The Nikon D6

Yesterday, Raquel and I woke up and started drinking champagne, which lasted through most of the day, at least until I transitioned to Scotch whisky. Yes, I know privilege problems. We were expressing our solidarity with our socialist brothers and sisters. I became so pleasantly elated from the alcohol at one point that I almost bought the camera that you see above. It is equal in expense to some of the cameras that C.S. Eliot buys. That is what I kept telling myself, that it was somehow not quite as bad as it seemed when looking at the cost of the thing. 

CS asked me where I planned to use it and I told him, In front of my eyes. I like that type of honest deflection and I suspect that he does also.

The camera costs more than any of my bikes, but it also does more. Though, much like my bikes, it only does marginally more than the one I already own, at a much greater cost. But, that's the price you pay for excellence. 

Are we expected to drink cheap champagne around here? Fuck no. 

This household demands justice! 

To persuade me not to buy this camera means that you harbor an anti-Asian bent. Likewise, don't try to tell me not to buy a Leica, you Antifa thug. 

Before I veer into opining, I will wrap it up here. I am shocked and alarmed by much of what I see in my news feeds. I though that these sorts of race uprisings only happened when Obama was president, or that is what a few of my conservative-minded friends used to try to tell me. I'm sure they would feel very stupid if they ever bothered remembering or revisiting any of their wisdom, or perhaps they have moved on to other predictable positions, like the missionary one. 

Oh yeah, Raquel and I had a breakthrough yesterday in the bathroom, from behind, where I could see her smiling and naughtily devious eyes in the mirror and her little titties bouncing with the rhythm of the act. It might have been the champagne and it may have been the race riots, the Good Lord knows the global disease hasn't acted as any sort of aphrodisiac. 

She was so giddy she told me to buy the camera, that she would chip in $500 for Father's Day. Such was her happiness with her new Kitchen Aid mixer. This was, of course, immediately preceding the bathroom encounter. The state of the nation might require additional champagne today.

It is the thing that seems to make us happy together. 

Imagine me and you, I do
I think about you day and night, it's only right
To think about the girl you love and hold her tight
So happy together

If I should call you up, invest a dime
And you say you belong to me and ease my mind
Imagine how the world could be, so very fine
So happy together

I can't see me lovin' nobody but you
For all my life
When you're with me, baby the skies'll be blue
For all my life

Me and you and you and me
No matter how they toss the dice, it had to be
The only one for me is you, and you for me
So happy together

I can't see me lovin' nobody but you
For all my life
When you're with me, baby the skies'll be blue
For all my life

Me and you and you and me
No matter how they toss the dice, it had to be
The only one for me is you, and you for me
So happy together

Ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba
Ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba

Me and you and you and me
No matter how they toss the dice, it had to be
The only one for me is you, and you for me
So happy together
So happy together
How is the weather
So happy together
We're happy together
So happy together
Happy together
So happy together
So happy together (ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba)

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The Darjeeling Limited

I will write no pithy notes or observations about the film tonight. I am in a foul mood and will not have much to express here of value, or insight, or otherwise. I'm not sure what happened today, what went wrong. As the day advanced my temper seemed to rise with the sun in the sky. By dinner time I could hardly speak. Perhaps it is repressed frustration, some wellspring of exasperation from the sense that soon we will finally be escaping the lockdown. Escaping to what, I have no idea. The world seems less welcoming to me than ever before. I want to travel, alone, but also know that being anywhere else will not change this thing that is collapsing within me.  

Raquel told me that she overheard two separate arguments in the streets of our little neighborhood when she was walking the dogs with the boy tonight. Perhaps a global virus will not serve to make the world a better place. 

Perhaps I chose the wrong photo, and title, and subject for tonight's post. 

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Fantastic Mr. Fox

I'm not sure what it means to be a matchbox movie critic. I could not find an authoritative slang definition, either as a complete phrase or when searching just for the meaning of the word matchbox. It sounds vaguely familiar, and of course mildly dismissive, but I couldn't confirm. The internet is overrun with proper nouns and near-search terms, and only seems to offer avenues of understanding where they intersect. The world erects its Towers of Babel again and again. It's our origin myth and our impending apocalypse, told in perpetuity. What is the use of a repository of information if the past still becomes lost or obscured?

