Until That Time

It was hot.  I am in recovery.  I thought to go out, but I didn't.  I stayed inside all the live-long day.  I am antsy and want to walk, but I don't want to take any chances with the surgical wound.  I want it to heal as best it can, so I have decided to bite the bullet, so to speak, and wait until I see the doc again before trying to do much.  

Rather, I sat inside and worked on pictures.  I can't seem to get out of the Cuba file.  I've been there three times, but none of them were photo trips.  The first time was in the 1990s before Americans were allowed to go.  I had a permit from the U.S Government to attend an International Hemingway Conference.  If you are a longtime reader here, you know how I got to be King of Cuba for awhile.  But I was in the conference and on the hotel grounds most of the time.  There was only one afternoon for only an hour or two where I got to go anywhere with my camera.  

The second time was an impromptu trip with Ili.  She hated for me to carry a camera.  She hated my taking photographs.  She was adamantly and virulently against it.  Still, I'm amazed at what I got from those few days there.  

The third time, I took a group of students.  I had chaperone responsibilities and not so much of a chance to explore with my camera.  

One day, I need to go with only one thing in mind.  

Somehow, I've "lost" the photos that I had worked on before.  I can't find them in any of the folders.  As I go through them all, searching, I find pictures that I never worked on before, like the one above, so I set about taking the raw digital files to finished product.  The music plays.  I make keystroke after keystroke after keystroke.  It is repetitious, but each photo requires its own corrections so I can't just drop a LUT onto them.  It is all tweaking and tweaking and tweaking.  

And sometimes it goes awry.  

I still have a long way to go, but I get a thrill at seeing the images emerge.  Damn, I think, I used to be able to take pictures.  It makes my heart yearn.  

That is pretty much, by and large, as interesting as my life has been for awhile.  Oh, there were some texted photos that a friends sent me from their journeys on the road.  Those, however, are of little interest to you, I think.  In fact, I find that my reports on "friends"gets under some people's skin.  It's o.k.  Often enough, the thing itself is both its own punishment and its own reward.  

I used to ask students if they thought there was more happiness or unhappiness in life and in the cosmos.  You'd think that an assemblage of people would say it was 50/50 on the average, but the answer coming back time and time again was overwhelmingly on the negative side of the ledger.  There is more suffering, they would say, than happiness.  

So. . . I am not alone.  Maybe it succors us to think there is no escaping the downside of things.  

I have photos from many other countries to cull, but much of that was taken in the pre-digital era, shot on film, and much of it was later scanned poorly, so I don't know how much of it I will use.  I may be tempted to re-scan some of it, but that takes a LONG time and the results may not be much different.  How much do I need for a website, anyway?  I only want to be able to show people that I am a "real photographer" when I ask them if I can photograph them.  You can't be a "real photographer," it seems, without some social media or other online platform now.  It is that kind of world now.  

"Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada."

Yesterday, my phone informed me that it had made some videos for me.  Crazy.  One of those was very, very long.  AI, I guess, had taken video I had shot with the iPhone and edited it in some crazy but fascinating ways.  I was fascinated for a bit.  There were things I hadn't seen in a long time, video I had forgot taking.  But after watching my life in digital time for quite awhile, fascinated by my movie self, I thought, "Holy shit!  Where else does this go?"

I mean Apple might own it for all I know.  It may be part of the permanent digital cosmos.  

It made videos from my photographs as well, mostly from the time of Ili.  

I think I am much more handsome now!  It is true.  

But that isn't saying much.  

Who said, "90% of life is just showing up?"  I think it was Woody Allen who makes a film every year.  That is more than just showing up.  Whatever the other 10% is, I need to do more of it.  When my surgical wound has healed, I will hit the road a little in an attempt to make stories and art.  Stick with me.  You will see.  I can sometimes be fascinating.  

Ho!

Until that time. . . there is this.  Enjoy. 

Revealing the Wound

I DID it.  I unwound the bandages from my leg without passing out.  Then, of course, I took a photo and sent it to SOME of my friends, the ones I didn't think would mind seeing something awful and kind of gross.  I was looking for sympathy, of course, or something akin.  Then, after messaging, with the greatest of trepidation, I stepped into the shower.  Surprising, really.  The thing didn't sting or have any strange sensations.  And though I couldn't believe I was supposed to get the thing wet, it seemed quite alright.

Once I had finished my shower and the required after-shower ablutions, I checked my phone with some anticipation.  I had gathered no great sympathies, however, only some rather matter of fact stuff, and then only a very few.  

So much for drama.

Then I remembered a saying from my childhood in the ghetto--"If you want sympathy, you can look it up in the dictionary between. . . ."

So, being bereft of the emotional support I was so desiring, I decided that I needed medicine.  

Walking was more difficult without the support of the Ace bandage than it was before, and it was a bit of a struggle across the burning parking lot and into the bar.  Sounds like a Hemingway title.  

I looked even more goofy than usual as the doctor told me to keep the thing loosely covered "so the dogs don't lick it."  The wound was much bigger than I had imagined and I hadn't any bandages--even the largest stick on ones you can buy that are larger than your hand--that would cover it, so I put on a pair of my loose long China pants.  They looked like the kind surgeons so often wear.  But I didn't care, really.  Most people wear unstylish things, especially in this heat.  Shorts and old logo t-shirts and sandals are de rigueur.  

A skinny, spicy margarita with tajin was just the thing.  

But man, it has gotten hot.  The thermometer won't leave 95 for days now as we struggle under a "heat dome."  It is still spring and I am certain these are End Times.  It boggles my mind that people voted for Trump, but he won my state in the last election.  

"Drill, baby, drill!"

You can only conclude that most people are mentally impaired.  

I ordered some street tacos to go with the marg, but they were pork and all wrong.  And it was just then as I was taking my first bites that I determined how I would live out the next six months of Global Warming Heat.  I would live on fish tacos, beer, skinny spicy margaritas, and mango ice cream.  It seemed, really, the only thing to do.  I would need linen shirts and pants and a good pair of huaraches, some beaded necklaces and colorful string bracelets.  Hell, I'd probably want an ankle bracelet as well.  This was only evening wear, of course.  Everything now must be done in the mornings.  By two o'clock, it will be time for siesta.  Close the blinds, take off your clothes, turn on the fan, and lie on top of the covers.  The margarita will help you sleep until four.  By five, perhaps, the sun will be low enough to allow you to go out.  Fish tacos and beer await you as the sun goes down.  And later on, the ice cream.  

I will make all of this at home.  I've decided to boycott restaurants with their cheap ingredients and high prices.  They are not a good value.  I do not get my money's worth.  Fish tacos require little--shredded cabbage, grated white cheese, jalapenos, and cilantro.  Skinny spicy margs need only lime juice, orange juice, and sliced jalapeños (though I've gotten wind of the idea of using a spicy hot asian sauce instead), and a little honey.  I'm thinking I will buy an ice cream maker.  That should bring the women running.  

I suggested to the woman who almost never asked me out that sitting in the sprinkler was the only way to truly beat the heat.  

"I'm a hillbilly, so I'm down," she said.  

I've done it before.  It is called adiabatic cooling.  The evaporation of the water off the skin draws heat from inside the body.  You can freeze to death like that.  A sprinkler and an inflatable kiddie pool with cold drinks will see you through the hottest of summers.  

