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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Conjunctiva

I know CS loathes the many pictures of the boy, but I came across this older one today and wanted to post it. Look into those white and blue eyes.... That boy gave me the pink-eye he broke out with in Tahoe. I expected it, having lounged around with him while he was out of school for days, though I had forgotten how unpleasant it is. My eyes are crusted over with with a sort of adhesive kitty-litter each morning. I went through the drops that we had from the doctor and pharmacy in Tahoe. Mom said she was coming down with a case of it, so she was using it also. Only too late did I realize that she was largely doing preventative treatment. So, now I have no prescription eye drops and have been left to survive with what is available over the counter. I have been using that supply like a drunken sailor: without a condom. 

To add to my woes I have been in a heightened state of alert at work. I am on-call from 8am-4pm and have been for the last couple weeks. It adds stress to my life, though I tell myself that somewhere deep down within me it is good to have my readiness challenged. The sort of fight-and-fight more instinct that has garnered me so much praise throughout the years. I did do some rather comprehensive diagnosis today that felt good, to remind myself that I can commit to an issue and focus on it to completion.  Small victory, but each success offers some sweetness.

Jesus, my fucking eyeballs itch. 

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I thought I was someone else, someone good

I went in to see my girl at the guitar shop but she ignored me. Well, she said hi, but that was it. The conversation part is over. The guitar looked and sounded beautiful, though. The frets and fingerboard were all cleaned from a decade and a half of sweaty buildup and booger grease. They adjusted the neck so that it was straighter, which improved the action some. I have been playing it all night - Lola, All The Young Dudes, Walk on the Wild Side, Candy Says, Rebel, Rebel. Etc. Any song that I could think of about being ambidextrous. I don't know the chords to that Replacements song or I would have played that one, too. 

Ah well, I like used guitar shops. It takes an absolute obsessive to own something like that. Speaking of, the boy and I went to the comic book shop while we were there and bought a copy of an old Fantastic Four. A store that's in the same small plaza, also owned by someone who has clearly converted their preoccupation with their interests into what passes for a job. They all seemed so happy, though. If there had been a used record shop then we could have completed the Holy Trinity of lonely passions.

Cameras are something I can buy online. Though I like gawking at gadgets also. For most stuff, I prefer to go wandering around amongst the irrational and alphabetized hoard. Where will men like me go to be lonely when there are no more storefronts? All of my thoughts turn to apocalypse and the police state when I think about what the future might be. Imagine all those empty store fronts once the Amazonian destruction of the strip mall is complete. The deforestation of America's parking lots. It will make police meaner and more self-justified in whatever violent stupidity they care to unleash on you for ever being outside again.

Wandering will be no more. 

Well, I just wanted to sit down and write a bleak note out to the universe, letting everybody know that now that I have my guitar back I'll never need to leave the house again. The earth really does fall away like you see on the left side of that picture above. Strangest lake I've ever visited. Nobody can go swimming in it. From there it is only more slope and then the edge of the world. I think you might come back up on the other side if you can hold your breath one complete rotation around the sun. 

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Power, Corruption and Lies

I don't remember who did the piece that is at the top here, but the rest below are Gerhard Richter. They are not how Richter intended you to view his work, I do not believe, because they are all distortions created by the little action camera that I was using, and only details of larger works. I didn't bother trying to be true to the original at all. I've even adjusted the color on them, to make them pop more, for today's kids. 

Overall I am deeply disappointed with the quality of the images that come out of the little camera. They are all grainy in low light. The camera really only does okay in sunlight and who wants to see those images.  But the boy seems to love recording our fledgling snowboarding expeditions, and what is your parents' money good for if not to make you, a child, happy.

Nobody says, The children are our future any longer. It's too dark. The irony has become questionable, uncertain, or worse - certain. 

It is easy to like Gerhard Richter, though difficult to find much good writing about him. Critics struggle, it seems, with aligning his various styles. Admittedly, there is much incongruity between the pop-art, abstractions, and his photo-realism or even his glass-plate photography. There's a lot going on there. He's like a seven or eight trick pony. 

