Shark

All of the experts seem to agree: we have been doomed by a hoax.


I returned to work today. There were many people telling me that they will miss me and congratulating me on the new position, others just congratulating me, then there were others who ignored me, as usual. Actually, I can never tell how much I am being ignored at any given time because I work remotely. I live a solitary life in some key ways.


The onset of the coronavirus seems to have suddenly created this new world for the boy. He is teleconferencing with his friends. He has been making some art online with one of his school buddies. They do the same instructional videos together online and then compare drawings. One of his early master works is below - Shark.


I do not wish to document my quotidian ailments but I have a headache today and am not feeling up to much more. Stress, perhaps. In conversation tonight I could feel how brittle Rachel was. She went to bed early, before I could. I will go now and listen to the boy read through one of his stories before bed. The sound of his voice working his way through a story is so much more superior to anything and everything else in the world right now.

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Crowning

Yes, home-schooling starts tomorrow. Our self-quarantine continues. 

Yes, I understand that my underwater selfie is not as pleasing as the pics I took of my son. 

It's my nose, et all.

Yes, that explains it. 

I try to maintain some composure in the face of threat or danger but I'm not liking the global numbers. I have been chatting about it most of the day, as I'm sure any reader here might have, also. So, I won't add anything to the discourse of apprehensions. I have friends that are pregnant, and unwell, or older, or fragile, as we all surely must in connected corollaries and combinations. It is impossible not to think of them, to want to love them, to send them love without causing any further concern through that expression. To love invisibly. 

I almost offered to say a prayer before dinner tonight but had just finished another book by Houellebecq today and could not muster any words of tranquility or utterances of invocation. Yes, None.

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Codes

And just like that, mom and dad seem to be getting along together again. The stresses and strains of being on vacation in an RV while the world contracts a new virus may have just been too much for us. We each have rooms that we can go to now, doors that can be closed. Not slammed, just closed. We are back to our comfortable spaces. I can lie in bed and play the guitar now. 

I may purchase a synthesizer if the shelter at home demands linger - they will. Based on my current online scientific studies, this is a measure that will hopefully slow the spread, only. The way for it to be effective is for it to last several months. During that time treatments will be devised and supplies will be manufactured to manage the influx of the infected with issues. That flow of patients and bodies will be staggered some by this tactic. Until a vaccine is developed, or we achieve herd immunity otherwise, there will be much suffering everywhere. 

This is why the holy bible instructs us not to eat penguins, bats, or flamingos. And some other stuff. I've been reading a little bit of pre-apocalypse Leviticus, to help clear my head of the noise of newsfeeds. 

So far; so, so. 

Did you know that a semicolon tattoo has a coded meaning?  

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Loathing and Fear

I took down a post from yesterday. I had a bad day with Rachel and vented a bit about it. It was not a great look for me. There are some people that aren't great to camp with. Mom will remain in that category until further evidence suggests that she belongs in the preferred group. That's all. 

It has been unusually stressful to be out on the road with a child while the world burns to the ground with viral infirmities. So, I'll grant that it has not been an entirely ideal situation, for any of us. Though her behavior camping is indistinguishable from her behavior elsewhere. So, I'm not sure what to think of it. Perhaps camping is not the problem. 

I should stop. Having not stopped yesterday was my reason for taking down the other post.

The boy and I have been having fun, though.  We've been playing in the pool and ocean and campground and elsewhere. I chased him all around the trail-heavy hills of the campground on my mountain bike yesterday to his intermittent squeals of childhood joy and excitement. He has been reluctant to play with other kids at the campsite. I wish that I could be 8 years old with him, sometimes.

We go home today. Tomorrow, we return the RV. After that, we will be home-schooling the boy for a while, where hopefully my 51 years will be an advantage. 

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Dream Beneath A Desert Sky

We fled the desert. There was unexpected rain. Perhaps I will tell more tomorrow. We drove most of today, from Joshua Tree to Half Moon Bay. After driving in to the national park well before sunrise this morning in the hopes of viewing Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the crescent Moon all clustered together in the morning sky - it was mostly overcast; we saw no such thing - we came back to the recreational vehicle and I took a nice long nap. When I awoke mom had already hatched a plan for us to leave. She wanted to be closer to home. The rain just played into that wish conveniently. 

