It has Bluetooth.  It gets incredible gas mileage.  And when I drive, the music is more than wonderful.  It is fanciful.  There is no pop, no rock, no rap or hip-hop.  It is all samba and Brazilian jazz and music from Spain and France and Mexico and places I don't even know.  It is a fantasy.  Traffic doesn't matter.  I am happiest driving now.  

As I prepare dinner for my mother and I, I put on BBC News at six.  At six-thirty, I turn to The Evening News on ABC, "the most watched news in America."  Holy shit!  Right there you can see everything that has gone wrong.  Not the news.  The hype.  The presentation.  The speed with which everything must turn.  The anxiety in the voices.  And, of course, the last ten minutes of soppy, "heart warming" news.  

After that, after dinner has been eaten and the kitchen cleaned. . . I am in for the night.  I try to watch television, but even the pay channels now cater to the lowest denominator.  The serious shows have all been cancelled, everything that I liked.  Everything is made for kids and morons who love fantasy and superheroes and dumb-ass comedies.  

I tried watching "Nosferatu," but it was too dark for my mindset just now.  I think I will watch only 1950's adult comedy films if I can find them.  

I drove my Xterra the other day.  It barely started.  The battery is dying.  I must get a new one.  The brakes are going.  The seat is wearing through.  The a.c. is rather weak.  

Two doctor's appointments today.  I'll be sitting all afternoon.  I am feeling a bit better, though.  My skin no longer aches.  Just a constant cough, fatigue, weakness, and dizziness.  

But I have a new tankless water heater.  Limitless hot water!  Ha!  I barely use it.  At least I won't be using gas to heat water I am not using.  

I was at my house as they did the installation.  It is a lovely place.  All my things are there.  

Don't hate on me for dropping out.  I've been booted out, that is all.  Now I must surround myself with something I can stand in an attempt to counter the rest.  Otherwise I will come completely undone.  

Still Ill

Will I ever get better?  My body ached, my vision was blurred.  I coughed up phlegm from my lungs.  A sick sweat enveloped me.  But I had to paint the wall of new siding.  I stopped and bought the paint--$80/gallon.  I was off balance, not thinking well, so when I opened the paint bucket, it spilled out over the deck.  

"Fuck me!  Fuck me!"

I tried wiping it up, but it smeared and still showed.  I got the roller and the brush.  I set up a ladder on the uneven ground,  Nope.  I got a board to prop up one of the legs.  I rolled the paint.  I think I should have cut in the parts I couldn't reach with the roller first, but I'm no pro.  Some parts were very difficult because of electrical boxes, conduits, etc.  I got paint on those nether regions, but not so very well.  It didn't matter, I told myself.  It would all need a second coat.  I'd fix everything then.  Ninety-two degrees. 90% humidity.  The wall was painted.  I was soaked in sweat.  I was sick and failing.  I was done.  

Weak, achey.  I stripped to take a shower, my first in a couple of days.  Sick sweat covered me.  I washed my hair.  I scrubbed myself well.  The hot water felt good.  I didn't want to get out.  

Unguents and lotions.  

"You look much better than you feel," I thought.  

I had to get back to my mother.  She was to have a brain MRI.  

Getting her to the car, out of the car, into the office--it was all a struggle.  My mother is helpless now.  She cannot take care of herself.  If no one helped her, she would simply sit until she died.  It is a terrible thing.  She can't hear.  She moans and says she's in pain.  

"What do you want me to do, mom?  I sure wish the doctor would give you something for pain."

She has, of course, but my mother won't take it.  She keeps eating Excedrin.  She can't lie down.  She sleeps sitting up.  

I have to do everything for her now.  24/7.  

What do you think such a thing does to a person?  I'm no saint.  She tells me what she prays for.  

How's that working out?  

I will have to leave her for a bit again today.  I have to be at my house at eight to meet the water heater installers.  I have to pick up my own meds at a distant drugstore.  Then I'll rush back to my mother's.  I am still sick, so I will probably sleep.  

But we eat well.  I made another large pot of soup yesterday, this time cabbage and ham.  Carrots and celery.  Potatoes and garbanzo beans. Onions and garlic.  One entire head of garlic.  We ate that for dinner.  Good God it was delicious.  I look forward to having it again for lunch.  I dreamed about it.  I believe I will only eat soups from now on.  It is positively medieval.  

Next will be a fish stew.  

I never drink enough water.  I do now.  No liquor, of course.  It would do me in.  Pedialyte.  That's the stuff.  It's like water only better.  I drink bottles of it.  And Fuji water.  At night, I make cups and cups of healthy teas.  That is problematic as I have to get up in the night to pee.  But maybe being hydrated is why I think I look better than I feel.  If I remain on this regimen when (if?) I finally get well, I'll be a new man.  

I've talked to no one in days.  The carpenter still hasn't shown up.  I have been too sick to watch t.v. let alone read.  This morning, though, it seems that my skin is no longer on fire.  Perhaps I'm on some slow road to recovery.  

That picture at the top--I made it from this Otto Dix painting.  I thought I'd try the process in reverse just to see.

Look, don't be a hater.  I have no way to go out and make new photos right now.  This is the best I can do.  Just sit back and enjoy it.  It's fun.  Or funny.  

It is what I have.

My Apple Music playlist has been unbelievably good all week, however.  It is like a gift from the cosmos.  It is keeping me sane. 

O.K.  Relatively.  

I'm trying, kids.  I'm underwater at the moment.  I'm trying to swim with a hundred pounds of chain.  

I may need a therapist, but what could they tell me?  I think a pet dog might be a much better thing.  

 

Struggling

See?  Sometimes the results aren't what you want.  Still. . . it kind of fascinates me.  There is some fun in the randomness of results.  You can always go back and give different or more precise instructions and get something else.  

Still not what I was looking for, but fine all the same.  Some people don't like me doing this--until I make one of them.  Then they are fascinated.  One who hates AI sent me a picture of her dog.  

"Do this one.  Pleeeeez."  

She must think I just push a button.  I know a woman who gets paid $500 to do pet portraits.  She does a lot of them.  I've been wondering if I might not be able to get a 3D printer to print these in oil paints.  I could be the new Andy Warhol.  

