I’d been thinking about the self-publishing options available to folks now (see my post below), and I found myself that morning scanning through some web links about photo book publishing. I’ve wanted to put together a book of my art photography too. I began scanning pages of comment about how well Apple’s online photo book publishing mechanism works with Aperture…the Apple photographer work flow software I use.
I discovered several insights into the problem of color management I’ve been wrestling with, ever since I got a request, that came with a promise of actual money, for a print of one of my Puerto Valarta images. It took me so many test prints to get the colors right off the printer, that I actually lost money on it. But it was worth it to me, just for the satisfaction of knowing I had a fan of my art photography out there who was willing to give me good money for a print they’d particularly liked.
Here’s the image that gave me so much trouble:
This is off the Puerto Vallarta gallery. You can’t really see it in this JPEG, but the actual image is rich with delicate detail in the floor tile and brick work, and there are so many beautifully subtle colors and gradients. I love it myself. But getting what I saw on Bagheera’s screen (Bagheera is my art room Mac) to match what I got from my printer, a very nice Epson R1800, turned out to be a royal hassle. This JPEG doesn’t do it much justice either…but I wouldn’t expect much fidelity from a JPEG. The printer was another story. I spent a lot of money on it to get something I could produce art quality prints with and I had no idea it would turn out to be so hard.
The worst…and you may find this hard to imagine…was that damn beige wall around the brick archway. I could not for the life of me get it right out of the printer. I could get the tile floor. I could get the brickwork. I could get the lovely wood in the shadows, and in the bright golden light of the morning sun in Puerto Vallarta. I could get the dog perfect…just perfect. I could not get that goddamned beige wall. It starts out with a distinctly reddish cast at the far end, and gradates over the stucco to the lighter, paler beige in the near end. It is just lovely if you get it right. But I kept getting a yellowish wall, or an orange-ish wall or some puke colored wall. I was having fits until finally, just by accident, I hit on a combination of Aperture output settings and printer color settings that got it right, and I was able to give my customer a good print of it.
This…I thought…cannot be right. I’d taken a profusion of notes during my struggle to get a good print of this image and looking through them the only thing I could say for sure is I had a combination of settings that would work on That One Photo and probably I’d have to do it all over again for any others. I knew there was this thing called "color management" you could enforce…somehow…which was supposed to use the color profiles of your printer and monitor to make sure that what you see on the screen is exactly the same as what you see in the final print. But whenever I looked into any of these color management systems they were all horribly expensive to buy and more complicated to install and use then I had the money or the time to fool with. There had to be an easier way.
Last summer I was asked at the last minute to do the photography for a relative’s wedding. Some of the photos I took were with the Canon 30D digital SLR. But some shots, the critical couple and family portraits were done with the Hasselblad. I’ve been hemming and hawing for months now about getting them prints because I knew it was going to be a massive effort to get each individual print right. They’ve been very patient, but it’s been embarrassing.
So I’m reading this article online about using Aperture to publish photobooks via Apple’s photobook service, and I see a simple, straightforward explanation of how Apple’s own internal color management system works that I’d never been able to find while I was struggling with the Puerto Vallarta photo…and suddenly everything snapped together for me.
I had only a vague idea that Apple even had color management built into the operating system. And there it was, laid out for me in an simple step-by-step process, to set it up in Aperture. Apple’s system is called "ColorSync", and since it was built-in to the OS, it Was as simple as I thought it had to be. Just a matter of getting the latest color profiles for my printer installed and then, in Aperture, switching on the onscreen proofing and making sure it was using the printer profiles. The default is the Apple RGB space. On the printer side instead of trying to set up a third-party color management system, I just switched on ColorSync. When Aperture printed, I just had to make sure it was using the printer profile for the particular kind of paper I had in it when it sent output to the printer. That was all I needed to do.