It is very odd to be out in an rv having a family vacation while all of this pandemic is consuming the world. The boy is only as afraid of it as what we have caused him to be, so far. It seemed to land when we told him that he wouldn't be going back to school when we return from vacation, and that we're not sure when he would. 

The drive up the 101 - we took that instead of the 5, which we've seen too many times - was beautiful. California is a beautiful place to drive around and visit. If I would have had a hit of acid this morning when we departed then I would have eaten it. 

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Emerald Desert

The world is progressing just as one might expect it would, at least when driving around the Joshua Tree area. Most people, when out in nature, practice social distancing more readily. We drove through the park from the south entrance to the north entrance yesterday. The boy was bored witless. Mom and I offered what precious and incomplete little data we had, presented as reasonably certain facts. We listened to some Gram Parsons tracks - Hickory Wind, his cover of Love Hurts, and the Byrd's cover of Dylan's You 'Aint Goin' Nowhere. We also listened to U2's Joshua Tree. Why not?

Once we had driven through the park we stopped at the Joshua Tree Inn. Raquel and I had stayed there once before on our first night of driving across the country together, almost twenty years ago. We stayed in the room in which Gram Parsons passed away. It was not our intention. It was simply offered to us and so we took the chance, as a novelty.

I was enjoying a modest pouring of bourbon on the drive. Rachel took over and drove about half the way home. I insisted that I am perfectly FINE! a few times but this message didn't seem to land with mom. The pot edibles help keep an even keel when you're drinking.

I am half kidding. I was drinking and I was eating pot edibles and mom did decide that she should drive, but I never claimed that I was fine.


Today is Raquel's birthday. St. Patty's Girl. We're just going to take it easy and go swimming and drink more bourbon or wine or champagne.  Well, after we pack everything up and head to a new campsite, where there will presumably be more kids for the boy to play with. We may not have the pool to ourselves forever.

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Recreational V

I'm trying to get my photo library to load, but I am getting error messages and I care far too little to try to fix it, at least for now. I just tried to drag and drop them into the library from the camera's memory card and now I am getting a permission's error there, also. 

Yesterday, as we walked along the beach north of Santa Barbara, we found a small river that made its way out from the hills to the Pacific. The boy hiked up it a short way, eager to enter any body of water available. There were freight and passenger trains passing along the bridge above the river. We could see people wave at us and we would wave back, the location being that novel. 

We talked for a few minutes about the land and the fresh water that had made its way here and from how far away. That now we are seeing it become part of the great vastness in front of us. There being something funereal and slow and graceful about it. Something simple. 

Today we will drive into Joshua Tree National Park. We may rent a car to do so, as we do not want to burden ourselves with the RV and all the work that is required to move the behemoth. We are parked in a private club made just for such vehicles. I have never seen anything like it before in my life, and I could walk from site to site and just chat with people all afternoon and evening. They are suspiciously nice and generous. 

I will bring some 35mm film cameras out into the desert and pretend to be Anton Corbijn. The boy will need to be Bono, for this photo shoot, but they share a similar moral intensity. Both seem to feel with equal certainty that there are many more cookies in the cookie jar than the world is admitting. 

I will attempt to capture that look of righteous indignation that hangs like a scowling mask upon the self. 

I know it well. 

We have all started to get along a bit better, which is nice. We went swimming yesterday in the campsite's pool. Yes, we are RV camping and not tent camping,. so there are amenities. The two types of camping are very different things, barely resembling the other at all. We seem suspicious here because we are neither retired nor are we golfers, and we brought a youth. When we went swimming in the pool yesterday we had the entire area, including the hot tub, to ourselves. Thousands of retirees had stayed away. 

CS is wondering what he should do next and I stumbled upon his answer almost by accident. The documentary to watch is About Schmidt with Jack Nicholson. It will give you the premonition of yet another kind of story that can be told. Grand mistakes are not just for the kids, any more. 

More and more, in pictures, my son has started to look like my brother. And mommy, well... for the first time since I have known her she has stopped wearing bikinis when we go to the beach or pool. But she still looks just like mommy.

where water comes together with other water 

I love creeks and the music they make.

And rills, in glades and meadows, before

they have a chance to become creeks.

I may even love them best of all

for their secrecy. I almost forgot

to say something about the source!

Can anything be more wonderful than a spring?

But the big streams have my heart too.

And the places streams flow into rivers.

The open mouths of rivers where they join the sea.