I'm assuming that matchbox movie critic is a very dated term and that's why I can't discover its meaning, but that's just some of my good old-fashioned ageism. I engage in terrible ageism at work, just to see if I can make people uncomfortable. I confide in people that I'm becoming transgender through the influx of androgynes, not at all by choice. They can't tell if they should support me or report me. 

I watched another Wes Anderson film tonight, with the boy and mom. We chose one that was oriented towards the boy's age. The artwork makes it all worth it. Doing storyboards for an Anderson film must be engaging fun and a lot of work. The finished works are like so many dioramas come to life. Again, the music stood out. I looked it up for you, same composer as The Grand Budapest Hotel - Alexandre Desplat. His contribution to Anderson's films is significant, as is the artwork of Hugo Guinness. Though I do not believe Guinness worked on this one. 

CS is right. There are not enough films by him, and he is a rare fabulist. I hope he lives as long as Altman. That should give him about another 30 years or so. 

This concludes my matchbox review, dictated from the matchbox pulpit, discarded in this dry tinderbox cathedral.

.

 

 

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Back to watching a film for the night. I will not provide any, or very much, commentary concerning it here. The stylistic flourishes are charm-filled, the storytelling inventive. There is humor everywhere, even in the sadness, which redeems its faults. One day soon, if not already in film schools that are worth attending, Anderson will be compared and contrasted with Altman. There is plenty there to compare, for those who wish to take the time. The score for this film, I like to imagine, is one that Altman might have envied. 

Okay, those are my observations for the night. I did not bother supporting any of my statements with example. This omission is intentional. It is the way that I learned to speak when living and conversing in New York. You assert a thing that presumes the listener can sort the completion of the observation out for themselves. If they attempt to disagree, they will not quite know with any precision what it is they are disagreeing with, though the temptation will always be strong, but the details distant or overwhelming. Hesitation in intellect and wit is deadly.

I miss the atmosphere of the city very much - NYC - a place where anything can be discussed. I have nostalgia for the bars and restaurants of that city as if a great war now separates me from them in time and space. The people of that world now dispersed to the scattering of which aging always results. Tonight I grant myself some nostalgia and longing for my memories, and the imagination that longing provokes.  

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Backyard Camping

The mission has begun. We set the tent up without the rain shield, to enjoy the light from the sun setting through the tops of the trees above us as we set off to sleep. Every time that we have tried to sleep in the back yard the boy has opted out once it became dark, wanted to sleep in his room. It only seems to work when the comfort of his room is not an available option. We'll see. 

I am considering keeping the tent up through the summer and living in the back yard. After setting the tent up I stared up through the branches of the trees above me and felt some hint of solace. 

I will have my computer with me. I will wake up long before him in the cold outdoor morning. I will perhaps finish this post as he sleeps next to me. 

What has made him sleeping in my bed possible lately is due to me putting the largest pillow I have between us, to buffer his tossing and turning. We will see whether that becomes a factor in my sleep tonight. It is funny what love will allow you to endure. Then it wears off. The endurance I mean, not the love. 

The above portion was written last night, before we fell asleep. Remember the part about not using the rain shield. Doing so involved me forgetting about the sprinklers. That was what woke both of us up promptly at 12:45 AM. I leapt to action and put the rain cover in place, but not without some minor chaos and distributed moisture. 

The boy went, almost, right back to sleep. He did speak a few sentences before drifting back off, one of which was: Amanda Huginkis. We had been watching old episodes of The Simpsons and when I explained why Moe the bar owner exclaimed to the bar, I need Amanda Huginkis! as a response to Bart's prank phone call was so funny he really took it to heart. So, right out of the darkness of sleep, with the sprinklers conducting their automated irrigation on our unprotected sleeping apparatus, that was what he had to say. 