Bereft of love and sympathy, after lunch, I took the required nap.  At five, I went to see my mother to show her my wound.  We decided to sit inside in the air conditioning rather than outside in the heat, but sitting inside staring at one another gets just a little tedious.  She gave me no real advice on the leg.  She is just happy that the cyst is gone.  

When I got home around six-thirty, the afternoon heat had subsided.  It was time for a Campari.  I sent a text to C..C.  I had introduced him to the pleasures of Pusser's Rum, the official drink of the British Royal Navy.  

In the Royal Navy, sailors were historically afforded a daily ration of rum, known as a "tot." This ration was initially one pint of rum, but it was later reduced to half a pint. This daily ration was part of their daily sustenance and became a staple of their life at sea. The daily rum ration was abolished in 1970.

C.C. makes a variety of drinks using Pusser's, but last night he was drinking Pusser's Old Fashioned, so I sent him this.  

I've owned several of these enameled cups since I went to the America's Cup race in Newport in 1983.  Saturday's toast: "Sweethearts and wives, may they never meet."

Oh, those Royal Navy sailors were drunken sots and not the kind you would bring home to mother.  

Halfway through my Campari, Tennessee and his wife rolled up on their Vespa.  They'd been to a reggae festival in town.  I got them drinks and we chatted on the deck amid the bites of tiny, invisible mosquitoes.  

"We're going to the beach house next week if you want to come."

I pointed to my leg at which T's wife had looked while he stood at a distance cringing.  

"Not next week," I said, "but thanks."

It was nice to have a bit of company.

It was too hot to cook.  My appetite was suppressed, so I decided on salad for dinner--a spring mix with sliced Campari tomatoes, avocado, and garbanzo beans, olive oil and Balsamic vinegar.   I wished I had some cheese to grate on top.  It would go on the list.  

"Do girls still like "Breakfast at Tiffany's?"

"Oh, yes.  I love that movie."

I like girls who like "Breakfast at Tiffany's" rather than "Pretty Woman."  That's me.  Just saying.  Different souls, I think.  Rather so.  

Here's a scene that was deleted from the final version of the film.  Hmm.  

Removing the Bandage

Marelene Dumas' "Miss January" set a record for a painting sold by a living female artists—$13.8 million.

Today, Dumas is known as one of the most influential painters in the world, according to Christie’s, which said she “is known for her emotionally charged, psychologically complex portraits — often based on found photographs — which explore themes of sexuality, race, grief, motherhood, and the body.”

Free the Nipple.  Nude dresses banned in Cannes.  Sally Mann's work confiscated by state police from a Texas art gallery.  

I don't think we, as a nation, are united on how we feel about the naked form, but when I read that there is an epidemic of pedophiles online, that the most searched for thing on Porn Hub is for underaged girls, I think maybe we are a not getting the point.  

As well as sociable, mildly depressive, vengeful, and superstitious, Twain was also surprisingly sophisticated.

Once he married Livy, Twain quickly took to the lifestyle of the era’s one percent. His millionaire father-in-law, who had made a fortune in coal, bought the young couple a mansion, with suitable staff, as their starter home. For the rest of their lives, the Clemenses and their three daughters never lacked or denied themselves any pleasure or purchase. For 11 years, the family lived in hotel suites and villas in various parts of Europe, particularly England and Vienna (where Freud, Gustav Mahler and Theodor Herzl came to see Twain perform). At one point, Livy complained that they were as “poor as church mice,” when the family was residing in Venice in a 28-room villa with a team of servants.

As he enters his 70s, the lonely writer begins to seek out the companionship of young girls between the ages of 10 and 16. While no sexual overtures accompany these relationships, Twain’s letters to his many “angelfish” are distinctly flirtatious, and the whole business feels more than a little creepy. Once the girls reach 16, he drops them.

While knowledge of Twain’s life can enhance our understanding of his writing, the man himself turns out to have been self-centered, loving but neglectful of his daughters, foolishly gullible, something of a money-hungry arriviste and vindictive to a Trumpian degree. Of course, he was also a genius — at least in a small handful of books, perhaps only one really. Were it not for “Huckleberry Finn,” would we really think of Mark Twain as one of America’s greatest writers? I wonder.

That's from a book review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.  I've never been a Twain fan outside of "Huckleberry Finn," so that rather thrilled me.  

One of my friends responded, "Showing any kind of interest in anything is “kind of creepy."  Name withheld to protect the deviant.  He's the same person, however, who tells his outraged friends, "Sure, in the animal kingdom the males always fight over the right to breed with the older females in the group."  

Nature has its ways.  

I guess this will bring me to what I really want to talk about, will bring me to the buried lede.  

Today I am to take the bandages off my surgical wound and take a shower.  I am terrified.  I don't want to look at it.  I really don't.  I live alone.  There is no one to do this for me.  What if I pass out?  

I am sure my leg will be forever deformed.  My gut is heavy and my shoulders have narrowed.  Which females in the pack will fight over me?  Body issues.  And yet. . . several women at the gym who I know only from seeing them there, surprising me with their concern, offered to come help me take off the bandages and shower.  Some insisted that I take their numbers.  And I swear I think the nurses at the hospital and the doctor's office were flirting with me.  

Girls still send me pictures, some of which I can post here.  

Some who have almost forgotten me send me ancient gifts.  I got a Christmas present yesterday, a book with last year's inscription evincing the feelings of the time.  

But I feel postdated.  I mean, for all of it, I am alone and will have to deal with my physical disabilities without the help of a True Love.  I am both terrified and sad.  

Last night, I decided to try and get back to a normal life, to shake the inherent gloom, so after visiting my  mother, I decided to get sushi on the Boulevard.  It was early, but in the good months, you need to get there early if you want a good table.  

But last night, that was no problem.  There wasn't a soul to be found.  I sat alone for a good long while in the six o'clock 93 degree afternoon.  Eventually, an irritating middle eastern hillbilly family sat at a table near me.  They were loud, obnoxious, and hideous.  

But the food was alright.  This is a mid-level sushi place with decent but not spectacular food.  There are two Michelin star sushi restaurants in town, but dinner is around $400/person at a seating for nine.  Some of my friends go.  I never will unless someone is sporting me.  Maybe, you know. . . my next true love.  

The workers came to do house repairs yesterday.  They finished the apartment and will come back on Monday to do the house.  It is expensive, but I will feel better when it is done.  Money.  I let things go too long with some fantasy that I will get out and fix things myself.  I am not a skilled handyman.  I am something far worse.  I can pitch mulch and haul things to the curb, but don't let me around power tools.  

Though I have built a couple of decks.  No real skill there, though.  

Miami sent me a song as I was working on culling photos for my proposed website.  I am going to build a website with photos that the average person who knows nothing about photography other than the commercial images they see can appreciate.  Anything that would appeal to a person with a critical eye will remain in the vault.  I just need the website so that when I ask people to be in a project and they say, "Do you have a website?" I can show them this.  Don't get me wrong, I like the images.  They are good images and don't embarrass me, but they are not weird or dangerous nor a challenge to the average sensibilities.  