I tried to read Robert Hughes article about him - The Unblinking Blur - but Time magazine has a pay wall and I can not summon myself to attempt a leap over it, and my knees hurt.

See? That's my take on his art: there's a lot going on there. 

But he is truly great and original, I do believe. To see an exhibition of his works confirms it. The quality, depth, variety and power of his works is apparent. There is something mysterious and yet self-evident there. The blurred images of unknown people, sourced from newsprint and then affected with what I believe to be screen-printing techniques, are both haunting and direct. The Baader-Meinhof series in particular is a powerful "take" on an historical event, where technique, context, and content merge to form an indistinguishable whole. Those now dead bodies portrayed almost as through the lens of a newsprint or documentary memory are unforgettable and yet shrouded in layered mystery. 

Well, I won't write more about him or his art here. I did not prepare. I did not go to the museum to write an essay, though I do sometimes miss writing them. My thoughts are dangerously disorganized elsewhere in life. It is why some writers drink, and perhaps why a drinkers' repenting is so often short-lived. Not that I am repenting at all, I have been drinking immoderately at times but in peace. I'm not sure how I accomplished it, but I am enjoying a little window of time in which I am being mostly left alone. 

I am envious of CS' situation, yet that is perhaps only the idea that I am selling to a willing buyer. I dream of having days of freedom stretched out ahead of me. It has been years since I have had the feeling of being lost in a car - not knowing exactly where I was or where I was going, or when I would stop, of where I would sleep, but knowing that all of those things would come. Being connected always is taking its toll on me.

Alice said that my guitar should be finished today. I am looking forward to chatting with her again. She is the most interesting person I've met in a while, both circumstantially and personally. Also, she is my type - skinny blonde, small breasts, reduced facial hair, etc. No, that was just a joke that occurred to me as a defense in the event that CS said anything about my post yesterday. But he didn't, disappointingly, and I did not wish the joke to go to waste. My interest in her is not sexual and I am not making jokes at her expense, they are for my pleasure, so shut-up.

I have always depended on the shyness of strangers. 

(CS)

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This

(The Bay)

A curse on the cafe of CS. He texted me an article that I had read once before, but was able to suppress the impulse to buy a camera I didn't need. Then he re-sent it, and like a fool I read it again. Now I must act. I have been looking on eBay. The prices are higher than what I want to spend tonight, especially when you start looking at lenses, but not high enough to keep me away forever. I am nothing if not a man of capitalist courage. Be bold and mighty credit will aid you. 

I don't need anything else. 

I bought a used 12-string acoustic guitar yesterday. An impulse buy, but it is lovely and I've been playing it ever since. All the 12-string rock classics - Over the Hills and Far Away, Wish You Were Here, Ticket To Ride, Hotel California (I sang that to the boy this morning), Give A Little Bit, Hurricane. I think that's all of them. I've been playing anything that I think might sound good on it. 

Maybe I'll take a few weeks off from work soon and learn to play Busted Bicycle.

The guitar tech that I've chatted with a few times at the store convinced me that I don't need a new Martin D-28, that the guitar I have is plenty sufficient and likely has much sentimental value for me. She was right. It was comforting to hear it from somebody else. I gave her the guitar to clean and adjust and put new strings on. Alice. 

She switched to playing guitar left handed recently. I can hardly even imagine such a thing. The difficulty of it seems tremendous. There are other changes she has undergone, also. She was born an Al then added the ice part, it seems. 

I tried to play the guitar left handed when I got home and was ashamed at how clumsy I was, unable to perform even the most basic tasks of the other hand. It seemed much more difficult than starting new with the right hand did all those years ago. Some things will remain beyond my abilities forever. I own books that I will never read and probably never get rid of. We all probably do. Well, those who collect books. 

I wanted to ask Alice about switching playing hands, though I did not wish to appear fascinated with her life. But I was. I can not always be trusted to contain my curiosity. She did not seem at all hesitant to talk about the realities and particulars of playing the guitar. Maybe I'll ask if I can call her Candice the next time I go in. 

