Can't Catch a Break

I want to tell you more about Pamplona and The Festival of San Fermin, but man. . . I have more trouble than Carter has liver pills.  

That's an obscure reference that many will have to Google, I think.  

I was mad to write more about my Pamplona adventure, and I wanted to get back to my own home and find some photos from those days.  But. . . my mother needed things and the day didn't get off to the start I thought it would, so I was out later than I wished which meant I needed to get back to my house and take my Xterra to the shop for my appointment at noon.  

I made it just on time, and the mechanic wheeled the overheated car inside to take a look.  I didn't think I should stand over his shoulder while he was working as if I knew anything, so I stayed in the office and chatted with his wife.  After he'd taken a good look, he said it was the radiator cap.  He showed me that it didn't have something that other caps did.  I was confused, then I remembered--I'd dropped the original cap into some obscure place in the engine that I couldn't access, so I went to the auto store and bought a new one.  Hmmm.  He was going to order a new cap, but I said I lived only a mile and a half away and that I would drive it home and go to the auto store in my mother's car to get a new one.  I didn't want to leave my car there and walk home.  So he filled the radiator with coolant and said there was no charge.

By the time I got halfway home, though, steam was coming from under the hood.  I began to wonder if it was really the radiator cap or if it wasn't maybe the water pump.  I'd buy a new cap first and see if that would do the trick, but I had my doubts.  If it were the cap, why did the car only begin overheating after the mechanic had done all that work?  

Things weren't looking so rosy.  

I went to the gym.  The maids would be at my house in a bit.  After a workout that I cut short because I was worn out with things and didn't want to do a couple miles on the treadmill, I drove back to my house.  But I was too early.  The maids were still there.  What to do?  It looked like they were getting ready to pack up, so I took a drive down the Boulevard.  When I got back, they were gone.  

I sat down at the computer and searched for images.  I pulled out a hard drive labelled "Travel" and inside was a folder titled "Spain."  I looked through it but there weren't so many images.  I decided to look for the missing photos.  

Which meant I had to empty the closet in my study.  It is stacked with folios and folders and bits and pieces of other things that had to be piled on the office floor.  And of course, inevitably, the Spain images were in the very last box on the bottom of the pile.  Inside a black shell box with "Spain" written on a white sticker were twenty or so plastic sleeves holding thirty-two slides each. 

I took them to the light table to see.  Why had I not scanned these before?  I would now, but I didn't have very much time.  I found the scanning tray for slides and loaded it.  Five slides at a time.  I took it to my scanner in the bedroom that has to use an old computer that will run the no longer produced software.  

The scanner and the computer weren't communicating for some reason.  Shit piss fuck goddamn.  I started and restarted the scanner and the computer numerous times panicked that somehow the software had been corrupted.  There is no way I know to get it again.  Then, after half an hour, I realized I had plugged the wrong cable into the computer, not the one coming from the scanner.  

Ecstasy.  It still worked.  

But scanning is slow.  I set the scanner to a lower resolution output to try to speed it up, but it still took twenty minutes to scan five slides.  While the scanner was working, I showered.  When I got out, I loaded five more and went outside to clip my nails.  Twenty minutes later, I had nine slides.  The scanner had failed on one of them.  No time.  I loaded five more, and took the nine I had to the big computer to work on them in Photoshop.  

I was trying to set the stage--the streets of Pamplona.  There were so many more to scan, but time was running out.  

In twenty minutes, I went out to load another five slides.  That is when I noticed a wet spot on the rug in the dining room.  WTF?  Had the maids spilled the bucket when mopping the floor.  Then I heard something.  I ignored it, then heard it again.  I looked at the ceiling.  It was stained and cracked.  I stood over the wet spot and felt a cold drip.  No, no, no, no, no!

I went into the attic to take a look.  I checked the drain pan.  Dry.  But next to it, water was dripping out of a--I don't even have the vocabulary for this--some pipe or duct that was covered in a thick white sealant.  I put my hand there and felt the drip.  I rushed back down the ladder and got a pan.  Back up the ladder, I tried to fit it under the drip, but there was something blocking it.  I managed to get it partway only hoping it would catch the water.  

I called the HVAC company that does all my work.  It was after five now.  Closed.  My nerves were shot.  I called my mother to tell her I would be running late, but she was telling me she was sick.  She didn't understand a word I said.  

"You'll have to tell me when you get back.  I can't hear you."

I thought about the rafters in the attic.  It is a tall attic, twelve feet to the peak.  Yes, those rafters would hold a man's weight.  

I turned the a.c. up so that it would not run much, packed my shit, and headed back to my mother's house.  

She said she wasn't hungry.  She'd eat some soup.  I was punky.  I made a cocktail and sat for a minute.  I tried to tell her about the car, the a.c. leak, but she couldn't or wouldn't hear me.  There was no succor for me anywhere in the world, I thought.  There is nothing for me but strife.

Behind closed doors, millions of Americans are stepping into one of the hardest roles they’ll ever take on: caring for their aging parents.

Times Opinion interviewed dozens of family caregivers across the country to paint a portrait of the American elder care crisis. In the video above, these caregivers describe the heavy emotional toll and personal sacrifices required to keep their loved ones safe and comfortable.

The United States currently relies on unpaid caregivers to provide $870 billion worth of labor each year, often at an extreme cost to the caregivers’ own well-being, finances and futures.

“What if this goes on for another 10 years?” one caregiver said. “How long am I going to be able to maintain this?”

Families, it says.  It doesn't mention the ones totally on their own.  

Cocktail done, I went in to make soup.  My mother came in just as I was about to serve. 

"Do you still have those hot dogs?"

I did.  Two.  I fixed them and put them on buns.  That is what she ate, not the soup.  

"You said you weren't hungry.  Didn't want to eat anything.  I could have made a real meal."

"Oh. . . sorry." 

All night, I worried.  I went to bed, but couldn't sleep. I got up at midnight and took an Advil PM.  Woke at six, drowsy, dopey.  Made coffee.  Shit--I was out of milk.  Out of my mind, I got in the car and drove to the store.  Now, coffee by my side, I tell my never-ending tale of woe.  

I just called he HVAC people. They will come as soon as they can.  My day is now going to consist of waiting for them.  I am not sure this is going to be an easy fix.  After that, I will have to deal with the ceiling.  

While they work on the a.c. I will try to scan more slides.  The Festival of San Fermin lasts all week, so I can still report in real time.  After the festival, on my way to meet my girlfriend in Cannes, I saw part of the Tour de France which is going on now as well.  It was quite the summer, really, and I hope I have the stuff to tell it well.  With photos.  

