A Convoluted Day

Some days start off well, take a sharp left, then fall apart only to be set straight by a random act of kindness, as they say.  So it was yesterday.  

I was up early enough, had read and written and had drunk my coffee.  The plan I had in mind was to go to Grit City to do a little shopping in funky shops like the one pictured above.  There are plenty of little shops like this one there.  I would take my cameras, I thought, shop, walk around town, make some award winning photographs, then have lunch in the converted train station with its myriad restaurants.  Yup.  

But it was cold and I lingered.  And then I thought to be productive.  I had some Agfa Scala Black and White Positive Slide film I had shot, three of four rolls, but I hadn't developed them because the "easy home development" that was promised was an arcane slog that would take over an hour and much serious concentration.  I'd had the developing kit sitting on my dining room table for over a week.  I decided to bust a move and just do it.  

But there was much more to do than just develop the film.  I went to the garage to get some extra containers for the chemicals.  I put together all the measuring cups, mixers, and temperature gauges I would need.  I had to crawl around on the floor beneath a desk to unplug an old lamp.  This, my friends, was terribly, painfully enlightening.  

I needed the lamp for. . . oh, shit. . . it doesn't matter, really.  After developing and washing and bleaching and washing the film, I was supposed to take it into a dark room and expose the film in a clear container filled with water under a 100 watt bulb for two minutes--each side.  One roll, then another.  The process then required re-development and fixing and rinsing. . . . 

The whole thing is stupid.  But I set straight away to mixing the chemicals and getting them to the perfect 68 degrees.   

The day was passing me by.  I put on some music and began the process.  I brought out a changing tent and spooled the film onto the developing reels and put them in the tank.  I poured in the developer, agitated for 30 seconds, then 10 seconds every minute for 11.5 minutes.  

Bored yet?  I was.  I was standing at the kitchen sink looking out onto a very bright and gorgeous day.  

Pour the developer back into the container to save it for later in the process.  Rinse for four minutes with agitation.  Fill, dump, fill, dump.  Then the bleach.  Same agitation, four minutes.  Discard.  Rinse again.  Now came the magic.  I took the film into the bathroom and turned on the lamp.  I put one reel of film into the water tank and let it sit for two minutes approximately 12 inches from the light source.  Flip.  Repeat.  Then the other roll.  

I was excited now.  

I went back and redeveloped the film.  4 minutes, same agitation.  

Rinse.  

Fixer, three minutes.  

Rinse for 8.  

Oh, my, the music was good, but the day had passed me by.  Now came the reward.  I pulled the film from the reels.  Shit.  

They all looked like this, some slightly better, some worse.  The film was solarized, I guess.  It was a combo of positive and negative.  Piss, fuck, goddamn.  I knew it!  I knew it wouldn't work.  I had done everything perfectly.  Flawless.  I hadn't varied at all from the instructions.  

Now it was three.  I hadn't showered.  What to do?  I decided to get a cup of the good jasmine green tea at the cafe.  Maybe something good would happen to me there.  

It didn't.  The chess club was there, table after table of plain nerds.  No costumes.  Nothing creative.  Just fucking chess club.  

I drank my tea and went to my mother's.  I told her the whole gift thing was freaking me out but I would spend Christmas Eve with her and would make us bacon, eggs, and French toast in the morning.  She lit up.  

The question is, though, what about the Christmas meal.  The across the street neighbors have corralled us into another four or five o'clock dinner, but the wife went into the hospital on Thursday to have a stint put in.  She does not come home until today.  Are they still wanting to do dinner, we asked one another?  My mother suggested we should get groceries just in case.  Somehow she has an idea that we would eat ham and macaroni and cheese.  Hmm, I thought, not the worst idea I've ever heard.  

When I left my mother's, I steered for Whole Foods.  All I'd eaten on this wasted day was a piece of peanut butter toast early in the morning.  I had decided on a steak, potatoes, and asparagus dinner.  When I pulled into the parking lot, though, I saw the shaved ice cart that used to sit at the weird magical shop that had closed down.  I hadn't seen this fellow for a very long time, so I walked over to where the trailer was parked and stuck in my head.  

Here's one of the photos from my solarized roll.  I had taken this long ago, probably the first or second time I had gone to the shop.  It was a bit of serendipity that the image was on one of the rolls.  

"Hey, bud. . . what are you doing here?"

His eyes popped and he said my name.  "I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.  

"How in the hell did you remember my name?  You're like a bartender.  It's uncanny."

I looked at his menu items.  

"Bread pudding?"

"Yea, yea. . . do you like bread pudding?

"I love it."

"Here, let me give you a taste."

"Let me get my groceries and I'll come back and buy a piece," I said.  

When I came back to the trailer, there was a line waiting for shaved ice.  I walked around them to his open door.  

"Let me take care of them and I'll get you the pudding," he said.  

"Oh sure. . . ."

His ice shaving machine is a work of wonder.  It makes the lightest pile of ice imaginable, lighter than snow.  He works on the machine himself.  He told me when I first met him that he is like a shade tree engineer.  He had to make some of the parts.  

When he finished, he turned to me and said, "This one's on me.  You're the chillest dude I've ever met in my life.  Some people just have that vibe, you know?"

His light eyes were smiling.  I was floored.  I don't know if I have ever been called "chill" before, but this guy was being sincere.  

"Do you want caramel?  It comes with caramel.  My mother made this."

I was feeling pretty trippy after that.  Maybe, I thought, I had become "chill."  Whatever, this fellow had just turned my day around.  

That morning, before I decided to waste my day with the film, I had gone to my friend's Substack page and read some of his writing.  It was good.  Now I too had a Substack site, meaning I got all kinds of feeds and recommendations for other people's pages.  I went to some.  It was depressing.  There are a lot of good to better than good creatives on Substack, good enough to make me doubt myself.  Everyone seemed to me more talented, especially considering my shitty luck with the film.  

My buddy had sent me a text earlier to let me know he had posted another installment of his story.  I needed to tell him something, so I wrote:

You can imagine how many people ask me to read their stuff just because of my degrees and experience.  I always say no, that I have read all the great literature and I can't give them a real critique.  But your stuff is good.  I like it.  The style is refined, but it is the material, really.  Good match.  Good job!

Simple enough.  I sat on the deck with a Campari and a cheroot thinking Dry January was going to be difficult.  Then I made my meal.  I watched t.v. and just before bed, I checked my computer.  My buddy had appreciated my comment.  I'd passed on to him some of the day's good vibe.  

I haven't seen the little feral cat for a couple of weeks now, so once again, I think she might be gone.  Every time I say so, though, she shows back up.  I will hold out hope until Christmas, I think, but after that if she hasn't shown, I will pretty much know.  I've been feeding her for a long time now, maybe seven years or so.  It seems that she is just another girl in my past now, just a bit of a reminder of things I am sloughing off.  But it's o.k.  Another way of looking is ahead.  That is where tomorrow is.  

Further!