I ran into "The Artist" who had the studio behind mine in those studio years.  He was a full-time artist who made his living selling art.  Some of his very large encaustic pieces sold for $10,000.  He is living in Canada now and was only here on business.  So, in the parking lot at Whole Foods, we stopped to chat and catch up.  

"Are you still doing photography," he asked.  

Embarrassed, I thought for a minute and said, "No. . . I haven't latched on to a project I could run with, really."

It sounded terrible,  It sounded like defeat.  

The song Miami sent was a lively Latin tune, and just at that moment, I was working on this. 

It seemed a fortuitous synchronicity.  Just maybe, I thought, this thing is going to get me going.  Maybe this thing is going to work.  

But I need to quit finding photos that I haven't processed before and just go with what I have got or I'll never get a website up.  

But I am putting off the inevitable here which is dealing with my surgical bandaging and wound.  I will go to the gym and do a little more light exercise, and then come home and deal with the dressing.  My nether regions begin to tingle in an uncomfortable way just thinking about it.  I'm a real scaredy cat when it comes to this shit.  I was fortunate to have someone who loved me after my accident.  I could not have done that on my own.  

This is nothing of the kind, but still. . . oh, love. . . oh love. . . . 

The Cuba pictures are good, I think.  I need to get out and do more.  

Maybe I'll sport a camera when I go out today.  But I don't have a website to show, and really, there is nothing for me here.  I'll read.  I'll write.  I'll cull more photographs.  I'll cook healthy food and sit on the deck with a late afternoon drink.  I'll remember my life and pretend to still be living it.  

But, of course, there is always the music.  

Wonderful News

I just spent the morning writing badly about yesterday.  I'm trashing that one, but now I am worn out with it and feel the need for brevity.  And so. . . . 

Yesterday I went back to the surgeon.  Oh. . . I had some descriptive, flowery descriptions that I've now deleted.  I was nervous.  The doc wasn't.  He unwrapped the wound.  I didn't look.  He said it looked great, put some salve on it, and wrapped it back up.  

"You can remove the bandages on Saturday and take a shower.  You don't need to wrap it up again.  Just cover it up with something so the dogs don't lick it.  I'll see you in a week."

What?!  This was great news, except for the part where I have to deal with it on Saturday.  I couldn't believe that I was going to be o.k. to shower then, and I certainly wasn't looking forward to seeing the thing itself.  Still. . . . 

He told me that I shouldn't run or jump or. . . surf.  He had a sense of humor it seemed, for his P.A. had asked me if I was a surfer when they came into the room.  Maybe he was human after all.  

"I had to cut two flaps to fold over to cover it, so I don't want you putting any pressure on it.  Otherwise, you can do normal things."

Jesus--cut two flaps. . . .  I was certain I didn't want to look at it on Saturday.  

Still, I was fairly elated as I crossed the parking lot to the car.  

Home, I decided I needed to start exercising.  Three weeks in chairs and beds and quiet rooms had turned me into a lumpfish, soft and gelatinous.  I got dressed and drove to the gym.  

Oy!  I had what amounted to fetal strength.  The gymroids had spread the word that I was out with some vicious STD but that I was still gay and the prognosis was good, so people had to come tell me.  All the motion after so long, though, was making me dizzy.  I stayed for about half an hour.  I didn't want to do too much.  

A tub bath, lunch, and a nap.  Life as I have known it was returning.  

In the late afternoon, I poured a Campari, and of course, I took a photo to send to my friends with the good news.  

"A Campari and the kabob I’m about to cook.  Coming back to the world."

There is much more to tell, but I told it poorly once and have no confidence I can do it better again, so I'll leave it at that.  As bad as things have seemed, it is all turning out as well as it could, I think.  

And so. . . there it is.  Selavy.  

A Sissy Goes to the Doctor

2018, Havana, Cuba.  To prove I was a Hemingway Hero, I challenged all comers to meet me in this fighting ring, bar none.  

But the hombres had little interest in fighting a madman.  Ha!

Just kidding, of course.  Yesterday, wounded and only walking as needed, I sat at my computer culling work for my proposed website all the live-long day.  I was working in the Cuba files.  Oo-la-la, there are some tasty bits in there, though the photos are no more than travel pictures, illustrations for an article, perhaps.  They are good, I think, but not "art."  And that brings me to a dilemma in building a website.  

But I'll get to that.  

As I went through the photos, there were two trips intermingled in the folder.  One was with Ili in 2017.  One day I got a hair and said to her, "Let's go to Cuba."

"O.K." she said, and without much preparation, we booked a direct flight.  Halfway there, I began to question myself.  WTF?  We would just land and see what happened.  Ili had booked an apartment through an Air B&B site online.  When we got to the airport, I knew to exchange money there for the best rate.  Then we got a cab, gave the driver an address, and we were on our way.  

The trip turned out to be very easy.  Cuba was now a tourist destination, though most people were coming by cruise ship and staying only a day or two.  

As I went through the photos, I was surprised to come across some movie clips.  I'd forgotten all about them.  There was Ili on our first afternoon sitting at a table in the Floridita drinking a frozen daiquiri.  Three takes.  I asked her where we were and what we were doing.  

"We are at the Floridita drinking. . . I forgot what these are called."

"Daiquiris."

"We are sitting in the Floridita drinking daiquiris," she grinned.

"And what are we going to have to eat?"

With a mischievous look in her eye, she said, "Hemingway's balls."  

WTF?

She did this each time, for all three takes.  

I have lots of photographs of her, of course, but this was one of the few times I actually shot her with video.  There we were on a sudden adventure before the accident, me a bit chubby but healthy, she looking wonderful and still in love.  I decided to take the clips into Adobe Premiere and edit them into a little video.  I don't do enough video editing and I keep forgetting how to use the program which, it seems to me, has been updated every time I go to use it.  It took me a long time to remember how to make titles (I did a shitty job), cut and move clips on the timeline, and add transitions.  The audio was pretty bad as I was using the built-in mic on the camera, so I tried to clean it up a bit.  Then I tried to white balance and brighten the video.  I didn't do a very good job at any of it, still, the clips were quite  improved.  After spending way too much time on this silly project, I rendered it ready to send. . .  where?  I wanted to post it to YouTube so I could put it on the blog, but I decided against that.  

It was a lot of time spent with Ili's fanciful images.  But I was O.K.  

When I ran across the photos of me in the fighting gym that I had stumbled onto as I walked some neighborhood back streets, I thought, "Yea. . . that is me, alright, all faux-fury and bluster. .  . a sissy-boy playing up his manhood."  I was thinking about the trip to the doctor this morning.  

I am worried, of course, but more. . . I am scared.  I could call it "anxious," but that would be underselling it.  As I've confessed, I have come to realize that I am and always have been an anxiety-ridden fellow, but sometimes I am just plain scared.  I am afraid of my visit with the surgeon this morning.  I am afraid I'll pass out when I see the hole in my leg, or maybe just vomit.  I don't want to be the one who has to clean it and care for it at home.  I want to close my eyes and let someone else do it.  

But there is no one else.  I'll have to cowboy up.  

I won't go into my paranoia about all the things that might go wrong.  I keep imagining that the wound won't heal and all that would entail.

I'm that kind of guy.  

I'm also the kind of guy, though, who would always take off on a romantic adventure.  At the end of the trip, Ili told me, "My god, that was the most romantic thing I have ever done."