I made a mistake which feels like a grievous error.  My mind is slipping.  It was not 1985 when I was in Pamplona, but 1989.  I know that now because I looked at the framed poster I have from that festival. 1985 may have been my summer spent in Peru.  Or wat that the year we climbed in Ecuador?  Yes. . . the memory wanes . 

I was not a practicing photographer then, however, and had with me only a little Olympus point and shoot camera.  I shot slides because that is what you did then before digital everything so you might, perhaps, get some of your slides into one of Brando's big slide show parties.  I've told you something about those many, many years ago, and I will retell that here again, too. But slides from a point and shoot camera are not the best and scanning them is problematic.  I forget who developed them, but whoever did it did a lousy job.  And as I say, I had not taken serious photos for a number of years at that point, and so. . . we will do the best illustrations we can.  

Here is what I did, running with the bulls and getting inside the ring as they entered.  It was a little surreal. 

I can't find much on the the suelta de vaquillas once inside the ring, but here is a short clip of it.  You see the "bull jumping" that is a sport of its own.  This clip is from many years after I was there, and in the past, not so many people were let into the ring as the doors to the tunnel closed when the last bull entered. 

Yesterday, it seems, three people were gored in the Running of the Bulls.  It seems a stupid thing to do, I know. . . but somehow it seemed the only thing to do at the time.  

 

The Festival de San Fermin

Today begins the Festival of San Fermin.  At eight o'clock in Pamplona, the rockets went off and they opened the gates of the corrals letting six fighting bulls and six steers run the half mile through the slippery cobble streets to the bullring, the Plaza de Toros.  The entire trip takes about three minutes.  If you arrive with the bulls, you enter the bullring with them.  

I did.  

The moments before the bulls are released, we, donning our white shirts and red neck kerchiefs, gathered with the others at the statue of San Fermin, secured our newspapers, and had a shot of liquor with the rest of the crowd.  

When the flares go off, a hush falls over the crowd and you hear the rumble of the coming bulls.  Barricades line the streets, and to my surprise, people were climbing them to get into those masses assembled to watch.  Often, those on the other side of the barricades try to push the would-be runners back into the street.  

Then coming around the corner, you see the bulls and suddenly you wonder what the fuck you were thinking.  

And you run.  

But the bulls run faster, and suddenly you are among them.  The idea is to touch a bull on the nose with the rolled up newspaper you are carrying.  As you run, one of the big dangers are the runners in front of you.  Many of them fall.  You do not want to fall in the street for that is where people get trampled.  Maybe they slip on the cobblestones, but it seemed that many were merely fainting, their legs buckling beneath them from fear.  And so you must look back at the coming bulls and forward to avoid the bodies lying in the street.  

I would like to tell you I hit a bull on the nose, but I can't.  I hit one on the ass as it went by, though.  And I continued running with them all the way to the bullring.  I was among the runners who made it into the ring.  

Along with two of my group, my dead ex-friend Brando and a six foot six 'roid boy I had known since he was a kid from the gym.  At one point he weighed 290 pounds but was now a trimmed down 250.  We had him psyched to grab a bull by the horns.  And so. . . we waited.  Once all the bulls and steers had been herded out of the rings into the waiting pens, the thick, heavy wooden doors, the Puerta de Toriles, are closed.  

And the next event begins.  

It was haunting, really, standing on the hard packed sand of the bullring made famous by Hemingway in "The Sun Also Rises," looking up into the stands filled with onlookers cheering (or jeering) those who had made it inside the ring.  

Second act--the release of the vaquillas.  These are young heifers, smaller than the bulls that would fight that afternoon, but much more agile.  Men lined up before the Puerta de Toriles sitting on the ground before the heavy gates, waiting, and the arena went silent.  When the gates opened, the first vaquilla rushed out and young men sprung up to avoid being trampled, but a few were not agile or quick enough and could only hope to avoid the heavy hooves.  The crowd was now cheering and the game was to keep away from the horns.  Those small horns were capped by pitones embolados, rounded balls that reduce the chances of puncturing the skin, but the heifers still knock runners to the ground or easily flipped them in the air, much to the crowd's delight.  

I looked up and saw my gymroid buddy approaching the heifer.  He had one horn in his hand and then the other.  He had now grabbed the vaquilla by both horns, and the crowd went mad.  The entire stadium was whistling as the big gymroid struggled to hold on.  He was obviously trying to throw the "bull."

But the whistling was not encouragement which he didn't understand.  Rather than cheering him on, they were denouncing him, and within seconds, two men in blue smocks ran up to him carrying large bamboo sticks and began beating him on the back and shoulders and legs until he let go.  

And they took him away, out of the arena after threatening him with arrest, and put him out on the street.  

Later we met our friends back at the Cafe Iruna in the main plaza for breakfast and a drink.  We waited for the papers.  Each morning during the festival, the local newspaper would produce extensive coverage of each encierro. The newspaper posted large printed pages outside its offices or in display cases where anyone could stop and read them.  This was long before cell phones and the internet, so crowds would gather in front of the display cases, reading over one another's shoulders. People were looking to see whether friends had appeared in the photographs, find out who had been injured, and how serious the injuries were.  

I had hoped for one thing--to be pictured running with the bulls.  Rather, however, it was the big gymroid.  I was pissed.  In that picture, I was running right beside him.  There I was, or rather, there was my shoulder and hand.  

I was crestfallen.  But yea, that big guy sure stood out in a crowd.  

We had tickets to the bullfights that afternoon.  Or we were supposed to.  We'd paid for them, but typical of Brando, there were none, just as the rooms in the main square were a fiction, too.  If we wanted to go to the bullfights that day, we'd have to purchase tickets from a local shyster with an overcharge.  Of course, I did.  The tickets were for sol y sombra, sun in the early fights, shade later on.  

I won't detail the fight as many would not approve.  I'll only report that we went with wine filled botas and were covered in wine from the antics of the crowd before the fights were finished.  

There is more. . . much more. . . and maybe I'll tell it over the next week as the festival continues.  I've been told that the festival has changed much from what it was then, that was more wild and free and violent and of the tradition that the Sun crowd would have recognized.  

But for now, I must take care of mother.  

The photo?  Oh, just another kind of Running with the . . . . 

I couldn't do this now.  It makes me very sad.  

Voodoo Still

As I have reported, I just spent $2,000 repairing the Xterra.  I was happy, though, for it felt good and was running great.  

For about ten minutes.  

I had plans for Sunday.  I had just received a delivery of cheap "linen" pants from China.  I can't help myself.  The pictures that pop up on my feed sell me.  In this case, though, they were just about perfect  for me in every way but one--they were too big.  The waist and the length.  But otherwise, I loved them and for only a couple of kopeks.  That's what happens when you buy from China online.  You never know.  I decided, however, that I could get them tailored for about twice what I paid for the pants--and I would. In the meantime, I just ordered two more pairs, L instead of XL.  Why did I order XL?  Oh, don't tell this to anyone, but I asked ChatGPT which size I should order.  Shhh. 