I had a simple and pleasant day today after work. Just driving up the valley to pick up the boy with the dog in the car, something came over me. Difficult to describe, a sort of calmness mixed with satisfaction. It has been some time since I've had such an unhurried and contended sense of a moment. Time barely seemed to pass, maybe it didn't. I wanted to make sure I made some small record of it. This.

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SFMOMA

(The beach at Crissy Field)

I went into SF yesterday, by myself and spent the day by myself. I had no plan, but I had a few things I wanted to do, hoping to take pictures as part of that. I only have images from the little Osmo Action camera and my phone, all the others were 35mm film. I brought two cameras and three lenses, one loaded with black-and-white all the day and the other color. 

I stopped at a guitar store and played a Martin D-28. It sure was nice, as well it should be for the price - $3100. Only rock stars should own these guitars, really. It is a big step up from the air guitar that I learned on. 

Then I went and dropped of a bunch of rolls of film at Photoworks. I am the only photographer left in the world that spends that much money on pics that anybody else would just delete from their iPhone. Just meaningless, thoughtless snapshots, most of them. I keep trying to capture the mystery of the visible, as Winogrand seemed to do so effortlessly, but it escapes me. It is maddening, that.

After getting trapped in horrible weekend traffic everywhere that I tried to go I eventually decided to give up and go to the SFMOMA. Getting there took me more than an hour, but once there they had wine and salmon lunches. I had one salmon and two cabernets. The little Osmo camera is fun at a museum. The ultra wide angle distorts everything. I forget if it's pincushion or barrel distortion. I guess it must be barrel, though if you follow the line where the floor meets the wall in the image below that looks more like pincushion. 

I don't know, is what I'm trying to say. It's mostly barrel distortion. You can see it really clearly in the image above, if you peer out towards Alcatraz and look at the horizon. 

The day was nice. I am out of practice at being alone. Halfway through the day I was wanting some companionship. the SFMOMA is the only place in San Francisco where women dress lime women. It is a sort of oasis of femininity in a landscape that is otherwise openly hostile to the idea. The women at the museum all wear boots, and know how to walk. It always functions as the onset of seduction, which is maddening. Women know how to be looked at, and that knowing communicates a tremendous amount of coded information. 

After a couple glasses of wine I was texting anybody that I could think of that I used to go to museums with. Zoie, mostly. My long lost art buddy. She has gone the way of the heiresses. She probably has a cooking show by now. 

I am kidding a bit. She finds me funny so I assume certain liberties. 

(SFMOMA guard and I inspecting the gilded jazz testicle)

I went back to the cafe a couple times throughout the day where the wine was. My photography suffered from this, I am sure of it, though it will take years for me to confirm since I was shooting film. But what the fuck... I'm not on assignment. I am the only person who really seems to care about what I am doing, which frees the mind considerably. 

Well, I'm the only one interested until the cops get involved. They have an interest in lots of things I do, if I give them any hint that maybe they should. 

I found a local exhibition that featured three local SF artists. The one below was my favorite. Her art involved itself with the portrayal of black people, and their sexuality, in American culture. But I was able to look past all of that to enjoy the formal compositions and powerful abbreviations of figure, which was beautiful. The entire room in which her work was displayed was painted a red that is similar to the red you see below, which added a lot to the exhibition. 

(Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle)

There was also an exhibition of German art since 1960, which was great - Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz being two of my favorites. I noted to CS that Baselitz reminds me of a post-modern Otto Dix. I was texting CS throughout the entirety of the day. He also used to be one of my museum buddies who has now gone the way of the heiresses. His cooking show will be called Cafe Frittata. If I were CS, now that his pockets are filled with gold and has nothing but free time, then I'd create my own YouTube show. Something like Fishing With John. That show was exactly 30 years ahead of its time. 

Okay, the day has started here. I must do something with it or it will disappear into the skies from whence it came. 

You can look into a bottle of red wine and see the day's shadows moving there. 