I chuckled to myself for a bit, decided that I needed to take a piss, went inside and did so after he fell back asleep. I was tempted to lie down in my bed and return to sleep also, but then pictured him waking up in the backyard by himself and likely panicking. So, instead I ate a Xanax and went back out to the wet tent, across the wet lawn, while the sprinklers were continuing their task, and climbed back into the tent. After about 45 minutes of reading Twitter, I finally fell back asleep and slept until 6am when mom brought me a cup of coffee. 

The boy slept until 8am, happy as Bart Simpson.

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An escape from things

We went to a neighbor's house to go swimming yesterday. I tried to take some pics of the kids jumping in the water and swimming but the pool was mostly in the shade of the surrounding trees, which made it more challenging. The camera struggled to find focus with so many bubbles rising in the dark. Ah well, I was not trying very hard, either. Add to that the fact that I was drinking this local beer - Pliny the Elder - which has a relatively high level of alcohol. I was lucky to emerge from the pool using my own resources. They say that ventilators are in short supply in the region and nobody is supposed to administer CPR any more. 

Today will be another day in which I try to drink red wine in peace and mom will drink champagne, but will mention how she really needs things to change. It won't be directed at me, but it will be said towards me enough, as it already has, that I will be expected to acknowledge her desire for things to change, without at all knowing what she means. For now, as far as I can tell, there's only one thing that I would change. 

The boy and I will sleep in the tent in the backyard tonight. We've talked about it now for the last week or so. The next step is to do it. That's quite fine with me. I look forward to it. He just likes being around me and I feel the same about him. We have a pretty good time together. Sometimes it's just nice to get away from people who don't like things as they are. 

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The past has ceased to follow

I've run out of pictures. Found this old one from when Raquel and I went camping for two weeks - Arches National Park, Canyonlands, Zion, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Bryce Canyon... there might have been more, but those are the highlights. She said that she was fine with tent camping. She had been to a few electronic music festivals in the desert, so she was a real outdoors type. This turned out to be quite untrue and she has never wanted to tent camp again, even though she has a few times, with an air mattress. She prefers hotels. Mates for life will often express differences in their tastes, for life. 

The boy and I will set up a tent and sleep in the backyard tonight. It will get up to 97 degrees here in the upcoming week. We may try to drive down to Santa Barbara in early June. Not sure yet. There are complexities to traveling now. Hotels are not open. Families travel as caravan of sorts, and their needs are not the result of having additional people, they are multiplied by that same fact. I'll bring my tent, just in case. 

Okay. there is nothing new under the sun, except this Covid-19. 

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The Kids Are Alright

All you wanna' do

(CS)

Fuck. I have become a working man. It seems that it is all that I do. With very little sleep last night, I still worked all day today. It was a strain and I did so with a persistent headache. Tonight, I have ingested the elixirs. I must write quickly before their grip drags me south to the underworld. There can be no fooling around tonight - sleep is a sine qua non. I must go into the weekend rested, if I ever hope to steal from it what is intended.

The picture above was taken when I was with another woman. A girl, really. She was somewhere between those two ways of being, perhaps. Camille - she played a big role in my life and then disappeared. Towards the end of our relationship her sex life became more active than mine. We're friends now, but that friendship did not appear easy at first. She had broken me. Broken me in the way that other women may wish to reserve for themselves. Broken me in such a way that Rachel would never forgive or acknowledge. 

The three important romances in my life - Honey, Camille, and Rachel. In that order, with generous overlapping in the friendships and some commingling of the romances. Camille occupied two years in the beginning of what might have been mine and Rachel's time, otherwise. Though Camille and I had started two years before Honey finally wanted no more of me. Not sex with Camille, but something worse: intimacy, fond and deep friendship. It caused Honey to marry a golfer.

Somehow Amy, my first wife, has drifted into the aether. Though I still love her and think of her fondly. She and I used to laugh often. Though the same could be said about Camille and I, and Rachel and I. Honey was very sweet to me, and tolerant. I remember putting my head in her lap and feeling something I had never felt before, something warm and affectionate and true. I miss her and think of her fondly as well. Of course: Rachel. You do not give a woman a child, intentionally, that you do not believe that you will love forever. Or, the version of forever that yet remains. 