In my closet, I have had a pair of leather Nike Air something or others that Tennessee had given me that are pretty cool but too small, and I wondered if I could get them stretched to fit.  I asked. . . Chat. . . and it told me yes, leather shoes were the easiest thing to stretch.  I Googled "cobblers near me" and came up with a few that were closed on Sunday, BUT--DSW Shoes, the big outlet store, was open AND they had a shoe repair department.  So I called.  It was an automated voice, but it told me that yes, they definitely stretched shoes.  

I had a plan.  I was going to drop off postcards at the post office then continue on to DSW, drop off the shoes, then go to Whole Foods to get fixin's for dinner.  

Dropping off the postcards went smoothly.  

When I got to the strip mall that housed DSW, the parking lot was packed with Sunday shoppers.  Miles of blacktop to cross.  The air was a pressure cooker, that air that lets you know a monsoon is in the offing.  Still, I was happyish because I was getting things done.  

I thought.  But this is a tale of woe.  No luck.  They didn't stretch shoes.  

Piss shit fuck goddamn.  O.K.  I'd stop at the gas station and fill up my ready to go Xterra.  

"Hey, Boss. . . . hey. . . ." 

I heard a voice.  Me?  Yea.  

"Your radiator's leaking."

I walked around to the front of the car.  It sure was.  Steaming coolant covered the cement.  

"That's not good."

"No it isn't."

I was two miles from home.  Could I make it?

Barely.  The thermostat was climbing fast and I hit every long light on the highway.  I'll have to call the repair shop today.  

What had I accomplished?  Nothing.  The voodoo doll was certainly working for somebody.  Could she still be hating on me now?  Really?  I'd been nothing but good.  I never got it.  Haven't still.  But a hater's gotta hate and there is nothing you can do about that.  Thieves of things and good names.  Sometimes you can't help but be a victim.  

I'd put the pants through a wash cycle and had thrown them in the dryer by themselves.  I was hoping to shrink them.  Don't throw a pair of pants in the dryer by themselves.  They just roll around in a ball.  I hadn't helped myself here, either.  They are so wrinkled now, I will have to iron them.  Funny.  I don't own an iron.  

The monsoon hit just as I was preparing to head back to mom's.  I got a call.  It was mom's across the street neighbors.  I didn't answer.  They left a message.  They thought I needed to get back to my mother's house because of the storm.  WTF?  I considered giving them a little helpful advice, too, but only for a second.  

I called my mother.  What did she want for dinner?

Soup.  She couldn't eat anything solid.  I had to think.  Could I get away with not going to the grocers in a monsoon?  Sure.  I'd figure something out.  

What I figured out first was a four-thirty cocktail.  At five, I put on the soup.  Chicken noodle.  I'd drop an egg in it.  Oops.  No eggs.  I put garbanzo beans in instead.  I asked my mother if she wanted any sardines.  Oh no, she said.  I opened a can of Patagonia sardines, just three big headless fish in a can.  I couldn't find any good crackers and had to go with mom's Saltines.  First bite was "ugh."  I got some mustard.  Much better, but it didn't really match with the wine.  Shitty dinner.  We watched Norway/Brazil.  Nail biter.  The underdogs won.  It was exciting and now I was drinking a real drink.  

Six-thirty.  Mexico/England would be coming on.  I put on the second half of "The Great Beauty."  My mother sits slumped in a chair all day and night until I want to watch something like this.  Then she is peripatetic.  She can't sit still.  She stands in slow motion, looks around, moves slothlike toward the sink, bangs things around, turns back (Slowly she turns, step by step, inch by inch), opens and bangs shut the cabinet doors over and over as she looks for something unknown, then sits and slides objects around on the wooden table.  

"It stopped raining."

I pause the movie . 

"What?"

"It looks like it stopped raining." 

"Oh."

Yes, yes. . . I am going insane.  And I feel terrible, too.  She is suffering and I am helpless to give physical relief.  What sort of life is that, a life of pain and suffering?  I do not think I would be such a god.  I do not think I could come up with such a plan.  I am not as strong as she, though.  She lives with the suffering better than I can with this abject helplessness.  

I have nothing to distract me here at mom's, though, but the television and this computer.  When I watch t.v. she is always like that, suffering just to the right of me.  She won't go to bed until I do no matter if it is nine or midnight.  My presence must succor her in some way.  

I turned on the soccer match.  It takes no concentration or thinking.  Now she simply sits still.  Maybe she like soccer.  I don't know, but it was an incredible match, and England won.  Quite a thing.  

So today is dealing with the car.  I'll take my wrinkled pants to some tailor.  Then I will go to the grocers and come back to the house to make dinner and watch the U.S. play Belgium.  Trump has taken a shit on that game, though, and has sullied anything the U.S. touches on the world stage.  It doesn't matter if the team wins or loses today--no matter at all.  They have already lost.  Trump made certain of that.  

Let's Get Lost

This is what it SHOULD have looked like, anyway, but the 250th July 4th celebrations around the country were marred by atrocious weather and events.  

Or so I heard.  

Other than a few moments in the afternoon, I was home with mother.  She is not doing well.  The antibiotics are ravaging her gut and the UTI is making her insane.  Do any of you now truly believe the Times isn't tracking my blog?

When I went to the grocers in the afternoon, though, the city was like a ghost town.  No traffic. Empty streets.  The parking lot at the supermarket was nearly empty.  Inside, there was no one.  

Then, just as I got back to her house came the deluge.  True monsoon stuff.  

"Good.  There will be no fireworks tonight.  The dogs will be happy."

But it was still early, and I was wrong.  The fireworks began at sundown and went on in an orgy of Patriotic Gore well after bedtime.  I stepped outside for a brief moment to see what all the commotion was, and Holy Moses, the entire neighborhood was lit up in every direction with magnificent frontyard displays of pyrotechnics.  Not sparklers and firecrackers but the kind of stuff you see in city parks, high in the sky exploding with "rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air" super expensive things.  The night was hot and wet and gunpowder smoke hung thick in the humid air.  

As impressive as it was coming from maybe ten different neighborhood yards, the night air was too uncomfortable for me to stand it very long, so I went back into the house and closed everything up for the night.  

I had watched soccer before, during, and after dinner.  I made hotdogs and mac and cheese and baked beans which my mother said she didn't want but ate pretty hardily.  

"Do you feel better after eating?"

"No."

