24 Hours

It is Saturday, and I've thought to go out and try making pictures once again.  It is strange how that works, though.  Sometimes every photo you take feels like a good one, and other times you can't make a photo on a hundred dollar bet.  A couple weekends ago, I was on fire.  Since then, nada.  And after a couple nada days, I have a very hard time motivating myself to get out and try again.  

"Why?  I mean, why do you want to go out and make pictures?  Of what?  What's the point?  It's kind of weird, don't you think?"

Yea, I'm starting to think.  It is kinda weird.  Maybe I could do something else.  Like what?  Go shopping?  I am not sure what other people do.  Oh, I could work in the yard, I guess.  People do that.  Wash the windows.  Get with others and play a game of Scrabble.  

The windows DO need to be washed.  

Already this morning, though, I've had a small victory.  The internal fan on the HVAC system here at my mother's house wouldn't turn off.  It just kept running when the outside unit shut off.  This happened once before and I called the engineering firm with whom my mother has a service contract.  The guy who came out said it was the capacitor and that it would cost about $1,000 to replace it, but he said he wouldn't do it, that the fan motor used very little electricity and that they were built to run forever.  

Then it started working again.  Cool. 

This morning when I got up, it was continuously running again.  Just running.  So. . . have you ever used A.I.?  I asked for some solutions.  Yup. It said to turn the thermostat way down below where I usually set it, wait awhile, then turn it back up.  

And Bingo!  That worked! 

It also told me that this was caused by a faulty thermostat, not a capacitor, and that replacing a capacitor should not cost more than $400.  

At least the engineering firm didn't charge me for the kid's "advice."

This victory is coming off the heels of a wonderful night's sleep.  I don't remember waking once.  And that followed a surprising dinner--by mom!  Kind of.  She said in the morning that she would make salmon patties for dinner.  Really?  I was shocked.  I didn't think she had it in her, but I love her salmon patties and said, "Sure."  I had to do the heavy lifting, of course.  I opened the can of Sockeye salmon, but she had already crushed the crackers and cut some onion.  I cracked a couple eggs into the mix for her and added wine to moisten it when she said the mix was too dry, then I oiled the pan and did the frying.  But man, those patties were perfection.  Look at mom.  It was nice, too, that I had bought her sunflowers to brighten up her day.  

So the past twelve hours or so have gone swimmingly.  I'm a little upbeat.  

Maybe I should wash her windows.  

My Physical Fitness Club visit yesterday went well, too.  People were chatty, and I met a new, very friendly, very pretty woman who was sweet, and some of the other women told me how much they like my hair now.  I'm not quite on board with that, but it was nice.  This is my only social outing, by and large, so I was feeling upbeat after. 

Then I followed the Shock Jock to his house to look at the e-bike that he wants to sell me.  Never had I been to that part of town.  He had a nice house and a cool dog, but the bike was not really an e-bike, not the kind I want, but a pedal assist bike. You can't just let it act like a little motor scooter.  You have to pedal all the time.  I asked him not to be offended, but that wasn't what I was looking for, so we sat and talked a good while before I split.  

Going home, a big pickup truck was blocking one of the roads I was on. I didn't know why, then I saw the fellow grin and try to push it out of the way.  I got out to help him.  

"It just quit on me," he said sheepishly. Together we tried to push it uphill into a driveway.  We were able to move it a little, but not all the way. 

"Can you get by?"

Cars had lined up behind us, and just then a tall boy got out of the car behind me.  

"This looks like a three man job," he said, and indeed, he was right.  We got the truck out of the road. Although the driver was thankful, as I got back into my car, I thought now the shitty part of his day has just begun.  As I drove away, though, I thought about me. Look at that, I smiled, jumping out to help a fellow push a truck just like you were a kid.  

I decided to go to Whole Foods and buy nice things for mom's, including another big container of tapenade, a nice bottle of wine to compliment the salmon, ripe watermelon for desert, and, as reported, sunflowers.  

Back to my house.  I showered, had a protein drink, part of my new plan because I don't eat enough protein-rich foods anymore having only breakfast and dinner.  Clean, physically fit, and full of amino acids, I decided to cook up another couple of film scans for viewing.  

Then came the crazy rain.  The rain here is not like the rain in other places.  It is like the rain in Viet Nam, I've been told by people from Viet Nam.  The weather here is much as it is there, they say.  Beautiful Viet Nam, not the one from old war-torn movies.  The one where rich French families went to vacation.  But yea. . . the summer rains.  

And when the rain has passed, the air is cooler, so when I got back to my mother's house, we sat out for awhile and had a cocktail.  Backing up, then, I'd say maybe I've had a good twenty-four hours or so.  Nothing big.  Just minor happiness.  

I'll take that.  

But the question remains.  Will I go out with cameras?  

Probably, but I don't think I have a vision today.  Maybe I'll go to the little hipster record store in the hipster plaza and peruse their good book section.  Maybe I'll wander and find some little magic somewhere once again.  A shaved ice truck.  A strange home goods store.  Maybe I'll sit somwhere and have a beer.  

But. . . I think I'll wash my mother's windows first.  At least a few.  

Have Your Bot Call My Bot

I just found that on one of my blogs I have to O.K. comments before they appear.  I didn't even know they were there. I just released them.  Glad to have seen them, too.  Evidence that I may still have an audience.  

"Have your chatbot contact my chatbot.  We should do lunch."

 I read an article yesterday that reported there is an app that can, with 99% accuracy, detect writing created by A.I.  You can subscribe to it for $20 a month. . . and I wonder why?  I mean, who needs to know?  I guess it might be handy for lazy teachers and professors who don't want to handle writing assignments effectively.  I thought about signing up for a month just to run my blog through the app.  I think my use of ". . ." and "--" and hanging italicized sentences might be mistaken for bot writing.  So I've read, anyway.  But nope, I swear, I am fucking up the writing all on my own.  But do I care if you are having A.I. write your memos, letters of recommendation, etc?  Not a bit.  Why would it matter?  After the bot has done your job, you still look it over and approve or disapprove of it like any good admin, right?  Back at the factory, after I left, they hired a VP with an Ed.D. who is as illiterate a person as you will ever read. Then--BOOM!--A.I.  Everyone knows she doesn't write her memos any longer.  It is a standing joke, one which has not raised her esteem in anyone's estimation.  Were I working there still, I'd have A.I. summarize her briefs so that I got the gist and not the bloviation.  

And I'd probably do something scandalous, too.  

I'm just a little scamp. 

But I don't really blame her.  Writing is fun until you have to do it.  Unless you adopt a character.  At lunch on Wednesday, my secretary and I were having a good laugh over the way I'd write return emails in response to some disgruntled complaint.  I would speak the words I was writing in the voice of a 1940's movie actor, many times William Powell in "The Thin Man."

"Dear Mr. Equitone, It has come to my attention. . . ."

It really helped make a miserable chore fun, and my secretary was always delighted.  She'd laugh and clap her hands in approval.  

"And so we will attend to this most pressing matter without delay.  Sincerely. . . ."

Those old actors were really something.  A.I. can't match them.  

I recently got fooled by some A.I. music, though.  Again.  Damn!

That same app that can detect A.I. writing is not very good at catching A.I. images.  But, and this was something new to me, A.I. companies are embedding secret codes in images that identifies them.  Hadn't thought of that.  If they can do that, doesn't it seem obvious that they can embed other codes, too?  

A.I. is watching you!  You can't escape.  

As I've said from the beginning, the people in charge of A.I. scare the shit out of me.  