The places where water comes together

with other water. Those places stand out

in my mind like holy places.

But these coastal rivers!

I love them the way some men love horses

or glamorous women. I have a thing

for this cold swift water.

Just looking at it makes my blood run

and my skin tingle. I could sit

and watch these rivers for hours.

Not one of them like any other.

I’m 45 years old today.

Would anyone believe it if I said

I was once 35?

My heart empty and sere at 35!

Five more years had to pass

before it began to flow again.

I’ll take all the time I please this afternoon

before leaving my place alongside this river.

It pleases me, loving rivers.

Loving them all the way back

to their source.

Loving everything that increases me.

- Raymond Carver

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Jalama Beach

We made it to the beach. It is on the coast, north of Santa Barbara. Now we're just waiting for everybody to adjust to being in an RV with very limited space together, and having that process be our vacation. We'll see, not every moment so far has worked out perfectly. It's not like Burning Man, where I can stuff my pockets full of drugs and wander away for 24 hours. Anything more than one hour here would start to seem unusual. 

But there have been walks on the beach. The boy loves it and there is that.

Today, we head further south, Joshua Tree. It was raining in Big Sur. 

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Afterwards

Amid the panic, we prepare to depart on vacation - luckily, we were not flying anywhere. The boy has long held a dream in which all of us are camping together as a family. Mom doesn't like to sleep in tents. An RV became the obvious solution and consequence of these facts and opinions. So, off we will depart tomorrow morning in a ~26 foot long vehicle that we will also be sleeping and eating in. When we pick it up today I'm going to ask if the previous renters were Italian.  Mom and I have discussed a backup plan if any of us become ill. One of our close friends here in Sonoma is in forced quarantine. These are times.

I will bring books and cameras. We will be somewhat off the grid, which should be nice as long as the basic structures of society hold. I can't decide if I want to bring my guitar or just the little ukulele. This might be the pleasant family vacation we had hoped for, if we can learn to let go of the worries that tend to circle in flight around any issue like this.

Have I lived through something like this before, or was that just the memory of having read Don Delillo? He is what will soon become an "at risk" writer. 

Some experts say within the next week or two there will be pockets of breakouts in the US that are very similar to what we saw in Iran and South Korea. Though they also questioned if the US response will be as coordinated and successful. These are the details that I hope to avoid while out camping. I withdrew more cash than I needed from the bank this morning. More than we would need for a camping trip in which we paid for most everything in advance.

Fears seem so silly afterwards. 

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Raises and Responsibilities

Well, CS was telling a fertile version of the myth. It is not official yet, but I will be moving into a new role at work soon. There will be some money and a different set of responsibilities. More of them, I assume. It will not be so much money that you will notice any difference in me. I'll still chat with all the little people who helped get me where I am today.

There is not much more to say about it. It is not exciting. I might buy myself an immodest reward for having achieved so much. I have been drinking wine for two days straight now, to celebrate. I may go to the pub now and have a few beers. The boy and mom have put themselves in the car with a destination of Costco. I opted out of going, though I pretended as if I wanted to join them. I like to give them time to themselves sometimes, also, especially on the Costco trips.

The sun has come out here and I should go for a bike ride, to help keep my head clear. I will let my boss know that I am leaving soon. He is away on vacation. He had a good indication that this might be happening before he left. I will encourage him not to cry at the thought of losing me. He is a very good guy and I like him a lot. I perhaps cause him more stress than happiness, though that has never been my intention. Increasingly, fewer and fewer share my worldview and life approach. I must be doing tremendous spiritual work for God.  

Well, as I said, it is not exciting. No reason to explore the boredom further. 

Come to the pub, if you want to chat about any of it. 

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Or Lot's wife

I have no idea what Cafe Syphilis is talking about. I encouraged him to buy some new beachwear and play the ukulele, maybe the harmonica. From this he has drawn inferences all his own. 

I would write more but now I am a busy man, with a lot on my mind. 

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Espirit de Core

I often develop a ghoulish preoccupation with anything that might kill me - from wildfire to acute hypertension to suicide. Lately I have been reading about all the newest diseases. Any fool can brush up on the coronavirus, and many have. You can sense their expertise on social media. It takes a malignant mind to stay up late to read about infectious diarrhea the way that I do, but rarely do I run out of things of which to despair late at night.


Here are some pics of the boy and the dog playing, to help lighten your spiritual burdens and woes.