My male friends have wondered, and some have asked, how I am able to lure such beautiful women into my life. It is the laughter. What is CS's saying, women find you funny until they don't. That is consistent with my experience. I have been lucky at making the women in my life laugh anew. It's not always perfect, but it is often unexpected. The best of things often is. 

I may wake tomorrow and think of yet another love I have had and enjoyed. The memory of laughter arrives on the waves of sleep like the whisper of a favorite and familiar song. 

That thunder in your heart

At night when you're kneeling in the dark 

that says you're never gonna' leave her

But there's this angel in her eyes

that tells such desperate lies

and all you wanna' do is believe her

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Don't Read At Me

My last post was prophetic. Can't sleep; I knew - tried to doze without assistance. Needs become something worse than needs under the guise of habit or therapy. 

The president suddenly announced that he's taking an experimental, clinically untested, drug to either help him fight the coronavirus he has, help prevent him from getting it, or he invented a self-apparently dangerous lie up on the spot, and America shrugged. We live in odd times. I try not to write about politics. I suppose this barely qualifies except that the subject happens to be the president. The longer that the surreality of this presidency persists the more determined it becomes to prove just how out of reach it must remain to be. Newsfeeds are filled with observations about him or observations about his observers. The perfect president for the time. What will online interactions will be without him? Will this same paradigm of interaction just spill over into the next presidency?

I've been watching Portlandia, and have laughed out loud a couple times at the mildly absurd bits. Twice I was nearly surprised at the sound of it in the near darkness of the room. The pup came in to sniff at me and nuzzle my hand. I rubbed the soft fur of her face and cooed at her a bit before she went back to the other room. Best 15 seconds of the night.

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God's Lonely Man

I started to watch Taxi Driver, but decided against it after the first act. The score stood out. Bernard Herrmann, one of the greats. Famous for his work with Hitchcock and others. I guess I wasn't in the mood to commit to an almost two hour film. It ends in sensational violence. Hard to forget that aspect of it. 

Going through old pics tonight, trying to find some that I have lost along the way. The first several years of taking pictures I had very little of an idea what I was doing. The few pics that I do like now seem to have happened mostly by accident, when seen in context with the others. I used to take so many more pictures of inanimate objects - buildings, windows, doorways, corners, cars passing, flagpoles, etc. Just compositional efforts, trying to learn the language of framing. Now, it is rare that I take a picture when there is not a human in the frame. Something changed. It must have been me. 

Odd thing, what images do to a person over time. You remember seeing a part of the world the way you saw it then, the exact way. For many of them I remember the specific context, also. That is a part of their purpose, I suppose. I once read that a large part of the mind is dedicated to processing images. Yet few of them require or incite much contemplation. Their effect is more immediate. Most of them require little contemplation, until one does. 

I have always had a poor sense of time's passing. Rarely am I ever able to accurately guess how long ago something happened in years or months or weeks. I don't imagine that's a sensibility that I'll suddenly develop later in life. Sleepless hours stretch out into an eternity. 

What happens to the sense of seduction? An obsession so mild that it works. I'm relieved that I didn't finish the film, though I would not have minded the music.

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I should have been better, to you

I had been watching films. I'm not sure what happened, or why. Perhaps it was because I watched a documentary last night. But something went terribly wrong. I watched a Netflix documentary about ZZ Top tonight. I can't believe I'm even admitting it now. It doesn't feel cathartic. It feels shameful. It is shameful. It's like admitting that you once became addicted to ephedrine. 

Don't watch it, unless you like listening to people who have been addicted to drugs for decades speak. The way that they can hardly form words any longer scares me. It is, perhaps, a premonition of days to come, but without any of the money that might somehow make it matter less.

I feel so stupid. I'm sure it was the last 90 minutes that did it, but I have no admissible evidence. Just hearsay here. But I'm sure of it, as sure as I'm sitting here with the chords of Jesus Just Left Chicago running through my head.