"Dr. Eldon Tyrell.  CEO, The Tyrell Corporation.  Our Motto: MORE HUMAN THAN HUMAN!"

 Still, I like fooling around in it to make things.  I'm like J.F. Sebastian, "living a lonely, isolated life in the abandoned Bradbury Apartments."  

"I make friends. They're toys. My friends are toys. I make them. It's a hobby."

Rusted brandy in a diamond glass
Everything is made from dreams
Time made from honey slow and sweet
Only the fools know what it means

Temptation
Temptation
Temptation
I can't resist

What the hell, we might as well end on a song.  I've posted it before, but I'm not sure anybody listens to what I put here anyway.  I can say with great assurance, this isn't A.I. 

 

Temptation, temptation, temptation
Oh, temptation, temptation, I can't resist
I know that she is made of smoke
But I've lost my wayy

She knows that I am broke
So that I must play
Temptation, temptation, temptation
Oh, whoa, temptation, temptation, I can't resist 

Dutch pink and Italian blue
She is waiting there for you
My will has disappeared
Now my confusions oh so clear 

Temptation, temptation, temptation
Whoa, whoa, temptation, temptation
I can't reisist

The Troubles of the Bourgeoisie

It was a beautiful day.  I had no idea what to do.  

I did nothing.  

I came back to my mother's house early.  It was too soon to have a cocktail, I thought, but. . . .  After a bit of sitting and staring, I read for an hour.  But I was outside in the garage porch, and it was hot.  I was sitting in a plastic leather lounger, and I was sweating.  I decided to make an early dinner.  I wasn't making much.  

The news.  More t.v.  Bed.  

I need human interaction.  

"Hi.  I'm one of the boys from the neighborhood.  What's your name?"

One good luncheon date has put my present life in perspective.  It is miserable.  

"You need to be careful what you say out loud.  When she's gone. . . ."

Oh, trust me, I would be full of guilt.  But not to worry.  I'll be gone before she is, the last years of my life spent in empty servitude.  

The film lab sent me an email at noon.  My film was ready to pick up.  I had shot slide film and was excited to see.  

I was surprised when I walked in.  The pretty blonde woman at the counter reached into a bin and pulled out my film.  I'd only seen her once, and she wasn't there when I dropped the film off to be developed.  She didn't ask my name, just smiled and handed the rolled up strip to me.  

I put the film on the light tray on the counter and started looking through.  She was talking to another customer as I went through each slide with a loupe.  

"Funny, isn't it, that when you get your film back, you wonder where all the masterpieces you thought you made have gone."

She looked at me and said, "Well. . . slide film is tricky."

"Oh, no. . . I don't mean the processing.  I meant the photographer."

"Oh. . . yea.  Ha."

The excitement was gone.  I had my cameras with me, and I only needed to make eight exposures to finish another roll, but it was hot and there seemed to be no magic in it anymore, so I drove back home to start scanning the film.  And that is when I began to wonder.  I had shot this roll on the old Canon film camera.  And the film was older.  The slides looked either underexposed or underdeveloped.  The colors were not saturated.  What was it--me, the camera, the film, or the lab?  

Food for thought.  Maybe shooting up the 100 or so rolls of old film wasn't the best idea.  Thrifty, sure, but I could be screwing up what might have been some good photographs.  

Or was I just shitting myself?  Was I able to make "good photographs" anymore?  How would I know?  I wasn't winning any awards.  Nobody was clamoring for a print.  I wasn't a social media star.  I don't even know how that shit works.  I've posted some photos, but like ten people see them.  

Vivian Maier never showed anyone her work.  Eggleston said he only liked his own photographs.  Did he mean all of them or only some?  

Why should it matter?  As I said before, speaking to the void, making pictures should be fun.  And as a photographer from Belarus sagely told me by email so long ago, "When you can't make photographs, don't try to make photographs."  That's pretty much the same thing, right?  

I wonder what happened to him.  Sasha.  And his girlfriend.  I still have a photo of her that he sent me hanging on a wall in my house.  A sad ballad, I think.  

The rest of the photos I bartered for are by women who are doing quite well.  Three in particular.  When I traded out one desk for the one T gave me, I found, among the many, many other things stored away forgotten in the drawers, a birthday card from one with a small hand colored photo pasted on.  I'd forgotten about it completely.  It warmed my heart.  

But that now seems long ago and far away.  

It is going to be another bright sunny day.  I wish I could spend it at the beach.  Take some photos.  Sit in a beachside pub and drink a cold beer and eat a fried fish sandwich.  Talk to the locals.  Which reminds me.  The last time I was at the beach, the only time I've gotten out of town for the day in years, was Bike Week.  I still have the phone numbers of two women who wanted me to make pictures with me.  Not "with me"--you know what I mean.  Lunch with Red one afternoon.  Lunch with the factory women yesterday.  

That's it.  That has been my social life this year, at least with any females.  

And mom.  

I'll go make breakfast for her now.  I bought some of those whole grain protein frozen toaster waffles for her.  She asks for them all the time now.  But I'll fix eggs and Canadian bacon and toast with honey and a side of Kimchi for gut health today.  She hasn't lost a pound on my watch, and the old machine keeps ticking.  Vitamins and minerals and good fats and proteins.  

And about 30 prescription pills a day.  

I'm going to look at my buddy's e-bike today.  And who knows, I might even go out and make some pictures that only you will see.  

And that is better than what 90% of the world's population will have today.  Mine are the troubles of a bourgeoisie, First World privileged baby.  

And I'm just the fellow to document it.  For you.

Selah.  

Lunch

I was nervous about going to lunch with my old colleagues, my old secretary and the new shop foreman who took my position twice removed.  I got to the restaurant first, and when they walked in the door, their eyes popped and they both said, "I love your hair.  You look good."  And I have to admit, the cosmos, in all its wisdom, had given me a good hair day.  

"Thanks.  The trouble is now there is nothing but face."

And suddenly, I had found my old groove again.  I like being with women more than with men.  It is just more comfortable, I find.  I think I'm just full of estrogen.  So we caught up, and everything was as it always had been, and the time flew by.  An hour and a half later, it was time to leave, but I could have stayed awhile longer.  

Driving home, I ran through the day in my head, and I realized I am still witty.  You might not find it here, but I seem to have a knack for telling stories, and that can't happen in a group of guys.  You get maybe ten seconds before someone cuts you off.  Guys don't listen.  When I was a young man eating alone, I would watch couples intently, and what I saw was a man talking and a woman listening, and I thought I didn't want to be that guy.  I was going to listen when women talked and try not to butt in with commentary.  It was a good lesson. My dead ex-friend once said to me, "You're really interested in what people say, aren't you.  I just wait for my turn to talk."  And it was true.  I've learned much about people by listening.  But that all changes with a group of men.  Everything is quick, whether witted or not.  No one ever makes it all the way through a story.  You get the beginning, but you never know how the story was going to end.  

Yesterday, though, I had the women laughing.  I love to hear women laugh.  I've said it all my life--it sounds like diamonds being poured into expensive crystal. 

It was mid-afternoon when I got back to town from Factory City, and I wanted to take some photos along a stretch of highway that looked promising, but it was too hot.  The little Corolla was reporting that it was 101 degrees outside on the road.  I felt it.  The heat and humidity could knock you down, so I bailed on that idea and left it for another day--probably sometime in October if this is any prediction of how summer is going to be.  

I went to the grocery store and loaded up for mother's, and then I went back to my house to chill.  And when I sat down at the computer, I came across a photographer, Kristina Rozhkova.  