I ran a test print of the image above through it and it came out…perfectly. Then I got into the wedding photos I’d taken last summer. The wedding portraits were all taken outdoors under a tree with a little lake behind it and the lighting conditions kept varying because the bright puffy beautiful clouds in the background kept passing in front of it. I picked out an image of the couple that needed some adjustments in the light levels and tweaked until I got everything to my satisfaction. Then instead of making a test proof print, I just sent it directly to the printer using the ColorSync setup and the expensive high gloss paper. I wanted to see the final product right up front. It came out exactly right.
I was thrilled. Now I could make as many art prints as I wanted and not have to worry too much about wasting paper and spinning my wheels searching for the right combination of printer settings to get something to print the way I wanted it to print. I started work on the wedding prints I’d been promising my family…the southern Baptist side down in southern Virgina…for so long. It was great. Everything was coming off the printer perfectly. Just perfectly. I was delighted.
I’d printed up a nice 13" by 19" print of the couple’s wedding portrait, and thinking to myself with that sense of completeness and inner satisfaction an artist gets when you have a head of steam up and it all comes together and its all perfect that, Hey…They’re really going to like this… Hopefully it’ll make up for the delay in getting it all to them… And then I realized what I was doing.
It’s Valentine’s Day, I’m 55, I’ve been single almost all my life except for maybe that short affair I had with Keith ten years ago and even that was more a roller coaster of yes we are no we’re not yes we are no we’re not until he dumped me…I’m sick, absolutely sick with loneliness and despair is settling in to keep me company in my old age…and here I am happily, cheerfully even, working on other people’s wedding photos. Like…this is what my life was always meant to be after all. I exist, to serve other people’s happiness. I was born to watch other people get a love life and settle down. Keith settled down. My first high school crush is happily settled down and has been for over thirty years now with the person he calls his soulmate. And a certain heartless jackass I know in Arlington Virginia keeps telling me my problem is I just don’t work at it enough, like a sanctimonious billionaire who thinks the only reason people are poor is because they are lazy and just don’t want to work.
I get to watch it all…the parade of life. I get to point my camera at it. I get to make drawings and paintings of it. I have the skill…and the eye. I get to document it all as it passes me by. That’s why I was put here on this earth I guess. I think I saw it, finally, last night.
How I spent my Valentine’s day: I made other people’s wedding prints. Trust me, it wasn’t what I’d planned on doing. If someone had even suggested it I’d have laughed in their face. I’ll do them later…just not Valentine’s Day. Not when I’m so lonely while the whole fucking world celebrates being in love. And it just…happened. Like an omen. Like a tap on the shoulder reminding me I have a place in this world, and that’s not it. How I spent my Valentine’s day: I made other people’s wedding prints.
Well…I need to go get some more photo paper. And…ink.
The Second Annual Casa del Garrett Valentine’s Day Poster Contest…(Part 2!)
Okay…we’re a little behind schedule in posting our worthy Valentine’s Day Poster Contest runners-up here. Sorry. But that sense that things aren’t going according to plan is All Part Of The Fun!
Here are some more worthy contenders for the crown. Alas, they just didn’t quite measure up. But that only makes them even more worthy!
More worthy contenders who were left standing in the dust tomorrow!
He called it a poem for Sunday. I’d say it makes a good Valentine’s Day poem. Or an any day poem at this stage of my life. Being as I am, at that age where death isn’t totally unexpected…
"I thought he died a while ago…"
I hate this time of year. Not only is it dark and cold and covered with ice, la, la, la, la, la…it’s that Most Romantic Day Of The Year! !!!
…Just really preoccupied with the house. On Wednesday I discovered that a leak in the roof, near the back of the house by the chimney, that I thought had been taken care of was back with a vengeance. Between that and other more routine maintenance here at Casa del Garrett I’ve been away from the den computer more then usual.
And…I really don’t feel talkative right now…for some reason…
To: Bruce Garrett
From: "FTD.com" <lily@mailfromftd.com>
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To: Bruce Garrett
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To: Bruce Garrett
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To: Bruce Garrett
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To: Bruce Garrett
From: “FTD.com”
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So…I’m wandering the web and the various gay news sites and I come across this shot of actor TR Knight and his BF doing Disneyland…
More Here. I recall wandering around Disneyworld not too long ago. I had a great time. But I go into these vacations willing myself not to think about how alone I am wherever I go…which is one reason I’ve always avoided theme parks. If I don’t do that, if I’m not successful at forgetting, then I just want to go back home. And there have been times I’ve done just that.
