Testing and Pretending

Just kidding.  I don't even like cars.  However. . . I have watched all the seasons of "Drive to Survive" on Netflix, and last night I fell asleep on the couch after watching one episode of the new season.  I don't like cars, but I had a fascination with F1 race car drivers when I was a teen that came from a couple of movies and, probably, Playboy magazine--and here was the thing I imagined, my takeaway that seems to have dominated a large part of my life thereafter.  

A race car driver swaggered because he had tested and knew his limits.  He knew how far he could push before he failed.  Other people only ever imagined their limit having only fantasized about it and never having really tested it.  I wanted to be able to swagger.  

I tested my limits in many ways with many things.  And this is what I learned most of the time: "Quit it."

I've said many times, "Pretending's fun."  

One of my curses has been having a romantic imagination and reading too much.  I wanted for awhile to solo sail around the world.  I bought a sailboat.  I even crewed on a 30' racing sailboat in a series race called The Lipton Cup which we won.  But I soon realized I would probably die if I tried to sail around the world alone.  There were many reasons, but one stood out--I couldn't fix a fucking thing if it broke.  I've already confessed that.  

So I tried climbing rock faces and giant mountains.  

I met people whose feats scared the hell out of me.  

I tried lots of things.  I was o.k. at some, but there were many better.  

So, do I swagger now?

Fuck no.  I limp 😂!

But I did learn my limits, and that was an important life lesson.  

So, you know. . . sometimes, I still pretend.  Just push the play button. 

There are some things that I can't pretend about.  My cousin from Ohio will be here this afternoon.  I will bring my mother back home tomorrow.  For the past two days,  I did my duties.  I cleaned the house, mopped the floors, got rid of old things in the fridge, washed the sheets and made the beds. . . etc.  My own home life will again take a hit, not the one it will take when my cousin leaves, but quite a hit nonetheless.  We'll see how it goes.  I think my mother will need a lot of care.  

And I still have everything to do around my own house, though I am beginning to have the idea I might hire someone to lay all the granite rock in the driveways.  I tweaked my back making beds yesterday.  I'm trying to imagine the damage I could do shoveling granite.  

I took some photos yesterday.  I was experimenting.  It took awhile for me to get the process right using a dark filter and flash on my Leica M, but I think I got it now.  All I have right now are photos of things in my yard, though, and nothing to show.  Maybe later.  

Maybe not.  

I can only hope you are enjoying my A.I. creations.  What I have done there will make it's way onto paper in various ways sometime. I can't say "soon,"  but I will do what I can.  

O.K.  The sun is shining and I gotta scoot.  There is much to do today and only a man who knows his severely hampered limits to do it, so. . . .

When I preview this post, I see that you have to go to YouTube to see the video, so you can either click on that or on this link (The Cuba Project).  

Or. . . here's a version that is only the music. . . but you are missing some good visuals with this one.  

Change of Plans

And then, just like that, plans change.  My cousin will be here tomorrow it seems, so I have much to do to get my mother home.  I'm thinking Monday.  My stomach clenches.  I'm going back to work.  Sure, I will have more of my own time than when I am living with her, but I still must do all the technical things for her care.  And this is only the prelude to what will come in a few weeks.  I'll be back to full-time caregiver.  Having had this time at home, it is going to be hard.  

But enough of that.  I turned down another happy hour with the bros.  I just don't seem to enjoy it anymore.  In fact, my day went pretty much as planned.  I spread some rock around the perimeter of the house.  I took a bag of dirt and filled in the hole in my mother's yard.  I went to the auto supply store and got new wiper blades and wiper fluid.  I stopped in to see my mother who was sitting with a group playing a game I'd never seen before.  I went to the gym for a very brief workout.  I got liquor then went to the grocers and got what I needed to make the seafood stew plus a good crusty bread.  

All good.  Now let me back up.  

When I got to the auto supply place, I tried taking off my wiper blades before going in.  I tried.  And tried.  But I couldn't figure them out.  So when I went into the store, I asked the twelve year old boy working behind the counter which blades I needed.  He walked me over and recommended one brand.  Then came the hard part.

"I can't seem to get the old blades off."

"I'll do it."

He rang me up to the tune of $64 fucking dollars and walked me out.  It took him about a minute.  When he left, I opened the wiper fluid and opened the hood and started pouring.  I realized I'd never put any wiper fluid in the Xterra in all the time I'd owned it.  Carefully, I aimed the gallon of light blue fluid into the the little opening, amazingly without spilling.  Pour, pour. . . wtf?  How much fluid does that little thing hold?

It took the whole gallon and still didn't reach the top.  That is when I began to have my doubts.  I looked under the car to see if it had just run out onto the ground.  Nope.  So I closed up the hood and started the car.  I pulled the wiper handle to squirt the window washer fluid.  Nothing.  Again.  Nothing.  Again and again and again.  Now I was wondering if I had put the washer fluid in the wrong place.  What was there?  Oil.  Coolant.  I didn't put it in either of those.  Brakes.  Power steering.  I didn't think so.  

I tried again and again.  I guess the pump or something is broken.  Piss shit fuck goddamn.  My fault, I'm sure.  I should have put the fluid in years ago, I guess.  

The stew turned out poorly, too.  Cod, bay scallops, and peeled shrimp.  Something made the whole thing taste like fishy iodine.  Not terrible.  Still.  Carrots, celery, and potato.  Crushed tomatoes.  It just didn't come all together as it usually does.  Don't know.  Beats me.  

I had no deserts in the house.  Still, an adult beverage and the new season of Drive to Survive.  Two cups of tea and then some hot Ovaltine (malted) with milk.  I was ready for bed before ten.  

I got up at five, so I will go to my mother's house and get to work after I post this.  I think my mother will enjoy her nieces company more than she does mine.  They are hillbillies and talk hillbilly shit, stupid stuff I can't do.  They eat shitty food from cheap places or some salty, fatty thing they fix at home.  My cousin doesn't enjoy my cooking, so. . . .

My mother will cry when she decides to go home.  And then she will be stuck with me.  Not the same circus at all.  

I need to make some photos.  It is a cloudy rainy day.  I should shoot film and make some blurry ones, but Quasimodo with a camera seems to draw a lot of attention around these parts.  Quasimodo just wants to stay in his bell tower.  