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Big Trouble

That kid that you see above is in big, big trouble. He became angry with mom yesterday morning, after I left for the city, and threw a baseball inside the house, breaking a terrarium she had made that was hanging in the kitchen. So, now he's on lockdown - no screen time, no baseball practice, no playdates, no bike riding, no fun. 

I added him as a beneficiary to my 401k this morning. You just never know. For tax reasons, I should probably replace him with mom on all of that stuff. I normally have mom do all of that. Yes, I know... I should be responsible for my own life, but it bores me. I have never aspired to be an administrator or manager or principal or an executive of any kind. I hate even asking a person where they want to eat. Even the thought of asking a group that same question angers me as I sit here. The only time that I've ever liked groups is when they were cheering for me. 

CS recalls a similar fondness for fledgling stardom this morning. There's my one true sentence.

It is better to be cheered than to be ignored, better to be remembered than forgotten. Better to live than to die.

Better is better than what is worse. That is my koan. 

Jesus. I just ran out the door to pick the boy up and take him to baseball practice and then to the store to get some dinner. I had some thoughts and observations during that time that I was going to note here, but they have slipped my mind. I am a man of that age. 

I did, however, ride my bike today. It was the first time in months. I have been getting fatter and drinking more, so my guilt pushed me into activity. It was a glorious day for a ride. There was that, which was good, and was enough, and was better. 

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Nudes of Mom

(Waiting to glimpse Mommy)

I meant my mother yesterday, not innocent little Raquel. It helps me relieve stress to look at naked pictures of my mom. It makes me feel presidential and vice. 

Yes, yes, yes... I saw the humor in the sentence yesterday, and the horror, and went with it anyway. I was going to write mommy, but kept it simple.

Mother knows best. Mom can be anything.

Like most boys, I used to sniff my mom's underwear. Not that most boys sniffed my mom's underwear, but maybe theirs. I didn't know that you were supposed to sniff the dirty ones though. You can imagine my surprise when I first encountered a real vagina, excreting its own glandular and bacterial scents. I was driven wild with lust. At fourteen or fifteen that's mostly all that you have is wildness and lust. I was blessed with both.

My mother lost both of her breasts to cancer, so I had fewer childhood opportunities to connect with them as desirable flesh. I connected them with fear of loss and disfigurement, and the pain of femininity. I remember my mother talking to me about what their loss meant to her. She centered on it not mattering, as long as she was able to stay alive to be my mother. I also saw them as a connection to life, even in their absence.

Like most boys, I found the breasts of the girls and young women that would show them to me or let me touch them or put my mouth on them to be miraculous, and still do. Few things appear as naturally beautiful as do breasts. Titties.


I agree with CS. Such things are interesting. It is very rare that anyone has ever offered me too much information. If I've ever said that phrase to shut somebody up it was because of their personality, not the information they offered.


I am torn between preparing for the coronavirus and buying a new camera. Sure, I could do both or neither, but what the fuck, do I have to do everything, or ignore everything that there is to do, around here? All the time?

My problem is that I have already "invested" so much into photography. As the boy gets older he is becoming ambivalent about the process, and mom and I are getting older. Neither of us finds many portraits of ourselves that we like as much any more. Mom asks me to take sunny portraits of her so that she can update her LinkedIn profile. etc. How many cameras does one need for that?

Sure, Rhys will be playing sports soon, so I'll need a better telephoto lens, but beyond that I probably have all that I need.


Nobody sleeps naked around here any more.

 (Pre-Dad and Pre-Mom)

(The Babymaker, with feeders)

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Exhaust

(Wrigley and Akira)

I have this little sliver of freedom, in a sense. I am "on call," but I have the house to myself for a few hours. I just put the boy in a friend's car and watched him drive away for a Cub Scout hike. It is still sometimes a strange feeling seeing him go anywhere without mom or myself. Today is his third leap year. He was born in Jan. of 2012, so he lucked into one right away. I have 13, mom has 12, though she would probably not have me advertise any facts or clues.

I have been looking through old nudes of mom. Or, I was a few weeks ago.  Sally Mann talks about the standard of preserving a person's "essential dignity" in any portrait she makes. I believe that I have done that. Though I did not discard of all of the images that were not flattering, either. I kept all that I could, and find some of them to be nearly unspeakably beautiful. Or rather, speaking of the beauty would be superfluous. 