I’m happy for these guys. I really am. But seeing stuff like this…at this stage of my life…just reminds me of the life I never had and I don’t want it to. I just want to feel happy for them. But…I failed. I never found it. God knows I tried (even if a certain heartless jackass in Alexandria wants to keep telling himself that I never did). I tried. It never happened. It just…never happened. But then…people who look like that want people who look like that…
Wow… That looks like the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride. I wanted to do that one while I was at Disneyworld but I thought, one roller coaster at a time so I did Space Mountain instead. Look at those smiles. Damn. Just…Damn…
Another Valentine’s Day spam arrived in the mail today…this time from Harry & David…
From: "Harry & David"
To: bgarrett@pobox.com
Subject: Perfect match: Gifts as extraordinary as your Valentine.
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Hello… Is this Harry or David? Yes…I’d like to order a bottle of vinegar and a lovely bouquet of ragweed and barbed wire. Send it to Cupid…wherever the hell he lives. The gift card should read… Hello…? Hello…?
I’m such a sourpuss this time of year…for some reason…
I just got my first Valentine’s Day spam from FTD. Maybe they finally figured out trying to sell me Mother’s Day flowers every year since mom died isn’t getting them much business. Problem is, reminding me I’ll be single for yet another Valentine’s Day isn’t helping adjust my attitude toward them any either…
Subject: Save 25% and Send a Big Hug to Someone You Love
Why…yes. I would absolutely love to send a great Big Hug to Someone I Love. Alas, the few Someones in my life who fit that category of Someone I Would Love To Send A Great Big Hug To are all happily coupled…er…to other people. So I really don’t think I should be sending flowers to any of them.
Save 25%. Send Someone You Love a Big Hug! The FTD ® Big Hug ® Bouquet. Now Only $29.99. Same day delivery available. Offer ends Saturday.
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Yes, The Most Romantic Day Is Near. Thanks for reminding me. Bastards.
The Lonely Rose by Demonmiss27
…and I’ll get your idiot spam on Mother’s Day again this year too won’t I?
But I won’t mope around the house. No. I’m going to get right to work on This Years Valentine’s Day Poster Contest! It’ll be Fun!
The folks over at SLOG are making me wish I was in Seattle for Valentine’s Day this year…
Every year on Valentine’s Day the Stranger hosts a very special event for the heartbroken, the recently dumped, the bitterly divorced. Single people bring mementos of failed relationships to our Valentine’s Day Bash and we invite them up on to the stage, we listen to their sad stories, we boo their awful exes, and then we destroy their mementos live onstage in front of a cheering crowd. Over the last 12 years we’ve burned wedding photos, weve smashed engagement rings to smithereens, shattered sex toys after dipping them in liquid nitrogen, had gay boys beat off on the favorite t-shirts of homophobic ex-boyfriends, and taped pictures inside urinals and broadcast live, streaming video of live, streaming urine running down the faces of lying, cheating, scheming, heartless ex-girlfriends.
The Bash is coming up fast—did you know that Valentine’s Day is on February 14 this year?—and you could consider this your save-the-date notice if you weren’t, you know, GOING TO BE ALONE ON VALENTINE’S DAY, seeing as you don’t have a date to save the date for BECAUSE YOU JUST GOT DUMPED. So instead consider this your personal invitation to start looking around for a memento to bring to the Bash. We don’t want to get all woo-woo about this, but we’ve heard from past Bash participants that they were truly moved by the experience and it did, on some level, help ’em heal. And, hey, if you’re single on Valentine’s Day, what better place to be than a room full of drunk, single people on the serious rebound?