People take everything too seriously except what needs to be.  Look at ESPN for instance.  Really?  Endless talk shows about sports.  What couldas and what ifs and ifs.  Who watches this?  I hear the money boys at the gym talking about the same things endlessly.  They are passionate about it.  They are, by and large, republicans.  Wealth Management guys.  That title breaks me up.  

My college roommate and I played sports every day.  In college, we were the hippie team.  We played just to beat the dunderheads.  We were good and we won and won.  They hated us.  Sometimes they got mean.  We weren't mean.  They didn't like getting beat by long haired hippies.  We always thought the intellectual athlete was the thing.  We read books outside of our studies.  

We thought we were cool.  

None of us made money.  Both my college roommate and I worked at the factory.  

Bohemes.  

None of it ended up mattering except for the money.  We didn't change the world for the better.  It is as bad as it ever was.  

You can quit reading now if you don't want to hear about my present life.  I've warned you. 

I was sicker yesterday than the day before.  Other than taking my mother to get her blood drawn, I slept most of the day.  Took plenty of over the counter medicines.  Drank Pedialyte.  Oh, god, how I wished I had someone to go to the store for me.  

"Do you want me to get anything for you, honey?"

Rather, I had to "do" for my mother who cannot do anything anymore.  As soon as I sit down, she needs something.  She sits and moans.  Yesterday I spent hours on the phone trying to get her into an orthopedic spine specialist.  The soonest I could get her an appointment was the end of September.  Doctors outside her "group" won't see her because she had surgery.  When I call her "group," I get someone who works for all the clinics, someone who does not understand what a kyphoplasty is, who doesn't understand that an Interventional Radiologist is not an orthopedic doctor.  

Health care is fucked.  

Many doctors I have tried to get her into are not taking new patients. 

I live in a town with many great health facilities.  I wouldn't want to be going to some general hospital in the small-town Midwest.  You'd be getting the equivalent of Doc on "Gunsmoke."  On the other hand, you'd probably get in pretty quickly.  

I still feel like shit.  I should be getting over this, but I'm not.  It may be the stress.  Even when I try to rest, the nightmare of my present life won't leave me alone.  

I need to go paint the outside wall where the new siding is today before I take my mother to a brain MRI at 12:30 because the new tankless water heater is going to be installed at 8:30 tomorrow morning.  I have to be there for that, too.  The carpenter has still not come back to work.  This is dragging on.  

I have found a way to lose weight, I think.  Eat the same thing for every meal.  Eventually, you won't eat much.  I made a second pot of chicken soup.  I've been eating nothing but chicken soup for days now.  I thought it would help me get over this illness.  Oh, the chicken soup is spectacular, but I am over it after a smaller and smaller bowl.  

I'll be down to my original weight of 8 pounds 8 ounces soon.  

Entropy

Worst night of my life.  I was sick all day, but last night was a different realm.  I ached.  I sweat.  I choked.   At one point, my throat seized up and I could not breathe.  My entire body went into convulsions and I began to heave.  I was tingling and was about to go out, then. . . well you know what happened or you wouldn't be reading this.  

I was awake every thirty or forty minutes.  All night long, I worried about needing to take care of my mother.  But I needed care, too.  There is no one to call for that.  The psychological stress was as great as the physical. 

I will get better today, I think, but I will not feel good.  My body is tired and weak. 

I have nothing clever or smart to say this morning.  This illness comes at the worst time.  

Everything falls apart.  Entropy.  A law of physics.  

Work Release

My mini-stroke may just be the illness causing me to have thick, phlegmy mucus.  That's a crazy thing to hope for, right?  But I've friends who also have this malady.  Tennessee asked me if I had a sore throat.  I didn't.  He did.  Now, as of last night, I have a sore throat.  Yay!  

Could it be The 'Vid?  

"Everything is covid now."

I had gone back to bed after my morning post, but I had much to do, so I got up and, again, soldiered on.  I got my mother set up with her meds and headed to my house.  I had to put it back together for the maids who are coming Tuesday.  It is difficult for me to believe that two weeks ago, I told them not to come because of the reconstruction.  My carpenter is working sloooowwww.  

When I walked into the house, I felt overwhelmed, but I've learned in this past year that my problem with manual labor has always been my desire to get it over with.  I rush.  I took a few breaths and began, one box, one item at a time.  I had to make decisions.  All of this was not going back on the shelves.  A huge box of old teas--gone.  Whew.  Some odd, one-off beer glasses.  Gone.  A Lazy Susan I bought a long time ago to put into my deep cabinets.  A bunch of bar-b-q utensils.  On and on.  The rest got put away better than before.  Hours passed.  The floor in the dining and living room was clear.  The big garbage can outside half full.  There were big boxes of things I decided to keep, but in the garage, not in the house.  Many trips.  I changed the filter in the a.c.  It requires a ladder.  My ladder is heavy.  My ceiling is 9'2".  It hardly ever goes smoothly, but this time it did.  I put away the rollers and paint brushes I had left outside.  I called my mother to see if she was O.K.  Neighbors were there.  Good.  I grabbed the sheets and pillowcases that needed to be washed.  I don't have hot water yet, so I would have to do that at my mother's.  I folded and put away the laundry I had brought back.  

I showered.  

My mountain buddy had called me earlier.  He was in town until Monday morning.  He wanted to get together.  I told him I didn't think I could.  He wanted to hear about my woes.  His mother is nearly as old as mine.  She is going through much the same thing now.  His dad is going through what I am, taking care of her, but he is 95.  There is one other difference.  

"I didn't marry my mother."

After my shower, I had a text from him.  He was meeting another friend at a brewery at 3:30.  I wrote back saying that I didn't think I could be very social.  Four.  I decided to make a Negroni.  I sat down at the computer and asked A.I. to do illustrative things some of my photos.  I liked the results as much as I liked my photographs.  Others may not.  I find it fascinating.  You have to give good instructions and it takes awhile.  Sometimes you get lousy results.  But not always.  Of course, ChatGPT won't work with many of my photos.  They go against company policy or something.  It is a shame.  

I was out of Campari.  I decided to make a trip to the liquor store.  It was halfway to the brewery.  Should I go?  

I showed up just as the other friend was leaving.  Larry.  You've seen him in the Dancing Larry videos I've put on YouTube.  He didn't look so good.  I was glad he was leaving.  I didn't have the energy.  