Oh. . . my!  She has published a book called "The Bliss of Girlhood."  I went to her website, and here is what she said:

The Bliss of Girlhood

For some reason, as a society we sanctify "youth". You may say that this project for me is an attempt to do the same. Each one of my heroines is for me, a goddess each one of their gestures is sanctified. I met my models for "Girls" by chance, while out on a walk in my hometown this summer. I instinctively knew that I wanted to shoot my next portrait series about them, to spend time with them, and almost join them in their play through photographing them.

In working with my models I especially liked working with the notions of "affect", "sensuality", and the interplay between the concepts of the"aberrant", "erotic" and "childlike". I sought to find my own so-called "adult" experiences reflected in the world of childlike simplicity and beauty.

I enjoyed being enthralled by the image of the slightly-opened mouth, the relaxed, Balthus-esque poses; the image of a strand of hair slightly out of place or a gesture that I saw as an expression of almost-religious trepidation.

I do not fixate on the "erotic" here. For me, these photos are not about eroticism for eroticism's sake, or even about eroticism at all. Rather "Girls" is about being able to catch and reexamine that transient, waifish, liminal moment between "almost childhood" and "almost adulthood' that I have already passed in my own life. For me this photoset is an attempt to get at the heart of vitality as a concept, to examine life in all its forms.

"Childhood" and "blissfulness" converge with "aggressive sexuality" and "disquiet."

These themes are very present in my previous work as well, the conflict between "power" and "weakness" "sensuality" and "aggression". All this converged in the images of my "Girls" who are always full of contradictions. The beauty and the essence of "waifishness" or "girlhood" for me, is in its transience… 

I found the photography ordinary but the subject bold.  These were not her relatives, and she is no Sally Mann, but she is exploring something in a way that. . . well. . . you know. . . .

Innocent enough not to call the authorities down, but. . . well, she's female, and so. . . .  But you know I've echoed those same words a thousand and one times before.  

It was time to return to mother's.  I pulled the groceries out of the refrigerator and stepped out into the muggy five o'clock air.  But I was feeling fine, still thinking about lunch.  I have a wry sense of humor, I told myself.  I could even report the grimness of my current existence in ways that made them laugh.  So when I pulled into mother's garage, I put away the groceries, made a cocktail, and joined her in the garage/porch.  I wanted to tell her about my day.  

She couldn't hear what I was saying, though, so we stared out into the distance until my cocktail was gone.  

"I'm going to make supper," I said.  

I made that ground beef, garbanzo bean, and tomato sauce dinner again with grated garlic and ginger, cumin, salt, pepper, and Cayenne.  Have I told you I finally know the difference between red pepper and Cayenne?  They are both red peppers, but Cayenne is hotter.  

Over rice.  

And when we had eaten, there was still half a pot of dinner left in the pan, so I decided to put it in a container and take it across the street to the couple who had just had open heart surgery.  One of them did.  

I walked in just as they were getting ready to cook.  We chatted about how well he was doing and they thanked me for the dinner.  

When I went back to mother's, I watched a couple YouTube camera porn pieces, then looked for a movie we could watch. 

"Here's one, mom.  About Elvis.  Do you want to watch this?"

It was "Priscilla."  Oh, my.  I had no idea.  I never followed Elvis, of course, and I didn't realize that gene ran through the family.  Jerry Lee Lewis was his cousin, so I am guessing.  It was a little surprising to me.  But I love this director, the same who made "The Virgin Suicides" and "Lost in Translation."  

She understands something about "girlhood," too, that isn't always bliss, but thank goodness, she looks at it and doesn't turn away.  

Nepo baby that she is.  I can't find the photos that her father took of her when she was young.  They have disappeared from the internet as have the photos Lee Miller's father made of her.  

Selavy.  We live in dangerous times.  I heard two young men in the gym saying they wish we could bring back public executions.  

"That would make people think."  

I wanted to say to them, "Yea, like they do in Iran and Afghanistan," but I didn't really want to get involved.  It would have been a losing proposition.  

The movie was over at ten, and when I went to bed, I slept well the whole night through.  I'm sure it was the lunch that did it, that made me feel "normal" again.  

It may not seem like much to you, but as the institutionalized Tom Waits/Renfield says in "Dracula". . . a movie directed by the father. . . "my soul for a kitten!"

The Light That Burns Brightest

I have a luncheon date with some of my old comrades at the factory.  I don't want to go.  I was ill yesterday.  Badly.  I don't know what caused it, but I suspect it was bad alchemy on my part. Very dizzy and feeling like I wanted to puke.  Bloated belly, too.  Just misery.  I didn't move the entire day.  I hadn't slept, as I reported, the night before, and, perhaps, that was bad alchemy, too.  I think I feel better this morning but it is too early to tell. Physically, I think I am able to go to meet the comrades, but mentally. . . I'm not so sure.  They will be shocked by my present state.  I'm not looking so good.  I will not be the heroic figure I always imagined I was.  This life I'm living--or rather, the one I'm not--has taken its toll on me.  

One day, my mother's 91 year old neighbor asked me what I was going to do that day.  Worn to the bone, tired and distraught, I said, "The same thing I do every day.  My life is not my own."  

"Oh, come on," she replied, "you're better than that."

I don't like her as much as I used to.  

I will go, I imagine, to meet my comrades, but I will not be the same jovial cat I used to be.  I am slow now, dulled by the daily routine that grinds me down without cessation. 

"If there is anything I can do to help. . . ."

As I usually reply, "Can you take weekends?"

What they will see today is a man not retired but resigned.  It is difficult to understand from the outside, I know, for I have the freedom to do anything I like inside a box.  It doesn't look like much in a glance.  But I've worn deep grooves in the pathways now.  Incessant.  Interminable.  

They say that a person imprisoned for a certain amount of time loses their ability to function "on the outside."  Recidivism is high.  They just lose their ability to function independently.  There was a truly powerful t.v. series years ago about a man released from prison trying to adapt to life again that C.C. and I were fond of.  

Fond?  Not the right word.  What was the name of it?

I love A.I.  "Rectify." 2013-16.  

That character didn't do so well.  

The thing about prisons is that they don't seem to be a deterrent.  The number of incarcerated has grown past our ability to house them.  I'm guessing--and this is just a guess--that there are simply too many things considered criminal.  Perhaps we should think about reducing rather than increasing the things we consider crimes.  

I don't know.  I'm just considering my own case.  My sentence seems severe.  Of what am I guilty?

"You're shitting me, right?"

O.K.  Whatever.  It is obvious.  Conceited self-absorption. 

"Isn't there another term for that?  More succinct?"

A.I. and I agree on this--the term has been over- and misused in pop psychology.  Let's not confuse it with simple vanity. 

I grow old, I grow old. 

Shall I wear my trousers rolled?

Yup.  Roll 'em up, old sport.  You'll not be offered that peach.  

But enough of that kind of talk.  That's it for the daily whine.  We all live under the curse of a death sentence. Why go on about it so?  

But as Roy Batty so famously says, "I want more life, fucker!"  

At least he got his hands on his creator.  Selavy.  

Buy an e-Bike Instead

I watched the number one movie in America last night.  Broke all records for gross earnings on opening weekend.  It was already available on Netflix.  So I watched it.  If that is a glimpse into the American mind, then we are a country of adolescent imbeciles.  Worst movie since "Waterworld."  The script couldn't possibly have been more than ten or fifteen pages.  

No wonder I have such a difficult time getting along.  