"Stick with me, kid.  You ain't seen nothing yet."

And for awhile, it was true.  But that is for another time, perhaps. . . or perhaps not.  

Another Year's Lease on Life

Caravaggio

I am a louse.  For two years in a row, it seems, I have forgotten the birthday of someone I care for deeply.  I am like that.  I am like Caravaggio's painting of Narcissus.  I have never enjoyed birthdays, especially my own.  Nothing anyone can do will ever live up to my grand expectation of what should happen, so I'd rather be ignored.  That way, I can mope and cry that nobody really loves me.  

Not the way I do, at least.  

Yea, yea, yea. . . . 

But it breaks my heart that I have plumb forgotten, especially since she has been remembering mine.  There is no real way you can make up for that, I think, as I've been told more than once that birthday's are more important to women than is Christmas.  Sounds like a sexist thing, sure, and I was told that by a male chauvinist.  Still, that doesn't mean he was wrong.  He was right about a lot of things even though he turned out to be a crook.  

Brando, I mean.  

I am learning not to judge the book by my cover too late in life.  One dust jacket doesn't fit all.  

I took this bit of information with me to my doctor's appointment yesterday.  I was early, but it didn't matter.  I waited for over an hour.  By the time the doc got to me, I think she was in a hurry.  She walked in with a nurse and a scribe.  I think that is what they were.  She smiled and said, "Your blood work was great."

"Well. . . I've been through a bit since I saw you last."  And I proceeded to sing to her my sad song.

"I'm glad you got that taken off," she said.  

"What was my testosterone level," I asked her.  

"I don't think we tested that."

"Yes, it's on here," said the nurse.  I had requested the test.  The doc took a look.  

"It's normal," she said.  

"What was the number."

She read it off. 

"I'd like to get it up to around 800," I said.  

She winced.  "Why would you want that much testosterone?" she queried.  The nurse giggled.  

"What are you laughing about?" I grinned.  

"What most men want it for," she stumbled. 

"No, no. . . if that was it I'd be asking for Cialis.  I just want to look like the man I used to be so I can use my charms," I said.

"I don't know," said the doc. 

"It's one cc a week of testosterone," I said.  "That's standard.  I've been around this all my life.  Most of the guys at the gym who are over forty are on TRT."

She wasn't impressed.  I didn't think she would be.  My levels are o.k.  I should probably leave it alone.  But when all the other boys are getting pumped. . . .  

I'll leave it alone.  

So I took the good news home with me as a victory for the day.  

"Looks like I might have another year," I told my mother, "if this leg thing turns out alright."

But my mother had a phone call just then, so my victory limp was over and done.  When she got off the pone, she made me a grilled cheese sandwich and some chicken soup.  I opened a small coca-cola.  This is not the way I usually eat, but boy oh boy, it was good.  

"I need to get back to my house where the healthy food is," I said.  "But first, I need to stop a the infectious disease doctor's office and cancel my appointment.  I want to hear what they have to say."

My mother was boo-hooing as I packed up to go home.  "I like having you here," she said.  It was meant to be sweet, but it was also something else, a whole lot of guilting, I think.  It seems unfair, but I understand.  And therein lies the rub.  

As I pulled into the parking lot at the doc's office, I got a call.  It was Tennessee.  He had just gotten back into town and had missed my entire fiasco.  

"Where are you?  I've got something for you."

"I'm at the doc's office," I said.  

"When will you be home.  I'll stop by."

Since I've decided to give up drinking whiskey alone in my home every night, of course his present was a bottle scotch.  The devil works in obvious ways.  

I filled him in on my fun two weeks, and he told me about his.  That's what people do.  He wanted to know if he and his wife could take me to dinner, but I told him I wasn't up for going out yet.  When he left, I thought about the dinner I had turned down and the one I would have instead.  I decided I'd been eating like shit for days now, so I'd have one last shitty dinner.  I went to the store and bought a frozen pizza.  

My mother called.  She said she was lonely.  

"Yea. . . I know what you mean."

What could I say.  People stop by and see her all day long.  They bring her food.  People call her on the phone.  I can go days without hearing from anyone.  But she is closer to the cliff than I, so I understand.  Nobody wants to be alone with "the thing."  I can only tell her that I will be much more alone with it than she is. . . but I know that is no comfort.  

And that is what I had on my mind for the rest of the night.  I watched a little tv and went to bed.  

I will get back to editing my photos for the projected website today.  I may get back to making photographs when I can get around again.  I feel I have another year's lease on life, and I want to make it productive.  

For now, though. . . well. . . there is the music.  

Moving the Needle

Hockney

It was a long day.  All the signs were ominous.  We drove to the surgical center through a downpour and flooded streets.  Full moon.  And when I got there, they told me my anesthesiologist was named Dr. Moriarity.  Moriarity!  That was Sherlock Holmes archrival.  So I said. 

"You're the second person today to mention that," said the attending nurse.  

The doc's P.A. came in to explain what was going to go on that day.  Of course.  I asked if I was going to be able to walk after the surgery.  

"Sure.  He is just removing something under the skin. . . . "

I did see the doc just before they took me in for surgery.  He was his usual taciturn self.  He looked, maked my leg, and said he would have to put in "permanent stitches."  I guessed that meant the kind he would have to remove.  

When they wheeled me into the surgical room, I began to quiver and shake uncontrollably.  I couldn't stop.  It was embarrassing.  The anesthesiologist was not there.  I had met her earlier, but it was a man who said he'd be administering the anesthesia.  Probably a P.A.  

"Are you cold," he asked me.  

"I think it is probably anxiety," I confessed.  

"Oh, here, let me give you something for that."

That is the last thing I remember.  I went into surgery at around 1:30.  I came to in the recovery room around 3:30.  That seemed like a long time to me.  As I came to, I was shivering and quivering again. There were two nurses asking me if I was o.k.  

"I can't quit shaking," I mumbled.  

"That's normal coming out of the anesthesia."

"Really?"  

I've been under many times before and don't remember ever quivering.  It was taking me long time to come to.  I was the last patient of the day, and I think the staff was eager to close up shop.  

"Do you have any pain?"

My leg was stinging.  

"A little."

"On a scale of one to ten."

I thought a minute.  "Two."

Then they had me stand up to sit in a chair. 

"Ow--it's a five now."

"O.K." said the nurse.  "I'll give you something."

She put a syringe in my IV tube.  

"What is that?"

"Dilaudid."

Oh, man. . . I like the Dilaudid.  But that was it.  No opioids for home.  It was going to be all over the counter shit from here on.  WTF?

I was still loopy when they brought my mother in.  A nurse began explaining my post-op care to her, but she couldn't hear, so I said, and I answered all the questions.  My mother would have been confused by it all anyway.  

The doctor never came to tell me how it went.  I'm guessing he was in a hurry to get home.  I did not think that bode well.  

The nurse told my mother to get the car and pull up to the front door.  She helped me dress, then wheeled me out I a wheel chair.  It was only raining slightly at the time.  It was a straight shot to my mother's house, about two miles.  With luck, we got home without incident.  