I got an outside table and my buddy and his wife joined me.  We needed chairs.  I got up to ask at other tables.  A couple sat together.  She was very pretty.  I approached but they didn't look up, so I leaned onto the table and asked, "Do you mind if I sit here with you?"  Oh, Christ. . . the look.  "Just kidding," I said.  "May I borrow one of your chairs?"

I don't get out enough.  

My buddy's wife was getting a little--I don't know--peckish.  They'd been at the bar for an hour already and she was getting hungry.  

"I need something to eat now.  Should I order food here or are we going to dinner or what?"

"How about some boiled peanuts for an hors d'oeuvre?  They have great boiled peanuts here."

She stared at me.  "I've never had boiled peanuts," she said.  

"Oh, you're kidding?  You'll love them.  You are in for a treat."

I went inside to get the peanuts and a beer.  My buddy joined me.  

"Let me buy you a beer," he offered.  

When the waitress handed me the beer, I left him and said, "You get the peanuts.  I'm going to sit with your girlfriend."

"Wife," he said.  "You married us."

He ordered the Buffalo Wing peanuts.  She was cautious, then she wasn't.  

"These are good," she said.  

"Those are staples here in the sunny south."

We chatted for an hour.  Then the phones began to ring.  His from his sister about his mom.  Mine from my mother.  

"My ankles are really swelling," she said.  

"I'll be right there." 

And just like that, it was over.  I'd had my fun.  The rest of the night wasn't as good.  

So yea. . . I went to bed with a sore throat and woke up with one, too.  It could be a lazy day once I wash the sheets and take them back to the house.  

One thing is funny, though.  My mother had boiled a chicken all afternoon, and when I got home, I chopped carrots, potatoes, onions, peppers, and garlic to make the soup.  At the end I added baby spinach leafs.  Chicken soup.  Isn't that supposed to cure a cold?

Moon River

The days grow rougher, more difficult to navigate. . . harder to manage.  I can't do it alone much longer.  I think I may have had a mini-stroke.  In conversation, the earth suddenly seemed to shift.  My balance was off.  I haven't recovered.  But I've had to soldier on.  

I managed to get my mother to her cardiology appointment.  The news was bad.  She may have had a heart attack in surgery the doctor said.  Her legs are swollen.  He ordered some sort of venous test STAT!  STAT turns out to be next Thursday.  They can't take her before then.  New blood pressure meds, one for when her systolic goes over 170.  It's been over 170 for weeks.  

My mother tells everyone she can't take her pain meds.  They make her sick, she says.  Yesterday I heard her on the phone with her primary doctor's office yelling at the person on the other end of the phone that she couldn't take the Percocet, that she wanted Tramadol.  She told the doc when we were there, however, that she didn't want Tramadol.  

Last night, after taking the "emergency" pill, her BP came down.  I put together a dinner.  Then I collapsed.  With no one to talk to, I turned on the television.  I needed an escape.  I put on "Breakfast at Tiffany's."  

Readers of the blog will know how incredulous I am that Tiffany is referred to as Tiffany's even when the sign is clear above Holly Golightly's head.  I've never read the novella, but I must just to see if Truman Capote wrote it that way.  

I thought I'd seen the movie before, but last night I had to wonder.  Maybe I'd only seen scenes, only seen it in parts. I settled in and watched it from start to finish.  Everyone speaks very quickly in the film except for Buddy Ebsen.  

Old Doc married Lula Mae when she was fourteen, or as people say, "just fourteen."  Not quite Humbert Humbert, but close enough.  Yup, it is a pretty dark film.  But hey, you know?  Kids love it.  

When the movie ended, my mother began crying about being in pain.  She said she might need to go back to the E.R.  I came apart.  

"What do you think they are going to do differently," I asked.  "Every time we've gone, they say you need to go to a rehab clinic.  You say no, you're fine, you can take care of yourself, you just want to go home.  They give you pain meds, but you don't take them.  Your doctor gave you the strongest pain med they are going to give you but you won't take it.  I can't take away the pain.  I can take you to doctors.  I can cook and clean and fetch, but I can't do anything more.  You don't listen to the doctors.  I'm at a loss.  I don't know what to do."

  

I wasn't as calm as that sounds.  

She said O.K.  She took a hydrocodone tablet.  I went to bed.  

But I didn't sleep well or long.  When I got up, she was sitting at the kitchen table.  

"How'd you sleep."

"I did o.k." 

She is taking the pain meds now, but they will run out soon and there is no refill.  Next week is full of medical tests.  

I'm falling asleep in my shoes.  

"Back at the ranch," as they say, the carpenter is absent.  The fellow who walked off the job is hounding me for his money.  I have to get the house put back together today so it can be cleaned on Tuesday.  I need to be there when they install the water heater.  I need to be there when they replace the gas meter.  I need to be there when they come to service the HVAC.  There is too much for me to do.

All the doctors tell my mother, "You are lucky.  You have a good son."

I believe my mother will outlive me.  

Portrait of a Worker as an Old Man

I couldn't sleep last night, couldn't breathe.  I woke over and over and over again choking, gagging.  Phlegm from my sinuses.  It was maddening.  So much for the dignity of work.  

Yea. . . I worked.  I had to.  After the reconstruction in the kitchen, things were a mess.  I got scrub brushes, sponges, mops, and rags.  I filled a pan with water and TSP (trisodium phosphate), something that cleans almost anything.  I scrubbed the ceiling.  My broken body was not a fan.  I stood on a ladder, reaching with my left hand above my head without an AC joint, holding on to anything I could for balance.  But it had to be done.  I scrubbed the ceiling, emptying and refilling the pan as it became mud.  I scrubbed and then rinsed the entire thing, and then I dried it with towels.  Then I did the walls and cabinets.  Same thing.  And then the floor.  I did, however, feel a bit heroic.  Cleaning the kitchen took hours.  I had emptied the kitchen counters of all things, so when I was finished, the kitchen looked new.  But I realized that the floor planks which had warped from water leaks was coming apart.  I had sanded the floors, painted them, and then polyurethaned them 28 years ago.  Had it really been so long ago?  Something will need to be done.  

Later.  