Wonder if I can get something like this going here in Baltimore. Somehow Baltimore seems like a more perfect place for it then Seattle. But maybe all that rain they get in the Pacific Northwest makes them all gloomy up there. I could show them gloomy here in Baltimore. Maybe instead of random stuff I find out on the web, this year’s poster contest will be my own Baltimore photos.
If you’ve ever played Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and felt down that you don’t possess Nathan Drake’s rugged good looks–don’t get down–you’re not alone.
According to research by a Kansas State University Psychology professor, gamers that view extremely muscular men or very thin women are more likely to feel self-conscious about their own physique.
Richard Harris, (author of the research) said that his research shows that simply viewing the attractive game character for 15 minutes can negatively impact the player’s image of their own looks and body.
“It was kind of sobering that it did have such a short-term effect,” Harris said.
Harris divided a group of university students up, having the males play a wrestling video game while the females played a beach volleyball game. Before they played, the students completed a survey about their body image. After they played the game for fifteen minutes, they were surveyed again. The new survey showed that the participants, as a whole, viewed their bodies more negatively.
You know what else can leave you with a negative body image? Friends. The kind that just drop chances for you to meet people on the floor because you’re not good looking enough to be boyfriend material.
Geekologie points out the RealTouch, which is a futuristic sex toy for men…
Apparently, the RealTouch is like a Fleshlight, kind of, only with moving parts. The orifice expands and contracts and the interior heats up to human body temperature. And it comes with a USB port that connects you to a computer where you can watch a POV porn film that is cued to the device, so the device simulates the intensity and frequency of the action committed by the porn star on the screen. Comes in straight and gay varieties.
Lovely…
Just…lovely… Behold the total dehumanization of sex. That…thing…on the right is the innards of the heterosexual version. Please god let me be born a gay man in the next life.
A university in Germany is concerned that while some of its students are learning skills that will help them get ahead financially they might be lacking in the skills required to attract partners. Potsdam University, south of Berlin, has initiated a course in flirting and is offering the course to all Master Degree computer engineering students. So far 440 students have enrolled in the course.
Emphasis mine. Gosh…you think there’s a need out there…?
The course will teach students how to write flirtatious email and text messages, methods for attracting partners at parties and functions, how to dress and what topics to discuss while on a date. The course will also guide students in how to deal with rejection if the methods taught in the course fail to produce desired outcomes.
…The university believes that education for students should be about helping them succeed in their future private lives as well as their future careers. ‘Students that feel they are missing out on the fun that others are having are liable to suffer low self esteem and possibly depression: many IT and science students also tend to be socially shy so this is definitely a step in the right direction’ Marta, a student psychologist noted.
…Recent studies around the world have indeed shown that university students studying computer related subjects and science are most likely to be virgins and engage in the least sexual activity during their years on campus. Could Potsdam university break this cycle?
I don’t see why not. This has been a hobby horse of mine ever since my mid-thirties when, still single and lonely, I became sickeningly apparent to me that I still had no clue what I was doing, or how to go about finding a lover. School should teach this as a subject, right along with reading and math and everything else they’re supposed to be teaching kids to prepare them for life. Yet we’re still, in this day and age, lucky to even get decent sex education.
Some people are naturals at this. That’s fine but the thinking seems to be that the dating and mating game is something we are all innately naturals at and that just isn’t true or there wouldn’t be so much loneliness in the world. And violence and hate and all sorts of other psychosis. Think of how much more peaceful this poor angry world would be if everyone had an emotionally fulfilling love life. Teaching people how to date, how to flirt, how to handle rejection, get back on their feet and go on, isn’t as silly as it sounds.
We are not all naturals at this. Most of us are just plain lousy at it. Whatever evolutionary baggage we have for it probably doesn’t much apply in a modern industrial technological civilization. The village were we all used to grow up in together and get to know one another is gone. The dating environment our parents found each other in is gathering dust in the history books. And they did it by trial and error too anyway. We need to get past that, and start treating the human need for companionship seriously, like it’s just as much a matter of our long term survival as making babies. Take a look at the news headlines on any day of the week and tell yourself that the problem with this world is there is too much love in it.