I was in bed by ten.  Thought I'd slept the whole night through when I got up at 12:30.  And again at 2:30.  After that, I never got back to sleep.  Lay in bed thinking.  What would I do if I didn't have to take care of my mother?  I know, I know. . . bad juju.  I thought of all the places I'd go, all the pictures I'd make.  But I knew it was a fantasy.  I am certain I will die before she does.  You think I'm being dramatic, I know.  I'm not.  

And so, what can I do?  I think I'm going to buy an electric bike.  The Shock Jock has one he said he'd sell me "for a good price."  

"Good for whom?" I queried.  

He showed me a photo of it.  I like it.  It's a beach cruiser looking thing.  I could use it to scoot to the Boulevard or in the other direction to the little hipster section of town.  I'd go on little photo journeys, perhaps.  

Just a thought.  

The plumber came and fixed the leak yesterday.  He was a good kid.  Young.  It was a cracked pipe or hose--something in between.  It took him about ten minutes to put a new one on.  

$400.00.  

That's what plumbing costs on The Lord's Day, I guess, at least here in my own town.  

If I were a handyman, I could have put that money toward the purchase of an e-bike.  

Wouldn't that be fun?

Everything's Broken

Woke up early, before dawn.  Couldn't lie in bed any longer.  Shuffled to the kitchen to hit the button on the coffee maker, but I heard something.  What was it?  I tiptoed around turning my ears this way and that.  Something I couldn't quite sneak up on.  Faint.  Spooky.  Wait a minute.  I looked under the sink. Water was coming from somewhere.  Everything was wet, but not too wet.  Apparently it had just begun.  I pulled everything out from under the sink and reached in to find the leak.  What to do?  I went outside to look for a shutoff valve.  Apparently, my mother's house does not have one.  I began to panic.  Bucket--get a bucket.  I went to the garage and found one.  I tried to put it under the leak, but the pipes were in the way.  I forced it in anyway.  Sort of.  It was catching only some of the water.  I went back to the garage to find another, flat pan.  I found one.  It was catching all the water but filling up every five minutes or so.  I sat there watching, emptying, watching.  This would not do.  I got my iPhone and turned on the flashlight.  I got painfully on the ground and shined the light up under the sink.  I could not see the leak, but I could reach my hand up and feel it.  There were small knobs.  Hmm.  I started twisting one--twist twist twist.  The water stopped.  I'm a dumbass, I thought.  I got up and tried turning on the water.  It was the cold water tap I had turned off.  I got towels and dried up what I could.  This was going to be an easy fix--for a plumber.  I wasn't even tempted to try.  I'd fuck something up and flood the house.  I've done that before.  

When my mother got up, I informed her.  

Whatever.

In a little while, I'll call a plumber.  

That is how today began.  All my hopes and plans and dreams and aspirations. . . . 

I just ain't catching any breaks.  

Still, let's look on the sunny side.  

I stalled and stalled and stalled before going out with cameras yesterday.  Going among the throng with the a camera was anxiety producing.  But I forced myself to pack up and go.  I'd take the Xterra now that it was running.  I loaded up the car and left the house somewhere after noon.  The sun was beating down.  It was hot. It was humid.  I parked the car around the corner from the hipster market in the big parking lot of the liquor store.  I'd spent enough money there.  I wouldn't be that long.  

The hipster market was bland. Row after row of sun shaded clothes racks, old t-shirts, shit that the Salvation Army had thrown away.  Hipsters dressed in the same faded cloths.  I had an ultra wide angle lens on the Leica.  I walked through the crowd seeing nothing of interest.  I saw a girl with a camera taking photos.  She was a young hipster and would surely not get into any trouble.  It is good to be a young woman if you are a photographer.  My advice: don't be an old man with a camera.  

I may start dressing in drag.  

I walked back to the car with a camera full of film, hardly having snapped the shutter.  I decided to drive. . . somewhere.  I made a few wrong turns and ended up in a place I hadn't been for awhile.  There was a sign painted on a wall.  I stopped the car and left the engine running.  Grabbed a camera and took some photos, then went back and got another camera.  O.K.  When I got back to the car, the temperature guage was up and the a.c. was blowing warm.  Piss shit fuck goddamn.  The thing still isn't fixed.  But as soon as I started driving, the temperature gauge dropped to normal.  I hit a long red light.  The temperature gauge climbed.  I turned off the a.c.  It dropped a bit.  

And that is how I spent the rest of the day.  I turned the a.c. off at red lights, then turned it back on.  I was sweating bullets driving through town.  

I finished a roll of film and decided to take it to the film lab.  After that, I took the car home.  What to do?  Wait until winter to drive it?  

I put everything back in my mother's car and drove to Whole Foods.  I had told my mother when I left that I would fix a steak for dinner.  I picked out a good one, a big, thick Porterhouse.  Asparagus.  Baked beans.  And, oh, yes. . . tapenade.  A bottle of red wine.  That should do it.  

And it did.  I let the steak sit out for two hours to come to room temperature.  I patted it dry with paper towels and rubbed both sides with olive oil.  Salt.  Pepper.  I punched a thousand holes into the meat with a fork.  I let it sit while my mother and I drank some wine and ate the tapenade with crackers.  

Just before six, I set the Dutch Oven on the burner turned to Hi.  In a few minutes, when it was good and hot, I seared the steak for one minute on each side, then I turned the heat to medium and cooked the steak with the top on the pot for three minutes.  Flipped it.  Three minutes more.  

You could almost cut it with a fork.  Holy smokes--I've learned to make a good stovetop steak.  It was a huge steak, but there were no leftovers.  I gnawed the last bits of meat off the bone feeling like Bobby Kennedy Jr.  

I've called the plumbing company and now we wait for someone to become available.  My Sunday is shot.  I'll be here enduring whatever the fates have planned.  

But look on the sunny side.  

"If you enjoy this sort of content, please hit the like button and subscribe."

Until next time. . . .   

Between You and Me. . .

I got the scanner thing figured out, and boy did I scan.  Sat my butt in a chair before the computer all the live-long day.  I won't bore you but to say the update to a software program I bought to run my old Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 ED scanner, discontinued in 2009, did the trick.  Apparently I hadn't used it with my current desktop computer which I bought in 2019 because I did not have the right cables for connecting the scanner to the computer. The cable I ordered from Amazon didn't work, but thanks to A.I., I found the right connectors.  And now things are purring like a kitten.  Before leaving home, I sent about a dozen images to myself to download onto my little laptop at my mother's house, but it is old, too, and getting funky and for some reason it doesn't pick up all the texts I should receive.  They are sitting on my phone, so I just sent this one of a very handsome devil this morning and will wait to see if the rest come through later.  

Oh, yea. . . a world of selfies.  

I was invited to Happy Hour with someo of the gymroids yesterday.  I told them I would love to go, but I'd could only have a quick pop, and then I'd have to get back to my mother's, so we met at 4:30 at the bar I last drank in with Red on a Saturday afternoon.  I got there first.  Same quirky bartender.  Remembered me.  Bartenders, baristas. . . I don't know how they do it.  But I was not there for my "usual."  I ordered what Red had, a Belvedere dirty martini.  

Made from Polish rye, I just read.  Better than corn or wheat vodkas, but some prefer potato vodkas for a more earthy taste.  I'm not a regular vodka drinker, but this thing hit the spot, cold and briny-sweet.  

So did the second one.  

The boys showed up and the barman knew them, too.  Alain ordered an Old Fashioned with Maker's "Mark."  I put that last in quotation because the barman had a field day with that.  I didn't follow, really, but there are several Maker's.  And, said the barman, he had more expensive whiskeys, too.  He wasn't through working over our section of the bar, though.  He was ramped.  I should have had my camera with me because he was looking crazy wild.  And so the afternoon went.  The bar crowd grew rapidly, and by five there was standing room only.  There were some pretty wild characters showing up, too.  Across the bar sat two pretty women.  A guy nearly as old as I and not nearly as attractive showed up in a partially unbuttoned shirt and a cowboy hat, and he slowly made his way to them.  