Okay, I am now going to read Atomised by Houellebecq for a few hours. CS suggested Whatever, which was great and dark and funny. So, now we have a book club. He's reading some other book by him right now. I should order a new one. I might finish this one today. Reading great writing used to encourage me to write, now the discouragement of it is exhausting. 

(Ibid)

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Willis, the cat

He passed away a couple months ago, to no one's surprise and everyone's loss. I was sending my buddy, Abraham Lohan, pics tonight and yesterday, so I had them at the ready here. It was his cat and he and his wife, Kat, loved him much. I had shot a few frames while drinking wine in their kitchen. It is Kat you can see sitting in the bokeh below. 

So, if you've ever tried to be a manual film photographer while drinking red wine or other kinds... you get poor at a faster rate, but the missed shots and the evidence of substandard shooting technique can still trickle in for years. 

Dividends. 

I'm not drinking right now, so I am writing about it from the authority of emotional opinion. I can chuckle at my previous string of sillinesses. How few people ever learn to take life as cheerfully as I. How few could possibly stand it. At long last, I am an affront to ambition.

If one can not lift some magic from the black cat that has cut across your path then what were all those incantations, and all of that screaming, ever for?

I'm not sure what that sentence means. It has no relation to anything in my life, currently. Perhaps it is just some of the nonsense I regularly permit myself to write when drinking, of which I was thinking. It was a contact sentence. 

These images too are, in a sense, nudes with black mask. 

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Belief

A friend asked me if I still write here. I lied and said yes. I qualified that I'm just writing notes at this point, not essays. Essays are too 20th century. Almost everything is, now. When I was a young man I thought that knowing as much as I casually could about the past would make me seem erudite. But now knowing anything just makes me sound aged.

To wit, I had a comparative discussion of Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Rod Stewart's respective "standards" albums this morning, to give you a glimpse. The verdict: Morrison and Dylan can stay, Stewart has to go.

Who are those people, you ask? Oh, just some old crooners from the big band era. I mean, there were some really big bands back then. For a brief time the counter culture became the culture. We were led to believe that if we did enough drugs then we just might destroy capitalism. We simply never made it all the way around the killing of the ism, though the capital did not survive.

But I did not come here today to note the existence of rock and roll, nor the absence of my previous income. I didn't come in here for any reason at all. So, take note of that and go.

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Long live the strange

I found a 3x5" card in an old shoe box the other day. I had written a list of basic life tenets that seemed sound enough at the time. Little reminders like, The world doesn't owe you anything; Don't feel sorry for yourself; Don't shy away from change; Don't dwell on the past; Sleep with your hands above the covers; Wear two pair of underwear if you can't stop on your own; Etc.  I had not written these from my own thoughts and beliefs. They had been transcribed from somewhere else. When I came to the part about not shying away from change a strange feeling passed through me. On that point I asked myself, Why? I didn't have an answer, but I felt some inner frustration rising at the idea. Change is unavoidable, of course, but is that a reason to embrace it? Or rather, not shy away from it? 

I'm not so sure any more. 

My life is about to change. I happen to be embracing that expected change, for now, but that is mostly because I will be the one causing it to happen. I've just decided to move on from a few different things at once. Perhaps the point was for me to not shy away from change that is not the result of my own decisions, or my own doing. 

For many years I successfully resisted change. The only change I seemed to want was more seclusion. I enjoyed a world where that was possible and never quite recovered from it. It was my little one-bedroom Shangri-La. But people moved in and people moved out. 

How much should a parent change? - our wives and mothers ask. We talk about the usefulness of change but try employing any of it when you have a child. It will be roundly denounced as irresponsible unless it means making more money, of course. Or, somehow improving the life of your child in a pre-sanctioned manner. Any other change is regarded with deep suspicion. What is needed is stability.

This is why I use the butterfly as a personal symbol and metaphor for my inner and outer self. 

I want some stability, also. Not too much, though. Not all the time. Mostly I want stability when I think about the future or when I recall the past. At other times I want life to feel like a perpetual Sunday morning, when it's raining.

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"Fail We May; Sail We Must"

(Andrew Weatherall 1963-2020)

The news hit yesterday, that one of the legends of electronic music had passed away suddenly. It seems impossible. He was always more pharaoh than man. He will likely be interred in the great pyramid at Giza. No need for mummification. His legacy will preserve him for eons among my people. His life as it was seemed so magical as to be from an afterlife, where the secrets of the universe were known only to those there. 

