Among the Living

Things happen.  Some days go so well, you wonder how it all works. 

After Pig's Head Saturday, I wanted to get up early and try to do stadium steps.  I'd been walking my old exercise course the past couple days trying to get rid of the antibiotic haze and to begin to strengthen my flabby muscles with some push ups, pull ups, sit ups, and knee bend squats.  Four times around the half mile track each day, but the second I tried running backwards slowly and did some jumping jacks and slow cross-overs or cariocas or whatever they are called.  Sunday morning, though, my knee was screaming "No mas."  I abandoned the stadium after four trips up and down and limped my way back to the house. 

On the way, though, I saw a red chair sitting curbside.  It would be great in the studio, I thought, and when I got home, I came back in the Xterra with the back seats down and loaded it in.  It was pretty much in my neighborhood, and I was trying to do it quickly so as not to be seen.  I don't want the neighbors thinking I've fallen onto very hard times. 

Back at the house, I pulled the chair onto the deck, left the door open because it was a glorious morning, and came inside to vacuum all my furniture.  I had woken to a sneezing fit that morning, my eye burning and stinging from what I could only imagine to be cat hair or dander or something.  I'd been sneezing the night before.  Fucking cat. 

I got up to find some eyedrops, but they were with the thermometer and heating pad that I don't have. I am just not medically prepared.  But the bathroom drawers were full of other things, tampons from some long lost wife, I presumed, prescription bottles with her name on them, little containers of hotel shampoos and conditioners and moisturizers, and a menagerie of other odd articles.  Eye burning, nose running, I stood there at five o'clock in the morning emptying the drawers of all their flotsam and jetsam. 

The sneezing continued, though, and that's when I decided to steam clean everything.  My mother had a steam cleaner, I recalled.  Yes, she said, she'd bought it years ago but had never used it.  Bring it over, I said.  I'm gonna. 

So after my aborted exercise routine, I had out my old vacuum that had not been used for years, not since a girlfriend got me the Wrecking Crew one year for Christmas.  I fired it up, a Kenmore Hepatic something or other.  It smelled of old dog.  Badly.  I opened up all the doors and started vacuuming.  And just then, unannounced, my mother walked in.  Shit!  The Chair!  Remember, my mother does not know I have the studio, so I made up a story about giving the chair to a friend who had recently moved into a new place.  Aren't I sweet.

My mother is always intrigued by cleaning, and soon she had the vacuum and I held the cushions for her to clean.  That is when the sneezing really began.  I have never sneezed so much or so hard before.  And against all desire, I took a Sudafed.  There was no helping it. My nose had become red and raw within minutes.

We worked through the little routine until every piece of furniture had been vacuumed.  Just in time.  I was meeting two friends for brunch very soon. 

"I'll grill some salmon and asparagus tonight," I told her.  "I'm going to go buy one of those metal fire pits today so we can sit out and eat tonight.  It will be great fun." 

And with that, she left and I headed to the shower.  It was almost noon when I got out and the speaker pinged to let me know I had a text.  I called back instead. 

"Are we supposed to meet at twelve or twelve-thirty?" I asked.  "Oh, just come over here.  We can meet Steve at the studio."  She was there just as I finished dressing, and we were hurriedly heading out the door when the phone rang.  It was my mother.

"What?  What?  You got what?"

The connection was terrible.  My mother was yelling something that I couldn't understand. 

"Fire pit!"

Hell, she said she had found a fire pit on curbside driving home.  Really?  What sort of magic was that?  It was certain to be awful, but. . . .

Brunch at the sister restaurant to the one that served us the Pig's Head the night before on a glorious day, breakfast tamales and Bloody Mary's and mimosas.  It was just good to be alive.  Again.  What is there in life but beautiful places and good food and drink with friends? 

Later, we went back to the studio.  I wanted to use the big 8x10 camera with Impossible instant film.  I hadn't done that for a long, long while, but I was trying to find a new gig, a new project. First, though, I needed to familiarize myself with the process again.  And oh, what a process it is.  I put the new chair in front of the studio and set up the monster camera trying to remember what all the knobs and locks were about.  I got my friend to sit in the chair and put a piece of film into the special holder, got under the hood, focused, closed the shutter, metered for exposure, set the aperture, put in the film, pulled the dark slide, and fired the shutter. 

"I think I did that right." 

And so we took the film inside and placed it in the old 1970s Polaroid film developer and hit the button.  Everything worked.  Four minutes later, we looked at the print.  Old film gone bad.  I opened a newer package.  Rinse, wash, repeat.  Better, but exposure was off.  Next. Oops.  The developer did not pull the film through creating a mess of blue chemicals that I needed to clean.  Another.  Another. Now the chemicals weren't spreading across the entire picture.  Was it the film or the machine?  I couldn't determine it, and it was getting late.  It had taken hours to make five or six pictures at the low, low price of $15/sheet. 

"Hey, you guys want to come to dinner?  I'm grilling salmon and asparagus.  You can bring your dogs." 

This last part was a bit problematic, but I was pissed at the cat for making me sneeze.  She would stay in the house, the dogs out. 

"I'll get some wine and some logs.  My mother is bringing a fire pit." 

My mother arrived first, and surprisingly, the pit was perfect, a true beauty.  The sun was failing and I lit some logs and poured some wine.  Four pounds of salmon lay on the counter marinating in citrus and salt.  The jasmine rice was cooking.  Then there were dogs, friends, fun talk, a grill.  The salmon was judged to be spectacular, the fire unsurpassed.  And there I was, once again among the living.  It is like that, sometimes.  Just that.