I guess I should mention the possible End of the World.  I've warned you, but I know warnings do no good.  What could you do, anyway?  Build a bomb shelter.  I just don't trust Trump and his Criminal Band of Jokers to succeed at anything, let alone war.  I am of the mind that the war won't stay in the Middle East this time.  

But what I think is of miniscule importance.  It is informed only by paranoid intuition.  So I suggest you discuss it among yourselves.  If I were you, though. . . I'd make as sound a financial plan as you can.  I think I'll start looting my rich neighbors' houses soon.  

O.K.  I must get with my pick and shovel to work.  You know the song. 

Hi-ho, Hi-ho, 

It's off to work I go, 

With a shovel and a pick

And a great big dick, 

Hi-ho, Hi-ho.  

I think that comes from "The Ginger Man."  J.P. Donleavy.  Was a must read when I was a budding intellectual undergrad.  It's still in print.  I just looked it up.  Has been ever since it was published.  Sold millions.  How about that?

Here's a little song to get your day started.  Gentle and easy.  Just what we need. 

Big Night Out

Well now. . . it seems these pictures of '50s mom are resonating with a lot of "folks."  Makes me happy.  There is just something plain wholesome about them, isn't there.  Oh, I know the past was a dirty little secret that people just kept quiet, by and large, but as in the Victorian era, there was a lot of mask wearing and coded language.  It was early morning coffee, and mom had just popped a benzedrine to get her going after the barbiturate that helped her sleep the night before.  

Good god, those were the days!

I went to Happy Hour with the boys after visiting my mother yesterday.  Mom seemed a little glum.  She is ready to go home, but the launch date has been pushed back to maybe Wednesday.  I understand she wants to go home.  That is how I felt almost the entire last year.  There are many similarities, sleeping in a bed not your own, not having your own things surrounding you, nothing to do but watch television or read.  The difference is she doesn't have to do all the work, doesn't have to cook or clean or prep the day's meds, doesn't need to run anyone to the endless stream of doctor's appointments. . . etc. 

That is not what is on her mind right now.  I understand.  

Still, I have another weekend at hand.  Sort of.  There is a lot to be done before mom goes home, and I'm just the man who needs to do it.  

And so. . . out with the boys.  We had the gold standard sidewalk bordering seats at the nice restaurant and bar on the Boulevard, and it was an endless parade of beautiful young women walking by.  How did everyone get to be so beautiful?  I guess I have been gone for a long while, and maybe that is the reason.  

But there was something else, too--a fair amount of young and very attractive women on the arms of older men.  And when they walked by, the women almost always looked our table over like. . . like what?

"Rented," Alain said.  

Ooohhh. Sure.  It has been around, but it seems to have become more public.  

"We need to take him down to Costa Rica for a weekend and get him laid."

That got the boys going.  Sure, soon.  

"You need to pop that cherry, boy!"

Yea, yea, yea.  I had little enthusiasm for it other than a weekend in Costa Rica.  I don't want a hooker.  These boys are all jacked on testosterone.  I'm running on estrogen.  I want women to fall in love with me, flirt with me, court me. . . .  

But it didn't make me glum.  I just was.  I had nothing clever to say, nothing at all, really.  It felt like something was broken in me.  I felt like gum on somebody's shoe.  Life had passed me by.  None of those girls were going to pick me out of a crowd.  

We drank drinks.  I was going slow, though, for I hadn't eaten a thing all day.  Is this an old man thing?  It happens all the time now.  I just forget to eat.  I ordered a beer and a lobster roll.  Then I had a Negroni.  This place makes outstanding Negronis.  Of course the Negroni, nice and red as it is, gets me catcalls from the crowd.  

"Can you put a little umbrella in that for him?" Alain queries the wispy young waiter with the man bun.  

In a bit, I order a hamburger.  So does everyone else.  We are tired of waiting for the famous judge to show up.  

He never does.  

After burgers, they order another round of beers.  They all get light beers and I an IPA.  When the waiter brings them, he says, "Here you go, fellows, three girly beers and one manly one."

Ho!  This guy took a big chance with his tip.  But the boys get a kick out of it.  

I only take a sip of mine.  The boys are ready to hit the next bar.  

"Why aren't you drinking?"

"I just don't want it."

"Too manly for you?"

We split the tab evenly and all leave good sized tips for man bun.  

The next bar, a few blocks down the Boulevard, is owned by a friend.  It is not my favorite, though, for it serves just beer and wine and snackable food.  There is liquor--kind of.  It is some special deal.  The owner doesn't have a liquor license, but he is able to sell liquor made by a local distillery on their license somehow, but only theirs, and they do not make scotch.  All the liquor drinks are cocktails that I don't care for, so I just have water.  We sit at the bar with the owner's wife while some guy with a guitar strums chords across all the strings and sings.  

"I can't stand a strummer with a guitar.  This guy sucks."

The d.j. objects.  

"This guy is very popular.  He's got quite a following."

"Sure.  I'll bet.  He sucks."

He continues to quarrel about it, but I won't relent.  The performer is awful, but people flock to bars to hear "the music."  

Whatever. 

I listen for awhile to the talentless guitar player and the round robin of conversation, but I am a bum, and so in a little while I say, "Sorry boys, but I'm buggin' out."

Nobody objects.  

Home by eight.  

And that was My Big Night Out.   

The morning is gray and drizzly.  It will rain today and tomorrow they say.  O.K.  I will spend the weekend on my couch.  I will make a seafood stew for one.  With crusty bread.  It sounds delightful.  I don't watch much t.v. anymore except for YouTube, and mostly I just put on music now, but maybe I'll watch a movie.  I read that "Sentimental Value" is now streaming.  Maybe that.  It sounds like a movie for grownups.  

I will burn the Lampe Berger, drink hot cocoa or golden milk, and good hot teas as the rain, soft, I hope, falls upon the roof.  There is work to be done, and though I had good intentions, I did none of it yesterday.  I will not pressure myself, though, and I will try to do a little of it today.  Doing a little makes me feel better than doing none at all.  That is the gentle way.  

Let's just be sentimental one more time. 

Sad Songs for Lonely People.  Such a thing.