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Return from Tahoe

(Raquel)

We made it up to the snowy mountains and then back again. Going down steep hills should be easier, if it wasn't for all the ice.

The boy broke out with pink-eye and then vomited at the threshold of the men's bathroom at the restaurant where we were having dinner, leaving an acidic and stinky puddle that most men just walked back and forth through as I tried to comfort the youth and get his face and mouth washed. One gentleman kindly asked if he could help. He let the restaurant staff know to draw straws soon, because someone was about to clean up the vile, child wretchedness... None of this tainted our weekend enough to obscure the fun we had. See Raquel's face above. 

A face can always be many things to any person who sees it, but that one is happy for me. I told her she looks like a

Well, I should not relay here the private flattery that I shower her with. The words do not seem as flattering when not being whispered only to her, when no one else can hear. But that is what I like to tell her, and what she seems to believe. It's good to have whispered secrets with one that doesn't need to strictly believe them any more. 

I have started this post poorly. The boy getting sick happened last night. We came home today. Everyone should know by now that I am attracted to the woman I love, sometimes even in orthodox ways. We call it the "Missionary Piston," when we're feeling artless and thrusty.  

We had considered skiing today also, but after two full days of the snowy stuff and then the public vomiting, we opted to drive home. Family vacations are strenuous. So many things can go wrong, there is so much time and effort and expense put into making it all work. Mom and I both agreed that we sort of lucked out. The boy getting sick sooner would have meant more severe limitations on what we could and could not do.

Tahoe is expensive, don't go often unless you really just love throwing cash money into an avalanche that never happens. That's what we have been doing. If we ever go to Yellowstone I am going to fly a drone into the asshole of Old Faithful, because I am nothing if not newsworthy. Our trips skiing and snowboarding could have easily paid for a family trip to Japan by now, but what the fuck... the boy can snowboard, and so can dad.

So, that's what parents do: spend all their money trying to create good memories. 

(Rhys)

(Undercover Agent - R-Q6)

The boy, of course, loves all the snowboarding gear. The goggles were a gift from Colorado ski friends, for his birthday. The helmet-mounted camera was a gift from mom and dad for Christmas.

Is he "spoiled"...?
Perhaps a bit.
Fuck you. 
You try to have a kid. 

I grew up begging my mom to buy me very specific things, - model numbers included - she would buy me the cheapest knock-offs of those things. They were not the same. It was the Sony Walkman that broke my tender heart one Christmas morning. I remember the moment of my disappointment and shame. Looking back on it I can remember the moment of tearing open the wrapping paper, as if I had been involved in a crippling accident, I could see back to the moment of impact but could not ever change the moment, no matter how much thought I applied. 

I never remember being hungry or cold. Don't shed a tear for me, yet.

I have decided that I want to make more money. I have never bothered focusing on that, at all, though I did spend my first adult decade having mostly tax-free money pour into my pockets from both sides - drugs and music.

Like Jimmy said, I made enough money to buy Miami, but I pissed it away more and more slowly over time as my kidneys aged and I couldn't always get the flow started. I trickled it away so fast. 

CS says that he will soon take a 40% cut in income. I know that this will greatly anger me when I see him next, and I will not spare him my wrath. He will show discomfited concern about lavishly spending money on me the way that he should and I will not like that at all. He has recently lost his romantic partner. You would think that something like that should help my cause, but it won't. He has been a very poor father figure but I've never seen him eat cat food for dinner. I know he can afford to purchase me some pleasure, and pay to watch.

He worries about money as if he had lived my life rather than his own. 

I don't worry about money, I worry about living too long. How would I explain my poverty and my longevity. I only built stories for one or the other.

What a mess.

"You're on Earth. There's no cure for that." - Samuel Beckett

Um, Sammy...
Yes, there is.

I call this DWI-Art. When you are driving after drinking in the snow at dusk and you have a new point-and-shoot and the people who are screaming or whining at you in the car are also boring you witless with their fears and you wish that they would all just shut up for once and let you do your art because it might live on past their little selfish moment of terror. 

(head-on)

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