She sat half the evening with her head on her hands on the kitchen table.  I have no light or happy moments in my mother's house anymore.  It is simply unmitigated misery now, and there is nothing I can do to alleviate the suffering but give her her meds and cook and clean and sit in the room with her.  There is no use talking now.  She doesn't hear me.  If I ask or tell her something, she says, "What?" and I have to repeat it again, then usually once more at top volume.  My throat is shot.  And if she answers, I can't make it out as she simply mumbles to herself.  Then before bed, she will tall me, "I'm sorry I'm such a bother."

"It is what it is."

After soccer, I put on a movie.  Wow.  It is was an Italian film that seemed a marriage between Fellini and David Lynch.  

The trailer doesn't do the movie justice.  I dislike reading subtitles, but this one is well worth the effort.  It takes a moment for the movie to grip you, but it does.  Or, it did me.  However, it got late and I had been drinking.  But wait, don't go yet. . . you have to hear this one.  

The other day at the grocery store, I saw a case of Topo Chico.  I've been drinking Pellegrino flavored waters after eight, but they are pretty sweet.  I thought I'd give these a try.  And boy. . . they quickly became my favorite.  I love them.  So every night, I'll drink two or three of them watching television to get hydrated.  

Ahem.  

Last night, I looked at the can and saw that each drink had 100 calories.  A hundred calories?  From what?  They aren't very sweet.  

Yea.  Alcohol.  They are not just water.  They are an alcoholic beverage.  I've been "hydrating" with ranch water, as they say.  No wonder I liked them so much.  I'm an idiot.  

Suddenly sleepy, I turned the movie off halfway through and went to bed.  

Somewhere in the night, waking me from a dead sleep, my mother burst in.  

"Did you call me?"

Sleep doesn't come easy after such disruptions, and I struggled the rest of the night.  

It is Sunday.  I will get out for a walk in the noonday sun.  Mad dogs and Englishmen, they used to say.  And me, intent on heat stroke.  But such is my life.  

Oh. . . I hear the creaking of the walker.  My mother is up now and I must attend.   

"It is what it is."

Patriotic Lore

This was my coffee book/social media idea that I never got to do.  I think it is a good one.  

You know, if we lived in the America Again times with those ideals, Trump and all his cronies would be in prison.  He's a top grade scammer, that one.  

But here we are 250 years in waiting to see if we survive the Trump era.  My conservative friend fears democratic socialists, but he admits it is all because of Trump.  He, I believe, confuses democracy with capitalism, I think.  Freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are democratic, not capitalistic ideals.  The creed of capitalism is "MORE."  Advertising is what sells it.  When I told him that, he seemed to confuse progress with growth.  I sent him more bike week photos.  

"These are your people," I said.  "They want to Make America Great Again."  I promise you that you could not have gotten out of this crowd alive if you were wearing a Biden t-shirt--unless it said "Fuck" before his name.  This was a 100% Trump crowd.  And it is great, I think, that they undermine the government coffers as much as possible.  Everything is done "under the table."  They don't want government in their lives. Except for roads and water and utilities, etc.  

"These are your people, bro."

NASCAR, UFC, and Taylor Sheridan!!! 

But he is not of that lot.  He is a Park Avenue kind of republican.  We are alike in our tastes, I guess.  

I had the best time I've had in many, many months last night.  For an hour.  My mother doesn't want to eat solid food yet, so I set her up with cottage cheese and soup for dinner at five and told her I'd be back in an hour.  I went to my favorite sushi place.  They open at five, so I was one of the first customers in.  I ordered, and everything came out quickly--sake, miso soup, edamame, and tuna kobachi with sliced spicy cucumbers and perfect slices of avocado.  It was heaven.  My waitress was a slim and very attractive Asian with a few tats on the back of her triceps and shoulders.  When she smiled, I could barely speak.  I have no illusions anymore, but having her as my server complimented the experience.  When I left the restaurant, I was as happy as I could possibly be given the circumstances.  

Back to my mother's at 6:10.  Time for an antibiotic.  I turned on soccer, then at halftime, the news.  I can't stand David Muir, but I watch him.  If you do, notice that he always has his face turned slightly to the left.  He never looks at the camera straight on.  He likes to do field pieces where he can wear a t-shirt and show his workout muscles.  Is he on TRT?  Peptides?  

Then back to the most incredible soccer match of the World Cup so far.  Little Cape Verde took Argentina deep into overtime play.  It looked like they had a good chance of upsetting the reigning World Cup champions.  I was glad it was on, a great distraction from everything.  So. . . sushi and soccer.  And whiskey. 

What a night.  

Later, in bed, I had vivid dreams.  Weird dreams.  Or I should say "dream," for there was only one.  There was a girl.  When I woke, I thought that she had been in my dreams before.  It is not a girl I know, but she seems familiar.  

I had gotten my car back earlier in the day, too, so all in all, the day was alright.  

Now. . . I will celebrate the 4th with my mother.  But we can't have hot dogs and hamburgers, so, I don't know.  I don't enjoy fireworks, so that doesn't matter.  Maybe a movie.  

There is nothing else to tell.  Maybe I'll eat a hot dog anyway.  It seems a must.  

Nothing Succeeds Like Excess

Oh, man. . . the Times has bee reading my blog again. Trump and Swift--Barnum and Bailey, MAGA and Progressives--two sides of the same coin.

Many writers have invoked the Roman writer Juvenal’s phrase “bread and circuses” when discussing the White House’s recent U.F.C. fight on the South Lawn, depicting it as a gladiatorial spectacle meant to distract the masses from the increasingly bleak circumstances of their lives. An American royal wedding unfortunately has the same vibe, a big-budget display of status that will, in the best-case scenario, serve as escapist entertainment for us proles. (One thinks of Ms. Swift’s invocation of the movie “Gladiator”in her Time Person of the Year interview: “Are you not entertained?”)



No one roots for the overdog.

As she sang to her 15-year-old self on her second album, “Fearless,” “In your life, you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team.”

It’s not just that she is finally settling down with the boy on the football team, but that such a highflying spectacle of “having it all” appears to be the culmination of the singer’s three-year career victory lap, ever since she pulled off the record-breaking Eras Tour, which helped make her a billionaire.

Ms. Swift’s music is best enjoyed on headphones in bedrooms, with intimate, evocative lyrics about childhood, breakups, complicated love and secret yearning. Now it seems she feels most at home in stadiums, judging from the broad pop schlock of her most recent album, “The Life of a Showgirl.” Even for this momentous milestone in her private life, Ms. Swift apparently can’t imagine a place to stage her next triumph other than a basketball arena.

She is now 36, old enough to run for president.  

2028!

Power to the People!

But that is just me. . . and the columnist.  

I know, I know. . . you'd rather hear about my miserable life.  I'm working on a project idea.  I needed to see storyboards, so I used A.I. to cook some up.  Here's one. 

I'd need a crane for this shot, though.  I might be able to get a ten foot ladder, but I'd need someone to climb up and take the picture, so. . . .  