"Look at that," I said to the boys.  "That should be me."

"Everybody knows him," said the shock jock.  

"Why?"

"He's a musician or something."

"I don't know him.  Why should I?  Does he know me?"

"Exactly," said the shock jock.  

My across the street neighbor walked in just as I was leaving.  Alone.  He's my age, a retired orthodontist with money, divorced, and always randy.  I said hello goodbye to him on my sad way out.  I would have loved to stay, but when I had called my mother to see how she was doing . . . .

I ordered a pizza from the hippie pizza place when I left the bar.  It was ready when I got there and hot when I took it back to mom.  She wasn't very excited.  Her cable tv had been out since the terrible storm the day before.  I, once again, unplugged all the boxes and plugged them back in but it still didn't work, so, frustrated, I called the cable company.  I was two martinis and a big glass of wine in when I called.  I was on hold for fifteen minutes, and when I finally got a human, it was the usual ordeal.  I'd been on the phone for forty-five minutes when the fellow on the other end said they would have to send someone to the house.  On Monday, between nine and ten.  Maybe it was the liquor, maybe it was my life, or maybe it was the motherfucking cable company, but the fellow on the other end of the line got my full, foul, filthy curse-laden, wrathful response.  

He didn't appreciate it.  

Upon reflection. . . something is wrong with me.  I'm broken.  Mine was the ranting of a madman.  I've lost control.  I'm usually resigned to the ways of the world.  Last night, I was feckless.  

I'm sure the cable company has a dosierre now.  I'm betting that a repairman never shows up now.  

There is a little hipster pop-up street market today near the Cafe.  I may load up some cameras and go.  I should, but I'm not sure I can handle the anxiety of walking with cameras in a crowd.  The chances are good that I will run into some confrontation.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't handle that well.  The cracks are widening and getting deeper.  All the King's horses, and all the King's men. . . . 

Just now, all my beautiful pictures came through on my computer.  I could have selected an image from many.  It's o.k.  I'll need them every morning.  A selfie is good for a report of my sudden mental collapse.  

But as one woman replied when I sent her the selfie, "Just a happy boy with his camera."

Uh-huh.  I sent a woman my selfie.  Tell no one.  This is just between us. 

Selavy.  

"Who Is Fred Dubitone?"

I mistakenly sent a text message to the wrong person yesterday.  I may have lost a friend.  It was an innocuous thing, really, but not to the recipient, perhaps.  It brought me down.  Way down.  I couldn't quit beating myself up all night.  When I woke in the dark, I'd remember it and get low all over again.  I'm not sure how many friends I have left.  I think, by and large, I've been forgotten.  And so I tell myself I will hunker down, huddle up in my shell, read, write, and take pictures, and I will not think or worry about it. But this writing about myself, now. . . I don't know.  I thought I would quit it, but it seems I can't.  I thought about writing character portraits of the people I have known.  

"Who Is Fred Dubitone?"  

I don't know why he came to mind.  It was a kid I went to school with.  He came to our junior high school in the ninth grade.  He was French, or so it seemed.  We could hardly understand him when he spoke, but that made him intriguing, especially to the girls.  He was good looking with dark curly hair and slightly dusky skin, and he was immediately taken up by the "in" crowd of kids who were in the social clubs and sat in student government.  

When we got to high school, he was early into getting high.  Kids would meet up downtown at the big lake with the famous fountain and smoke pot, then, later, drop acid.  But in the twelfth grade, he was walking with some other boys when a big truck swerved off the road and ran them over.  Fred took the worst of it and was in the hospital for a long time.  He became something of a senior class concern, and when he finally returned to school, he came back to a hero's welcome.  

When we went to college, he was among us, and in our second year, I was invited to take off the summer to tour Europe with a few friends, Fred among them.  They calculated the money needed, and everyone saved up, begged or borrowed.  In the end, I decided not to go.  Fred came up short, but somebody spotted him the rest.  

When the boys got back at the end of the summer, they were skinny and had tales to tell.  Things had gone right and wrong, of course, and they had not always wanted to do the same things, so they would break up and meet again somewhere.  Running out of money, they went hungry, learning to eat scraps of food diners left on their plates.  The funny thing was, they thought it would be good to have Fred along in France since he spoke the language.  Except. . . he really didn't.  French people did not like him, they said, and they found out that he was not from France but from Morocco.  His French was as bad as his English and so it turned out Fred didn't really have a language at all.

By now, Fred's hair was shoulder length and he began to put on weight.  The last time I saw him, he was sitting on the floor in house he rented with some others with his shirt off rolling joints and looking like a little fat Buddha.  Fred didn't finish college, and I really didn't think of him much again until last night.  

Leonard was the one whose idea it was to go to Europe.  I didn't really have much to do with him in high school but we became friends in college.  His mother was an elementary school teacher and his father a blue collar working man whose brother was the state's Agriculture Secretary.  A large building at the university was named after him.  

Leonard's parents were recently divorced.  His father was a bit of a rounder, it seemed, a good looking man who exercised and was proud of his figure.  Now, Leonard was "the man of the house," living with his mother and three sisters.  As often happened then, after high school, Leonard became something of a hippie.  He and Chuck and I had long hair and formed hippie intramural sports teams to compete against the frat boys.  My college roommate played with us, too, and boy did we piss off a lot of people.  They hated losing to flip-flop wearing hippies.  

Leonard was the first person I knew to live with a girlfriend.  I went to their apartment and for me it was like a wonderland.  She was a little older than Leonard, and the place looked like something out of a movie about Haight-Ashbury with old low couches, candles, incense, and Batik wall hangings.  I was quite envious in a fearful way.  His girlfriend's brother lived with them, and it was he who formed the first social/political organization for gays at the college.  

Before the year was out, Leonard was his girlfriend's boyfriend.  Now, Leonard was not only the first person I knew who lived with his girlfriend, but he was the first openly gay friend I had, too.  It was quite a new thing then and a bit of a shock.  I thought back though, to the times I went to Leonard's house where he lived with his sisters, and he'd be walking about after his shower in short shorts and clogs.  

O.K.  

Chuck was a strange one.  He was a real stoner who wasn't supposed to chew gum, his doctor told him, because he always swallowed it.  Couldn't help it.  Some sort of reflex, I guess.  When we were out, he'd ask somebody for a stick of gum.  

"Chuck, you can't have gum.  You always swallow it." 

"I'm not going to swallow it.  Give me a stick of gum."

In a few minutes, Chuck would not be chewing anymore.  

"Where's the gum, Chuck?"

Before our second year of college was through, Chuck had shocked us all and joined the military.  I never saw him again.  

Leonard went on to become an elementary school teacher.  I saw him several times over the years.  He never seemed to age and was still one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet.  

All that was running through my head last night as I couldn't sleep.  That and much more.  I think I was measuring my life against the people I have known. . . and coming up short.  

So it seemed last night in the shadow of an errant text message.  

It was innocuous, perhaps, but maybe she didn't think so.  

But Enough of That

The best thing about yesterday was the food.  And that's not saying much.  I fixed hard boiled eggs and some protein toaster waffles for breakfast.  With maple syrup.  No lunch, of course, but we ate a small container of Greek olives chili peppers and garlic cloves from Whole Foods while sitting outside mom's house waiting for the house cleaner to finish up.  For dinner, beer battered cod and cooked, peeled giant shrimp with finger thick asparagus and a yellow rice pilaf.  Hardly any prep.  Easy cleanup.  As healthy as quick food can be.  

