Young at Heart

Apropos of nothing.  The pool pic was all I had at hand.  I like it, the colors, the dark abandonment, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with today's post.  I do have millions of pics from the old studio days, but I don't know anymore.  You'll have to tell me if you want to see those again.  As far as I can tell, the pool picture is the thing.  Times change.  Drugs are legal and/or easy to get online.  Brains no longer work the way they used to work.  We live with change, for good or ill.  

Ramble.  

I spent too much of yesterday scanning more of the fucked up black and white slides that are weird.  After scanning them all, I wondered why.  I may use a few of them here when they illustrate a point, perhaps, but they are ruins.  I would have liked some of the photos--many of them, really--if the process had worked.  I was getting a good eye at some point and working at the whole thing.  I am fairly addicted, though, to experimentation. . . and failure.  Most experiments fail.  But once in awhile, something clicks and I have a breakthrough.  And therein lies the magic.  

But it was another gorgeous day that I spent inside.  Moping?  No.  I felt off-kilter.  I couldn't put myself together.  At noon, I decided to go out to get breakfast.  That is when I knew just how poorly I felt.  So much so, that when I got home, I went straight to bed, as one will.  It was one.  I forced myself out of bed at three to clean up for a visit with my mother.  

And still I was off.  

So much for beautiful days.  

I'm beginning to believe I suffer from mild Covid or, perhaps, long Covid.  I may even begin to believe that getting the flu and the Covid vaccine together have had a long term impact on my health.  

But I read that infrared light treatments could end all my suffering.  Maybe.  No one knows for sure.  I know people who have their own infrared light saunas at home.  There are infrared masks to remake your skin.  The rays may reduce chronic pain.  Infrared light and mushroom extracts seem to be a good idea right now.  It is only magic until science confirms it.  Then it is science.  

As I so often say, there is far more that is unknown than is known.  Yeats had automatic writing, seances, and monkey nuts.  G.B. Shaw was a vegetarian.  You just gotta pay your money and take your chances.  

I only have a day and a half to get gifts now.  I must.  I don't want to, but I need to.  Just some for ma.  I told her I'd spend Christmas Eve with her and make us a big bacon, eggs, and French toast breakfast on Christmas morning.  I don't like the idea of leaving the comforts of my own home, but I need to.  

Oh. . . I need to get something for the cleaning crew as well.  They are coming--can you believe this?--at 4:30 pm on Christmas Eve.  Yes, I will get them something, too.  

It is the quiet time, not the raucous time, now.  Everyone is ready to sit and wait for Santa.  I will mingle with my mother's neighbors and not my own.  Maybe there will be a widows/widowers and orphans meetup on the Boulevard on Tuesday, but the crowd has gotten very thin.  

The days are longer now.  Can you feel it?  The blue night turns grey now as daybreak begins.  Like Santas helper, I have much to do in the next few hours.  There still beats the pulse of a young child beneath this broken exterior.  

Dreams can come true. . . .