Muddy water didn't ever turn to wine.

Well, maybe something good came out of all of it. After the above video playing through, this one came on. I'm going to post before it finishes, so I could be wrong about it, also.

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Honeyland

If you wish to feel privileged then it is the film to watch. Such a loaded word for triggered people with uncocked pistols. It is is meant to indicate those who have special rights. Everywhere our attention is directed to the ubiquitous evidence of these in our lives. How can we not see? Always, there is just enough truth to the claim. Certainly I do not wish to trade my life with that of another, some much less so than others. 

This is a film about people whose lives you do not envy, but you do not look away. It is a privileged perspective. The anguish and loneliness and longing are great. I do not wish to see it again. Is that a special right, or are their circumstances simply beyond my control?

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The Matrix, Frankly

I didn't watch a movie yesterday. Mom and the boy watched Flash Gordon. Not my cup of kitsch tea. So, I drank a bottle of wine, and then another half, and argued with two old friends about social politics, about how the dems have jumped all of the sharks in the American Ocean. One of the friends has taken up the "more principled" argument of conservatism. Myself and another friend have chosen to defend liberal principles. You already know how this one ends: everybody believes they have taken the red pill and that all others have taken the blue pill. 

I just discovered that The Matrix is now considered an allegory for the trans experience, among other allegorical considerations. I've never seen the film, so I have no opinion, but have become aware of its basic premise through its cultural references - that we have a choice between painful self-awareness and numbing ourselves to that awareness. But since I'm mostly regarded as a white cis male, let me offer my opinion anyway: of course it is. It's like heavy metal: about half of the people who really get into it have gender identity questions. The other half, shockingly, don't notice and become defensive when you do.

There are a spectrum of phrases that have emerged into popular culture since the trans-rights movement, but my favorite is deadnaming. I mean the phrase, not the act of referring to somebody as the name they used before they transitioned, maliciously or unintentionally. If I were ever to become trans I would keep my name or make it even more male, if only to frustrate people's expectations further. I envision a world of female Franks. That is my dream of liberty. I'd keep my cock, also. I'd just install a nice little pussy slit underneath it. Dilemma: solved. Though I suspect bike riding might become more pleasurable or painful. The pussy will decide.

The idea that we must accept anybody's identity strictly in the form they present it is absurd and insulting. Nobody actually does this. Why do so few people mention Jung in the great trans conversation? We each form an amalgam of identity clues about the people around us, and we accept as being true a portion of what a person projects, mixed generously with how we feel about the person's identity, what we have intuited about them. If we are to exclusively accept the claims of others concerning themselves as being true then I have some inventing of my own to do. I want to be more toxic, pure toxic - and masculine, much more of that. My lifelong interests in the arts, literature, and music have left me vulnerable to the hurtful opinions of others. I want to reclaim my chosen half of the binary pie. It is critical that you grant me these things that I wish for. Anything less is unjust, cruel. 

Yes, I understand the differences and overlap between identity, projection, and acceptance. Read the heavy metal thing again. I am just bending the concepts to suit my own narrative. One need not transform entirely to demonstrate some mental flexibility. The claim that a certain type of self-knowledge can only be experienced by some is ridiculous. Understanding and acknowledging this does not make you an egg. I just learned that word, also.

Below is a visual demonstration of how some people see themselves, then how I see them.

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Tree of Life

It deserves all the accolades. It is one of the more beautiful films ever made. The attempted breadth and scope are awe inspiring. Yet it is pretentious. Too Christian for my tastes, though I don't precisely hold that against it while I'm watching it. It achieves the grace that it attempts to convey. I greatly enjoy seeing it occur and there is an emotional payoff, if you can stick with it. Many payoffs, in fact. But it leaves little memory of its visual beauty in me after it's over. I don't see it in my mind when I am not looking at it, the way I do other films. That could be my fault. Perhaps I lack the depth of understanding required to commit sequences to memory. That I miss its true visual and narrative message. I'm not sure, but it's rare that something so exquisite doesn't stick with me more. When I close my eyes few distinct scenes appear there for me to re-enjoy. It is a slow film but far from boring. It somehow evades memory.