As I say, that was the best thing.  

I did get to read more of "The Frenchmen" yesterday while sitting with my mother.  Eakin spends a lot of time dishing on the theorists, and it is both revelatory and entertaining--until you think of such a tale being told about yourself.  Curious minds, they say, want to know.  It seems to be the stuff of fiction which makes it better.  

"He was caught by his mother masturbating to the Bible."

You can't make this kind of stuff up. Yes you can. But everyone has secrets. I like to make pictures of them. They seem less. . .  real, if that makes any sense.  Photographer or peeper--you be the judge.  

The new stuff, though, is none of that.  Trying to do good work without getting into any trouble. Steering clear of the human spectacle. Much less anxiety producing.  

Though this weekend there is a hipster market near the Cafe Strange.  Dare I?  A little Leica shot from the hip of the goings on of the underclass?  I love them so, letting their freak flags fly.  I should go to a golf tournament or some such yuppee affair and do the same, then pair them up in diptychs.  Now there is a capital idea. 

But it would surely land me in some Jihad jail, Islamic, Progressive, Cowboy Christian, or otherwise. 

C.C. sends me photos of small towns he visits in the midwest.  They are devoid of people, as are the photos my friend who moved to the midwest sends me.  I know there are people in the midwest, if not so many.  But C.C. tells me there are a lot of mean-assed Proud Boys there.  I know what he means.  I once asked an old man sitting on the stoop of an old, closed gas station on a Sunday afternoon in a small, rural town if I could take his photo. He said sure, and as I was trying to frame him up with my big old Bronica medium format camera, some redneck boys drove by in a pickup truck and began shouting at me and banging on the side of the truck door.  Those boys, I think, weren't real fans of Robert Frank, et al .  

"What are you doing out here, boy?"

"Oh, I'm just pissing people off and trying to get my ass kicked, if I were to guess."

It's pretty much the same in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I hear.  Many other places, too.  It is a shame, though.  History will be lost except through the selfie. 

Driving through rural parts of the state, I see so many things I'm afraid to get out and take photos of, things that tell a story of the present history of our grand nation: old trailers sitting at odd angles with every sort of junkyard scrap piled around, a man and a woman sitting in folding beach chairs by a cooking grill; a shirtless man with long pants hard, black shoes and white socks, sitting with a cigarette and a beer in his driveway. 

Etc. 

I have not the chutzpah, I guess, or not enough, anyway.  I am cowardly when I can be, when nobody's looking.  

I can make those images in A.I. though.   

I did this in a rush just now.  I could do a better job with it, but you get my drift.  Would you, given the opportunity, make the photograph?  A better one than this, I mean?  

Maybe it wouldn't be worthwhile. That is how I succored myself as I drove by.  I didn't even do that driving by the trailer, though.  I just knew I was not that dedicated to "my art."  Still, alone with myself at night, I am full of cowardly regrets.  

It would take someone like Sir Richard Burton, I think.  Not the actor, of course, but the British Explorer.  Funny, isn't it, that they are both knighted and have the same name.  One got it for acting.  

Huh.

I guess the explorer was Sir Richard Francis Burton, though. I have always been enamored of/with/by his life.  He was a maniac.  Fearless.  

If only he'd had a camera.  Sadly, he was pre-photography. 

Richard Francis Burton … dashing explorer of the exotic and erotic

Well, I guess there was photography.  He never took any photos, though.  More the pity.  

O.K. I overslept and my mother is ready for breakfast.   I'd better get cracking.  Enough of this kind of talk.  Until tomorrow.  

You're Nobody

Man alive, I just love this one!  My imitations will know no limits.  When I scanned this yesterday, I paused for a moment and wondered who might have taken it.  Maybe William Klein. Maybe Fred Herzog.  And just maybe Leiter, too.  All of them working magic in the 1950s.  And there was Robert Frank and Diane Arbus.  And I can't leave out Mark Cohen or Garry Winogrand.  

Those have been and will now again be my guiding lights.  

Actually shot on black and white film, too, just like olden times.  

Some photography orients the viewer.  Ansel Adam's images, for instance.  He puts you in a place.  Vacation pictures and wedding photographers, by and large, do.  

This one, though, is more disorienting.  I like it.  It seems to me a half-remembered dream.  I couldn't wait to show it.  It makes my knees weak.  It's been awhile since I've been this excited to shoot pictures again.  

But photography is becoming increasingly illegal.  Peepers and creepers are popping up everywhere.  Glasses with cameras are becoming illegal in Europe.  God warned us about making graven images, but we didn't listen.  Islam knows how to deal with infidels.  They've been killing photographers in some Islamic states.  They are a deeply religious people.  

As-salamu alaykum.

Photography, as art, is heretical, I think.  It is, as C..C. says of all art, transgressive.  By that, of course, I mean that it asks you to look beyond the boundaries of what you are used to and what you believe in.  The rest is just decorative.  

But don't misunderstand me--I like the decorative, too.  

Sometimes.  

I'm just pulling your leg a bit, though.  I don't believe in ART.  But I do believe there are artists.  

Me?  I just want to please and delight and, if I can, make you laugh. 

"You just like to piss people off, don't you?"

That is what one of my favorite grad professors said to me one day as we were riding in an elevator together.  It rather shocked me, but I am pretty quick sometimes. 

"No, sir.  I just want to shake them out of their complacency."

And that, my friends, was the conversation verbatim.  

In meetings, when I disagreed with someone, I'd agree with them to the absurd extreme.  I'd run that logic out to its furthest distance just to watch it crumble.  Usually, the room got uncomfortably quiet, but afterwards, people would tell me, "I'm always glad when you are in these meetings.  You say what everyone else is thinking."  

It started in grade school where I thought I was the class lawyer.  

"You can't do that to Bobby.  That's not fair."

Oddly enough, I never got a paddling or detention in my whole educational career.  Isn't that something?  I never got fired, either.  

But, I think, if I had gone along more, I could have done better.  I had a knack for sometimes shooting myself in the foot.  

"How's that working for you?  You sure showed them, didn't you?"

People still like to say things like that to me now.  They like that I'm nobody.  That's what Dean Martin told me.  He said, "You're nobody 'til somebody loves you.  You're nobody 'til somebody cares."  

My mountain buddy brought it up the other day when he visited.  He remembers a line I used. 

"You're right.  You win.  Now get out of my house."

"Look how that worked out!"

Kick a fellow when he's down, I said.  Nobody loves me.  Nobody cares.  

"You need to quit being so picky.  You need a partner."

That one came from my beautician last week. 

When I left the cafe yesterday, though, the counter lady ran out after me to tell me goodbye.  Huh.  That was a big surprise.  

I went home and shaved.  Holy shit, that was a big mistake.  There is nothing now but my old wrinkled vestige of a face.  

"Look away!  I'm hideous!"

I think I need a vacation badly.  

I'm still shooting film, and I think I got the scanner working again.  I won't know for sure until I run it through its paces for a bit.  Won't be doing that today, though.  I have to take mother across town to the oral surgeon for a 1:30 appointment.  Fucks my day up royally.  I used to spend my nights listening to music and working on images so long ago now.  Now I watch t.v.  Those were better times.  

