Photography Thinks
Basel cell carcinoma. Don’t matter if you wear a hat. Well maybe it does if the brim is wide enough. Baseball caps don’t protect enough. But the removal isn’t so bad. Needles. A little scraping and cutting. Plastic surgery to leave no trace. Heals in a week. Be careful out there.
So, here I am, alive at 76. Complicated year health wise, not all resolved. Travelled extensively. Made a few new friends. Kept old enemies. Still no family on my side. Won’t reconcile with any.
Improved creatively. Read a lot. Saw some movies. Learned a few things, but no new tricks. Overall, a good enough year to make me want more.
Gotta live with the hand dealt with. No reformation or rehabilitation on the horizon. Nothing I can do to help anyone or myself.
Just need to stay fresh and interesting enough for Sharon. We all know what a headache I can be. Then we both will deal with aging and our end game.
So, as much as I try, I remain a man with a camera. No new ideas for the art. New ideas for me. To the others who want to see pizazz, I say go elsewhere.
Celebrating a birthday, especially one in the 7os, brings reflections on the past and projections about the future. The good news: my blood, medicated as it is, tests perfect. The bad news: my blood, medicated as it is, has rejected the Moderna Covid vaccine. So, a very happy day, followed by a depressing Doctor visit. Such is life.
I don’t have much of a voice anymore, my career and reputation having been wrecked in 1998. I try to do acts of kindness, everyday which is not always easy. You should too.
So, now we don’t even have a pool to swim in until everyone who came in contact with a covid positive neighbor are tested. One person stops residents of 1,000 homes from enjoying the amenities. Person remains anonymous, nameless. We don’t know male, female, republican, democrat.
No pickle ball, not that I play. The covid positive talked to someone who played so that got closed, too. Many here avoid masks anyway.
Tennis courts, clubhouse, everything, including bocce, shuffleboard and basketball. No problem getting a parking space, because no one is using any of the recreational, educational, creative or entertainment venues.
A chaise is available at appropriate social distancing, but the pool deck cannot be accessed. I’d say we were in hell; temp over 100 degrees, global warming caused and many here are Republicans. Good thing I don’t need medical care, because the hospitals are filled, their staffs overworked. Death rates climb. Don’t worry about us, Publix remains open. Total Wine delivers.
I turned 72, which was a good thing and a not so good thing. As to the former, I am alive; as to the latter I have CLL, a blood disorder that isn’t lymphoma or leukemia, but what it is requires me to take pills everyday and be fearful of falling or catching a cold.
I have a marriage that thrives, even though I didn’t support us as planned or become the man we both wanted me to be. I cannot shake the past and don’t have much of a productive future planned. My photography comes second to my wife, so for those two things, I don’t want for attention, assignments or affection.
I read, shoot pictures, travel and volunteer. The images I make at the Soup Kitchen of Boynton Beach are printed and handed out. I have been given a wall that needs to be filled. People leave stuff at our door which I deliver and I beg for diapers (4s and 5s), along with donations of money, clothes and household goods.
Nothing can be done to ease my pain or fix the story. No one knows what happened to me, except a select few and I am not important enough to find out the truth. Not saying I was perfect, just not so imperfect to have been the subject of judicial and political torture. Few friends, none close, and few relatives, none close. Not so bad as long as I live.
Just trying to keep living, loving and laughing.
Without photography, there would be no Jazz.