Call Me

I did leave the house yesterday, but just for a bit.  I had to.  The cleaning crew was coming.  It was nice to come home to a sparkling house and clean sheets for the first time in. . . oh. . . I won't tell you, but I forgot to wash them last time, so. . . I just slept on the other side of the king bed.  That was my mother's suggestion.  It was, but she was kidding.  

And once again, I didn't turn on the television.  I read.  I've been reading again.  I have a bunch of books to get through.  My brain has turned a bit into mush, though.  I can only read for half an hour at a time or thereabouts before I get brain weary and need to get up and move or fall asleep.  It frightens me a bit.  How did I let this happen?  My brain is in the same condition as my body now, it seems.  I am, however, now working on them both.  I'll be fit as a fucking fiddle soon.  

I'm reading the book of essays by Maeve Brennan.  Those are fun.  They are short pieces, about the length of one of my blog posts and seem almost, but not quite, as off the cuff.  She uses much more description, though, of what she sees.  I've gotten too much away from that, I think as I read her.  There is a bit of Hemingway in it, descriptive passages without too much detail, sort of what Hem says he learned from the paintings of Cézanne.  That she made a living doing that grieves me a bit.  That's not about her.  It's about me.  

I'll need to read some longer form fiction, though, to get ready for tackling Cormac McCarthy's last works.  I'm sure they will be wearisome.  I'm predicting that I will start them but never finish them.  I just don't think they are going to be so good as his best and even his second best works, but I won't know if I don't take the ride.  

It is cold here in the sunny south.  It is 38 degrees out as I write.  The air is blue in the dusky morning and does not invite me to go out.  I have set my thermostat higher than I ever have before.  I can feel the cold air seeping in from my many old windows, can feel the cold air coming up through the floorboards.  I've lived here since 1996, but only now is this bothersome.  My metabolism is certainly changing.  I have become an old man who dislikes the cold.  You'd think these layers of fat would insulate me.  Ha!

I shouldn't post that photo.  I keep telling myself it is not appropriate in the moral climate of the day.  People are "personally offended" and "triggered" so very often "these days," and I have been good about not showing the most. . . uh. . . well, the most provocative stuff.  But I must say, I find this photo to be more objectionable than most of my photos.  It is like boudoir photography which I think is the sleaziest form of the craft, but goddamn, the photo just pops.  She was a real pro model who drove more than an hour from the coast to shoot with me just because she liked my pictures.  She wanted to come back and shoot again, but she was leaving the country in a few days for about three months, and of course, after that we lost touch.  I look at the photo now and think, "I should have asked her to marry me."  She was fun.  

My music algorithms are all over the place.  I'll get some hillbilly music followed by something like this.  And I'll like it, but it is like a guilty pleasure, something you don't want your friends to catch you listening to.  

"What the fuck is this?  Man. . . your hormones are whacked!"

Yea, but the air is cold and the coffee hot, and the world outside my window is blue and I am loathe to move, and besides, the old version of this was pretty good, so. . . whatever.  

I'm pretty sure nobody who comes here plays these YouTube things anyway.  One person's music is not another's.  But, if you are interested in the emotional penumbra cast over me lately. . . .