His death affected me more deeply than I might have guessed it would, had I been asked in advance. The most precious records I have remaining in my collection have his name on them. Records that I have not ever considered getting rid of. The ones that I told myself that I would hold on to for life, that those fifteen boxes were worth it and didn't weigh that much, nor cost too much to store. 

I listened back through so many of his remixes yesterday, either posted by myself or by other friends online. Some of them reaching back to the very late 80s, so many of the early 90s, but mixes all the way up until very recently. They are not tracks that people outside of the electronic world are likely to embrace, or possibly even understand. I will post only one here today, since I have no need to convert the unaware and uninitiated. It might not be the one, at this late age, that would work towards making any converts, either. But it was really something when I was a young man. 

One of the last tracks that I produced while still somewhat involved with electronic music was a sort of homage to him - When I'm 64 is the problematic working title. It is 64 beats per minute, so 128 bpm at half-time. It has yet to be released, but that conversation was re-started yesterday as a reaction to the news. It was my attempt at imitating his style of electronic/dance/dub, sort of. His collective recordings from the early 90s acted as a sort of launching point for the track I made. If it gets released then I will post it here. It is currently in a holding pattern at a friend's record label.


One of my proudest moments in being involved in the electronic music scene was when I found out that he liked one of the records that I made and with a friend, advocated for the track in his dj sets and even in interviews. It is a difficult feeling to explain, though of course it is just validation from one of your heroes. It seems simple when described that way. But having heroes is complicated and difficult. Even admitting to having heroes is complicated and difficult, for some.

Not me, not now.

I can imagine a day coming soon in which there will be no more heroes of mine left. Being reminded that I still have, and perhaps need, a few heroes was a shock.



His story can not possibly be told in just a couple track links.

Okay, I lied. Here's another:

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The happiness I once felt as a child

The position of the planets in relation to the visible stars of the local group of our galaxy has never had any discernible correlation to events in my life or to the formative process of my basic temperament, but I'm probably just saying that because I'm a Scorpio. 

For some reason the video I posted yesterday did not actually post with my miniature personal essay.

Today we might go to the beach. Though, yesterday we went to the park to meet one of mine and Rachel's friends - more hers than mine. She is moving out, getting a divorce. It saddened me but for some reason it seemed to embolden Rachel, so she was being a bit of a bitch to me. It must be important for her to make sure she can still act that way for reasons that are invisible to me. If today looks like it will head the same direction I will not be going to the beach. We'll see. Long term relationships tend to allow, and even encourage, a level of unpleasantness that would not be permitted elsewhere. 

Family-ity breeds contempt. 

We are all merely guests in each other's lives. I haven't forgotten that. 

But I did have a camera with me, so I was able to ignore Rachel and walk around Sonoma Square taking pictures. I should have a few images to post here soon, something other than ~years old film pics. If photography of one kind - street shooting - has taught me anything it is the value of walking away. It's just not worth engaging with some people on some levels. For me, yesterday, it was Rachel that I wished to walk away from, and so I did. 

Yet she told me how nice Valentine's Day was. Or, she responded that way when I referred to our "date night" as "its usual clumsy romantic disaster."

So, the happiness I once felt as a child. I get more of that through my relationship with Rhys, understandably, than I do anywhere else. 

Well, that and drugs, and sometimes alcohol. Though that specific return to the whimsy of childhood has mostly evaporated and dissipated for me. It is contextual and environmental. Now, I have to go all the way to Burning Man to feel a little hint of what it used to be. And who wants a naked old man wandering out in the desert feeling the happiness he once felt as child, or searching for it?

Okay, that's my report this holiday Monday morning. And to think... I should be working. Working is no way to return to any of the feelings I once had as a child. I told myself then that I hated school and that certainly it was as bad as going to work. 

Here, read that. CS sent it. It is good. 

"... to connect the poetry with the prose and so nudge travel writing away from its current status as a consumer report onto the threshold of a literary genre."

Etc.

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A candid portrait of my son - 35mm black and white

I stopped posting portraits of the boy. They did not seem to please my readers the same way that they pleased me. Since I stopped posting these blogpost links on Facebook my readership has dwindled to almost none, and I am willing to risk losing my remaining two readers. Not even Raquel still reads here. She no longer has much interest in the tide of my daily and weekly moods. I can't blame her. I don't blame her.

