The Hindu Way

Why would I bother with film when I can do this with digitals?  Color film, anyway.  Black and white, maybe, but there seems to me to be no need for color film in my shooting.  I'm just saying.  

I'm just saying that here and now, tapping away at the keyboard in the dark once again after a fairly sleepless night.  I am thinking I am not the only one.  I think many of you have trouble sleeping, too.  We could get by on less sleep, and be happy, if it weren't for those pesky researchers telling us that if we don't get eight hours of good, solid sleep every night we will get diabetes, have strokes or heart attacks, or, at the very least, get fat.  

It's so hard to live a perfect life.  

But I couldn't stay in bed another minute.  

I had planned on a fun travel camera morning, but rain is predicted to fall all the live-long day.  The forecast is often wrong, but still. . . . 

So in an imperfect world with imperfect lives, let me lighten your mood by telling you my woes.  You can either relate or be happy repeating the old mantra, "but for the grace of god. . . ."

I felt dampness on the rug that lies before the sink the other day.  I thought I had spilled water.  Yesterday morning, I felt it again.  I hadn't spilled anything.  Oh-oh.  There was only one thing to do.  I took my stiff and broken body to the floor and ran my hand around the cabinet beneath the sink.  Dampness.  WTF?  So I began taking all the items out and setting them about on the kitchen floor.  In the back of the cabinet, I found a vase that was full of water.  What?  Who put a vase full of water in the back of the cabinet?  This made no sense at all.  Maybe the maids hate me.  I took it out, dumped the water in the sink, and dried out the cabinet with paper towels. Then I felt around the pipes for dampness.  I didn't feel any and decided to wait until daylight to check again.  

When I checked again, there was water.  I dried it up, lay a paper towel down on the dry cabinet floor, and found the drip.  Piss shit fuck goddamn.  Now I needed to bend my really bad knee further than goes, get down on the floor and onto my back to peer up at the plumbing above.  

"Holy shit, I'm fat," I said aloud, grunting and puffing as I did some crazy pilates twist and roll.  "I need to go back to yoga."  

I traced the pipes with my hand until I found some dampness.  It was coming from the line that carries water to the sprayer.  I reached up to the fitting and tried to diagnose what the problem was.  There was a clamp of some sort, so I gave it a twist, then another.  Hell, yea, that should do it.  

Like fuck it did.  What I discovered is that the tube leaked only when the water was running, and not so very much even then.  I figured it must have taken months for the vase to have filled with water.  It had been fortuitously situated under the leak.  So I thought at the time, but sitting here now reliving this, I don't think it was.  That is a troubling thought.  

Having located the leak and not having the requisite skills nor adequate desire, I knew I'd need to call a plumber.  Cha-ching.  

I stood up.  Everything hurt.  I looked at the kitchen floor littered with all manner of cleaning products and decided to do inventory.  When was the last time I had done that?  There were things I had never purchased, things Ili had bought, organic counter cleaners and hand sanitizers and hand lotions.  There were extras of everything, triples of Clorox cleaners and multiple packages of dishwashing pods and dish soaps.  There were old sponges and ant and roach bait. . . . I decided to organize the mess putting like with like into dishpans, throwing away the products I didn't know I had and would never use, and requisitioning some things to the garage.  When I was done, I had three dishpans that went neatly back under the sink.  Then I thought of something.  I could fix the problem. . . the hillbilly way.  I'd just put a dishpan under the leak!  Brilliant!  Problem solved!

And that is what I did.  

Don't worry.  I'm still calling a plumber to fix the problem.  Eventually.  

It was still early, not even late, morning.  I thought about going back to bed, but then I thought again.  I changed into my workout costume and took a long walk to the outdoor gym at the park.  I would do a long walk and a little exercise and come back home before the morning was gone.  Having taken off a holiday week from the gym, I would just come back to exercise slowly.  