When the kitchen was finished, I had a decision to make.  The carpenter had called to tell me he was sick and wouldn't be working for a couple days, but. . . he wanted his money.  Many thousands of dollars of money.  He also told me that the new siding needed to be painted with a cement sealer.  He gave me instructions on how to do that.  It was midafternoon when I finished the kitchen and I was pooped.  I needed to get the renovation permit for the coming tankless water heater notarized and emailed back to the company doing the installation.  I also needed to stop by an orthopedic group to see about getting my mother an appointment.  

So I paused and I thought.  It was 95 degrees outside.  Still. . . the siding.  I decided to finish the work.  

It didn't take so very long, nothing like cleaning the kitchen.  It had been a productive day, but I knew I would pay for it.  All the bending and twisting and working overhead would have bones and muscles barking that night.  

And sure enough, after showering and dressing and printing out the permit, walking seemed a chore.  

But that is not why I couldn't sleep.  Phlegm clogged my throat.  Surely it was from cleaning the kitchen or perhaps working with the cement sealer.  Whatever. . . I don't find such work so very heroic.  It is the stuff that kills you, I think.  

I will struggle today.  I must tote my mother around to doctors and labs after I put my kitchen back together.  

After all the work, clean as a bean, permit notarized, and being just a block from the Boulevard, I decided to pop into what had become my favorite bar to get a Negroni.  They make a great Negroni there.  I think it is the smoked orange peel that does it.  

The bar was open, but nobody was around.  One fellow sat at the bar eating.  Two bartenders were standing in the back talking to a waitress.  I stood for a bit but no one paid attention to me, so I walked over to ask if they were serving outside.  

"Yes, I'll send a waitress out."

"Send her with a Negroni if you will."

I plopped down into the very comfortable low seating and waited.  And waited.  And waited a bit longer, but no waitress came out.  Perhaps they didn't like my look, I thought.  Maybe they don't serve hippies.  No matter.  It was a bad idea to begin with, sitting alone at a sidewalk table sipping a small, $15 Negroni.  

I walked back to the car.  

That's just the way my life goes now.  It just is.  

So I shopped for groceries and went back to my mother's.  I opened a beer and turned on the news.  Oh, my!  Virginia Giuffre’s mother is up in arms over the Epstein Files, and all I can wonder is how anyone can take her seriously.  I mean. . . where was good old mom when her "child" was on the "Lolita Express"?  At the time this took place, Virginia would have been charged with prostitution even as a minor, not lauded as a victim.  

I understand.  The past was bad.  We are better now.  Still. . . where was good, concerned mother?  

But man. . . this stuff draws a greater audience than the Magruder Files and the Kennedy Assassination Files combined.  

Someone sent me a song yesterday saying, "This should be your theme song."  Yea, yea. . . it might be accurate.  

"Ooh Woo, I'm a rebel just for kicks now."

 

The Dixian Life

I watched a documentary on Otto Dix last night (link). I've linked it, but I am not recommending it for 1) he is not everyone's "cup of tea," and 2) it really isn't a great documentary. It does have its moments, though. 

This came after a horrific day of carting my mother from pillar to post.  I figure I am now working 21 eight hour shifts a week.  

"I'm melting!"

We went to her primary care doctor.  She is nobody's favorite doctor, but she is "what we got."  

My mother needed her walker, so I packed it into the car.  Still, she was barely able to make the voyage from the front of the large medical building to the elevator.  We managed, then sat in the doctor's waiting room until she was called.  Since she is now soooo slow in movement, I stayed seated as she made her tortoise way to the door.  She turned to me and barked, "Let's go!"  She is completely dependent now.  She isn't going to try to deal with anything on her own.  

She was weighed.  Her blood pressure was measured.  It was, of course, high.  We sat for an hour in the little examination room waiting for the doctor.  When she finally arrived, she asked my mother how she was doing.  

"What?" 

"How are you doing?"

"I can't hear you."

The doc was wearing a Covid mask, so my mother couldn't see her lips.  I answered for her.  After that, my mother didn't try to respond.  The doctor directed all her questions to me.  When she asked for blood tests, I said that they had almost drained my mother of blood in the hospital and that she should have access to all those records.  She left to get them.  

Half an hour later, she was back.  

Skip ahead.  She wrote my mother prescriptions for Percocet and a blood pressure medicine.  My mother needed to get an appointment with the cardiologist fast.  She ordered a brain MRI, with dye and without it.  She ordered another blood test that could only be done at the Quest location because the sample had to be frozen.  I needed to make an appointment with a back specialist.  

We stopped at the cardiologist's office.  I take my mother for an appointment tomorrow afternoon.  We drove to the drugstore, but the prescription wasn't ready.  We got takeout from McDonalds and came back to her house.  I began calling offices.  I called the ENT docs to get an audiology appointment.  My mother finally admits she can't hear.  

"Thank god you were there."

Yea.  

I got a receptionist on the phone who barely spoke English.  I had a difficult time getting her to understand why I was calling.  Finally, she tried to contact the audiologist, but the audiologist wasn't in.  The receptionist would have to call me back.  

I called around to different places to schedule an MRI.  Three or four calls before I found a place.  They wanted a lot of info over the phone.  First, of course, was what insurance my mother had.  I asked my mother for her Medicare card and she threw her hands in the air, flustered.  The call was long but finally settled.  I take my mother Tuesday afternoon.

It was three.  I told my mother I needed to go to my house.  First, I needed to go to the gym.  Absolutely.  I did a brief workout and then went home to get a package that had been sitting on the doorstep.  Traffic was building.  The carpenter had not done much work, apparently.  I still needed to wash down the kitchen with TSP, then a clear water rinse.  But that wasn't happening today.  I needed to do that, though, and put all the boxes of things sitting in the dining room and living room back into the pantry before Tuesday.  The coating on the shelves still needed a few days to dry.  I must paint the siding the carpenter has put up before the plumber comes to put in the tankless water heater.  The entire house needs painting, too, but that isn't immediate.  The carpenter didn't seem to want to be the one to do it.  

"It's a lot of prep work," he said.  I don't think I can afford him.  

I showered, dressed, and headed back out into the afterwork traffic.  I had several stops to make.  Traffic was at a standstill.  I got groceries.  I got the drugs.  