This picture was taken September 2018, approximately. I am still more than a year behind in my scanning efforts, which decays any documentary effect or usefulness that these pics might otherwise have, at least in relation to them being posted here. If it were up to me then the boy would never wear t-shirts that advertised Spider Man or an inexplicably angry Yoda. They don't do well when photographed, though the kid seems to love them. But alas, life is not about my desires, or not exclusively.

Okay, today I might go buy a new car. I am tired of dumping money into repairs for my current one. Every few months there is something new that has gone wrong with the thing. It has worn me out. I'm going to go look for an SUV that will hopefully make me happier.  

Until then. 

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H**** Valentine's Day

Because I wrote of my love for Raquel the other day I will desist that same sort of thing today. I will write about my other Valentine, the boy. 

He brought home all of his cards and candies, shared from the other class members. The schools avoid situations like CS described now, they require everyone to share equally. So even the semi-r***** would go home with sweet treats and cards adorned with hearts. And why not? It is dangerous to teach children to prefer some over others, we're told. 

I kid, I wish no one the pain of feelings of isolation. 

The boy and I bought mom some flowers, and champagne. She loves both of those things and we love her. We are shipping the boy off to the babysitter tonight. We have no plans. Maybe a movie, maybe dinner, maybe a night alone watching a movie from bed. We are so starved of time alone. 

For my part, I am playing to Roxy Music's Avalon. It is my romantic album, though few might think of it that way considering the anguish written and sung about therein. Still, it is glossy and well-produced. The music is sinuous and sexy, if you allow it to be heard uncritically. Or, if you do not destroy it with analytical thought. The best critics do not teach us to hate things, but augment our understanding with observations we might not have made. 

So many things are such, when I allow them to be.

The best song that the Talking Heads didn't ever do:

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Raquel and I and us

Bedtime. Made myself a tea, now sitting down to hopefully quiet any remaining voices of uncertainty. How does writing do that, you ask? It doesn't. It raises anxieties to eye level and then, with a thrust, gives them the flight of pigeons. It is in part why I play musical instruments. The activity provides some temporary relief. It occupies a part of the mind and keeps another part busy. Why does wasting time assuage the feeling that I have wasted too much time? Who knows, but it does. The lesson of time can be had again and again. 

I know the answer to the question - don't worry - I know that it is not time wasted. Life is not money. It can not be saved, beyond unlucky and faithless memory. It can not be bequeathed.

Don't worry. I plan on being dead for a very long time. 

I've loved her for twenty years now, off and on. Nearly half of that time we have had a child. It all seems so impossible were it not for the amassing of personal and public fact. Everything does, after a while, seem so unreal. Of my own life I have forgotten much, constructed some from what was left. It takes a great breaking of the heart for most of it to come back to me now, always desperately, in shards and tatters. I remember the laughing well, but not at what.


This is not glumness - I promise. I am smiling as I sit here, contented to be alone in a quiet, dark room contemplating the utter strangeness of self, the last best trick of consciousness.

One day we'll disappear 

Together in a dream 

However short or long 

Our lives are going to be 

I will live in you 

Or you will live in me 

Until we disappear  

Together in a dream

  

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Frozen to death of her

I miss the feeling the everything might burn to the ground suddenly, at night. It was exhilarating, freeing, the unexpected thought of it. I'm not sure what I need to be freed from but wildfire is the fix. Maybe I'm a pyromaniac, or an arsonist. Or, I have gained weight and have few ways to express my frustration at the accretion of soft adipose tissue. Or, it is because my knees hurt. Tomorrow I will feel differently. I just struggled spelling tomorrow and a sip of my tea burned my lips. I have a headache. Everything seems to be falling apart. Not in the carefree, humorous, and reckless ways of youth, but without desire or consent or even much laughter. I need a break, but then I won't take one. It is all an insanity, that people just work and work and work until they die. Me, I mean me. It is insane that is what I will likely do. Most all of the other possibilities are somehow more horrible, yet the fear is endured. I am paralyzed by it. As a child I used to have a recurring nightmare. I would freeze and I knew that wherever I was turned next by the force of the mind's imagination the witch would be walking towards me, smiling her malevolence and curses. It was terrifying. I recognize the look in the eyes of the cruel, that it can be confused by some as being a version of comedy. It would end with me awakening, screaming. Her face comes back to me even now, all these years later. The awfulness of her roaming inside of me drove me wild with terror and panic when I was a child. She was a property of my mind, come to drive me mad. Even now, I am afraid that speaking of her, thinking of her, will awaken her where she may find me, sleeping again.