Working Man

I finally got to work yesterday.  It felt good to get things done.  I started with cutting up a bunch of old boards that have been laying around outside for far too long.  I cut them into three foot sections hoping the garbage guys will take them.  If not. . . there are other ways.  Afterwards, I drove across town to pick up some meds and then went west to the Home Depot where I bought some bags of granite to put on the ground next to my newly painted siding.  Got two batteries for my circular saw for what I considered an outrageous price since I hardly ever use tools, but my old batteries won't hold a charge anymore.  A few more items, too.  

When I got home, I spread the granite.  I will need a ton more, so I think I am going to have it delivered to re-rock the drives with enough for making pathways and covering the ground next to the house.  Granite is heavy.  I'll be sick of moving it in minutes and will wonder why I didn't hire somebody to do it. 

I'll order the big pile of mulch for the driveway, too.  

Today, though, I am going to clean my mother's house in preparation for her return.  While there, I will wash my Xterra.  

I think.  

I never know what I will do.  Some days I just don't want to work.  Maybe I'll take a nap instead for I am scheduled to go out with the gymroids for happy hour.  I don't want to, but I've already committed.  

I just thought I'd throw this in.  No narrative.  Nor reason.  I didn't sleep much last night and am too tired for narrative.  Outside the city is working on the power lines and two yard crews are mowing and blowing.  I just want a second cup of coffee and some danish.  I don't really think I'll get much done today, but as they say. . . there is nothing that can't be done tomorrow.  

Temptation

Good news!  My mother has a plan for aging at home.  

Me. 

We met with the staff at the Four Seasons Rehab Center yesterday afternoon.  My mother has made a determined comeback, apparently.  They said she could go home depending on when I wanted her.  What could I say?  She wants to go home.  

"I tell her we all want to live in our own homes, but it doesn't seem to resonate."

And so, by the end of the week, I will be back to caretaking.  There is a lot to be done.  She called her hillbilly niece who said she could leave to come down on Saturday.  Sounds good, right?  People think that will make it easy.  

"You should take a trip, go somewhere.  Take advantage."

Really?  Her regimen of meds is complicated, and I wouldn't trust it to my mother's niece.  I will prepare them with labels for days at a time in a big, plastic pillbox I bought for the occasion.  I will need to pick up her meds and take her to the numerous doc appointments that now must be rescheduled.  My mother's niece is not going to do a 20 hour shift the way I did, so I will need to go sit with my mother every day to give my mother's niece a break.  

I will, for a few weeks, get to sleep in my own bed, though.  After that, I move back in.  

I asked about getting some help for my mother's care.  It is all out-of-pocket, I was told.  I argued, not vociferously, of course, but in a well-reasoned manner.  Unexpected, I guess, for then the social director recanted.  There are ways, but not really.  She will set up a meeting with some Medicare people for me, she said.  

And so it goes.  

I had an inquiry about these pics.  I don't have nudes of my mother, so I just posted these as a suggestion that she was not always 94 years old.  My mother was a real hottie in her youth and even longer.  She was the sexual fantasy of the neighborhood boys, I am sure.  I had my own about one of the mothers down the street.  I shouldn't say "sexual."  They weren't about me humping Mrs. Jones.  It was way more nefarious than that, more of a visual, sensual thing, I am certain, where she sits in her underwear smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and is nice to me.  Who can remember?  But when I was a kid, we didn't see pictures of naked women except on calendars at the auto repair places.  

I guess these images rather reflect all of that.  

I can, though, remember the smell of the breath of those coffee drinking, cigarette smoking women.  But they always wore perfume. 

So. . . I am enjoying my days and evenings at home.  Last night, I hazarded a Negroni on the deck after getting the rehab news.  Wasn't sure how my diverticulosis gut would react, but my nervous system reacted as it should.  Maybe even better.  I ate a safe dinner of rice, steamed brocolli florets and garbanzo beans, with scrambled eggs all mixed together in a bowl.  I watched something on t.v. as I awaited the Trump Bowl later on.  Around 8:30, I think, I fell asleep.  When I woke up, it was 10:30.  I went to bed, but of course, I couldn't fall back to sleep.  At midnight, I gave up and took a sleep aid.  

I didn't wake up until 8:30.  Hence the late posting.  

I read about the State of the Trumpian Nation this morning.  My god, I'm glad I didn't sit through that.  No information there, just outrage.  

Today I must get busy.  I've been both lazy and sick and then even more lazy.  I've babied myself.  I haven't even gone to the gym in almost a week.  Don't know if I will go today.  There is much work to be done, and I'm the only one to do it.  This lazy streak must end.  

Nerd Rich and Proud of It

Since this blog has become somewhat of "The Misery Tour," I'll post Robert Carradine's Hollywood Death Mask here--and tell a story.  I'll also post his Life Mask, too. 

Forgive me for repeating myself, but a eulogy is in order.  When my conservative friend still lived here, long ago, I would go to his house and drink up his wine and whiskey and eat his food, especially on a Friday night.  It was his house, but I had rented it for years, first from his brother, then from his mother.  It was a groovy old Florida bungalow built the same year as the one I live in now, but this was right next door to Country Club College and had a big screened in front porch that was half of the undercover porch that sat on the front of the house.  Out back there was a huge deck where untoward things used to happen when his brother lived there, but that is another story best told in low voices in the flicker of candlelight.  My friend owned it now, though.  I bought my very own house, but I still went to the old house often.  

One Friday afternoon when I stopped by, a new guy was there.  The hors d'oeuvres were out and the red wine uncorked.  So was the new fellow.  He was a smart alec which was typical of my friend's friends at the time.  '80s.  Wolf of Wall Street wannabes, etc.  I had learned to hold my own with this pack of coyotes, so I spent a while trading barbs and jabs with the two of them--until something clicked.  

"Hey. . . wait a minute. . . you're. . . ."

Realize, I'd only seen him in two movies, "The Long Riders" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," movies in which his parts were smaller.  But both of his brothers were in "The Long Riders," too, so I knew he was a Carradine.  

"Man, I love Keith's films.  I just flipped out over "The Moderns."  

Robert was snide about his brother.

"I made more money doing "Revenge of the Nerds" than he has made in all his films."

I, of course, had not seen "Revenge of the Nerds."  But now that I recognized him, I was a bit more deferential.  My  conservative friend was a pilot (had won the National Aerobatic Championship competition recently) and was flying Carradine down the next day to compete in the Twelve Hours of Sebring race.  It was to be Carradine's first race.  

Not much of a story, I know, but. . . he told me his brother had painted the pictures in "The Moderns." 