Back to my mother's house.  Unload the car.  I have to carry two bags back and forth to my house to have what I need.  Groceries.  I sat down and drank a light beer.  I had asked my mother if she wanted salmon patties for dinner that morning.  That sounded like a good partner with the asparagus in the fridge.  It is one of the things she makes for me that is tasty.  She said she would walk me through it.  

Now, however, it seemed she had never made them before.  She couldn't really answer my questions.  I broke crackers.  Added an egg.  Added the canned sockeye salmon.  I mixed them.  They were pretty wet, so I added more crushed crackers.  Asparagus steaming, I put oil into the big pan and let it get hot.  Three salmon patties.  I had no idea how long to cook them.  I probably made the patties too thick.  They burned a bit.  

My mother barely ate.  I poured a drink and watched the news.  I would clean up later.  My mother sat at the table looking again and again at the pill bottles, turning them, reading them.  I put on the Otto Dix doc.  It seemed to me he had one of the best visions of existence I'd seen.  I've liked Dix' work.  I love going to the Neue Gallerie in NYC.  It is one of my favorites.  Dix' work has been prominently featured there along with so many other master artists from Germany in that era.  I love eating at the Cafe Sabasrky for Sunday brunch.  I love buying books and trinkets from the gift shop.  But tonight, I felt I was living in a Dix painting.  Dix said that photography couldn't capture reality as could painting.  Maybe he would feel differently today.  Photography isn't just photography any longer.  You can do anything with a "photograph" now.  They are must pictures.  

I looked through old emails.  2013.  Here was one that felt like Dix.  I could make many more.  

My mother went to bed early.  My t.v. algorithms suggested a show, "Modern Love."  I watched two episodes and went to bed.  

My mother was up and down all night.  She makes noises that wake me.  She moans loudly.  I am becoming a zombie.  

The carpenter called this morning before seven.  I had not gotten out of bed.  My phone was apparently on silent.  He texted me.  "Call."  I did, but got no answer.  My neighbor texted me, the one who recommended the carpenter.  He said Bob was sick and wouldn't be able to work today.  Later, the carpenter called.  He couldn't work, but he wanted his money today.  

I have much to do.  I need to print out a City Permit for the gas heater, sign it with a notary, scan it, and email it back.  I must wash down the kitchen today.  I need to paint some kind of coating onto the new siding.  The wooden deck has not been painted since last spring and is beginning to crack in the heat.  I must get that scrubbed, pressure washed, and painted soon.  I need to call some roofers.  

Autopilot.  That's all I have.  

"I'm melting."

Pops

This is one of the NYC street photos in my files.  I just selected it at random.  It is an unusual street photo, I think, in its proximity to the subject.  It is more portrait than street.  And I have tons of them.  They are very impressive printed large--32"x24".  I can envision a gallery full of them, huge portraits of strangers walking by.  I find the unengaged human face fascinating.  I was influenced by Mark Cohen I am sure, but he was more aggressive in his photos as he often used a flash.  I didn't disturb the subject in any way, so all the faces are lost in thoughts. . . of what, we'll never know.  

Yesterday, I met a real character.  I had to go to the paint store to buy the little liners for the paint tray.  When I walked in, there was man in a tank top waiting for his paint to be mixed.  I joked with the guy behind the counter that I should have bought two of the liners yesterday.  The man in the tank top said, "They come in handy."  

I smiled. 

He was a thick boned guy, thick all over.  He was broad in the shoulders slathered in mature fat that hid what was an obvious physical power.  He looked at me out of the corners of his small eyes made smaller by squinting and the thickness of his skull.  His head bobbed and weaved as he spoke through thin, tight lips that curled in a provocative smile.  He was eyeing me up, being friendly in a way I was familiar with from growing up in a bad neighborhood with some very brutal people.  He was the kind of guy who would walk into a bar in Texas saying "steers and queers" for the hell of it.  

I smiled.  

"Yesterday I watched a young guy hitting the bag in his backyard.  I noticed he kept dropping his right hand.  He looked at me and asked me if I wanted to spar and I said sure.  When he dropped his right, I caught him good and set him back about four feet on his ass."

He said all this like he was telling me what he had for breakfast.  But when he illustrated throwing his punch, I noticed he bent his knees a came up with a twist of the hips.  Yea, he knew how to throw a punch.  

"Wow.  Gloves or were you just bare knuckles?"

"Just these," he said making a fist.  "I asked the kid how he liked getting knocked down by an eighty year old."

"Impressive.  Were you a fighter?"

"I fought Golden Gloves when I was at Ohio State.  I lost to this big black guy, Cleveland Williams.  He was taller than me and I thought I could go under him, but he caught me and won the fight."

"Cleveland 'Big Cat' Williams?!?"

That seemed to irritate him a bit . 

"No, Cleveland Williams.  We went out and had some beers after that.  He was a good guy.  The next time we fought, I beat him."

"That accent doesn't sound like Ohio."

"I grew up in Cincinnati."

"Sounds more like Kentucky, maybe."

"I was born in Kentucky." 

"That's some pretty bad boys down there."

"There's bad boys everywhere," he said.  

"Yea, but I have some cousins from Kentucky meaner than hell.  If there is nobody else around to fight, they fight each other."

"I went down to Looavul--Looavul, not Louisville, with a friend of mine.  We walked into the bar and he said straight off, 'You know the difference between a pretty woman and an ugly woman?  There ain't nothing but ugly women here.'  And the fight broke out.  And when it was over, we all sat down to drink together and everyone was friends."

"My uncle was a boxing promoter in Dayton."  

He nodded and was quiet for a minute.  Then he said, "I was signed up for the Marines.  When I went down to Paris Island for training, I got drunk the night before and shot somebody.  I did five years for that," he said looking at me out of the corners of his slitted eyes.  "I was in the prison in Huntsville, Texas.  That was a very rough place.  Somebody dies there every day, but you never hear about it."

"I guess you tough in there," I said.  We were outside now and he was getting into his van with the painted advertising on the side.  He was an eighty year old ex-boxer, ex-con bad boy still working hard for a living.  And I believed what he said.  He could still knock a man out.  There were some twisted genes in there somewhere that made him what he was.  

I held out my hand and said, "My name's C.S."