I wish that I could have seen it in the theater. It is a marvel for the eyes. You feel lucky that it is happening. Blessed, even. Perhaps being blessed is what leaves me cold and empty. Perhaps the blessing is not transportable, meant only for the moment.

Some say that the theater will be no more. If true, films like this will be attempted even less. Who would commit the time and money to make something like this for a laptop screen? Only Kubrick ever attempted to convey the history and enigma of the human experience on screen with such ambition, pretense, and a philosophically inquisitive posture. 

The scenes of the father being strict with his son remind me of the imaginary childhood that I gave myself. My father did not pay as much attention to me, though, harsh or otherwise. Or, perhaps his love was also only a blessing of the moment alone. 

Ah, but man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for. - Browning

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The Third Man

Watching it now - there will be little commentary to offer. I have seen it before, and not that long ago, but I drink at times which has the effect of blurring my observations and memories. When it's not the drink, the drugs will often get me. What self-respecting film school graduate has not seen it? It is, I believe, the only film I have ever seen directed by Carol Reed. But Orson Welles is in it and the script was written by Graham Greene, so there is enough of interest for me to have interest. I have not seen all of the great noir films, but I have tried to see the examples that are considered the best among them. This is one. 

I seem to remember reading that Welles contributed the speech on the Ferris wheel, that it was written by him during filming. Perhaps that is an apocryphal tale. I do not remember now. I want to say that I read it in a piece by Bogdanovich, but everything escapes me now. Perhaps he only wrote that it was doubtful. Thoughts, like the people who appear as little dots on the ground. What does it matter if they stop moving, forever. 

He's only a scribbler with too much liquor in him. 

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La Jetée

This is not the film you want to watch now. I was rushed for time after cooking dinner and putting the boy to sleep. It is only 28 minutes long - a featurette, I read, in Wikipedia. I mispronounced the title to R and looked it up to confirm that is translates to The Pier, and to confirm my mispronunciation. I was saying it as, A Throw, in French. Or, A Jump. I don't know. I'm too exhausted to figure any of it out any more. Its message seems to be that we will never understand the present, past, or future, in that order. 

It is fascinating how little motion there is in this film - a woman blinking - yet there is a strong visual narrative - unforgettable, even. It is dystopian science fiction. The movie that was used as a basis for 12 Monkeys. Unnecessary to watch during a global pandemic, to be sure. But again, I was pressed for time and have not quite yet run out of stupefacients. Which is nice.

Witches nice.

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In The Mood For Love

(Christopher Doyle, cinematographer)

Perhaps I'll write pithy observations of a different film every night, until this lenient but unyielding terror passes. Many consider this film a masterpiece. For its lyrical moments and the tense romantic waltz portrayed poetically, I agree. It is hypnotic and beautifully filmed. That the two protagonists successfully resist their justified love is both counter-intuitively pleasurable and uncommonly troubling. Each time I see it I expect a different outcome. I wish for the different outcome with them, but also like them, can not have it. I can desire their desires. It is Lost in Translation for adults. 

No, that is not fair. I like that film, also. It tells a similar story and has some light-hearted moments, some laughs. That is all I meant. I take offense to its relenting of seriousness. In the Mood for Love is pensive, trifling, terse. The music, editing, and cinematography move together to form an indivisible whole. The slow motion montages could have been shot by Saul Leiter; the sounds of the desperate sobs of tender affection; hands being held in darkness; the lights of Hong Kong passing through the taxi; the taxi passing through the night. What a thing are the images of love - tragic in eventualities, graceless in the falling and failings.

I should watch Lost in Translation tomorrow night. I should re-watch every film I remember liking from memory alone. There could not be that many, perhaps one hundred, or maybe two. I could do it in less than a year. Imagine how profound and admired I would become after such monastic dedication. To lazily and passively ingest images and narrative and song, my eyes as fat and satisfied as that of a sultan's. I could become cosmopolitan and erudite and charming. What if I were to start all over. To re-invent the memories of my lived life. To promise to never be the first to fall asleep again.