On my way home, I saw an old friend of mine, a retired judge with whom I had travelled several times out of the country.  I stopped to talk to him and his dog for a bit, and as we stood, a couple came by and commented on the dog.  My friend has had Irish Setters since I have known him, some forty years, and he apparently barely feeds them for they are always excruciatingly thin, all lookalikes.

"You've had that dog a long time," the man said.  

"Yes. . . he's fifty now," the retired judge kidded.  

"You live in that house. . . ." 

The conversation turned.  "You were a judge.  And you live. . . " the man was speaking to me and pointing in the direction of my house.  "You're an artist."

What?  Ho!  I told him I was a straw boss at the factory.  

"Oh. . . the neighbors all say you're an artist."

I guess that makes them feel better, safer, than referring to me as the old, disheveled bohemian.  Later, I would think I should have told them I was a shaman, but then again, I don't need trouble in my own neighborhood, so best not to kid.

We chatted a long time about all the houses that had been and were being torn down to make room for new mansions.  Yes, we all agreed, the neighborhood was changing.  

It was later than I would have liked when I got back to the house.  I took a soak and a shower and a bit of a nap, but when I got up, it was still early afternoon.  The sky was grey.  I decided to go shopping for two things, a plastic container 15"x15", and some tea from the Tea Exchange.  

It takes frustratingly forever now to go a few blocks in my village.  Traffic and traffic lights galore.  I drove to the Office Depot in the big shopping plaza that has a Home Goods store and all the discount clothing and shoe places connected with it.  And apparently, everyone was doing their post-Christmas shopping.  The parking lot was jammed.  

Fuck Office Depot.  They didn't have anything that suited me.  I headed for the Tea Exchange on the Boulevard.  

Equally packed.  The sidewalks were full.  

Fuck the Tea Exchange.  They didn't have what I wanted, either.  

So. . . why do people complain about online shopping?  I can order exactly what I want from my computer and have it in two days or less.  Driving from store to store looking for what they don't have is a drag.  

Now it is time for confession.  I've already begun my Dry January.  I've probably already told you.  I need to lose about a hundred pounds.  I keep telling myself I don't need food.  Tea.  I am drinking a lot of tea.  Mmm, I say.  But it is not yet January and I am still susceptible, so. . . .  I've had a few invitations out in the past couple of days.  A Friday cookout with the gymroids and a Friday night invitation to come meet some girls, waitresses with whom one of my old co-workers is enamored.  They give him presents and treat him special, take pictures with him and make him happy.  He wanted me to come to the bar to meet them.  I had an invitation to go to a backyard party with a Bohemian crowd last night coming from my writer friend.  They were going to show "Slapshot" on a big screen and have roasted hot dogs and drinks.  

I turned all of the invitations down.  Stupid, I think, for my future girlfriend was most certainly waiting for me there.  I, however, stayed in, alone with dinner, hot tea, and home entertainment.  

Yea, yea, yea.  Maybe in February.  

The grey sky is beginning to show.  I am tieed and may go back to bed.  Such is my so-called life.  My hope is that you who are living similarly feel comforted and those of you with richer lives are amused.  But remember, there is an arrogance in looking down on people and their foibles.  You may avoid misery for awhile, but it is always watching you, peeping 'round the corner.  

"Give us this day our daily bread, and lead us not into temptation. . . ."

In the song I posted yesterday, one line goes, "I'd do it all better if I could do it all again."  I think the better line is simply "I'd do it all the same if I could do it all again."  I mean, the difference in the two must have led to the idea of karma and rebirth long ago.  I think, by and large, we wish we could be better but know we can't really change what we are.  Hence, our eternal return to struggle, suffer, etc., the Hindu way.  

I just saw this yesterday.  I wish I'd seen it before Christmas, though.  I don't know shit about the Kardashians and have never cared.  I'm arrogant that way.  But now. . . holy shit. . . I'm a fan.  This thing is great.  

After  I watched this, I Google Kim Kardashian and saw some of her (in)famous sex tapes.  She's the real deal, alright, an unrepentant bad girl.  If she came back in another life. . . if she had it to do all over again. . . .