BERLIN (Reuters) – Even the most quirky of computer nerds can learn to flirt with finesse thanks to a new "flirting course" being offered to budding IT engineers at Potsdam University south of Berlin.
The 440 students enrolled in the master’s degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection.
Philip von Senftleben, an author and radio presenter who will teach the course, summed up his job as teaching how to "get someone else’s heart beating fast while yours stays calm."
The course, which starts next Monday, is part of the social skills section of the IT course and is designed to ease entry into the world of work. Students also learn body language, public-speaking, stress management and presentation skills. and
"We want to prepare our students with the social skills needed to succeed both in their private life and their work life," said Hans-Joachim Allgaier, a spokesman for the institute at Potsdam University where the course is being offered.
Using brain scans, researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have discovered a small number of couples respond with as much passion after 20 years together as most people only do during the early throes of romance, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported.
The researchers scanned the brains of couples together for 20 years and compared them with results from new lovers, the Sunday Times said.
About 10 percent of the mature couples had the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved ones as those just starting out.
Previous research has suggested that the first stages of romantic love fade within 15 months and after 10 years it has gone completely, the newspaper said.
So the cynics and romantics are both right. The soulmate is a fiction for most people. But not for all of us. Alas, that’s a one in ten chance for some of us.
So…let me do the math here… One in ten people are gay…maybe one in ten of those are willing to admit it and live openly and proudly…and one in ten of those are capable of lifelong romance. Yes…I was doomed from the get-go. And never mind that people who look like that want people who look like that…
According to the Times Square Alliance, one out of five people don’t have anyone to kiss on New Years Eve, and more people kiss their pets than their friends that night.
Among the many kisses I’ve never had is the Stroke Of New Year’s kiss. The only boyfriend I ever had never thought to give me one of those when he could have…which should have told me something now that I think of it…
People who have been enormously lucky in love, and think the only reason anybody is ever single most of their lives is because they haven’t tried hard enough to get out and mix, are like billionaires who think the only reason anyone is ever poor is because they don’t want to work.
What Was That King Said About Shallow Understanding Again…?
He was talking about race relations of course, but you can see it apply all across the spectrum of human relationships: "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will…"
No kidding. I’m fifty-five years old now. My walk through life has taken me in many different directions, down many paths I would not have expected. Paths that even today some people who have known me for ages have never heard me talk about. Most of old high school friends know very little about the life I’ve lead lately. The friends I’ve made in the 80s and 90s mostly know very little about the life I led as a kid. My co-worker friends know little about my home life. My gay friends don’t really know my straight friends, and vice versa. The two main branches of my family tree live on different coasts, and don’t much like each other. Mom’s side sees less and less of me as their religiosity grows more and more hardened. My brother and I talk often, but he is not here to actually see the life I lead, or take part in any of it. It’s not that I live separate lives. I live only one. But it is very broadbanded. My walk has taken me many places.
I appreciate the fact that no one friend has ever been with me throughout the whole of that walk. It is the central grief of my life, that I have had no partner in love to share much of the walk with. I am fifty-five years old now, and any lover I manage to gain now, will only be there to walk with me through the last few bits of it. I’ll never have that one great lifelong love. It’s too late. The closest I could get to it now, is if I manage to make a lover out of someone from my past, who happens to come back into my life all of a sudden. Which I am pretty sure won’t happen.
So I can appreciate how some folks I see on a semi-regular basis here in Washington-Baltimore won’t know, can’t possibly know, all there is to my story. But some of it must surely become pretty goddamned obvious after a few years of hanging out with me. Let alone a couple decades. But apparently…not.
