Peeper

I'm out of photos unless I go back into the dinosaur cave.  I haven't taken any for a couple weeks, I guess.  So I am hereby posting one of the 1960s vintage fashion era radical change in direction/Italian Vogue images from a different time and sensibility.  I'll try to make something new today.  

The problem is I'm not working digitally and I am using big, burdensome cameras and am experimenting all the time and so have an overabundance of test shots and nothing of real value.  I have to develop all the film or plates and can only do so much at a time.  I'm not complaining.  I just don't have anything to show right now.  Fingers crossed, something tomorrow.  

But I am a people photographer.  All those building shots from the Time of Covid. . . just ain't me.  I'm a voyeur.  I get excited looking at just about anyone through a viewfinder.  I'm sure there is a name in the psych journals for this malady.  Well. . . voyeurism will do.  Yea. . . I'm a real peeper.  My ex-wife's father had wonderful apartments in Manhattan.  I used to go all the time.  At night, looking out back toward the courtyard, it was like the movie "Rear Window," only more so.  The things you'd see were astonishing.  I read an article decades ago about a photographer who had been making photos from NYC windows for years.  He had a huge portfolio, the writer reported, that would astonish people when shown.  As far as I know, however, that secret stash never came to light.  Probably too many legal hassles.  

I don't have even one person to make photos with.  Not one.  You might say, "What about your mother?" but I'm not going there.  I guess I do have limits.  Actually, it doesn't take too much thinking for me to find many.  O.K.  Yes, I guess I eschew most people.  My interests are. . . I'm sure there is a term for it.  

Refined. 

But I am a good caregiver and a good son.  My mother has never eaten so well.  Last night I made a chicken barley soup with carrots, onions, celery, and spinach in bone broth and wine.  Served with crusty bread.  God it was good.  

I'm taking her swimming this morning at her neighbor's pool.  Not swimming, really, but the therapist said that getting in the pool would be good for her shoulder.  I'll be there as the fat lifeguard remembering that since my accident, I'm unable to swim.  We might both be discovered floating face down sometime in the late afternoon or early evening.  If not, tonight there will be more soup.  

I am trying to stay away from the news, but here is my big takeaway today.  

In a single zany sentence, this is how the once-promising summer of boxing ended: Triller, a social video app that is a much less popular version of TikTok, put on a pay-per-view fight between a 58-year-old Evander Holyfield (who hasn’t fought in a decade) and a 44-year-old mixed martial artist, Vitor Belfort — and paid former President Donald J. Trump and Donald Trump Jr. to serve as live commentators, all on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. (link)

 Trump had hoped to box Biden in the main event (link), but I guess the money wasn't right.  

This, my friends, is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.  It is Your Land.  It is My Land.  Stand Beside Her, And Guide Her. . . . 

So maybe we've all gone mad.  It seems so.  And from what I read today (link), t.v. execs are going to feed us an endless stream of sci-fi/Marvel Comics entertainment until we all become addled teenagers once again.  It will be the triumph of Clearasil.  

And so it goes.  There seems to be no sun today, so much of my photo dreams are cancelled for the umpteenth day in a row.  I need sunlight for those glass plates.  I may have to move on to a plan B.  Or make more pictures of "things."  

It is not much of a life for a peeper.