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"It's not your fault"

I watched Good Will Hunting for the first time tonight. 

Many years ago I was being intellectually probed by somebody in front of a small audience. This person, who I esteemed, repeated the line several times to me: It's not your fault. Not knowing what they meant, but being intrigued by the power of the repetition of the line and its possible meanings I remembered the moment for years afterwards, but what I remember most about it was by how it resolved. I responded, Oh good, because I assign myself no blame. This person and I have joked about the interaction afterwards, but always through my line. It became one that we would say to one another, and likely still could, though it has been years. I never understood that what was being said to me was a line from a film. I never asked. I just assumed that I was the clever one, that I had made her laugh. Now, I believe I understand what she was saying but have no memory of the context which provoked it. I was in love with her for a while and she with me. It did not work out in the end. 

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I miss flying

I should not have written about my friends doing cocaine the other night. I dreamed about eating the stuff and it caused me some acute dream-restlessness. I'm not sure why I was eating cocaine in my dream. Perhaps snorting exists outside of the dream sphere - too unnatural an act; who knows. There were other aspects of the dream that did not make sense, also.

What happened to the dreams of youth? I remember that I used to have some in which I was flying. When I am swimming in large hotel pools now I will occasionally push myself off of the side of the pool wall towards the distant end and only paddle in a wide sweeping motion with both arms moving together in unison and I will pretend that I am weightless, in motion until the oxygen runs out.

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Kitchen Aid 600 - Pro Series

What says Mommy! more effectively than the acknowledgement that she cooks well and often for us - a KitchenAid mixer? What, I ask. We can make our own pasta sheets now, also, which will mean that maybe I'll get to use it sometimes. My lasagna recipe is always a crowd pleaser. Real men do not bake cakes.  I am old-fashioned, in that way. Some would say regressive.

Raquel was very pleased with our gratitude for all the hard work that she does, and of our thoughtfulness in a gift. I usually avoid buying appliances as part of what can be considered and called "kitchen work," but this one felt right and landed perfectly.

Mom is very pleased. Oh, there was other stuff.

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Island on the Shore

I have nearly run out of my medi-butter. It is what helps me sleep, when I take it before bedtime and then let myself drift away without distraction. I have promised myself to keep my phone and computer in the other room. There is only so much of the world you can take in a day.  

CS is right. He kept me up too late last night. I slept in also, though such a thing was ushered in on the wings of pharmaceuticals. I was drinking last night - wine - but it brought me little happiness. Before calling CS, I had called another friend in a faraway land and he was, surprisingly, there with yet another friend from an equally faraway land. They were doing cocaine. It made me feel a little bit depressed. Or rather, it added to my feelings of emptiness rather than assuaging them. Even though it was good to see both of them. They are not tasked with my loneliness. They may have felt that they were being their brother's keepers. 

There is nothing to tell. Or, less all the time. I am trying to find happiness in escape, knowing there is little there and is of a temporary nature. Then, I will wish escape from one form of escape to another. The tunnel at the end of the tunnel. 

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The Last Picture Show

Raquel and I watched it last night - we barely petted one another. 

Cybil Shepard is made of the flesh that Elvis used to eat.

There is something intangible and yet very touching around the redeeming quality of the beauty of truth, free from the visual and verbal notes of condescension. 

The film concerns itself with some immaterial aspects of who we think we are, and who we act out to be. I think. 

Never seen another film quite like it. 

I imagine Tennessee Williams became envious of certain scenes, wished that he had written them just as they were. The feel of his writing moved through this town as if through Truman Capote's eyes. 

I saw it, also. 

quite so - as almost 

quiet;

as the quiet

almost

always

says 

so

I suspect that my faith in love is dying.

Yet it was Larry McMurtry - the Patrick Nagel of the Raymond Carver of the writing in the previous time.

.