"I'll get you one," he said.  

He never did.  I guess I'll never get one now.  

Scary, though. . . a man my own age.  

But at least my gut is better now.  And yet, the misery continues.  I can't use my right pointing finger.  The nail is black and blue halfway to the tip and the finger is still swollen.  

Last night, not yet trusting meat in my tender gut, I cooked a frozen pizza and did the thing I've done so many times.  I couldn't wait, and the first bite scalded the roof of my mouth.  A big blister formed and then popped.  I had a one inch piece of skin flopping around for the rest of the night.  It "disappeared" while I slept, so now I simply have a raw tender spot that my tongue won't leave alone.  

Freud? 

I have a meeting with the staff at the rehab place today at two for an evaluation of my mother's condition.  Realizing that the hospital was adamant about not sending her there because it was short term "rehab," they kept insisting on sending her to a nursing home where we know what happens.  Today my concern will be how I get the help I'm going to need for my mother's deteriorating health using Medicare and not paying out of pocket.  My mother has bad osteoporosis, stenosis, sclerosis, etc., but her organs are pretty healthy, so I think she will live (in pain) to be a hundred.  I'll go broke quick enough if I have to pay for her care.  So, today will be tricky, indeed, with my mother sitting in the room.  I have to be careful with how I phrase my concerns.  

Is there an upside to this post?  It is 34 degrees this morning here in the Sunny South.  Crisp and crystal clear.  I should get out with a camera somewhere. . . but I won't.  Actually, I have a ton of labor I had planned to do around the house that I am putting off for a few days until it is warmer.  But work there is and plenty of it.  It will be good for me.  That is what they say.  I've got my circular saw batteries charged and am ready to do some damage.  

I really shouldn't be using power tools.  I've had enough trouble with simple kitchen tools and door jambs lately.  

That's it.  That's what I got.  And a song.  None of the ones I have cued really go thematically with this post, but that is probably a good thing.  I'll just pick one and let it live on it's own.  

Maybe something to get you out shakin' it on the dance floor.  Go ahead.  Nobody's watching.  Whatever way you like.  

The Dying Animal

Mom wasn't always old, of course, but now that is all people see.  It is difficult for me.  Sad and terrifying.  Phillip Roth wrote a book titled "The Dying Animal."  That is what we are, Dying Animals.  It is stupid not to preserve everything we can in our lives, especially when we are young, but "younger" is better, too.  There needs to be a record, I think, though in the end it doesn't matter, I guess.  Still, it is nice to pretend that it does or will, to have the illusion that we will remain once we are gone.  

I don't want my picture taken anymore.  Nobody took it when I was young.  Now people with their phones are always wanting to put me in some dumb fucking picture.  Fuck that.  I love photos of the young Cary Grant.  Even Trump does.  But I hate seeing him toward the end.  He was still better looking than most men his age, but that isn't the point.  

Pepsi had an add long ago that went, "For those who think young."  I try, and I think I do.  But the body. . . oy!

Yesterday I told my mother I thought I had a bout of diverticulitis.  Ironically, I said, I hoped it was that or else it could be something much worse.  I rallied a bit late in the day and went to see her right before dinner.  

"You had me worried," she said.  

"You've had me worried, too. . . for a year.  It has stressed me out."

Indeed, I think stress is what brought on the attack.  That and too much liquor.  

So yesterday I didn't eat.  That is what you do when you have an attack of diverticulitis.  My gut was still worrying me with little but constant pain, but I had my fingers crossed.  Around three, I decided a walk might be good for me.  And indeed, at the time, it seemed so.  Once I had showered, though, the nagging pain was still there.  It either was or I imagined it to be intermittent.  

When I got home from visiting my mother, I ate a can of chicken noodle soup.  Here's my gastronomical recommendation--drop an egg into it.  That's what I did.  It made a sort of egg drop soup.  Strands of egg thickened it.  I had it with a slice of fresh white mountain bread from the bakery.  Clear liquids and white food, they say.  White rice.  Bananas.  I was wondering if vanilla ice cream was included in that.  

I took a nerve pill and went to bed.  I didn't waken to pain during the night.  I am still paranoid and think I feel some sensation deep down, so it will be another clear liquid diet day.  Toast for breakfast, another egg drop chicken soup for dinner.  Tea.  

The finger is a mess, too.  My fingernail is half black.  The nail has weird and painful sensations.  I will surely lose it.  

Other than that. . . I'm a mess.  What is there to say?  

I keep reading that people are not in favor of A.I.  Who are these people?  I saw a "town hall" with Matthew Mcconaughey, just a clip, telling young actors like Timothée Chalamet (really?) that A.I. is not going to be stopped and they need to trademark their voices and images so that they own them.  I find this silly on so many levels.  A.I. will make their own new stars if it comes to that.  They might train their engines on past stars, but the new ones will be unrecognizable amalgams, just as writers steal the styles of others until they synthesize their own.  But that is not the thing that really struck me.  It was the rationale behind it--$$$!  It wasn't about art.  It was simply commerce.  Like. . . "I deserve to be rich because people like to see me act."  I abhor the amounts of money paid to celebrities and athletes.  It is a large part of the insanity in this country.  

But some people fear A.I. technology. 

"It will take over.  It won't be stopped.  Eventually, humans will be puppets."

Something like that.  Too many 1950s sci-fi movies, I think.  Oh, don't get me wrong--I loved those old sci-fi movies, and just a whole lot of other stuff, too. 

If A.I. can make those movies, I'm all for it.  And the music.  And anything else.  

Hey. . . maybe it can make photos of me when I was younger and better looking.  I think I'll work on that.  

O.K.  This ain't there yet, but you can tell it's coming.  This was made for zero dollars by kids on a laptop.  What do you think some studio with bank will do?

This Life Is Killing Me

Things went to shit last night.  Stress, I reckon.  Cleaning up after dinner, I sliced my right pointing finger open.  Not sliced, really.  The tip of a very sharp kitchen knife cut small and deep.  I had the devil of a time getting it to stop bleeding.  I used a styptic pencil for a long time, and finally wrapped it tightly in a bandaid.  I went back to the kitchen to take out the garbage.  Coming back into the house, I closed the same finger in the door.  Hard.  The nail went blue right away and did not stop throbbing all night . 

