It's been over a week now since I started feeling sick. That's too long. I'll tell you what I think it is--NASA/SpaceX. It's one of the cost-cutting, money saving "benefits" of doing things more cheaply. God knows what is being spewed into the atmosphere with every launch now. Maybe not even God knows for there is no data on it, at least not that you can see. The government space program is exempt from pollution control devices.
It's much like the old practice of spraying DDT on crop fields while workers were picking. That was a true practice.
Anyway, as my mother says. . . I'm hoping to feel better today. The sore spot in my throat is almost gone. I'll bet dollars to donuts you're happy to hear that.
As a result of my unknown illness, I didn't get much done yesterday. I did, however, take a walk with my little Fuji X100VI camera that I so wanted and have never really used, and I kinda fell in love with it. I'll tell you why. It is apparently filled with helium. It weighs nothing. And even though it looks like a Leica, it is tiny. But here's the thing I found I like most--the flash. I don't think I even realized it had one really. It is tiny. You wouldn't even know it was there. It is a small, oblong translucent plastic window just above the lens. Mere millimeters. And that's the coolest part. Other on-camera flashes cast hideous shadows. Not this little baby. It's as close to being a ring flash as you can get without being a ring flash. I am going to be getting my money's worth out of it now, I think, in certain situations.
See the photo above. But I'll get to that.
If it's not SpaceX pollution, it might be the pollen. It is falling like rain and it is ten degrees over the average temperature for this time of year.
But I digress.
My cousin left yesterday morning to go back to her homeland. When I called my mother, she was already doing the "poor me" act. Oh. . . she hasn't been alone since the beginning of the year. Blah blah blah. I understand. She doesn't want to have to clean or cook or doing anything for herself. There are easier solutions, I think, than my moving back in and watching Gunsmoke with her. She doesn't want to do anything at all, though, to make life easier on others. Just had her hearing tested. They told her the solutions to both her growing deafness and her headaches. Nope. She won't get hearing aids and won't try a mouthguard when she sleeps. OK. Her body, her choice. She cancelled her appointment for cataract surgery earlier this year. What she will do, however, is take pain relievers, muscle relaxers, and things to help her sleep day and night. So, I will get her someone to help clean and cook, and I will be there every day to take her shopping and to make her dinner and do her little chores. But I can't bring myself to move back in with her. Her broken wrist is, if not normal, now functional. She can do things for herself that she couldn't do before. The problem she has now is not as much physical as it was. Psychologically, sure, she wants someone to sit with her and take care of her. She doesn't want to be alone with her thoughts. I get that. She needs the distraction of twenty four hour Bingo. But I realize that much of my own malaise is due to going to the grave with her.
I went to her house and made dinner. We ate. We sat out and chatted. The neighbor came over with a beer to join in. Since I moved in the first time so long ago, and since I threw her outdoor neighborhood 90th birthday party, she has become quite a public figure. Passersby wave and stop to chat. The neighbors call on her every day.
Still she cries. It is not enough.
My friend's art opening was from six to nine, so at seven, I told my mother and the visiting neighbor I had to go. "I told my friend I'd take some photos for him," I said. That was mostly true. I had cameras in the car, but I wasn't sure I'd use them. My plan had been to photograph him and his friends in the morning when they were hanging the show. That was what my outdoor studio experiment had ostensibly been about. But I was feeling lousy in the morning and didn't go until nearly noon. When I got there, they were hanging the show and fairly ignoring me, and I felt stupid to even think about taking photos which were really for me and not much for them at all.
And so I didn't.
And when I got there an hour after the reception had begun, the crowd of freaks and miscreants was growing. I parked across the street in the liquor store parking lot and knew I would not take the big camera in, but I did grab my little X100. When I got inside, my friend was busy "holding court." He is a kind of "public figure" and has his own special following. I saw his ex-girlfriend as I walked in. It was her I really wanted to photograph, her and the couple who were also in the show, but she was sitting outside close with what I took to be her current interest, and though she looked up, smiled, and gave a bright-eyed welcome as I walked by, I wasn't going to bother her. The young couple, however, was sitting at a table alone with their baby, basically ignored but blissful, so I snapped a few pictures of them and sat down to chat. She was by far the most talented creator of the four of them. I thought one of her pieces was a screen print but it turned out that she had done it free-hand.
"What?! You're kidding. I would have bet money it was a screen print."
"She's really talented," said the baby daddy.
"She sure is."
They are living far from town with their parents, she with hers and he with his, separated by about fifty miles. He is working now in the cool record store and trying to get enough money to find a place for the two of them.
"In Denver, I was working for a non-profit and making a good wage, but I haven't found anything here yet."
I started thinking that I would ask around and try to find him a better job, a good job. They are the sweetest, friendliest kids, so. . . yea. Total hippies. . . or so I thought. But then I got the surprise of the night. She is a theme park groupie.
"I've probably been two thousand times. It is like home for me. I started going when I was a kid with my parents, and now I go just about every weekend."
WTF!?!? This was a thing I couldn't reconcile. No shit. . . WTF?!?!
I sat with them awhile before I said, "I need to get a photo of my friend, but it has gotten too crowded now. I don't like crowds, so I'm going to try to snap one of him and go."
As I got up to go, they were all beatific grins, seemingly content within themselves and the little disjointed family unit. I liked them plenty.
When I got home, I was shot. All I wanted was whiskey and tv. Horrible, I knew. I wasn't much better off than my mother, but it was what it was. When I turned the television on and scrolled to the YouTube channel, something came up that surprised me. I've been watching "White Lotus" which has not impressed me the way it has apparently impressed others. It drags on, I think, beating the most apparent things to death. But the cinematography is another thing. It is weird, and as I've watched it, I've wondered if they use AI to separate figures from the background. There is a strange out of focus bokeh that doesn't look natural, so I've noticed from the beginning, and I've often thought to Google it to see. What popped up on my screen as a YouTube algorithm recommendation was just that, an inquiry into the strange bokeh look of the show. And, as it turns out, it is not AI but the use of some specially made vintage lenses. Expensive lenses. And yes, they give a razor thin depth of field which is why for much of the show, the characters are seated in one place. That is part of the static feeling I have had about it. With such a narrow depth of field, however, you can't really hold focus if the subjects are moving about.
My question is answered, but I am spooked. I mean, I haven't even Googled it yet, but the satellite seems to know. It knows everything.
Everything except what chemicals these space launches are putting out.
I think I will feel better today. I will go to the gym in a bit, but I will be very careful and not do so very much. I want to be more productive than I've been, though, and have plans other than hanging around the house napping my life away. And I will take my mother to her therapy this afternoon and then take her to the grocers, and I will buy pork chops and spinach and beans and potatoes to make our dinner, I think, and I will cook and eat and clean and sit with her until I go home.
That is what I think at present, anyway. We'll see how that all shakes out.
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