I was loopy for most of the rest of the night.  I hadn't eaten or drunk anything for around twenty-one hours, so I made a can of chicken soup.  As it heated up, I put two eggs in and turned up the heat until I had chicken noodle egg-drop soup.  It was thick and chewy.  I had it with crackers and a small coca-cola. It went down well.  A bit later, I took a pee.  There.  Two things to check off the watch list.  I didn't have nausea and I had "voided."  I felt a tightness and a stinging in my calf as I walked.  I assumed it was the stitches.  

My cousin called.  My mother answered on speaker, so I could hear the conversation.  My mother said, "They took the cyst out, so everything is good now."

Yes, she wanted it to be.  But then I heard her say something that she hadn't said before. 

"The nurse came out and told me that they had to make a big hole," she was making the size of it with her thumb and forefinger though my cousin couldn't see, of course, "and she said that they had to do reconstructive surgery."

My eyes and brain were popping.  What the fuck did that mean?  Nobody had told anything to me.  When my mother got off the phone, I questioned her.  She said the same thing and made the same sized hole with her fingers.

"That's what the nurse told me."

I didn't think that was the best news of the night.  What could I do?  I got another small coca-cola and settled back into the remainder of my Dilaudid buzz.  

After dark, I was getting hungry, but my mother hadn't anything for me to eat.  She doesn't own milk.  There is no coffee or tea.  She did have some of that shit they call peanut butter, Peter Pan with sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil, some other shitty oil I can't remember, and palm oil.  Why are they allowed to call it "peanut butter"?

I spied a tangerine and ate that.  Then I started drinking water.  There were left over cans of sparkling water that I had brought some time ago.  I tried talking with my mother, but she couldn't hear most of what I said and I would have to repeat it in a shouting voice.  I gave up and turned on the commercial laden news.  

I checked my phone.  The only two people who were checking on me were people from work.  One was the woman who kind of almost asked me out.  She had texted the day before I went to surgery out of the blue to see how I was doing.  I hadn't heard from he in about a month.  So I told her my tale.  She was super duper sweet and wanted me to know all the things she would do for me from taking me to surgery to getting me groceries, etc.  Now she was checking up to see how I was doing.  I felt like I was getting healing vibes.  

The other text was from my old secretary.  She said she heard I was sick and wanted to know what was up.  I asked who told her.  She told me the woman who kind of almost asked me out had told my replacement at the factory for whom my old secretary now worked.  

"I don't want to get anyone in trouble," she proffered, "but. . . . "

"No trouble.  She has been super sweet.  I will copy the text I sent to her about it all before I went to surgery because I am too loopy to try to write it all out again."

And so I did.  

I didn't get another text from her.  

Later that night, one of the gymroids texted to see how I was doing.  It was on a group chat, so another one texted in, too.  

And that was it--work people who I don't see any longer and two gymroids.  

"My girlfriend should have taken me," I told the gymroids, "and should be taking care of me now, but. . . ."

Yea.  My mother talked about how much help Ili had been after my wreck.  I think she was thinking the same thing.  

But, "A man alone ain't got no bloody fucking chance."

Especially in today's market.  "Back in the days of Good Old America," as the memes go, they would have admitted me into the hospital, prepped me for surgery in my room, taken me to surgery, and brought me back to the room for the evening to make sure I was o.k. and to give me whatever meds I needed.  The Medical Industry, however, works from a bigger profit motive that seems more like something in a developing country where you go sit in a cattle pen waiting to see a doctor in the clinic who does whatever then shows you the door.  Maybe India would be a good model.  

"If anything goes wrong, if you can't void that night, if you nausea or vomiting, or if you see any seepage through the bandaging, call your doctor.  Try to keep the leg elevated.  Eat lightly.  Clear fluids."

Right?  What do you think would happen if I called the doctor's office at midnight if shit went wrong?

"If this is an emergency, call 911."

But with all of my mother's intensive medical training, I guess they thought I'd be fine.  

There is nothing in any of this that is giving me confidence or making me feel good.  Much the opposite, I'd say.  

My beautician is getting a hip replacement.  It is also going to be outpatient.  WTF?

When my mother had me, there was a three day hospital stay.  Now they let the mother and child stay for one.  That is a good metric, I think.  If anything goes wrong, "you know what to do." 

As I watched the commercial news stations, almost every commercial was for some medical drug or device.  

Now we have RFK jr.  And now he has Casey Means.  Michelle Goldberg has a nice column on that in today's Times (link).  

I think we are all fucked.  Some just don't seem to mind.  

Whatever.  Once you are in the hands of the medical system, you are done for anyway.  Your life will not be your own.  I'm going to start my meditation and groovy vibing and try to align my chakras and get my auras straight on my own, for I am, really, what I've got.  I need to center myself in a way I've not been centered for a very long time.  I've been living on anxiety and adrenaline for too long now.  I'm going to have to embrace myself and what the great void of the cosmos has in store.  I DO know for a fact that meditation can change your mental state, that you CAN move the needle into a sort of Nirvana.  I've seen it done with brainwave machines in psychology labs with kids who've had no prior training.  They could change the temperature in their bodies just by concentrating on moving a needle.  Some were better at it right out of the gate than others, but they could all do it, each and everyone of them.  

I should be able to do it, too.  

And so, for a little mood music, something to help me move the needle.  Maybe it can move your needle, too.  

Wish Me Luck

 

It is raining.  I can't eat.  I can't drink.  And wouldn't you know it, there is a full moon.  At least it is the Flower Moon and not something really ominous.  Still--surgery on a full moon.  I am numb with anxiety.  I'm a big macho baby.  Very typical, stereotypical. . . a meme.  Now there is just the waiting.  Six hours until surgery.  Just sitting, thinking.  It is a day to be gotten over.  

I am in the hands of a doctor now, someone I've spoken to for maybe four minutes.  I have no idea what I will be required to do, post-op.  I never asked.  He never said.  

The waiting is awful.   

I have nothing clever.  See you on the other side.  

Cowboy Up

Happy Mother's Day. . . mom.  

I just wrote a long, revelatory post.  Too much so.  It is gone now.  I'll put up the front.  It is a busy week for me who generally does little.  My days and weeks have become a jumbled mess.  I checked the schedule, though, and the maids are coming Tuesday.  Since I have surgery tomorrow, I need to prepare the house today.  I have an appointment with my primary care doctor on Tuesday morning that I am hoping I will be able to drive to.  I guess it is best that I stay at my mother's house, then, on Monday night.  That means packing up some overnight things.  Monday's weather is foreboding, of course.  Severe weather with high winds, possible flooding and tornadoes.  As my father used to say, "I shit you not."  It plays with my head, of course.  Ominous.  Should I check my horoscope?  On Thursday, I have an appointment with the infectious disease doc.  

WTF?  I used to be so young and spry.  

I managed to drive out to see my beautician yesterday, but I had been a mess of nervous dread all day.  I did not manage to get over to see my mother.  My body was leaden.  I got to my beautician's house at 5:30.  By 8:30, I was a platinum blonde.  She really did it this time.  I'm feeling a bit like Jean Harlow.  

Home, I put some frozen enchiladas in the microwave just before nine and called my mother.  Eating that late is not good, and I had to stay up later than I wanted.  I need to get my mother some flowers and figure out what we will do today.  But I am not up for it.  

Have I told you I am an anxious person?  I get paralyzed by it now quite often.  

