Venus of Urbino (1538) by Titian

I have nothing to write for I'm not living.  I've become the walking corpse we've read about our entire lives, the one we promised ourselves never to become.  I've let myself become numbed and routinized until it is my only comfort.  Travel is the only antidote.  But I've some fear of it now, of going out, of leaving home.  No kidding, that is what I think sitting here in the early morning dark once again rising too early and trying to think of something to bring forth from the nothing.  It is a hollow echoing.  Every morning I promise myself change, and every evening, tired at dusk, I forget about it all.  "Tomorrow," I say.  "I just must get through what I have to get through today and then. . . ."  Getting through.  Getting by.  "It is your own fault," I say wishing to be strong.  "Ask Herman Cain.  Ask the 1%.  If things are not right, it is your own fault."  

That is the easy answer because it has been drilled into us in every media message we've grown up with.  Be a self-starter.  No one owes you anything.  Get up in the morning and be successful.  If you don't, you have no one to blame but yourself.  

Maybe they are right.  Perhaps I'll refuse to change my clock this weekend since all this time-shifting is proven bad for your biorhythms causing lethargy and depression.  

I've been awake forever and the sun won't rise.  The temperature has dropped and I listen to the hum of the heater.  I don't like the dark any more.  Everything I do requires light.  It is dark more hours than I can sleep, and I even sleep better in the light.  I want light, goddamnit, soft and clear and beautiful.  This darkness presses against me like. . . well, you know.  

Will I change my life today?  Change the things I do and don't?  

I should give my photos titles like "Venus of Urbino."  Maybe I'd get more fans.  I could have "Betty of Asheville," and "Suzy of Cleveland."  What a series that would be.  I'm feeling better already.  Hope lies there.  But Titian has not fared so well in the contemporary world.  Critics abound.  This is no Venus, of course, but a common courtesan.  She is the forerunner of Manet's "Olympia" in which a prostitute looks with haughtiness at the viewer, at the next customer.  We line up.  We wait our turn.  We boys and some girls perhaps.  Some of the boys.  Some of the girls.  Maybe.  Some want to whisper ideology and get her some tattoos.  She needs enlightenment.  Jack boots, cropped hair, and a white men's tank undershirt.  I can make that picture.  I'll replace the flowers in her right hand with a symbol of power.  The dog will snarl rather than sleep, baring fangs at the viewer.  I'll have to think about the background figures.  I know some reviewers who might like my photos then.  

The sky is just now turning pinkish.  It has been a long day.  Perhaps I will be able to sleep.