He took it without much enthusiasm and said, "I'm Pops."  

"Maybe I'll see you around. . . ."  

He was the kind of guy I was familiar with growing up,  a guy always looking for trouble, and he knew how to find it.  

I take my mom to the doctor this morning.  God knows what will happen there.  It is with her primary care physician, and the two of them do not get along very well.  I'll have my work cut out for me, I'm sure.  The carpenter is continuing his work today. The price is rising.  He put back the washer and dryer in the little cubby and I painted the shelves, but that is all I could manage.  My nerves are bad now, and when I asked him how much he would charge to paint the house, he kind of winced and said. . . "It would be a lot.  There is a lot of prep work to do."  He wasn't encouraging.  I may have to do it myself, and I can, but climbing a ladder to paint the second floor apartment scares me now.  That's a horrible admission, but I'm already broken badly.  I don't like ladders in the first place.  Thinking about all the work I have to do on this old wooden house put me over.  I did what I could do and collapsed.  

Still, I had to make dinner for mom.  She didn't eat much.  She went to bed early, then, a bit later, so did I.  

I'm trying to calm my nerves, trying to find something to give me peace.  Debussy on guitar seems to help a bit.  

Is Painting a Room a Reprieve?

I don't know if my mother is regretting her decision not to go to a rehab hospital yet.  Anyone who calls or stops by and asks how she is doing gets the same reply--"Oh, honey. . . I'm not doing well at all."  She sits in a chair or wanders a few feet with the walker.  She moans.  She can no longer remember what meds she is taking.  Her blood pressure remains way too high.  She barely eats.  I sit with her, but there is nothing I can do except go down with her.  

And I am.  

Yesterday I had to leave to work at my house.  First, however, I went to the gym.  I didn't feel well at all, and the least exertion had me sweating bullets.  Sick sweat.  People were friendly and stopped to chat.  They always asked about my mother.  I kept working and sweating and chatting, and by the end of a what took longer than normal workout, I was feeling better.  I had a bottle of water in the car and drank it down.  I went to the house to paint.  

It was hard painting in that little cubby of a pantry.  I had to squat with bad knees, bend with a bad back, twist and reach with a terribly broken thorax.  Thorax?!

Whatever. 

Several times I thought about stopping before I finished.  And then I didn't, and then it was done.  I felt a hundred times better.  I drank more water.  I had been feeling so badly, I hadn't eaten all day.  It was o.k.  I washed out the brush and the roller, two things I usually don't do.  Rather, I'll stick them in a bucket of water and let them sit there forever.  But no, I cleaned them well and will reuse them today.  

I showered.  I washed my hair, gave it good conditioning, brushed my teeth with my power brusher, creamed my face with my beauty unguents, conditioned my skin. . . you know, things one can do at home.  

It seemed the sickness had left me.  I went to my computer and looked at a folder I put together what seems a lifetime ago for my proposed website.  It was the NYC folder.  "Fabulous," I thought.  Would anyone else?  There are so very many good ones. . . I need to work on it.  

Then it was time to do a grocery run and get back to my mother's house.  It would be a vegetarian meal with tofu.  I had brought my big Dutch Oven from my house so that I could actually cook well.  My mother's cookware is not to be recommended.  

When I got to her house, she was sitting in a chair with the heating vibrator pad she has spent most of the last year on.  I made the several trips from the car to the house carrying the goods.  I sat down to talk with her, but she couldn't hear me.  I tipped one of her light beers and put the brown jasmine rice to cooking.  Then I began chopping the vegetables--carrots, broccoli, potatoes, mushrooms, onion, pablamo pepper. . . . 

I dried the feta and cut it into slices and put it into a pan on medium heat to sear a bit.  Teriyaki.  Then I added garbanzo beans.  In a bit, after seasoning, I dropped in the vegetables.  The rice cooker popped.  I put spinach into the vegetable mix.  Holy smokes, the colors were beautiful.  

I'd made too much, as usual.  When I dished it for my mother, she said she couldn't eat all of it.  

There was a knock at the door.  The neighbor lady came to visit.  She sat at the table while we ate.  

My mother complained.  Her head hung down.  The neighbor looked at me with meaningful eyes.  Yea, yea. . . what can I do.  

"If you need anything. . . ."

And of course, "You need to take care of yourself, too."  

When the neighbor left and dinner was finished, it was 6:30.  We watched the Evening News.  

My mother needed something from the drugstore.  It was seven and not near dark.  I haven't been out at seven for. . . ?  It felt liberating.  I just wanted to keep driving.  Go to a cafe.  Drink with pretty women.  Anything.  

Back home, I cleaned the kitchen and sat down with a glass.  I searched Amazon Prime for "South Park."  I pulled up the latest episode, the now infamous tiny dick Trump episode.  It was on Paramount.  Somehow, I was able to watch it.  Do I have a subscription?  I must.  

"What in the world is that?" my mother asked.  She'd never seen anything like this before.  

Even for me, the episode was shocking.  Those boys have big cojones, I think.  But they nailed it, nailed the whole State of the Union.  We are a nation of bullied cowards now.  Everyone looks over their shoulder.  Everyone thinks twice.  

Google's got their eyes on me.  I wonder who else?  

I need to make that website, but I have so much to do.  Today the carpenter will be back to finish up his work, I think.  Then mine begins.  I will see if he wants to do more.  

It's only money 😧.  

My mother moves around slowly, moaning, not speaking now.  I don't know what she thinks she is accomplishing by sitting in her home suffering.  She will have to sit alone all day again today until I get back sometime this afternoon.  For all the good that yesterday did, I feel I am back in the same place.  The sickness returns.  

But the veggie meal was good and cleansing, and there is enough left over that I can heat it up and cook a bit of cod or haddock to go with it tonight.  

And so, my blog continues to spiral into the void.  It can't be helped.  There is nothing to do about it.  

I think I REALLY need a massage.  No. . . a spa day.  I need to be pampered for awhile.  

Ibid

Spent Sunday morning in the E.R.  Same thing.  The E.R. is not a care center.  They treat the issue and get you out.  This time, they just gave her morphine as a shot in the arm.  Didn't have the same effect, so they gave her a shot of something else in the other arm.  Blood pressure stayed high.  The doctor was a smart ass and liked to ask gotcha questions.  He talked to me like I was a student who hadn't done his homework.  