I don't know if I will be able to write for the next few days, but I probably will.  I just can't seem to stop.  

This is a week to get through, I think.  And then?  

I hope for better days.  And so. . . . 

Fuck it.  It is time to cowboy up.  

Solitude and Distraction

 I woke up at six in the still-dark.  As I walked to the kitchen to start the coffee, I saw that there was a car parked on the curb outside my house.  Weird.  I stared for awhile, but I could see nothing.  I made coffee and read the papers.  Quarter to seven, I got up to go to the computer in the study.  It was light now, and I could see that the car was empty.  The passenger's side window was down.  It rained in the night.  WTF?  It seemed even weirder.  Maybe the car broke down in the night?  I don't know.  To be continued.  

I've gone nowhere, talked to no one.  I have been staying away from people.  I thought about going to the cafe to get a tea, but I decided against it.  I don't want to catch anything before my surgery on Monday, nothing that would make them want to not put me under.  I think I've become people-phobic anyway.  It's not them.  It's me.  I don't want to be around them.  The quiet solitude is my comfort.  I have a routine now that works.  I read, I write, I take long walks, and then Epsom Salt soaks.  I shower.  I eat lunch and then I cull my photo files.  That feels productive.  I may nap.  I may not.  In the late afternoon, I go to visit my mother.  Back home, I make dinner and eat while I catch up on the daily news.  Then I read.  If I get antsy, I'll cull more photos.  Then, around nine, I will watch something on t.v.  Before bed, I have begun to do some breathing/meditation exercises.  There is a pattern, but there is variety, too.  

My young friend who moved to Miami keeps in touch.  She is an odd bird in some ways.  Loves old things.  Has started a vintage apparel business with her sister.  Likes old jazz music, so I send her some classics.  I sent her something more contemporary stuff the other day and she sent some music back.  "Blue Angel," by Hermine.  O.K.  I give her a history lesson, send her a link (link).  I don't know if it will be used.  Maybe.  I send another link to "Babylon Berlin" in the original German with English subtitles.  The dubbed version is awful.  I've sent the link to many, but you have to buy each of the four seasons.  I don't know anyone who has done that yet.  But it is worthwhile.  It is the weirdest series I've ever seen.  Leave it to the Germans.  I have a lot of German ancestry.  It may explain a lot.  

I believe in genetics.  

The hallucinations have stopped and my vision is finally beginning to clear.  My appetite is back, too.  Maybe some other desires as well.  It has been a rough--how long has it been?  It is all a haze.  Has it been a month?  No, certainly not.  But when was I in the hospital?  Last week?  I don't know.  I can't remember anything clearly.  I think it is this and the state of my battered body that fuels my desire for isolation.  The world is a scary place.  

I get my hair done today at 5:30.  It is a terrible inconvenience.  I don't want to go, but my gal is going in for a hip replacement and is sneaking me in before she does.  It may be awhile before she can do me again, so I must go.  I don't think, though, that I am capable of carrying on a conversation.  

Sunday is Mother's Day.  I can't muster the energy for that.  I'll need to get my mother flowers, but I'm not sure what else I can manage.  My concerns are all about Monday.  Mom's across the street neighbors want us to come to dinner, but I can't.  I'll be a complete lunatic by then.  

Oh so many moms.  Isn't that something?  

I look forward to being somewhat normal again.  Cyst free.  I am hoping to travel.  The concern is my mother, of course.  People tell me that I need to take care of myself, too.  They are swell to say so, but it is not so simple.  Maybe, though, I can get away for a few days at a time.  Miami.  The Keys.  I want to go see my friends in Yosemite.  Maybe a quick trip to my friend in the Midwest.  I really want a museum trip to NYC.  I long to go to Mexico City once again.  I'd love to do the Google Flights thing, just pick the cheapest flights on any day and go someplace I have never been.  There are plenty.  St. Louis.  Kansas City.  Omaha.  Anywhere for a few days just to see.  It would be like living again.  

There are two kinds of places I have always liked--locals only dive bars and small, beautiful, intimate places devoid of the masses.  People will rush out tomorrow to stand in lines to get into crowded, shitty restaurants to be part of the mass madness.  By and large, it is a lack of imagination, lives that have been routinized.  There is a sense of belonging, I guess, that is comforting.  It is a distraction from the void.  

Why do babies cry?  That was a question posed in "The Passenger."  It isn't because they are happy.  They cry when they are born.  Then they cry a lot.  Parents, in an effort to succor them, attempt to distract them.  They jingle things before their eyes.  They coo and whisper.  They pick them up and rock them.  Maybe we are conditioned to seek distraction, to avoid thinking about what is to come.  

Yea, maybe I need to get out and see some things, join the herd, dance with the masses.  

But hey--we have the music.  There is nothing like music.  All the arts envy its ability to make you feel.  Just a series of notes, major, minor, augmented, 9th. . . .  Artists try to do it with colors, authors with sequences of words, but nothing sets the soul afire like a rhythm, a melody, some harmonies. . . a simple tune.  

I have never been a Joh Prine fan.  I find much of his stuff silly.  But yesterday I heard this.  The lyrics are dumb enough, especially the "Constantinople" part, but the sound is pretty evocative.  There is that loose snare, that pedal steel, the Hammond B3 organ, and what I think is probably a National guitar.  Slow three chord blues.  Thuwump.  

Oh. . . and adult coloring books.  Can you imagine? 

Maybe I've Been Altered

I finished culling my many years of S.F. photographs yesterday.  "Culling" may be hyperbolic, though.  I whittled them down to about 180.  Now I need to choose, what?--ten or so?  I don't know shit about building a website, so this is all a wild shot in the dark.  Really. . . I can't see the target.  

In a folder from my visit in 2012, I found this photo.  I'd never processed it, so I took it into post-production and sent it to Q.  This was our afternoon visit to a bar downtown he said was owned by a friend.  The friend was not there, so Q gave him (or her) a call.  As I remember, we drank for free.  It was early, though, and the place was empty.  

"It gets going around midnight," Q said.  I think that is what he said.  Probably.  It was three in the afternoon as I remember it.  

Now I will begin culling my NYC photos.  Many, many more there.  It will be a giant task.  After that, Mexico, South America, China, Europe. . . .  I should be finished with this part of the website by. . . I'll never finish, I'm afraid.  But it is fun going through them all.  

The weather here is supposed to be extreme on Monday--storms, flooding, tornadoes.  That is the day of my surgery.  I was already feeling a foreboding.  Now. . . I'm spooked out of my head.  A dark cloud looms on my horizon.  

I am an anxious person, I think.  You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I am.  I bottle it up, of course, but it makes me ill.  I saw this the other day, though, and thought, "Maybe I'm not alone."

I've always believed that worrying was the only way to hold the universe together.  If I don't worry, things fall apart.  

You're welcome. 

I read that younger people, tired of the nihilism of the contemporary world, are turning to religion.  Life in the void is hard.  I understand.  But I read long ago that there is a "faith gene."  

The God gene hypothesis proposes that human spirituality is influenced by heredity and that a specific gene, called vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2), predisposes humans towards spiritual or mystic experiences.

You can Google it for yourself.  Maybe we can't help how we feel about such things anymore than we can determine our hair color.  