But it got worse.  Woke up with a terrible pain in my gut.  Wouldn't let up.  I finally realized it was probably diverticulitis.  I didn't get an hour's sleep all night long.  

The pain has lessened but it is still there nagging me.  I can't sleep.  I can't stay awake.  It is going to be a miserable day.  

Mystery Hole

"I have a lot of work to do around here still."

"Like what?"

"I need to do the driveways.  Mulch the one in front and re-rock the other two."

"Re-rock?  I've never heard that before.  Do you hyphenate that?"

"You bet.  I love the hyphen.  I love a good hyphen and I love a dash, and I especially love the ellipses."

Today will be a work day.  When I finish this, I will head out for the Home Depot.  This seemed like a good and noble idea a couple days ago, but I am face-to-face with the monster now, and I do not feel as fresh for it.  I fell asleep on the couch last night, not even watching television,  and woke up at 11:30.  Afraid I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, I took a Tylenol P.M.  Taking one of those approaching midnight is not a good idea if you are hoping to wake up and get to being productive.  Uh-uh. . . I wouldn't recommend it.

Already, though, I've used the hyphen, the dash, and the ellipses.  At least there's that.  

My Satruday workday, though, started on Friday afternoon.  As was reported, the neighbors had spied a hole in my mother's front yard.  Not knowing what to expect, I dutifully went over to look.  Sure as shittin', there was a hole.  A perfect hole, not sloppy.  I looked in.  It was eight or nine inches deep, and as one reported, there was a piece of pvc pipe.  

What the fuck was I looking at?  I reached my hand into the hole to feel around.  Dumb, right?  Nothing squirmed or bit me though.  I reached into the pipe with my fingers and dug out some dirt.  The pipe was attached to nothing on the side pointing toward my mother's yard.  It was on the border between her yard and the next door neighbors who live in Georgia but come down on weekends some.  They have been remodelling the house for a year in preparation for moving in. . . eventually.  

I was stymied, so I walked across the street to the handy fellow's house, the couple who always invite my mother and me to holiday dinners.  

"I HATE asking people for favors, but if you have two minutes, I'd like for you to look at something and tell me what I'm missing.  You know more about this stuff than I do."

He followed me back across the street.  He looked in the hole.  He put his hand in.  

"I have no idea," he said.  "It doesn't make sense."

"That's what I thought.  Good.  I am not as dumb as I thought."

After a minute he said, "Get a shovel.  We need to dig it up to find out."

I paused.  He wanted to dig up the yard.  I said, "I don't know," but I turned to walk back to the garage.  "Get a picture of this," I told him.  "This really isn't my thing."

I cut through the grass and pulled out the dirt.  Loe and behold, the pipe popped out.  It was simply a piece of four inch pvc pipe about two inches long.  It was connected to nothing.  

"What the fuck?"

That didn't explain the hole, though, so the neighbor took the shovel and kept digging.  About two inches below where the pvc pipe had been, he found another two inch pipe.  He dug and found it was going toward the street.  

"Ah-hah!" he said.  

"Yea, but the soil isn't swampy.  There is no water puddled up around it."

He decided it was an irrigation pipe.

"We need to turn on the irrigation," he said.  

My mother's irrigation meter/timer is from the '60s.  Nobody knows how to use it.  It is connected to a shallow well.  The neighbor started flipping and punching things.  

"Man. . . nobody knows how this works," I said.  

But he was undeterred.  For awhile.  He never got it to turn on.  I have no idea if it will ever come on again.  

We went back to the hole.  The across the street neighbor who lives next door to the other one, came over to see what we were doing.  We were three old men looking into a hole. 

"You're mother had a drain line put in for her washing machine," said the new guy.  "They didn't want to go under the slab, so they ran a new line out down the side of house."

That made sense to everybody.  

"Sure, it's a drain line.  If it were a water line, it would be under pressure coming from the street."

Duh.  

The first neighbor went across the street to get his prober, a long. slender metal rod with a handle for pushing into the ground to find pipes and such.  He started probing trying to find the drain line.  We had already dug up the yard from where we saw the pipe running to the street, but there was no pipe.  Then he spotted a clean out drain that was covered with grass.  He pushed in the probe.  Ah--the line took a turn toward the clean out drain.  

"If it is a drain line, it doesn't make sense that it blew out a hole in the yard."

"It could have gotten so backed up. . . who knows, it may have bee backing up since they put it in."

"I don't know. . . ."

He had me run the washing machine on a rinse cycle and we waited until it drained.  No water showed.  

He said he'd help me dig it up later if I wanted.  Right now, he had to take his wife to the doctor.

"I do this kind of stuff all the time.  I enjoy it.  I didn't like the way the drain lines ran at my house and I re-routed them.  Hell, it's just pipe and glue."

"I don't know.  I don't do this, you know?  This is the kind of thing where I go, 'shit, I need to call a plumber.'"

"Man, a plumber's going to cost $800.  I like doing this.  I'm a Renaissance man.  I can do it all."

I looked at him and grinned.  "A Renaissance man didn't do the work.  He knew how to do it, but he didn't dig the ditches himself.  He just knew it needed to be done."

He laughed and nodded.  Then he said let him know as he turned back to his own home.  

I filled in the holes we dug and put the grass back on top, all but the original hole.  I put a garbage can over it and put flags around it so nobody would step in.  Then I went inside, washed my hands, and got in the car to go and see my mother.  

Driving there, though, I thought about the hole.  If water had caused it, the offending pipe would be exposed and not be two inches beneath normally damp dirt.  A drain pipe wasn't going to blow a hole from eight inches below the ground.  Fuck no.  The hole was still a mystery.  If an animal had dug the hole, there would have been dirt on the grass in front of it.  Nope.  I had no idea how it got there, but I was pretty sure I knew how it didn't.  

When I told my mother about it all, I said, I'm just going to fill the hole back in.  "If a leak caused it, we'll see another hole, right?  I'm going to fill it back in."

And I will. . . with some trepidation.  

But now it is time for the Home Depot.  Today is just dumb work, nothing technical.  I kind of forget what I had in mind to do today, really, but it will come to me.  

I'd like to be on the Boulevard somewhere for lunch this afternoon, though.  And then off to see my mother.  

So I'd better get started.  Yup.  