"What's causing her blood pressure to be elevated?" he asked me in the smarmy tone of someone needing to be superior.  It didn't matter. 

"You want me to say pain."

"Right.  It's a shock to the system, so. . . . "

He gave her the option of going to a rehab hospital.  

"No.  I'm not going.  I have two friends who went and they said they'd never go back.  One of them got MERSA while she was there.  The other one wanted to leave it was so bad, but they wouldn't let her check herself out."

So. . . he gave her a prescription for a stronger pain med and said so long.  

She seems to be managing the pain so far.  

Me?  I'm not doing so well.  I think I am having panic attacks.  I feel very, very sick.  I'm weak and shaky and can't really focus my thoughts.  I wake in the night with horrible fear.  I can feel my body breaking down.  

But the number of things I need to do keeps mounting.  I absolutely have to paint the kitchen cubby today.  There is so much more that needs to be done around the house.  I am not the man for the job, however, and the bank account is shrinking rapidly.  

I never go for massages.  I've had maybe three in my life.  I think, though, that maybe a little human touch might help to settle me down.  I need to relax, that's certain, but I can't keep taking pills.  The cumulative effect is getting to be too much.  The same with whiskey.  I'm going to have to give it up.  

But the clock is winding down no matter.  

Sometimes music helps.  

The Broken Road of Life

I was right.  Pictures cause me trouble.  Yesterday's picture got the Google po-po looking at me again.  

My buddy, the detective novel writer, stopped by my house yesterday while I was there with the workers.  He's a friendly guy and I like him a bunch.  Long ago, I produced an award winning documentary that featured him as the primary informant voice.  Little Q directed the hour long project.  I've known the guy to some degree for a mighty long time.  

"What's your email address.  I want to send you something."

I wondered what it could be since we were standing eyeball to eyeball and he was telling me nothing.  He writes columns for magazines, too, mostly about food and wine, so I figured it would somehow be connected to that.  

Later in the day, I got the email.  It was an invitation to his Substack page.  It invited me to like and subscribe.  I could read for free, it said, but. . . . 

A fellow's got to make money, I guess, but I was a little. . . I don't know.  He could have just said give me four dollars a month or something when we were talking.  

Substack is huge.  Many of the good writers of the day now have Substack pages.  I read some excellent writing there.  Some of it mine.  But given what has been happening in my life this year, I've not really had the time to keep posting.  If I get cancelled here, though, that is where I will go.  I actually have readers there who have offered me subscription money to "keep me writing."  I have been, however, reticent to take it.  Unless I know I can sustain the thing, I feel I'd be defrauding them.  

I'm that kind of guy.  

But there is not censorship on the Substack site.  My god. . . you can't believe some of the things I have seen there.  I guess they have algorithms, too.  

Substack is only going to get bigger.  Trust me.  

My life is not getting any better.  I am taking my mother back to the E.R. this morning.  She's in terrible pain.  She can't sleep.  She needs relief.  I tell her that the E.R. is going to do the same thing they did last time.  They will get her blood pressure down and give her morphine which will alleviate the pain for a bit, then they will give her the option of going to a rehab facility or going home and dealing with things on her own.  

So one more cup of coffee, and then I'll spend the day in an E.R. room again.  

Yesterday, I washed down the floor and walls in the little cubby in the kitchen that holds the washer and dryer.  It was hotter than hell in there with the a.c. off.  I went to the paint store and for once the grumpy guy who works there was nice to me.  He helped me out, told me stories, said it was nice to see me.  He must have started taking meds.  The carpenter had a helper and got a lot of work done.  He is going to come back today to get more of the outside of the house closed up.  I was going to paint the walls so we could move the washer and dryer back in.  

That ain't going to happen.  It is depressing.  I am not able to sleep with my mother roaming the halls all night long.  I am feeling very ill now.  My body is buzzing with fatigue and unhappiness.  But I'll have to get used to it, for it looks like this thing is going to play out for a long, long time.  Backs are not something easily fixed.  If they could fix backs, a lot of players would still be in the NBA.  But my mother has to get some relief.  Her misery is terrible.  

And so, what I had planned to write today will have to wait.  As soon as she is ready, we will away.  

Naked and Afraid

Back when I was in the classroom, I would wonder aloud if people were happier now than in the past.  The answers always surprised me.  Now, however, I wonder myself.  How does one measure happiness?  Somebody seems to do it.  I read every year about the "Happiest Country" or "Happiest Places" in the world.  Surprising to me is that Finland is always high on the list.  I watched a 60 Minutes episode many, many years ago about the Finns.  Apparently, their language does not inspire jokes.  There are really, it seemed, no jokes in Finland.  If all of this reporting is accurate, then jokes may not make us happy.  

What does?  

I'm guessing that maybe it is, in the footsteps of Einstein, relative.  

I have enjoyed camping in my life.  In the wilderness.  I would not enjoy camping, however, on a resort island next to the Four Seasons Hotel.  The joy camping brings to me, I guess, is relative.  

For the majority of my adult life, I have held fast to the belief that you learn nothing from "happy."  "Happy" is a mindless state.  There were states of being that encompassed far more profundity than happiness.  

So I have come back to the old question, "are we happier now than were people in the past?"

Everywhere I look, I see images of "happiness."  Social media, of course.  Everyone, it seems, is eating at a fabulous restaurant with beautiful friends or are sailing on huge yachts in Miami drinking champagne and laughing with skinny girls in barely bikinis.  Everyone seems ecstatic.  

Even watching television at my mother's house, people with every known disease to man from erectile disfunction to liver disease are enjoying dinners, playing golf, romping with the grandkids, because they are taking some pharmaceutical concoction.  I watch and think I should get a disease so that I can be happy, too.  

So, in the past, in a time before photography, before media other than newspapers sold on street corners, or, perhaps, longer ago, when word of the world was carried by mouth. . . were people happier?  

I've often complained here about all one is expected to do in a day to have a long and healthy life.  I've been thinking about my old heroes lately, and the way they lived.  The famous explorer, Sir Richard Burton, for instance.  When he went into the blank sections of the map on the African continent, did he tale along everything he needed for a long and happy life?  Did he follow a healthy diet, make sure he did his stretching and got in his steps?  Did he get enough fermented food?  