No Time

O.K.  So I am making Leiter-like images right here in my own hometown.  Get used to it.  I might be doing this for awhile.  I like them.  I don't know if I would get the same look with digital cameras.  Maybe, but I don't want to try.  I pulled out all my old, unused film yesterday.  No, not all.  Just the 35mm and 120mm films.  All told, I have about 100 rolls.  What to do?  I think I'll try to shoot them up.  I may get tired or bored, but that's the plan.  Since it is expired film, though, I may be disappointed.  It is daunting, really.  I have very few hours a week in which to shoot, develop, scan, and take the images into post each week.  It takes time to sit with the images and imagine what can be done, to experiment and fail so many times until something clicks.  

Yesterday, I had left my gym clothes at my own house, so I asked my mother if she would like to take care of some business before I left.  We went to the bank, the dentist's office, the pharmacy, and the grocery store.  The dentist was on vacation and the receptionist was on the phone speaking with a patient for fifteen minutes while I stood and waited, my mother in the car.  Once she was finished, I was told that I needed to make an appointment with the oral surgeon who extracted the tooth.  I did. I'll get to that. 

We sat in line waiting for a teller at the bank. We sat in line at the pharmacy.  And, of course, my mother was super slow in the grocers.  When we got back to her house, I called the oral surgeon's office. We got an appointment.  Yay.  Wednesday, 1:30.  

I'll get back to that.  

I left my mother's house at noon.  I drove to the hipster film store to pick up my negatives.  Since I was far from home, I decided to detour back to where I had shot the double exposed film and see if I could remake the images.  You know, the magical place I had discovered.  

I parked. I got out of the car with my cameras.  Where in the fuck had everything gone?  It looked nothing like "the magical place" I had discovered on Sunday.  I tried hard, but I only took a few photos. 

You can never swim in the same river twice, they say. 

When I got back to my house, there was much to do.  The house was a mess of photo materials and books and laundry and, and, and the maids were coming the next day.  First, though, I wanted to cut and sleeve the two hanging rolls of film and develop the third.  But I wasn't moving or thinking right.  I was in bad pain in my hips and knees, but mostly in my back and ribs.  Was if from walking with my cameras and camera bag?  It felt like something worse.  More than that, I felt uncoordinated.  My feet were scraping the ground.  My hands were shaking as I tried to cut the film.  Then, I couldn't seem to get the film into the plastic sleeves.  I stumbled and fumbled.  The hands of the clock were going 'round and 'round. 

Once I had them sleeved, I took them to the light table.  The exposures were good, but I didn't want to scan them all to see what they looked like, so I took them to the flatbed to scan them en masse.  Each page of negatives took two scans as the surface of the scanner was smaller than the page.  Two pages, four scans, then into Photoshop to see them.  O.K.  I'd scan some in the good Nikon scanner.  I took the first two strips and loaded them in.  Scanning just one frame takes about twelve to fifteen minutes, so I decided to load and develop the last roll of film.  

Time was flying. I still felt weird.  Had I had a stroke?  Maybe. . . no, not maybe. . . I had not drunk enough water.  I think that I'd only had coffee, beer, wine, and cocktails for days.  Still, I wasn't thirsty.  

When the film came out of the tank and was hung, I was pleased to see the exposures were right.  I went in to check on the scanner.  

Shit piss. . . the scanner stopped after one frame.  I set it to work again.  This was the pattern now, one frame then an error.  

I looked at the clock.  I'd never make it to the gym.  I still had the house to get ready for the cleaners.  I had financial business to take care of, but as always, that was the last thing on my list.  I had an idea.  I have two Nikon Coolscan 9000s.  One, the one I was using, was hooked up to the fifteen year old Mac laptop that would run the Nikons scanning software.  The other sat in the study with the big computer that used another, more difficult scanning program.  I would try that once again to see if it worked.  

No shit--I couldn't find the cable I needed to connect it to the computer.  I searched and searched. There had to bo one.  I had the scanner hooked up before.  The scanner had an old Firewire 400 connector.  I needed an adapter for the other end that went into the computer.  After half an hour of searching, I gave up. I ordered a cable on Amazon.  

Then I started collecting all the old rolls of unused film.  Four o'clock.  I still had the house to clean.  I wouldn't have time for a shower.  

No gym. No walk. No shower.  

When I got back to my mother's, I was in a foul mood.  I'd have to double up my workout on Tuesday.  How stupid is that, I thought?  WTF is wrong with you?  You act like your training for a competition.  But I still felt off, uncoordinated, muffle-headed.  And on Wednesday, my day was broken right in two.  1:30 we'd need to be across town.  My Wednesday was fucked.  

My mother was sitting in the garage.  I wasn't even out of the car when she started talking to me.  She was babbling about a portable radio.  Her 91 year old friend had brought hers up to show mom.  

"She got it on Amazon," my mother said. "It would be good for out here."

Aaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!!!!!!

I made a cocktail.  Still no water.  I should drink some water, I thought.  The cocktail went down quickly. It was time to make dinner.  

My mother was going on about the things I needed to do.  The pineapples in the backyard were ready.  The blah blah blah blah blah. . . . 

"I'm in a foul mood," I told her gripping my hair in my fists.  I didn't tell her I was dying, that I would be dead without ever sleeping in my own home again.  I wanted to travel.  I wanted to see something outside of town.  I wanted to make more pictures.  I was ready to gnaw my foot off to get out of this trap.

"Dinner's ready."

The news.  Clear the table, do the dishes, clean the kitchen.   

Pour a scotch.  Watch t.v. with mother. . . something she can maybe like.  Nothing from the Criterion Collection.  Just Netflix/Apple TV/ HBO stuff.  

I am not longer able to sleep.  

Now I must go make breakfast for mother.  I'll not get to decide to skip breakfast and later stop in somewhere for a beer and a sandwich.  I won't get to go to my favorite Spanish place and sit at the big round bar. I'll not get to check out one of fifty new places in town.  I'll need to save my appetite for the dinner I will shop for and cook for mother this evening.  

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

I think that photo is fine.  I could do more.  After awhile, the thing would morph and I would develop something new that wasn't just imitation.  But it would take work and time and thought and imagination.  

Have you seen that new thing on tv?

I'm Bad. I'm Nationwide.

"Slow down, buddy. . . still that beating heart.  Don't rush it.  Take your time.  You'll run out of gas too soon.  Be in it for the long haul,"

Things that excite me excite me.  I'm like a kid.  O.K.  But as the song goes, "You'd better slow down. Baby now you're moving way too fast."

So I'd better start with the bad. 

"Shit piss fuck goddamn."

My mother doesn't like me saying that, but I think it's funny.  In the last summer before my last year of undergrad studies, my roommate and I got a job working at the Coca-Cola bottling plant.  Our foreman was named Adrien, and boy oh boy could that guy string a lot of curse words together without repeating one.  It was his only endearing quality.  We used to try, my roommate and I, but we could never get more than five or six out before we stalled or repeated.  We didn't like Adrien and he didn't like us, but I'll guarantee you that I remember him and he has never thought of me since I quit. 

But that is another story for a day when I haven't anything else on my mind.  

Yesterday I left my mother's house at a good time, around ten, and was on the street where I had run out of film the day before making pictures. And oh, what pictures they were. I was in the zone. And when I had finished up with that little strip of road, I drove down another mile, perhaps, to another little shopping zone, parked the car, and began again.  I never go to this little shopping strip, and I was surprised by the cool shops that are there, including tiny places for coffee and food. It was a mini-magical place, the kind I stumble upon once in a great while.  Not many people around, and man, I was quite the shutterbug.  I blew through two rolls of film just-like-that!  