Well. . . I've changed mine.  Perhaps that is a bad example.  But you get my drift.  

I have a minority reaction to many things.  Drugs, for instance.  I don't have the right brain chemistry for coke.  Some muscle relaxers jack me up.  Valium is like speed for me.  Smoking pot and eating mushrooms do not put me in a happy place.  Opioids and alcohol, on the other hand, seem to work quite fine.  

I'm probably a genetic romantic, too.  I am sure, as the old song goes, I'm "addicted to love."  Only recently have I begun to think badly of the women who have left me over the years.  They have always remained "Golden Girls" in my thoughts, and I missed their warm and gentle touch.  But lately, I've begun to remember the shitty things they did, the horrible, mean, selfish things, and their brilliant lights have dimmed.  Is it a shame?  Maybe.  I've perpetually taken responsibility for the things that went wrong, but now I am remembering what I did right.  I was true and never took another lover.  I'm pretty certain the same cannot be said for them.  Maybe not a physical lover, but their hearts and minds drifted.  I listen to the old song.

I'll bet she's not like me 
She's out and fancy free 
Flirting with the boys with all her charms 
But I still love her so 
And brother don't you know 
I'd welcome her right back here in my arms

As my friend once said about me, "If she came back, the door is always open."

Don't know if that is true anymore.  I've been ghosted, and I don't think it was anything I had done.  

But these have been dark days, and my mind has not been right.  I read some more yesterday about the drugs I have been taking.  I had to as I filled out the surgical form required of me.  I should have read more carefully before.  Hallucinations was a side effect of all the antibiotics I took.  I'm already susceptible to paranoia, sure.  And I have that "martyred" feeling sometimes, something my friends berate me for.  Maybe that is genetic, too.  But in my madness these past many days, when I would close my eyes, old lovers faces would appear just above me, and not in a loving way.  I would open my eyes to see them.  Then I would close them again and they would reappear.  

Yes. . . my mind has not been right.  My mind has taken a darker turn.  Things look bleak.  

Look at Q's face in that photograph.  That is like the faces leering down at me when I close my eyes.  Enigmatic.  Maybe menacing.   

Jesus, I need to get a grip.  I am nothing but paranoid about the surgery.  Something is sure to go wrong, something the surgeon didn't count on.  I'll wake to bad news.  

"I'm afraid we are going to need to take the leg below the knee." 

Or maybe I'l get a terrible, life-threatening infection.  No. . . I need to keep worrying.  Otherwise, disaster is a certainty.  

It is tough tackling the void alone.  I don't hold it against Generation Next or whatever they are called for turning to their chosen gods.  Society has failed them.  Church will make them feel better and more secure.  They have learned the old Hemingway lesson, "A man alone ain't got no bloody fucking chance."

But, I think, they are going to miss the Great Adventure.  

Well, there must be some way I can lose these lonesome blues
Forget about the past and find somebody new
I've thought of everything from A to Z
Oh, lonesome me

 Yeah. . . on the other hand. . . . 

The Bat Bird

This is not my photo.  Duh.  But I like the set.  Were I to have another studio. . . . 

But where was I?  Oh. . . I feel much better now.  I'm not all the way "there" yet, but my mind is clearing.  My body seems to be warming up.  I've turned my a.c. down a degree back to where it is normally.  My vision is still blurry, but I think/hope it is getting better.  The shakes seem to be gone.  

And last night, I cooked a big meal.  Maybe not "big," but normal.  

I'd never made salmon patties before.  My mother makes them, and I love them, but I have never tried.  Last night, I tried.  I looked up recipes online.  Too many variations, too many ingredients.  I went with the simplest one and maybe made it even simpler.  Chopped onion, canned salmon, two eggs, Panko breadcrumbs, and olive oil.  Shall I reveal that I have never used Panko before?  No, I shouldn't.  

I smashed it all together in a big steel bowl, then made patties.  I read that you should put the patties in the 'fridge for anywhere from thirty minutes to all day, but I didn't have time for that.  My patties fell apart a little bit.  I put olive oil in the cast iron pan and cooked the patties for four minutes per side over medium/high heat.  Rice and asparagus.  

Damn.  I forgot to add the spices to the patties.  There were bland.  Next time.  But they were o.k.  Not as good as mom's, but o.k.  I ate two big patties, all the asparagus, and a big portion of rice.  Coconut water was the drink of choice.  I haven't eaten a full meal in a week and a half.  

I felt I'd put on all the weight I lost.  But I felt good. 

Look, bitches, that's all I got.  I haven't been anywhere, haven't seen anyone.  I walk, read books, watch t.v.  I've had a retarded brain.  I guess I can report that the mild hallucinations are gone.  There is that.  

Oh. . . I DO have a tale to tell.  It comes from the weekend I was so terribly sick from the antibiotics.  I was weak, shaky, puking and out of my mind.  I was lying on the couch toward dusk on Saturday napping.  I woke when I thought I heard someone in the house.  I thought it might be my tenant, and I called out her name in query.  There was some disturbance, then I saw something fly through the living room.  WTF?  I was already paralyzed by illness.  Now?  

I lay on the couch listening.  I heard nothing.  I forced myself up onto shaky legs and peered around the corner.  On the window shutter in the dining room was a big, black, cowled thing.  It was HUGE and looked like the Caped Crusader or a sleeping Dracula.  Fuck me, I thought.  What was I going to do?

I have a big net in the garage that I have used over the years to catch armadillos, but the netting was too wide for this.  I didn't want to fuck with a bat.  My reflexes were non-existent at this point.  My tenant had been clipped by a flying bat a year or so ago and had to go through the rabies shots.  She said it cost ten thousand dollars.  I don't know.  I consider her an unreliable source.  But I didn't want to go through the rabies thing, so. . . I called her.  

"I don't know what to do.  There is a bat in my house.  I'm sick.  I can't try to catch the thing."

"O.K.  I'll call the police."

Call the police?  My mind was flip-flopping.  Nothing made sense.  O.K. I thought.  I'm going to let her take care of it.  

She came down, but wouldn't come into the house.  I sat in a chair on the deck barely able to move.  This was the day before I went to the hospital, and I mean, I was sick in my bones.  

The cops showed up, a young Black man and a White cop with tats all over his arms.  He was the same cop who came out to take my report when my cameras were stolen.  

"It's hanging on the shutter in the dining room," I said as I led them into the house.  They peered into the dining room from the kitchen.  

"How are you going to get it?" I asked.  

They looked at one another then at me.  

"I'm not going near that thing," said the Black guy.  "I'm not messing with a bat."

The White guy called animal control.  It was Saturday night.  

"They didn't answer," he said,  "I left a message.  We'll see if they call me back."

We all hung out on the deck for a bit.  No call back.  The White cop started searching the internet on his phone and came up with three numbers of private critter control companies.  He gave them to my tenant.  

"I doubt that animal control will respond.  You might want to call one of these companies," he said.  And with that, the police were gone.  The tenant called two of the numbers.  One was in a different part of the state.  One was an answering service.  The last one, however, said he'd be out in half an hour.  

He showed up in shorts and a t-shirt and a pair of surgical gloves.  I took him into the house and showed him the bat.  He walked back to his truck and got a small net, maybe eighteen inches in diameter.  