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Less chasing

Neither of the two newer cameras that I have are very easy to use with any of my Mac computers. Either the RAW file format is not supported or the camera will inexplicably shoot some shots in JPEG and others in RAW. It is driving me crazy, but not enough to fix it, or to find out why it is happening. It leaves me with fewer images to work with.

Like, right now. I just tried mounting one of the little cameras to both of my computers, hoping to get it to mount as a drive, which it has done before. Nope. Restarted both computers. Still, nothing. Learning new camera systems and memorizing their quirks and limitations is taxing, and my life already deals with a fair amount of complexity. 

Ah well, fuck it. I just spent way too much time getting a little micro-sd card to mount but then all the images on there were video and I have spent too much time fucking with it already to now get sidetracked into editing a video for a single shot. And as I mentioned before, that camera sucks in low light. It is really only meant to be used in broad daylight. I should have waited to buy the new GoPro Hero8.

Again, ah well.

It took me over an hour to finally produce the image that you see above and I might have already used that one. I can't remember. I am experiencing technological exhaustion and it is only 7:41 on Monday morning. I must find a better way of fighting soon.

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Tahoe, Again

We took another impulse vacation. Just for two nights, one day of snowboarding/skiing, which was yesterday. Now, we're in the Incline Village Hyatt, which is very nice. I am recovering from a series of wipeouts I had yesterday. My inexperience in snowboarding caused a sequence of events, all of which resulted in me taking some pretty hard spills. The short version of the story is that I need to learn to re-compose myself after a serious wipeout or collision. I tried to get back up and ride too quickly, after checking with the woman who collided into me that she was okay - she matched or bested me in weight, so it was quite a collision - not noticing that my left foot had come loose of its binding quite a bit, too much to maintain control of the board. This resulted in an end-over-end flip at a rather high speed and then some rolling, with the board still attached to one foot. If you know anything of the fortitude of the heels and knees of a 51 year old man then you can imagine my pain today. More soreness than pain, but pain also. 

Before this the day had been an unquestioned success. I did several runs without falling once. I have finally grasped the basic requirements for the sport, at about $10,000 so far. Though it is unlike anything else I've ever tried. There is a feeling of freedom inherent in the activity, if you can get to it, even though you are only like water with a choice, always taking the overarching path of least resistance, but with some say in the matter. Every 50 year old should take up a few new dangerous sports each year. Or 51.

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If this, then this then after that

Fuck, I feel broken. It has been a while since anything has made me happy, or even since I have felt anything more than lid pleasure. I know why that is - I'm beginning to suspect that I have a serious issue with a pinched nerve in my back. It is a common ailment, but mine has grown to become both acute and chronic. I had a cortisone shot, but it seems to be wearing off. The numbness and the weakness and the tingling are returning from the darkness like a coven. I've stopped riding my bike, to find out if that is a contributing factor, to hopefully find out. Though there is no good knowledge that can come back from that line of self-inquiry. If the biking is the cause, then I may need to give it up. If it isn't, then I may need to start some sort of treatment, and then I still might need to give up cycling or reduce the frequency or severity in which I ride. No, that is, as of yet, an irrational fear. But my pleasures are in the obsessive, not the recreational. That part I am certain of. If I can not achieve excess in a thing that interests me then I seem to hold that thing in a separate category from those in which I can. It becomes a lesser endeavor. That is part of why I struggle elsewhere, it seems. I am not in love with my own life as much as I once was. I am merely enjoying the sense of calm. I am told. 

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2020 - Dance Like Everyone

Well, CS is finally retarded. He'll have plenty of free time now to sit and eat apples and watch ducks in the park. It has always been his dream to go to Disney World. Now he can go every day and eat ice cream while watching the fireworks. Maybe he'll start taking pictures of children. It's impossible to know what new adventures he'll set out on. He has been texting me with brochures about prison. I support his exploratory phase of becoming an alcoholic. There are few things better than morning drinking. It's always what's kept me happy.

I've decided that I am also going to retire soon. Working makes no sense for me any more. Everybody should have noticed by now.

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