Even at the Dollar Store, it would cost me $$ to buy everything.  And I'm pretty lazy, or maybe just worn out, these days.  Still, if I could get all my mother's neighbors to be in the picture, it might be fun.  

My mother slept most of yesterday.  I took a sleep aid last night and did ok, too.  I watched a lot of soccer.  My car wasn't ready for pickup, so I will get it today.  My sleep aid was a Xanax, so my nerves aren't as shattered this morning.  I would like to take myself to a good sushi place for dinner, but that remains to be seen.  

I got the broken Ricoh camera shipped yesterday, and I am feeling good about that.  I don't know what I was thinking.  Yes I do.  I know exactly what I was thinking.

"Why don't I have one of those?"

Thinking isn't getting me too far these days.  And don't get me wrong about Taylor Swift.  I don't want to get on the wrong side of things.  I'm no hater.  I hear she did really well in her high school classes.  And as Oscar Wilde so famously quipped, "Nothing succeeds like excess."

Make America Great Again!

Opulence in the Time of Suffering

Happy lady, happy life. Again, 2016.  I keep looking at this one.  Trump Derangement Syndrome hadn't started yet.  Eight years of Obama was coming to and end.  We were on the verge of a downward slope.  

I don't want to burden you with my troubles. . . but that is all I have.  Mom is one tooth down now.  More meds.  The thing is, none of the doctors coordinate.  That is left to me.  Phone call after phone call, two pharmacies, and finally we all come to a conclusion.  I hope it works.  I am being told that the UTI causes madness in older women.  That makes sense and seems to be the case.  I'm hoping we have the right antibiotics in the right dosages to do the job.  There are so many concerns now from dry socket to infection to. . . it goes on and on and on.  

When it rains, you know?  They did not have my car ready yesterday.  The Ricoh GR IV I bought doesn't work, so I went online with the company who sold it to me because they did not list a phone number.  I have to pack the camera up, take it to FedEx, and return it to get a refund.  You know, though, I think it is better this way.  After I got the camera, I realized I probably would hardly use it.  I don't need it.  Maybe this is a good thing.  A reprieve.  It will pay for half my car repair. 

Sucks.  

That photo, though. . . that's what you get when you ask people if you can photograph them.  Such photographs are interesting in some ways, mostly for the artifice, and every picture tells a story, but. . . .

The world changed after 9/11. It changed again after January 20, 2017.  It is difficult to wrap my head around it all.  It has been a weird century so far.  

MAGA looks to Trump's big 250 celebration and Progressives look to Taylor Swift's wedding.  Both are decadently opulent, I think, and equally meretricious.  Barnum and Bailey stuff.  But Swift will be president one day and if her marriage fails, it will give her career a real boost with all the revenge songs it will inspire.  And Trump?  Who knows.  He somehow seems eternal like Moby Dick or Judge Holden.  

What a world, what a world.  Lewis Carroll would have had a ball. 

I Just Want. . .

I needed an SD card for my new Ricoh GR IV that was delivered a few days ago.  I found one lying about, but before I put it in the camera, I put it into the computer to see if there were any images on it.  Holy smokes!  There were--from my stolen Fuji camera.  2016.  It must have been the first images I shot with it because there is a lot of video when I thought I was shooting pictures, me wondering to Ily what the fuck was going on.  Many of the images were like this one--not focused.  I obviously hadn't learned how to use the camera yet.  But I remember the day vividly.  A lot of big memories and emotions enveloped me.  Those were good times.  I had a pretty girlfriend and was making the most money I had made in my life.  Not a lot, but more than I was used to.  We were going places, eating, drinking, adventuring. . . we were happy.  

I think it just floored me in comparison to the life I have now.  I have no backup, no support.  It is just my mother day and night. 

Yesterday, I had my Xterra towed to the shop.  New owner.  Fingers crossed.  It was a hassle getting the car there as the tow truck that was sent was too small, or so said the driver.  He was a fire plug.  He drove about five miles an hour worried the car was going to bounce and come undone.  That would be very bad, he said.  But we got it there under dark skies.  I had to decide how to get home--Uber or walk.  It was only two miles.  An Uber would cost $25.  I would walk.  

The skies got even darker and the wind picked up.  I knew I would get soaked.  Just as the monsoon came, though, I was walking behind a shopping village and was able to shelter in the back of a large building in the portico of a rear door.  In ten minutes, the heavy rain was gone, and I continued homeward.  But all around lightening was striking in huge, extended sizzles and pops.  I was more than a little worried.  But the rain had stopped and I limped on as quickly as I could.  

I was home.  

That is when I put the SD card into the computer.  I just wanted to climb into bed and have someone I loved hold me. 

Back at my mother's house, things were bad.  My mother's madness was growing worse.  She just talks now without context.  I am tired, so very, very tired.  I make dinners now, but she barely eats.  Her tooth is hurting her despite the antibiotics and oxy.  I got up a couple time last night to use the bathroom, and each time, she was up.  This morning when I woke, I heard her talking on the phone.  She was leaving an emergency message.  

"What are you doing?"

"I have an emergency."

"What is it?"

"I was up all night."

"Why?"

"I'm having a reaction to these pills."

"What is the reaction."

She couldn't tell me.  I don't know what to do.  We go to the oral surgeon in a bit, but I don't know what will happen.  Her primary care doctor called yesterday, one of her staff, to say that my mother's urine sample had e. coli and they were calling in a prescription of antibiotics.  I told them she was on antibiotics from the dentist.  We needed to see what the oral surgeon was going to prescribe.  

Perhaps all the infections in her body are making her crazy.  I don't know and scarcely know what to do.  

Maybe with the sun, she will become clearer.  

Oh--the care repair place called.  $2,000.  This is the last money I will spend on that 2007 car.  It breaks my heart, though.  

Today is going to be a challenge.  I don't feel up to it.  

And the SD card?  It didn't work in the Ricoh camera.  Wrong kind.  I need to buy a new one.

Another Tale of Woe

I had no time to write yesterday.  When my mother got up, she was crazy with pain.  So she said.  At eight, she called the dentist's office.  They said she could come in at one, but she screamed that she was in pain, so they took her right away.  I didn't have time to finish my coffee.  

The dentist took her back for X-Rays.  Then they called me in.  He had the X-Rays up on a screen.  He said that she had an infection in her gums and pointed to a fistula.  Given that she had osteoporosis and was on Prolia, he didn't want to pull the tooth himself.  His office made an appointment with on oral surgeon that afternoon.  

I filled out the mountain of paperwork about my mother's health, and within the hour, she was in the dentist's chair.  When the doc came in, he looked at the X-Rays that had been sent over, asked my mother to open her mouth, looked around, then asked questions.  