I don't think so.  Deprivation was more the rule.  

He died at the age of 69.  

Hemingway, of course, didn't make it so long.  But he wasn't happy.  Neither was Burton at the end of his life.  

I think my parent's generation was more content than happy, but I can't decipher the correlation between the two, really.  They are both abstract concepts to me.  

Were Boomers a Happy Generation?  Gen Z is supposedly not.  I remember lecturing about Gen X, having fallen upon the idea early on on my own that, being the first generation in America who would do worse economically than their parents, they had donned the garb of prisoners--sheared locks and baggy, chain gang pants and decorative chains.  Even band names--Alice In Chains. 

Millenials are now the new Boomers.  They are getting richer and will be the target of Gen Z's ire.  Millenials will be cock blocking Z from all the good things in life.  

I, personally, don't believer in "generations."  It is a form of intellectual capitalism as far as I am concerned, serving the needs of inferior minds for pat generalizations.  

Still. . . who is happier?  

It is relative, I think.  

I am wrestling with the problem just now.  Would it be possible for my mother to be happy now?  I am suddenly in favor of happiness over any sort of profundity.  Is there a path for me to happiness now?  If so. . . what is it?  Where is it?  

Are the residents of retirement communities like The Villages happier for being there?  Would my mother be happier around people who cannot hear well, cannot see, people who are not ambulatory?  

Maybe.  I think it is relative.  

Thank you Mr. Einstein.  

I believe that most people I know now are happier than I.  There are many factors.  

"Money will never make you happy," the old saw goes.  And then there is Marx, not Karl, who said, "and happy will never make you money."  Are poor people happy?  Are rich people happier?  

I DO think my mother would feel better in a room full of people who suffer equal maladies.  Right now she is camping in a little tent on the beach among the sand flies next to the Four Seasons Hotel.  

I had one moment of. . . of what?  Levity?  Is that akin to happy?  Well, I laughed for a few moments.  I watched a comedy special that someone I will not name for fear of implicating him sent to me with the note, "I think you'll enjoy this."

I'm often skeptical.  But right now, I am fairly desperate, so I clicked on the trailer.  H-O-L-Y S-H-I-T!  You click on it, too.  You'll know right away if you want to watch this thing or not.  I did.  I laughed a lot.  I think I wrote about 80% of his jokes.  The glee it brought me, I'm certain, is not for most people.  I'm sure he is hated and reviled.  

Again. . . relative.  

I guess.  

Better Off Skipping This

I may have to just forego photos on this blog until and if I can ever begin making them again.  I've nothing but old photos now, most of which would only bring me trouble.  So it seems.  

I may have to forego the writing on this blog until and if I can ever begin living again.  I've nothing but complaints and miseries now.  So it seems.  

I can always opine, though.  But I am weary of that, too.  

I am eschewing friends now.  There is nothing they can do for me.  

"I feel sorry for your mother."

"Tell your mother you are going to rehab."

"Your mother brought you into the world.  Now she is going to take you out of it."

I went to my house for a minute yesterday.  That just about undid me.  It is a mess.  I need to start cleaning and painting the reconstruction and putting all the things I've taken from the kitchen back in.  My house is small.  It doesn't take much of a mess for me to realize this.  The carpenter is supposedly coming today to work on the exterior.  He has his own problems, and his problems become my problems, too.  

My mother made a bad decision in not to go the rehab place.  There she would have had medical attention and physical therapy.  Here, she has me who can do neither of those things for her.  I can be and am a personal valet. I spent half of yesterday driving her around to banks and to pick up her new eyeglasses.  

I managed to get away for a minute.  I went to lunch at a Michelin noodle restaurant.  It did me no good, though.  I sat alone at a table and was ignored by the pretty Asian waitress who actually seemed disdainful.  

As I write, the carpenter sends me pictures of the work he is doing this morning.  It doesn't look good.  My mother is doing badly right now and I need to set up some medical appointments, so I can't get over to talk to him for a bit.  

My stress level is too high for me to be really functional.  Yes. . . that is it.  I am not really functional right now.  I'm in a simple existence mode.  Basic things are difficult.  My body aches.  Maybe I'm sick. . . or worse.  

My friend from Yosemite is in town just now.  He called and left a message.  He wants to get together, take a hike, have dinner.  I haven't the energy for that right now.  I don't have the energy to call him back.  

There was a time when I dreamed of sailing a boat alone around the world.  It's a good thing it was a dream.  At the first real trouble, I'd have gone catatonic.  

My mountain friend is different.  "The worse, the better," I use to say was his motto when we were climbing.  "You like doing this shit.  I like having done it."  

It's true.  I like the effect more than the process.  

Just as I write that, my phone rings.  It is him.  I don't answer.  I can't.  

Tennessee has called three times.  I've not returned them.  

Mr. Tree keeps texting me that he can come meet me.  Why?  I don't reply.  

Other's are full of questions.  I haven't the energy.  

My mother's phone is full of voicemails.  She doesn't know how to retrieve them any longer.  I play them.  Many are from the hospital following up on her care.  She doesn't wish to respond.  

I don't sleep.  I lie in bed and think about what I am dreaming.  It is the strangest thing.  I go under for a moment then rise back to the surface.  It isn't sleep.  I don't know what it is.  

Just now, I have invitations to go out.  Isn't that ironic?  I don't respond.  

There is a look in my mother's eyes that I am avoiding.  I want to say, "What makes you think you will die before me?"  And it is true.  The doctor said she is in good health otherwise.  Her major organs are strong.  She can't see or hear or think well now, but heart and liver and kidneys are still kicking. This painful existence could continue for another decade.  

I feel my own health failing.  My system is breaking down.  How long do I wait?  

That's it.  That's what I have this morning.  I won't bother you with this shit anymore, either.  There is nothing anyone can do at this point other than give platitudinous offerings.  It is wrong of me to put people in that position.  

And so. . . you'll hear from me when I have something other than this.  There are lots of good blog posts from the past.  I go back and read them sometimes.  I can be funny.  I can be wry.  Sometimes, I think, I am even insightful.  

But not today.  And so, as the saying goes. . . until then.