And I was feeling pretty stupid for not bringing more.  I never thought I would take 72 photos in less than an hour.  I needed film.  I could go home and get more or I could take my roll of color film to the lab in another hipster part of town and buy more.  I was in the Xterra, and I needed to drive it, so hipster city it was.

I paid to have the color film developed and scanned the same day.  Ouch.  

Then I decided to drive to Gotham and walk those derelict streets.  Two cameras and a camera bag. But you see me in that photo--hair all shorn, hat on backwards the way all short-haired redneck cowboys wear them, trad/norm to the core.  Old Quasimodo trying to pass.  

I walked a long time and was popping off what I was sure were classic photos. Bam! Bam! Bam!  No peeping, just thinking and shooting.  

I saw a bar door open.  It's window looked out upon the street.  I walked in to see what it would look like to photograph there.  A fellow greeted me at the door.  

"We won't be open for ten minutes," he said. 

"O.K.  I just wanted to see what it looked like through your window," I said holding up one camera.

"O.K. but you'll have to come back in ten minutes.  I can't let you be here before we open."

"O.K."

He was alright, not shitty in any way.  I walked next door to another open door and another bar.  This one looked different, kind of classy.  A big girl dressed like--I don't know what--low cut blouse, high cut shorts, garters, piercings and heavy makeup. . . .  She was pushing 200 pounds, I'd guess.  I was shooting one of the windows and when I turned around we almost bumped. 

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. 

"No, no. . . totally me.  Do you work here?"

"Yes," she said, her eyes alight.  She was really sweet, soft spoken.  I think she liked me. 

"Do you mind if I go in for a minute?"

"No," she said. 

"I just want to look through your window to see. . ." I said holding up a camera.  I walked into a little cubby.  When I came back, she askedm "How was it?"

"Not much, really." I looked at the deep, dark bar, all the seats lined up perfectly, as yet undisturbed.  "Do you mind if I take some pictures in here?"

"Go ahead."

I shot a couple, and said, "Thanks."  She was staring at me, smiling.  

I'll come back to that later. 

Onward. No kidding, I was smoking hot. I was making masterpieces.  But time marched on, and having walked miles and miles, I was getting tired.  My hips and knees and back were killing me.  I was waddling, walking side to side oh so slowly.  I only had a few shots left, so I turned back toward that car.  It was hot.  The rain I was out to beat never came, but the humidity had, and I was sweating like the fat cripple I am.  I was beginning to smell like old pizza.  

Two big cameras and a camera bag with lenses had done me in.  I'm not the fellow I used to be.  

Then there it was like an oasis.  I fairly crawled into the Xterra.  But man. . . what I had done was going to be amazing.  

I drove back to the hipster camera shop and dropped off more film. Paid again for expedited service.   I needed a beer, so I stopped at the liquor store on the way home.  It was across the street from the Cafe Strange, and I thought about going in and having the beer there.  My cafe au lait friend would be working, but I was far too beat.  Rather, I bought a six pack of Grolsch and drove home.  

"Grolsch?!"

I hadn't had one in years.  It sounded good. 

When I got in the house, I dropped my cameras and bag, opened a beer, and started a hot Epsom Salts bath.  I was stiff and sore and tired. 

It was a good combo.  I lay there for a long time thinking of the day.  I thought of the big girl who let me into the bar.  Yes, she was sweet as apple butter, and I thought, hey stupid, she wanted you to ask if you could take her picture.  Yes, I was certain of it.  I was a fool.  She would have done anything.  Eyes closed, surrounded by hot water, wait, what?  I was becoming. . . aroused.  

WTF?  

I drained the tub, showered, dried, and sat in a chair where I fell asleep immediately.  What dreams I had I'll never tell.  

When I woke, I thought, "I'll go back and take her picture."

I had three rolls of black and white film to develop from the last two day's shoot. I could do two of them together.  But I was lazy.  They could wait.  I looked at the clock.  3:30.  

"Alright, alright, I'll do them now."

It took some doing.  I went to the study/bedroom and started locating things.  I had fixer in a bottle I'd mixed up when I developed the 4x5 film. It should be good. I had developer, too, but I didn't trust it.  I found the bottle of HC-110 syrup and the beakers and funnels and plastic measuring cups, found the two reel developing tank and film spools.  But where was the little film puller tool to get the film leader out of the cannister?  Five minutes later, I found it. I cleared the dining room table, putting everything on the floor, and got the big changing tent set up there.  Scissors.  O.K.  

I had trouble putting the second roll of bw film on the spool.  It just wasn't going on right.  I tried and tried, taking the film off and putting it back on.  Three times.  Four.  Five--fuck it.  

I took the film to the sink.  Rinse.  Develop.  Rinse.  Fix.  Rinse, rinse, rinse.  My back and knees and hips were barking.  

After the final rinse, I took the film to hang and dry.  

What do you think?  Yup.  A lot of fucked up film.  I opened another beer.  

I went to my computer to check and see if the film lab had sent the scans yet.  O.K.  The first roll.  This would be wonderful.  

Jesus Joseph and Mary--shit piss fuck goddamn!!!!!!  Where the hell is a pistol?  A rope?  Something.  

I'd picked up a roll of film sitting on a stand with many other rolls of film.  This one wasn't in a plastic canister, but it still had the film leader out.  It was an old roll of film I'd shot and never developed.  The scans I got back were all double exposures.  All my masterpieces!!!  

"Photography should just be fun."

I remember saying that.  Yesterday.  

I still had to go to the grocers to get the makings of a pho dinner.  I could barely walk across the parking lot. I grabbed a cart for a walker.  

Back at mom's, she was in her usual place in the garage.  I moaned and groaned getting out of the little Toyota Corolla.  

"I'll be right back," I told her, and I took the groceries to the kitchen.  I made a Campari, came back out, and slumped into a chair.  

"How was your day?"

"I hurt all over," I said.  "I don't think I want to make dinner.  I'm beat.  I'll just open a can of soup and we can eat the rotisserie chicken I bought.  Is that O.K.?"

"I'm not even hungry."

Dinner was lousy.  Afterwards, we watched a YouTube history piece on Key West.  I drank a scotch.

Before bed, I checked my email.  The scans from the second roll were there.  Yea, yea, yea.  I'd lost hope. Wearily, I opened the files.  

"Be still my beating heart!!!"

Yes, yes, yes. . . they were what I thought.  Not all of them, of course, but yes, they all were what I hoped for.  Right then, I considered buying a $500 film developing machine that would let me do everything at home.  I have maybe fifty or more old rolls of film, now "expired" film, that I plan on shooting up. How many rolls would it take to make the machine worthwhile?  Then I went online and ordered a bunch of Kodak Portra 400 film.  

I am mad, perhaps.  Something in my brain might be broken.  How long will it take for me to tire of shooting film?  How long before I want to shoot digital again?  But this machine, by all reviews, is the real deal.  It works like a charm.  

I'll think more about this later today in my most rational hours.  But I am pretty sure I am going to make the mistake and buy it.  Just for the fun of it.  Photography should be fun, right?

Oh, but there is this. I have film hanging that needs to be scanned.  Scanning film is a drag.  Scanning fifty to a hundred rolls. . .  and then sleeving them, putting them into binders. . . where in the hell will I store them?  

The scans they sent me are small.  I didn't want to pay for the bigger ones.  But I got excited.  You may not be, but this is it.  This is what I'm going to do for awhile.  

"What?  Fuck up three out of four rolls of film?  Ha!  Good luck to you."

I know.  Like I said, I think I have a tick in my brain.  

"Tick?  Tic?"  

 I don't know.  But I think I'll go back downtown.  I think there is a girl there who likes me,