"There is a lot of good news here," he said.  My mother had only been on the Prolia for five months, and he explained why that worked.  He could extract the tooth.  My mother kept yelling out that she was only there for her tooth.  She was hallucinating that we were in the same office where she got the Prolia injection that made her sick.  

"This is the same place that sent me to the hospital," she kept insisting.  

"No it isn't."

"Yes it is."

She couldn't hear what the doc was saying, but she picked up some words here and there.  

"You're going to give me an injection?" she barked.

He tried yelling to her to get her to understand.  

"I just want to take the antibiotics and get rid of the infection," she said.  

"We can't get rid of the infection without removing the tooth.  If we don't remove the tooth, the infection will come back."

We were lucky, I thought, in that they could take my mother on Wednesday afternoon.  Local anesthetic,  approximately thirty minutes.  My mother, however, was barking.  She didn't want to have the tooth removed.  

I could understand.  They probably won't be able to do an implant to replace it.  They would have to do a bone graft, and with her osteoporosis and the Prolia, the surgeon was skeptical that it would take.  The dentist that morning said he might be able to make a bridge with her incisor, but it would not be very strong.  It would only be cosmetic. 

After dinner, I put on a soccer match and fell asleep on the couch.  When I woke up, my mother came back into the room.  

"I've made up my mind," she said.  "I'm not going to have the tooth pulled.  I'm just going to take antibiotics and get rid of the infection."

She had been in a state of madness all day.  Much of it, she made no sense.  Now. . . I regret to say. . . it broke me.  I reacted badly.  My entire system was breaking down.  This life is killing me, and I don't think I'm being metaphorical.  I asked her where she was going to get the antibiotics.  

"The dentist," she said.  

"They aren't going to give them to you.  So what are you going to do, get them fron the street?"

O.K.  I said more than that, but I am not proud enough to put them here.  Leave it by saying the conversation took me deeper into the hole I've fallen.  I could feel myself spinning in the darkness.  

In the morning, she told me she thought she was dying.  She needed the dentist immediately.  After seeing two, she decided she had a better idea.  I wanted to give her the car keys and call an Uber.  

Here's a fun part of the day.  I can't back up a car for shit.  I hit everything, trash cans, mail boxes, trees, and yesterday at the dentist's office, I backed into a car.  Three people including the nurse from the dentist's office were standing outside and saw/heard me hit.  I got out expecting the worst, but neither car was damaged.  Still, I couldn't just leave.  The nurse went in to see whose car it was.  She was in a chair getting rinsed, but she would come out in a bit, the nurse said.  We waited.  

The woman came out, looked at the bumper, and said, "O.K."  

That, my friends, was the best part of my day.  

I need to have my Xterra towed into the repair shop today.  Tomorrow, I take my mother for an 11:30 appointment.  Those things will take up the few hours of free time I have in the day.  

So, in summary, that is why I didn't give you another fun tale of woe yesterday.  Things just keep getting better and better.  

But there are the photos, right?  I've gone back into the archives of images I've never shown.  Bike Week.  That was my one day out of town in the last two years.  What a day.  I must say, I was very productive.  

Bad Film, Rotten Lives, Microbial Cleaners, and Men and Boys of the Religious Right

There it is, the ONLY in focus well developed shot with the Aero-Ektar Liberator camera I got--out of 32 pieces of film.  So. . . maybe the camera DOES work.  This was simply a test shot at my house.  That is not a coffee cup.  It is a huge planter my carpenter left for me as a present.  It is hideous.  For this shot, I put the camera on the ground, so maybe some of the problem I experience in using it is hand-held camera shake.  I mean, it is big and weighs 25 pounds and has a huge mirror that makes an impressive slapping sound when the photo is taken.  

I'll try again.  But here is what half the images looked like. 

This one is exceptional in that it appears to be a triple exposure.  For real.  I shot over a bunch of film that had already been exposed, or, in this case, double exposed.  I know I shot this piece of film with my Chamonix 4x5 camera because one of the exposures is in portrait mode and the Liberator won't do that.  Which means I probably shot that piece of film over a year ago.  That is why I have loaded up eight double-sided film holders and am committing to shooting them quickly.  I have to know. 

I made a "discovery" yesterday.  Then I found out that it is something I should have already known.  I was able to clear the a.c. drain line and the a.c. is working again.  I went to the hardware store to get some drain cleaner, as I said I would in yesterday's post, but the one I was looking for by Zep wasn't there.  But ACE hardware had posted a handy-dandy guide to the drain cleaners they sold telling what the pros and cons of each was.  They had two that were microbial drain cleaners.  They work because the microbes in them actually eat and destroy the buildup in the lines, then line the plastic pipes to keep working.  Vinegar only works at the time you put it down the drain, but the microbes keep working to prevent buildup.  After I put it through the drain lines with a hope and a prayer, I Googled "Are microbial drain cleaners good for a.c. drain lines?"

Oh, yes they are.  If you are not using them, you'd better.  But here's the kicker.  There are many brands out there, and one of them is what the repair guy told me to use last time they were out.  

I don't hear so well sometimes.  

So. . . fingers crossed.  

Now my mother is safely ensconced in her home again, as am I.  Now we are back to routine.  

At one-thirty, I had my beauty appointment.  I wanted to tell my tale of woe, but I had to listen to one that was longer.  It is so easy to see other people's fuck ups.  My 47 year old hairdresser (I love using language from olden times) moved in with a cop years ago.  I don't care for him.  She's from Russia, he from the Dominican Republic.  He has built a compound on a big piece of property on the wrong side of the tracks (see?), and rents tiny houses to homeless mothers and drug addicts.  I won't go into it.  But she decided she wanted to give him a baby, so a couple years ago, she got pregnant.  He built her a home hair salon and she quit taking new clients, only working a day or two a week with people who had been "with her" for a long time.  But you had to go to her house.  

He didn't marry her.  Then, when the kid was one, he did.  She had been a hot babe all her life.  She won some minor body building competitions, bikini or fitness or something (I don't pay attention).  She was ripped.  She was also a dancer.  I'm telling you, she'd lived the vida loca.  But she paid the price and had to have a hip replacement last year.  Baby, hip replacement. . . it all took it's toll.  Now?  

So who knew that her married life would be problematic?  

"Most people going through this get divorced," she said.  They don't sleep together now.  Roommates.  

When the foils came off and she had washed my hair, I wasn't quite blond anymore.  She had alternated blond and dark to give me "texture," she said.  Then she began to cut.  When she was finished, I said it looked like I had a hair helmet.  I showed her a photo on my phone of what I had in mind.  

When she finished, I was shorn.  I don't have long hair now.  I am not blond.  People will not ask me if I am a surfer any longer.  

I am church ready.  Normcore.  

