Dry January

It is the last day of Dry January.  The day will be gorgeous, too, a high of 82 and a cloudless sky.  So they say.  My weight has hit a plateau, as weights will.  I've lost all the pounds I might, by and large, from simply cutting alcohol from my diet.  For all the weight loss, though, I still look like shit.  It took more than a month to put the weight on.  Without Ozempic or one of the allied drugs, it would take a long time to lose more weight.  Either that or I would have to cut out ALL of the bad things I consume.  Right now, I'm alcohol-free and sleeping without sleep aids.  I'm a real Christian Cowboy, I am.  But I have on occasion eaten chocolate and ice cream.  I've had toast.  If I eschewed that along with everything else for another month, I might get down to my preferred weight by spring.  It would be nice to not fear going shirtless in public, though I do have Warhol like scars from surgeries surrounding the wreck to keep me monstrous.

I am taking all things "under consideration."  I will, however, break my fast on Saturday, sure as shittin'.  I have had little trouble going alcohol-free, but I don't want to put myself in some lifetime psychological prison.  Nope.  I've been a good boy.  Now. . . I want a drink.  

Should I call my "sponsor"?  

I imagine myself keeping my tea loving ways at night when I am home alone--if I ever get back there--but I am not going to sip a cranberry and soda when I am out with the homies or sitting in a chic Miami bar alone at sunset waiting for the promised love of my life to show up.  

So yea.  Say hello to tacos and beer after a day of surfing.  

What? 

Just sayin'.  

I joined up on a site of Fuji GFX 50 sii lovers.  I thought I might learn something.  And I did.  I learned (once again) that such groups, as are groups in the main, are worthless and worse than a waste of time.  I got nothing but caught up in an exchange with an idiot about what a photo should look like.  He wanted to inform me on how to make a photograph "pop!"  I went to his site and looked at his pitiful photographs.  I refrained, however, from telling the idiot he had the aesthetic taste of a used car salesman, but barely.  

I've learned that lesson once again.  I am no longer a member of that tribe.  

I saw a video clip of an interview with Miles Davis who said he didn't listen to records.  Other musicians copy one another, he said.  The music is derivative.  William Eggleston said much the same about other people's photography.  I have looked at too many mediocre photos.  I will stop.  It is, I think, like watching commercial television.  It infects you and fucks up your vision.  

I should begin wearing one of those green or khaki photographer's vests that photojournalists wore in wartime back "in the day."  That should make me stand out.  

I should report that I think I am feeling better.  I don't know if it is pretending or hoping.  But. . . .  And my mother seems to be picking up a bit, too.  I take her back to the ortho in 2 weeks.  We'll see what happens then.  Will I get to go home?  Will I return and begin a productive life?  I do know that I will not wait to do my home repair chores until May again.  I will not be pressure washing and throwing mulch on a hot day this year.  Uh-uh.  Not this cowboy.  I have gardens to make and weeks to pull and all sorts of fences to mend--literally.  But, you know. . . BBC.  It is the annual test.  

I'm looking forward to that drink.  Is that bad?  Oh. . . I'm sure it is.  But why is life worth living?  Maybe some music and dancing at home with a glass of wine in hand to some lovely tune wafting through the frangipani scented air. . . . 

Or as Issac Davis (Woody Allen) says in "Manhattan," "Tracy's face."

"The memory of all that. . . no, no, they can't take that away from me."