My Photo Confession

Fuck it--I'll post a photograph.  I have a hundred of these kind of images sitting on my desktop.  There is nothing special about any of them, but I don't know if everybody or anybody is enamored of my A.I. creations.  There is some enigma about this photo, maybe, but not enough to hold interest for more than a second.  It sure as heck ain't no Vivian Maier.  But. . . you know. . . photography gets me "out in the world."  

I watched this guy on YouTube last night.  He's about as fucked up as I am. . . but with a better accent.  I "enjoyed" what he had to say about his photography experience, though.  And he mentions Kierkegaard.  How about that?  

I've watched all of his six or seven videos.  He has only been on YouTube for a few months.  While his YouTube vids are pretty well shot from different angles and edited together fairly well. . . his photography is bad.  I don't watch him for his aesthetic vision.  I'm not sure his has been well developed.  No, I watch him to hear him explain his tortured soul.  

This morning, I thought to just shoot medium format film today.  It is going to be sunny and 87 degrees, or so they say.  Similar weather all weekend.  People will be out, I think.  Me and my Hasselblad.  Me and my two Rollieflex cameras.  Me and my Mamiya 6x6.  

And I'll wonder if I am experiencing life or just recording it.  Ha!  I've been "experiencing" life for a long time now without recording much of it, and I have to tell you. . . it ain't much fun.  I'd rather put it in a box for awhile, see it through a little viewfinder.  

"Did you just take my picture?"

"Not really.  I mean, I don't know you.  I used you as a trope, perhaps, for the time and place, but no. . . I don't think it was you."

That doesn't usually help.  But with film cameras, I can simply say no and hope they don't punch me.  

I haven't taken a good picture for a very long time.  I am beginning to suspect that I have put too much pressure on myself to make the kind of photos that I think I should.  I've gotten too many voices in my head.  I really should only be photographing what I like and what truly interests me and fuck the rest.  I don't really care about broken down factories, grain towers, old cars, etc.  I like the way girls look.  I like what they do.  I'm not allowed to say that anymore, I know.  These aren't the Rat Pack years.  I shouldn't even confess it now, I am certain.  But it is true and I still can't take my eyes off them.  It isn't sexual.  Even now, I am like a chaste girl from a Victorian novel.  I still say no most of the time.  I like the attention, but I really want love.  So no, you can guffaw if it pleases you, but it is purely visual.  Boys are the most awkward looking and acting things alive.  They are like horses.  Some of you, maybe many, think horses are beautiful, but to me, they look hideous.  That long neck and outsized head are monstrous, I think.  Same with boys.  Not head and neck, but just the way they seem to be put together out of machine parts.  Maybe it is their psychological makeup.  Their attitudes about everything, really.  Not to say that girls aren't fucked up.  Sure they are.  Badly.  But the aesthetics disguises so much of that if you only look from a distance.  And sometimes their talk really makes me giggle.  They make me want to be smart and witty.  I like to make them laugh.  The way they laugh. . . omg. . . like diamonds falling into a crystal goblet.  A boy's laugh, of course, is a donkey's bray.  I do have male friends, don't get me wrong.  But I don't enjoy looking at them.  From women friends, I must always tear myself away before I become too obvious.  

"What are you looking at?"

"I was just admiring your earrings."

Yes, I've learned.  There is a deep paranoia in many beautiful women.  Boys stare at them day and night.  They end up concentrating on their flaws.  

Have I made enough generalizations yet?  I'll stop.  But that was fun.  My choice of photographing anything, though, would be a woman in just about any context or setting, cheap and tawdry or deeply textured and romantic.  

There is my confession.  Do you think I could put that in an ad?  

And yea. . . like that fellow says, it is not a real interaction.  I would be stepping out of the river, a mere witness.  

Hadn't planned on writing that today, but there you have it.  Something other than the miseries of my own current life.  

Maybe tomorrow I will explain how that spills over into my musical tastes.  Yea. . . that would be good. 

If I can remember.  

I Had a Feeling. . .

I went out to dinner last night.  It was fine, but I got nothing out of it.  I'd have just as soon stayed home.  I didn't even have to pay.  Still, the whole thing left me feeling hollow.  

Just the way I feel this morning.  Empty and soulless.  

I looked through the photos I have taken in the last months to pick one to post, but they all left me blah.  Worse.  

I'd better find something soon to fill the void, to replace this fear and dread.  

I'd sat in the afternoon with my mother and two of her neighbors through one hour of entertainment at the luxury rehab, a singer with a karaoke style machine and a microphone.  Funny, I'd seen him last time my mother was there.  He wore a tropically patterned shirt, a small brown Panama hat, brown pants with a belt and big buckle, and, the kicker--gold shoes!  He had a nice voice and danced around as if he were playing in a nightclub, but what he was looking at. . . oy!  

And perhaps that stayed with me through the night.  

I don't know.  But once again, I could go to sleep forever.  

I ordered a new Buck Mason t-shirt yesterday.  Maybe that will make me happy.  I haven't created a tangible piece of "art" for a long while now.  Maybe that would help.  Or maybe just taking care of all the house projects hanging over my head would do it.  

But my mother will be out of rehab soon, and I'll be in that routine once again.  

The world becomes a Beckett play.  

Will Trump attack Iran to distract people from the Epstein files?  We'll know something by this weekend, they say. There is no telling what the Syphilitic King will do.  Will he wait until the Olympics are over?  

We'll all just have to wait and see.  

I can find no way to end this post, nothing with which to finish it off.  I had a feeling when I got out of bed it would go like this.  So, rather than ponder any longer, I'll just say. . . 

Sayanora.  

Hippie Surfer Dude Son

I watched a documentary on the origins of "surf music" a couple nights ago.  It was fairly fascinating.  Surf music of the late 50's and early 60's was jazz.  Back then, in California, the people making surf movies were shooting with 8 and 16mm film and no audio, so when they showed them in small gatherings, they would just put on a record, Miles Davis or Chet Baker, and let the projector run.  Henry Mancini, and, a surprise to me who loves this shit, Martin Denny and Les Baxter, too.  The early live music came from people like Dick Dale, Duane Eddie, and The Ventures, all instrumental, no singing, no lyrics.  In other words, kind of jazzy.  Once the surf craze caught on, mainly after the movie "Gidget" was released, surf music got commercialized. . . and so. . .  The Beach Boys.  But early on. . . it was all jazz.  

Love that. 

When I went to see my mother yesterday, her across the street neighbors were there.