I don't care.  I can't look into mirrors any longer.  When I do, I see an old man.  

"Look at this!  My skin is getting crepey."

The hairdresser's husband started doing peptides.  GLP 3s, she said.  He lost a bunch of body fat.  Now that she is working back at her old salon several days a week (think goodness--I hated driving out to her house), she is around "beauty culture" again.  The Russian woman who runs the business is an aesthetician and does all sorts of microneedling and chemical peels and shit I don't even understand.  She has machines.  

"Everybody tells me I need to get on this and do that, but I'm not into it.  I know how to take care of my body naturally."

I've seen her do it before, shedding the pounds, counting macros, as they say.  But all of it to me is counterproductive.  You have to stay on the drugs you take or you will revert, and nobody keeps off the weight they lose in a diet.  

Still, should I do some testosterone replacement therapy?  Should I do the peptides?  In this town, everybody else is doing it.  

Three hours in the beauty chair and I was done.  I paid her a whole bunch of money and made an appointment for five weeks.  I told her I would send her the info on microbial drain cleaners.  

I needed sleep, so last night, I took a Tylenol PM with an ibuprofen.  I slept straight through the night.  

It is Sunday, the Lord's Day.  I opened the Times.  There was this.

Men came with their sons. They came with their pastors. They came with their brothers, their hunting buddies, their Bible study friends.

I sent this to Q.  

"Is this the end of Pride Month or is it a Catholic thing?" I asked.  

"That's just the devil talking through you," he said.  

I sent it to my conservative friend.  

"Democrats or republicans?" I asked.  

I think the world has gotten whacky, then I'll remember "Rocky and Bullwinkle" or "Green Acres" from my childhood.  Still. . . there is the weather.  Climate, I mean.  

Okey dokey, mom's awaiting.  Eggs, toast, Canadian bacon, and navel oranges.  If she can chew.  She is in dental misery.  I'll bet she's not going to want andy of that.  

But I do.  

Available on Netflix.

Sh*t's F***ed Up

I'm feeling strange.  I woke up this morning and didn't know where I was.  I was in the guest bedroom in my own home.  My mother is sleeping in my bed.  We had to come here late last night when her a.c. quit working.  I haven't lived here for so long now that everything seems strange.  I'm writing on my big computer because I didn't bring my laptop.  I don't know what to do when my mother gets up.  She is not comfortable in my house.  She always sits in the same place at the kitchen table when she is home.  She will not know what to do here.  I barely do anymore, either.  

I am anxious.  

We may end up being here for quite a few days.  The a.c. drain lines are clogged.  They are under the slab for some reason that I can't explain, so new lines must be run through her attic which will require a pump be installed to fight gravity.  It will be messy and expensive.  I will call the company today, but being the weekend. . . . 

Otherwise, things are bad.  My mother called her dentist's emergency line yesterday.  His office is closed Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  She is in terrible pain, but he can't see her until Monday, so he called in an antibiotic and told her to take Tylenol and ibuprofen.  

"Did you tell him you are on 40mg of oxy a day?" I asked her.  

"No."

I don't know what to do.  

I am going to try one thing today to clear her drain line, but it is not recommended.  I am going to use a drain cleaner.  I did it once before and it worked, but supposedly it will destroy the kind of plastic they used for the pipes "in the day."  I figure what the hell since she is going to have to get new drain lines run anyway.  

My Xterra has to be towed to the mechanic this week.  

I get my hair done today.  

There is no food in my house.  

Shit be fucked up.  

I'll have to tend to mother when she gets up.  This is not going to be fun.  

It's going to be a long weekend.  

Doommaxxing

More of the daily view.  This is where mom sits.  I'm inspired by the abstractions of Saul Leiter, et.al.  I like the decorative as much as the provocative.  Each should work for the betterment of intelligent emotions. 

"Intelligent emotions?  WTF?  You're really goofy, you know that?"

I love questions like that.  You have to answer yes or no. Either way. . . .

Here's something that caught my eye in the N.Y. Times.  

Why the "Got"?  Wordy and wrong.  This Doommaxxing Has to Stop.  The Times has stooped to the vernacular.  But hey--that's where the money is.  Anything too highbrow gets cancelled.  

You know, if you read this on your phone, I don't think you get the full effect.  I've set this as white on a black background.  On your phone, I think, it comes up the opposite.  Not what I intended.  Something is lost.  

Selavy.  

How's your weather?  Good?  I can't tell because national news sensationalizes things to such an extent, it is hard to get a real read.  For most of this year, the average daily temperature here has been five or six degrees above the norm.  I don't look forward to hurricane season.  As far as I can tell based upon the news, though, you've been through wildfire and tornadoes and hail as big as a fist.  You're streets have been turned into rivers by torrential downpours, and, as in Europe, you are dying of heat-related things by the score.  This is republican weather.  The group-think there is that Al Gore was a nut and there is no such thing as Climate Change or Global Warming.  They have to be happy this is only happening to "the little people."  

They score higher on Adorno's discarded "F-Scale" based on the Authoritarian Personality work following the Second World War.  

Frat boys.  

I looked it up, but my conservative friend points out the data I sent him showing that much of A.I. has a liberal bias.  No wonder they fear it.  

But that's all Doomaxxing.  Let's look on the sunny side.  

See?  That was fun.

Oh.  I sent the photo of the girl sitting in the chair on the sidewalk outside her shop that I took with the Liberator camera, the one that didn't look sharp, the one I took to A.I. and wasn't sure if the final result looked like her.  I sent both versions.  She wrote back thanking me and saying how much she loved the photo.  I guess the A.I. version did look like her after all.  I was relieved.  Nice lady.  

Oops.  I looked it up. 

"Saying "a lady" instead of "a woman" can sometimes connote outdated social class expectations. Ultimately, referring to adult females as "women" is generally the safest, most neutral, and most respectful default."

Safety First!  She was a very nice woman.   

It's Friday.  Let the weekend begin!

I really do like that photo of my mother's chair.  It pleases me.  

The Cliff

I didn't have time to write this morning.  Mom had an early doctor's appointment.  Depressing.  Most of her clients are the elderly.  The doctor deals with the backward looking, those marching toward the cliff.  We all are, but the closer you imagine you are, the less you want to think about it but the more you do.  Mom wasn't very chipper when we left.  

I checked my old work email this morning.  I rarely do.  It is a "retired" account.  I had an email in early May from a girl I used to know.  She's a woman now, a successful attorney.  She owes that, in part, to me.  I was a positive influence on her as I think I have been for many.  The email simply wanted to know if I was still kicking.  It stunned me, really, for the last time we communicated was in the 1990s.  We were intimate for years, but I find it alarming when someone I am not standing in front of actually thinks of me.  

