What A Difference A Day Makes

What does one do about the terribleness of life?  Refute it.  Yesterday was an anomaly here, gray and rainy without cessation.  I barely left the house.  I put on an old iTunes library I don't listen to much any more and began scanning images.  I cleaned the refrigerator which was my main goal for the day because something there was smelling awful.  Then I paid the bills which is much too painful a thing to do.  Went through the stacks and stacks of old bills, unopened envelopes, bank statements, documents, and I began chucking them in the garbage. Not sure what all was thrown away, but things looked better where they had lain.  Loads of laundry, the rumble of the machines, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Etta James.  Lunched on leftover spaghetti and red wine.  Read for an hour and went to the gym.  Showered, napped, and opened that bottle of champagne which was not to be wasted, writing, scanning, thinking into the dusk.  Dinner, perhaps.  I thought about it too long.  Rain, too much trouble.  A bit of salad left, some soup, the rest of last night's spaghetti washed down with the rest of the champagne.

Later, a wine drunk called from California telling me of his perfect life, reminding me that mine was shit.  The joys of living in Paradise, he said, his blessings for being such a profound and perfect being.  I poured a whiskey and watched some recent movie not worth mentioning on Showtime.  Cat love.  Movie over.  Bedward.

Sounds dreadful, I know, but I was somehow regenerated by it.  I've decided to do less rather than more, but more often.  Everything.  Aim low.  Don't push the pain threshold.  Don't compete.  No marathons.  No sprints.  Just a quick walk around the neighborhood.  A few pushups.  One chapter of the novel.  One poem.  Etc.

I don't know what these images are, when or where I took them.  I was throwing away things in my office and came across these cut from a proof sheet, simply laying loose on the desktop.  Who are these diners?  I  only know that these were shot from the hip with my Mamiya 6 Robert Frank style.  I must do a little more of this.  Aim low.  Nothing epic.  In My Time.

Sunday.  Gray as yesterday but without the heavy rain.  The branches outside my window bounce up and down in the breeze.  Velveteen.

What a difference a day makes.