"Here's your hippie surfer dude son," said the man.  Such are his ways.  

When I left, I went to the grocers to get the fixin's for a pho dinner.  I hadn't time to run to the Vietnamese place where I buy the bone broth they cook every day, but I had read a recipe in The Times that said when you don't have stock, buy chicken drumsticks and boil them for an hour or so, then take out the drumsticks and used a fork to take off the meat.  

It worked like a charm.  I boiled them in grocery store stock, added all the spices, peppers, and vegetables, and served it over rice noodles.  Wowza.  

As I was buying the fixin's, I saw a guy a little younger than me, I'd guess, kind of bummy, surfer looking guy, eyeing me.  Did I know him?  I didn't think so.  In the check out line, I heard a voice behind me say, "You were a surfer.  Where'd you surf?"

I turned around.  It was him.  

"I surfed when I was younger some," I said.  "Mostly at the inlet and south."

"East Coast surfer," he said. "Me, too.  I went to the Pipeline once, but it was too much for me."

"Yea, I had a hard enough time surfing here."

I turned back to settle up the bill when he said, "Good hair."

"I pay my beautician for this," I said.  The small Black cashier looked up and giggled.  

As I walked out, I waved goodbye.  

"Keep the sand between your toes," he said.  

Man, that sounded good to me.  

Here's a little clip of my buddies and I in the 9th grade.  We'd all just gotten surfboards and were learning to surf in no break white water.  We had to go with my parents, of course.  But as I've said many times before, pretending's fun.  

Etc.

It Takes a Lot of Medicine

I got beautified yesterday.  Hadn't been since October.  I was looking more than a little Wild West/Buffalo Bill Cody.  The beautician improved me once again.  We talked.  I didn't really want to talk all about my mother, but she had plenty of things she wanted to say.  So I mostly listened.  

Went in at ten, out at one.  I went to see my mother.  Oy!  I finally said to her, "Has there been one good thing that has happened to you today?"  

She wanted to know when she was going home.  That is her mantra.  For me, the question sounds like, "When are you going to spend all your life taking care of me again?"  

"You've only been here a few days--I don't know what to say.  We have an evaluation meeting on Monday.  Probably then."

"I've got another week?"

I could get them to keep her there for over a hundred days, of course.  I argued and argued to get her into the Four Seasons Rehab Facility, but. . . . 

And so, my day was pretty ruined.  I was going to go to the gym after seeing her, but I couldn't manage to pluck up the energy when I left.  

This morning, the neuralgia is back.  Head to toe agony.  

"The pills, the pills."

Driving back from my visit with mother, I heard this song.  Yea.  Seems true enough.  

All things come, and all things pass.

It takes a lot of medicine to go this fast.

 

Stepping Over the Fence

Yesterday was warm and windy.  I sat out in the early afternoon to take in the sun and weather with my mother on the second floor balcony of her rehab hotel.  I don't know the root cause just then, but things were feeling pretty old Key West, and I was thinking seafood and adventure.  

"I could go for some oysters," I said. "It's the season for them, isn't it?"

I don't really eat oysters anymore because of the dirty bay waters full of sewage and chemical runoff, but especially because of the chance of getting hepatitis.  Still, life (mine) is short but memory is long.  

"Remember Lee and Rick's?" I asked her.  It was a place not far from where I grew up, and I remember going there with my parents when I was young, so, so many decades ago.  

"Yes.  I wonder if it is still there?"

"I think so."

I got out my phone.  Yup.  Sure as shitting.  I think the last time I was there was in the 1980s.  

"I think I'm going to go get some oysters," I told her .

"Take me with you."

The sky began to take on a dark cast as the edge of the approaching front moved in.  It wasn't feeling so Key West anymore.  

"I wish my friends still lived here.  I used to be able to call people on the fly and say, Hey. . . let's go get some oysters, but not any longer.  

When I said goodbye to my mother, I was wondering if I really wanted to go.  It was easier to simply go home and. . . . 

Nope.  Determined to break out, I mapped my way to adventure and daring.  

I grew up in a bad part of town, but we were able to look down upon the people in the neighborhood bordering the oyster bar.  Lee and Rick's is just off Old Winter Garden Road, then a two lane sometimes dirt thoroughfare of diesel mechanics and transmission repair shops.  It had changed.  Now it was four lanes, but that was all.  Old block buildings that hadn't been painted since I was a kid, dirt spattered, oil covered, surrounded by sandy, bare ground lined the new highway.  

I missed the turn.  I'd gone too far and had to run back through the shanty neighborhood.  The hair on the back of my neck rose a touch remembering who lived here and what went on.  Neighborhoods like this could be brutal.  People still looked at the unfamiliar car that drove down the street.  If some young guy smiled, you could take odds it wasn't genuine.  

The parking lot was littered with signs telling you that the restaurant was not responsible for whatever happened to your car while you were there.  Good to know.  I found the austere entrance, an unadorned door with a small, isignificant sign saying "entrance." 

"By god, boy. . . if ya h'aint got sense to know how to get in the goddamned restaurant. . . ."

Inside, nothing had changed.  Nothing.  It still smelled of old seafood.  There were two cast cement bars with a deep basin for scraping in the oyster shells.  There were tables, too, but nobody was sitting at them.  I walked in and took a seat in the middle of the second bar.  A big fellow came over and asked if I needed a menu.  

"Yea."

Another fellow brought me another and told me to move to the end of the bar.  

"What can I get you?"

I hadn't looked at the menu yet, but. . ."I'll have a bucket of oysters."

"How do you want them?"

I like them raw, but hepatitis and all. . . "Steamed.  Medium, I guess."

I ordered a beer.  He brought it and began to set me up.  

"They'll be ready in about four minutes," he said.  

I told him I came here with my parents when I was a kid but hadn't been back in like forty years.  

"I brought my wife here on our first date," he said.  He was thin and fit and had the obligatory tattoos on each of his arms.  

I'm a good listener, or, perhaps, a good interviewer.  I found out where he lived, in another dumpy part of town, with his girlfriend, though they've been together twelve years so he calls her his wife.  They have three kids, not his kids.  She is a little older and had the kids with another guy.  He never had any of his own.  But he was born in my own village, went to school there.  Odd, I thought, his trajectory in life.  

Oysters ready, he put the bucket in the trough and began shucking.  Shucking steamed oysters is much easier than shucking raw, so he was filling the bar quickly.  