"He's got it!" said the tenant who was watching him through the window.  It had taken about ten seconds.  When he came out, he was grinning.  

"How many people looked at this thing and thought it was a bat?"

"Four."

He laughed.  "It's a bird."

WTF?  He looked it up.  It was a chimney swift.  Of course.  It had come into the house through the chimney.  That is what woke me up.  That is what made all the clatter.  

"I'll take it with me and let it go at my house.  If I let it go here, it will just go back to your chimney."

He was a swell guy.  I hadn't talked to him on the phone, didn't know anything but that he was coming.  

"How much do I owe you?" I asked.  

"Two hundred."

Holy shit!  What could I do?  I was sick and wanted to get back on my couch.  When he was gone, I said to the tenant, "Two hundred bucks!"

"He was going to charge five hundred, but since it was so easy. . . ."

"What?  Five hundred dollars?  You're shitting me!"

"No.  That's what he said on the phone."

I was too weak and sick to complain.  I was just glad the thing was gone.  

I called the tenant the next day to take me to the hospital.  You know the rest.  

I'm lucky.  I've had multiple people offer to take me to surgery on Monday.  I've not asked anyone, of course.  These were all acts of kindness.  But I don't want to bother anyone.  The day will be a drag.  The surgical center called to tell me that I needed a driver and someone to stay with me for 24 hours after the surgery.  That pissed me off.  They make too many assumptions.  They should have just done this in the hospital and kept me overnight, I think.  

Whatever.  That is where I am.  Now it's on to yogurt and oatmeal.  Not combined, of course.  Gut bacteria and fiber.  I need to get healthy.  

It is raining and will be, reportedly, for days.  The rainy season has come early this year.  Temperatures are above the norm.  The college kids have moved out.  The town is quiet but for weekends when the hoi-polloi come to town, but they are an ugly lot.  I will walk in the drizzle and the rain.  That's all I have.  

A Smaller Version of Myself

I'm off the poison, off the antibiotics.  Now I'll see if I return to "reality" as I know it.  Your "reality" may be different, of course.  Everybody now is on the pipe or vape pen or mushroom gummy.   Everyone is in therapy, AI or other.  India attacked Pakistan and Xi is going to party with Putin.  The U.S. Navy just lost another $67 million dollar jet off the deck of a ship, and all I can think of is "McHale's Navy."  

You may need to Google that, depending.  

As the world falls apart, however, two things dominate the news outside Earth Two Trump World: The Met Gala and the Choosing of the Pope.  

I finished watching "Sugar" last night.  Bullshit.  He's an alien who decides to stay on planet earth rather than be loaded back on the Mother Ship.  It didn't need that.  It became a cheap version of Win Wenders' "Wings of Desire" where an angel decides to give up his wings.  At least in "Wings" the angel stayed on earth with no superpowers.  The masses, though, it seems craves super powers, magic crystals, elixirs, potions. . . anything unreal.  But, and here's the kicker to me; they know little to nothing about the natural world, don't know minerals and how they are formed, don't understand chemical compounds and their structures, know little if any math beyond the basics, and have scant knowledge of physics beyond gravity.  It is easier to hope for aliens and super heroes and magic rocks.  

If there are miracles, though. . . count me in.  I could use a few.  

I'm terrified to post this next thing.  It might get me in trouble with the. . . you know. 

This is Emily Ratajkowski at the 2024 Met Gala.  She skipped the Gala this year, but "The Naked Dress" was everywhere.  Rat is tired of all the politics of the male gaze, the female gaze, etc.  She thinks the Taylor Swiftian ethics of "dressing for the girls" and "dressing for revenge" is bullshit.  She's been liberated from all that, she posted on social media.  She just doesn't care anymore.  

I'm guessing that is why she had to post that on social media.  

I don't know.  I missed the whole thing once again this year.  Drats!

But the real shit is the conclave to choose the new Pope.  I'm not sure how much God has to do with the power politics of this stuff, whether he speaks to them the way he speaks to the head of the Mormon Church--reportedly.  But it seems certain that the contest will be between Church liberals and Church conservatives.  Since Vance killed the last Pope, this will be a most interesting vote.  I hope someone comes out shouting that the election was rigged.  Maybe loyalist will be inspired by the January 6th patriots.  

All I'm saying is things are getting weirder.  This Christmas, some children will get two instead of thirty dolls while billionaires have twenty cars, five yachts, six mansions, two private jets, etc. 

There's trouble right here in River City.  This I know, and I don't even have cable.  

Oh--I almost forgot!  I went to see the surgeon yesterday.  I got weighed first.  I've lost eleven pounds in ten days.  I just haven't been eating.  I don't recommend this diet, though.  It is pretty scary.  I don't feel so well.  The doc saw me for about two minutes.  He scheduled me for surgery on Monday at a surgical center, not a hospital, so I will be in and out the same day.  They will put me under, he said.  I won't remember anything.  I hope he's speaking only about the surgery.  I don't want total amnesia.  There are so many things I wish to remember.  

But I'm anxious.  How's that?  A better way of saying I'm scared.  Anxious is allowable, but scared, that's another thing.  I'm trying to keep my emotions in check.  

I'm puny now, decimated, but my mother tells me, "You look good."  Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in the open garage at my mother's house with her and several of her neighbors.  When the sexy dog-walking lady came by with her two big dogs, my mother's 91 year old neighbor's tiny dog ran out in a rage.  I hobbled out as quickly as I could to get it.  Then I talked to the sexy lady.  My mother had already told her about my hospital stay, and she inquired how I was doing.  I told her I felt like crap, that the antibiotics had kicked my ass, and that I was a little light in the head.  

"Well you look good," she said, echoing my mother.  

Starvation is a good look on me, apparently.  I hardly ate yesterday, either, and I am sure that by this afternoon, I will have dipped below the weight I had hoped to achieve at the beginning of the year, under 200 pounds.  I'm afraid, however, that I have become "skinny fat."  You know what I mean.  Not the rugged boy I've always wanted to be.  

Prebiotics, probiotics, fermented foods, and fiber.  That is on my agenda for the next few days.  Get some gut health back.  Clear my mind.  Bring some life back into this old body.  

Oh, yea.  One more thing.  When I was scheduled for the surgery, I was told I needed to have a driver who I know.  Can't be Uber.  O.K. I said, but that is problematic.  I don't really have anyone to drive me.  I hate asking favors of people, especially for something like this.  Someone will have to sit in a waiting room for four hours or so.  No wife, no girlfriend. . . I'm in a pickle.  That has been my takeaway from this whole thing.  I have no "support group."  Oh, one of the BBC gymroids would take me, but I'm not down for that.  My old work group has kind of dispersed and dissolved.  No, I don't want to ask any of them.  So right now, I'm faced with a quandary.  I'm a man on a wire, alone, an enigma, a mystery.  

Or I'm just a pathetic guy without any close friends.  Multiple choice?  You know which one I'll choose.  

I've read too many books, watched too many movies.  Tell your children that's not the way to go.  Major in computers or business and join a fraternity or sorority.  Fit in.  Work your way up the corporate ladder.  Get married, join the country club, have children and vacation at nice resorts.  And always remember Homer Simpson's great advice to his son, Bart--the Rule of the American Playground.

 "Don't say anything unless you are certain everyone is going to agree."