O.K. People liked yesterday's photo as much as I did. The trouble is, I'm not sure I can do it again. Bummer. I'm going to try, but I kind of work intuitively on things, and I'm lazy, I guess. I don't write anything down. Besides, who knew the photo was going to end up being so good? I've done it many times before, come up with a way of working with photographs that I can't remember later on. I had a whole series of China photographs that I thought great. I have no idea now what I did or how. Were that I was different.
Were different. Grammar is a terrible thing.
Here is another treasure I found looking through old files. No post-production magic here. I took this with a film camera and Tri-X film. This is pretty much just what you get. That's the look. It's a good look, just like in the old days. This photo is almost from the "old days." Don't know why I never worked this one up. She was a nice girl. She moved shortly after this to go to Seattle with her boyfriend. She used to write me for awhile after she left, but you know how that eventually goes.
I like the photo. It raises questions that it doesn't answer. I think it makes you want to know more.
I started writing this post just as the full moon "rises."
The full moon — nicknamed the buck moon — will peak at 6:17 a.m. ET Sunday, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac. It’s called the buck moon because male deer, or bucks, fully grow their antlers at this time of year, the almanac says.
I'm not certain what they mean by "peak."
I'm sure it looked full when it came up last night. I should have seen it. I had a surprise visit. I'll need to go back a bit, though, and narrate up to that point.
I hadn't left the house again for a second day but to get food and drink. I did go for breakfast EARLY in the morning. And by gosh, a brand new waitress was working the counter. She wore a red head scarf that exactly matched the color of her lipstick. It was startling, really. She was a nice girl, too, friendly in a natural way. But it was early and I was fat-headed and it wasn't until much later in the day that I thought, "Holy shit, you meathead! A diner! A waitress! A perfect picture!"
And, indeed, I had a couple cameras in the car. I told myself I'd go back one day, of course, but she will probably never look that way again. I don't know. I fantasize that I will go back and make arrangements for the photograph. . . tell the waitress what I want to do. . . get permission from the manager to make the photo. . . .
Any bets?
After breakfast, I came home and was at the computer searching again all day for old photos I never found. I went through every big hard drive that I have. Are the old photos gone? How? It seems like I have fewer hard drives than I used to. I'm rather in a panic about this.
By three, though, I thought I needed to move. I smelled like yesterday's pizza, so I thought I'd go to the gym for a bit of cardio just to get the old blood moving. I did a good job, and by the time I went to my mother's I was a truly gross human.
I got back to the house and dropped into an Epsom salts bath. The water was almost too hot. It was wonderful. Then a shower. Washed my hair. Trimmed my scruffy beard. And then. . . .
Boom! Boom!
Something outside was banging on the bathroom wall. Naked, I stopped dead and waited. Nothing. But as I finished my ablutions--Boom! Boom!
I threw on a pair of short and ran outside. I look down the alleyway behind the house. Nothing. WTF? Just then, Tennessee came running from the other side yelling and laughing.
"Man, I've been knocking on your door for twenty minutes. I looked in the window and saw your chair overturned on the floor. I saw your keys and phone in the kitchen. I told my wife and she said I needed to go inside and check. Man. . . I thought you might be dead."
"Half. Just half."
I told him to go around to the front. I needed to get dressed.
He was with his wife. They had just come from dinner, so I offered them drinks.
"Do you want to come in or sit out here?"
His wife chose the deck. I grabbed my fancy glasses and brought bottles to the table. It was about seven. We sat and drank until nine or so, but I never thought to look to the moon.
When they left, I realized I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and we'd gone through a lot of liquor sitting around the table as dusk fell. What to do? A bowl of soup, a piece of bread, and a little t.v.
I watched the last episode of "Normal People," season one. I didn't know there was no season two, but I think I was a bit relieved. I'd been wallowing in that Emo Wasteland for weeks. Good show, but man, it was starting to drag me down.
The show ended with the song my friend sent me a few weeks ago which led me to the show in the first place, and I wondered if she had been watching the show all along. It would make sense.
I turned off the television and closed my eyes for a moment. I just needed to think a bit before bed. When I woke up, it was heading toward midnight.
This morning I checked texts and emails. Alain had gone to Japan with his family. They were leaving for home the day the computer systems shut down all the airlines. A few days later, they made it to Atlanta. He wrote to say that he and his family were stuck there until Monday. No flights out, no rental cars available. When I opened the CNN page this morning, I saw a story on people being stranded in Atlanta.
It was a group text to the gymroids, and one of them replied, "Go to the Cheetah Lounge."
This morning, I wrote back, "That would be dumb. Go to the Gold Club."
I just got a reply saying, "Funny thing--our Uber driver took us by the Gold Club on the way to the hotel. Irony."
I wasn't even sure the Gold Club still existed.
I got another text from an old friend saying he liked the photo from yesterday's post. I have no idea who reads my blog, but I thought, "Holy shit! I probably need to be editing my posts." When I go back and read any of them, I often cringe at the repeated words or dumb errors that I blame on auto correct. If I wrote them at night and then edited them in the morning. . . .
But. . . whatever. You will all just have to accept my fantasy that if I were editing, I would be a great writer.
I have a lot of fantasies, actually. It is probably a malady of some sort. Oh. . . about that, I almost forgot.
Do you want to be happier? Here are 5 habits to adopt
"Some people are just happier than others. They don’t have to work at it, right? They just are,” social psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his podcast Chasing Life. “(They’re) kind of like people who are thin naturally, and they don’t have to work hard at it.”
Which habits can you adopt to increase your level of happiness? Lyubomirsky has these five tips.
1. Go with the ‘flow’
2. Practice random acts of kindness
3. Nurture your relationships
4. Express gratitude
5. Celebrate good news
This comes from the
people.
I should probably give it a try, but I think it might better be called "Mindlessness." It would sound like a Buddhist concept, at least.
And just as I think I am finishing this entry, I see an armadillo walk across the deck. I go out and follow it. It has burrowed under the house. I can't get rid of these creatures no matter what I do.
But of course, it is a full moon. The day is sure to be strange.
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