I looked her up.  She still has a big practice in Colorado.  She is 69 years old.  What?!  Time marches on, as they used to say.  

I don't know if I will respond.  Maybe.

That photo is what I see in the afternoon cocktail hour.  Sort of.  The telephoto lens makes it a bit more dramatic.  But there you go.  Now you know.  

O.K.  I have things to do and the day is drifting away.  I'll be back fixing dinner before you know it. 

Maybe I'll make a photo of that, too.  

Dumping

I don't know why I am using this image.  Just to get rid of it, I guess.  It's been hanging around like a bad penny.  I don't have anything to say about doughnuts.  Or anything else for that matter.  

I can always turn to Trump, though.  Or the State of the Union in general. Or the weather.  My conservative friend HATES Al Gore.  He says he is P.T. Barnum at his best.  I've asked him on several occasions to name two things Gore got wrong about climate change.  

"I'm not in the mood to take a test right now!"

He's losing his mind over the primary results in NYC.  He hates Bernie Sanders and AOC more than he hates Gore.  He thinks democratic socialists will ruin the country.  

"Yea.  We wouldn't want to end up like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, etc.  They consistently rank as the happiest places on earth.  We don't even come close to them in education, health care, longevity.  But we sure as hell are ahead of Somalia, so there's that!"

I understand his abhorrence of the hoi-polloi.  I do.  The difference is he wants to suppress it and I want to erase it.  With all the money the one percenters have, we could eradicate a whole bunch of it.  Better living conditions, better schools. . . .  I come from a bad place and know the exact formula for creating the hoi-polloi.  You can't fix it all, of course, but you sure can reduce poverty and ignorance, and if you don't have presidents like Trump, maybe violence, too.  

Here.  Let me dump another photo that's been hanging around.  Good to get them off my back.  It was a photowalk day, hot and drizzling, and the world looked used and worn and I was there to record it.  It's sort of like taking photos in your own home.  You see it differently, see all the things you've become blind to, the scuff mark on the baseboard, the worn chair. . . whatever.  Who was it that said, "First you make the environment, then the environment makes you"?  

Or "ou habites-tu?"  A more profound question than it seems.  I've spent my adult life building my environments.  A friend of my tenant came to the house the other day to fetch something.  When she walked in, she said, "Oh, wow. . . nice house."  People tell me it looks like a writers house, but I don't think it made me a writer.  Maybe a little bit better, though.  

Now I live in my mother's environment, and it is shaping me.  Backwards.  I'm even speaking hillbilly again.  My whole countenance has changed, I think.  But. . . it ain't as bad as my childhood home.  I mean the first one didn't have indoor bathrooms.  The next one did, but decor was not a priority.  Not spending money was.  This is the fanciest house my mother has ever lived in.  She's way ahead of the rest of her relatives. 

That's the top of my head this morning.  My mother woke me from a deep sleep in the middle of the night yelling that the maid was coming.  I never got back to sleep.  I'm not happy with my mother today.  But I must get on with things, so. . . .

I love this sound.  It is what Gillian Welch and David Rawlings brought to contemporary alt.country/bluegrass/hillbilly music.  

Failure

Well. . . if you want a little positivity in your morning, once again. . . stop reading now.  This is another tale of woe.  

I scanned the rest of the negatives yesterday.  I was right.  I fucked up over and over and over.  

This is just one example out of many.  Double exposures galore.  O.K.  That is something I will overcome.  But then there was this.  

You may have to enlarge this to see how far out of focus it is.  Look at the car and the trees in the background, though.  Sharp as a tack.  I took this, though, without any magnifying glass to help me.  

I told you I expected failure, but I wasn't prepared for this magnitude.  I was pretty much done with the big camera at this point.  I had only one halfway decent picture and that is the one at the top.  But if you look closely, the man's shoes look blurry.  His shirt is in focus, so how does this make sense?  Only if the lens board was tilted a bit.  Could have been. It is dicey.  

Once again, I took two of the photos to A.I. and gave it some simple instructions.  

Now look at that.  That is exactly how the image was supposed to turn out.  But as I said yesterday, I don't need a big-assed camera to do this.  I could do it with my iPhone.  

And here's the bridge fisherman again, this time sharply focused.  You can see that the shoes are further from the edge of the frame than in the original and that the whites are brighter.  I could have asked it to do it again with less contrast, but my intention was not to fool people, just to illustrate.  

O.K.  One more.  

I didn't work on this much.  When I saw it was out of focus, I was in despair.  It is nuts.  The bottom of the pole against which the fellow is leaning is in sharp focus.  Only that.  WTF?  Out of curiosity, I took it to A.I. 

Now look at that!  But try to read the t-shirt.  Right?  A.I. couldn't read it in the original, I guess, so it just kind of made it up.  I was tempted to send this to the fellow until I paid attention to the lettering.  I will have to send the fucked up photos to the people I promised and tell them . . . what?  There is nothing to say.  The images say it all.  

So, what to do?  

I loaded up eight film holders again, sixteen photos in all.  I will try once more, and if this goes badly, I'm selling the camera.  I'm hoping it goes well because for all of it, I like the staid sort of images that the camera forces me into making.  The whole process is slow, so things look different, or rather, I see them differently.  Maybe that's the thing.  If I can make it work, I'd like to keep using the camera, but I don't have time to keep failing.  

What did Einstein say about insanity?  

I can make other kinds of images with other cameras, and I have a bunch.  When out in a crowd, though, there is no beating old, strange film cameras.  People are interested, by and large, rather than suspicious or worse.  I have a converted Polaroid camera that shoots 4x5 and one of the old Polaroid Mamiya cameras with which I shot all the Polaroids in the studio now converted to shoot 4x5, too.  They are smaller, lighter, and a bit easier, but they don't give me that out of focus area that the Liberator does.  And I have 2 Rollieflex medium format cameras and a Hasselblad, too.  Oh, and a rangefineder Mamiya 6x6 as well.  But if I want to be sneaky, it falls to the Leicas, though my Canon took most of my travel street photos.  I don't think I would be able to do that any longer, though.  

Just saying.  I have, of course, the regular Chamonix 4x5 that has to be on a tripod, the image backwards and upside down on the viewfinder, a black cloth over the head required.  It is definitely not a street camera. 

I might try using the iPhone and A.I. if I sell the Liberator, though.  The idea is rather intriguing.  

So there's the desolutory post.  Not so much, really.  There is much else in my life that is worse and keeps me awake at night.  Camera problems are really just a blip on the screen.  Now, I'm off to try to fix some of the problems.  Need to get my Xterra towed to the shop.  Have to stop at a bank for my mother to see about some CDs.  The cleaning crew comes today.  

But, you know. . . I may get a French soda.  There's a little treat.  

So. . . a little happy music to end this post. As always, I'm a fool for . . .