I was eating them like a sissy.  A real oyster connoisseur squeezes some lemon on them and sucks them right out of the shell.  I scooped up a bit of horse raddish on the oyster and dipped it in cocktail sauce and then butter before putting it on a saltine cracker.  

The shucker didn't comment. 

"I saw you had butterfly shrimp on the menu.  When I was a kid, there was a place out on the trail called Gary's Duck Inn.  You'd think they'd be known for their duck, but it was a steak and seafood place.  At the time, they were the largest purchasers of shrimp in the country, if you can believe that, and they were famous for their butterfly shrimp." 

If you don't know:

Butterfly shrimp is a popular, visually appealing preparation method where the shrimp is split open along the back, deveined, and flattened into a butterfly-like shape while remaining connected, often with the tail left on. This technique increases surface area for better coating adhesion (ideal for breading and frying) and ensures faster, more even cooking.

"When Gary sold the place. . . "

Rather than write it on my own here, I'll paste the history from a local newspaper account.

Gary's Duck Inn ,a popular seafood spot established in 1945, inspired the creation of Red Lobster after investors Bill Darden and Charley Woodsby purchased it in 1963. Recognizing the success of the no-frills, high-volume seafood model, they launched the first Red Lobster in Lakeland, Florida, in 1968.

The Inspiration: Gary Starling opened Gary's Duck Inn in 1945 on South Orange Blossom Trail, becoming famous for shrimp and serving celebrities like Dolly Parton.

"Cool, huh?"

"Really?  I worked for Red Lobster for twenty years."

"Wow.  Did they still serve the butterfly shrimp?"

"They called them something else."

"Well, I'm coming back to get the butterfly shrimp next time."

"You'd better bring someone with you.  It's a pretty big platter."

He spread his hands apart as indication.

"How are you doing with the oysters.  You still have this many left."

He held up the bucket.  There were still a good number of shelled oysters on the bar.

"My eyes were bigger than my stomach," I said.  

"I don't want to charge you for the rest of these," he said.  "I'll just charge you for two dozen."

And to think I was nervous about coming in.  What a guy.  And of course, I tipped him 50%.  

 I'd come out by the Expressway, but I drove home down the old highway past my old neighborhood and the giant Shopping Center that bordered it.  It caught me by surprise.  It was HUGE, but now it was an eyesore, having been very badly updated, stuccoed, and painted a terrible orange, seeming miles of it.  For a long, long stretch, the aesthetics of poverty dominated the landscape, dirt lots and withered or dead shrubs bordering dirty parking lots, people's IQs affected by drugs, inbreeding, and a terrible lack of education.  

My people. 

It was still early.  Back home,I worked on some picture ideas, mere sketches of things I thought about making.  Music, drink. . . .

As I've told you before, I spent my life running from that place.  I wanted to live in the places I saw in movies and in the glossy magazines.  I wanted to fall in love with my own Golden Girl.  Some of it had worked out O.K, maybe.  But now and then, I need to step over the fence of Leave It to Beaverland and go to Zone 13.  

And live to exaggerate the tale. . . to gentle lovers.  

I Need to Join a Club or Something

This was a real Nextdoor post--kind of.  I added the possum.  There are many variations of this, but they are always funny.  None, however, are as hilarious as the original.  

V-day with mom.  Then home to make my dinner.  I could eat meatloaf, broccoli, and mashed potatoes at the facility with mom--for $25!  Rather, I had a pot of meat stew on the stove. 

Ate alone on the deck.  Later, I watched a silly cop movie on Netflix with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.  I'll never get that time back.  Maybe that's why I slept so poorly.  That or a million other reasons.  I should quit drinking again.  I should stay off my computer, and especially quit making those silly movies I've been making that I get such a kick out of.  I should quit pissing and moaning about my life and focus.  

I will.  I swear.  

Here's the photo on the sticky paper thing I have to wear at the rehab facility.  They take the photo and print it out in nothing flat.  I want one.  I'd use it.  It's like the old dot matrix images from the wayback, but better.  I'd bet dollars to donuts that Warhol would have a ball with it.  

Wait!  I have an idea.  I'll be right back.  

Well, nice idea, but no dice.  I was going to make something but A.I. had other ideas.  

WTF?  

Oh, well. . . I said I was going to give that up anyway.  I think I'll read.  I've heard that's a good thing to do.  I'll be like one of "those people" who take walks and reads books and recycles.  

"Hello, Mona.  Your garden looks lovely.  How about this weather?"

Valentimes Redux

  O.K.  I know it is wrong, but I can't seem to quit.  Ho!

No Valentimes today.  

Valentimes

 I really liked this one from the N.Y. Times today 

It was better than the one I had cooked up but decided not to send this morning.  

I don't really have anyone to share the day with but my mother for whom I have flowers, a balloon, and a card.  

So. . . fuck it. . . there's enough of that.  It completely got by me that yesterday was a Friday the 13th until late in the afternoon.  Remember from now on, when Valentine's Day is on a Saturday. . . . Or as we used to say in the hills, Valentimes.  Yea, that's right. . . just a bunch of uneducated hillbillies.  

So. . . mom is doing "great" at the spa I got her into.  Yesterday when I went to see her, she was with two of her neighbor friends at a "concert," a man singing karaoke to a room full of people with walkers and wheelchairs, so I left a note in her room and said I'd call her later.  She even showered without help, so. . . it won't be long.  

"But you said she could stay in that place for 90 days, right?"

Yea.  I can't do that.  I'm just not built that way.  She wants to go home.  Who can blame her?  Well, I know I do a lot, but. . . .

And actually, as well as she is doing, and as anxious as my hillbilly cousin is to have her Florida time, maybe that will work out.  Still TBD.  

But for now, I am home.  And that is pretty much it.  At home or at the rehab center.  I'm a veritable shut-in otherwise.  Surrounded by the ephemera and tchotchke of my life, of course.  

And so, to steal an old Royal British Navy toast with their daily allotment of Pusser's rum, a Valentine's Day ditty--"To Wives and Lovers. . . May They Never Meet!"

Having neither, it doesn't matter to me.  Rather, if you are smart and knowledgable and know the reference, "Here's to Esmeralda."  

Now I circle the bars on the promenade
While the girls in the glass, they're just throwing me shade

You're all fucked up, Saint Valentine