Understand that central grief of my life, if you understand nothing else about me, and handle it with care if I choose to let you see it. Because when that happens, Understand This, I am Not looking for a shoulder to cry on. If I let you see that grief it’s because, only because, I trust you. It’s a big part of me, that grief. I don’t want it there…I hate it…it has drained so much of the energy out of me over the decades. So much that I could have been, and now never will be. It still drains me a little, every day. I don’t want it there…I hate it. But there it is. We place our hearts in our friend’s hands. Mine has a great big wound on it that never heals, and never will until the day comes, if it ever does, that I find that intimate other. If I give you my heart you will see it there…it’s impossible for me to hide. And I shouldn’t have to hide it from a friend anyway. Just…handle it with care. It’s bigger, deeper, and a hell of a lot more painful then it looks. You poke it, and you won’t like what happens next.
I get it that not everyone in this world wants the soulmate. Really I do. I get that the quick easy fuck, and the shacking up with someone you don’t really like all that much, simply because you just don’t want to go home to an empty house every night, isn’t just a phenomena of the urban gay subculture, but all of humanity. You need to get that I am not that. For years, seriously, ever since I was a teenager coming off of my first high school crush, I regarded casual sex as cheap and the people that pursued it shallow. Well…I grew up. I came to realize that my temperament in love and sex and the whole dating and mating game were not everyone’s. I came to realize that you can’t judge people by the kind of sex they have, but by how well they treat one another. Should have been an easy thing for a gay man to grasp, but it took me a while. But at last I got there.
But some people seem to think growing up means not simply learning to acknowledge and respect other gay folks lifestyles, but living them too, as if my own romantic needs and desires are childish things, fairy tales, that sensible gay adults leave behind. If that’s the case, then I’m not the one who needs to grow up. You are. I learned the world is bigger then the limits of my own understanding, larger then the reach my own desires. You can learn it too. And learn this while you’re at it: people who need the lover and do not need and do not want the fuck buddy are a legitimate part of that world. Your mileage may vary. Fine. I am not you. And that’s okay. Let’s hear it for diversity.
No, I will not trick.
No, I will not hang out in meat market bars.
No, I will not "broaden my interests". There is nothing wrong with my interests. You’d know that, if you’d ever bothered to understand what my interests really are, instead of assuming what they are by whatever jerks my head around. I am looking for a lover, not a fuck buddy. If I was looking for the fuck buddy then maybe what turns my head would be a good indicator. It’s not.
No, I will not accept being single as my state in life. The day I finally accept that I have no chance whatsoever in finding that one great love of my life, is the day I put a gun to my head. Stop asking me to accept it, or stop pretending to like me as a person. Pick one.
And stop blaming me for my own singleness! I Have tried to find that intimate other, that companion of my heart. As I recall, I sent a certain someone who seemed to have a hard time wrapping his head around this, a several page letter detailing how hard I’ve tried ever since I was a teenager. And what I got back was a Fisked response that basically ignored every fucking thing I said in that letter, and kept right on blaming me for my own singleness. The fact is, if you’d care to look beyond your own great good fortune, at just our own little crowd, that finding and keeping that one great love is a goddamned hard thing. Most people are lucky to get even one chance at it. Let alone two.
Which is why we all need friends. Friends who care. And I don’t mean care in merely a rhetorical or theoretical sense. Friends who actually care enough to help. Shouting out to a drowning man from the safety of the shore, directions to a store that sells life preservers, isn’t helping.
I don’t expect my friends to set me up with dates. And especially not if they think it’s asking too much to expect to actually have a love that engages you body and soul, heart and mind. And extra especially if they think I’m not attractive enough to actually have a chance of finding what I am looking for. And extra-extra especially if they have a completely fucked-up idea of what it is that I am looking for in the first place. I don’t expect it. But if something comes along, and you see a chance to do something like that for a friend, then why the hell wouldn’t you? That’s what I just don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you? I’ve actually done that sort of thing in the past for some of my heterosexual friends. Hell…heterosexuals do that for each other all the fucking time. If I wanted to get bitter about how indifferent gay culture is I could easily right now. But I know better then to judge all gay people by the indifference of some.
And when something just fucking drops into your lap, and you just let it float away like a dead leaf in the autumn wind, am I really being a hardass if I see that as a sign that your friendship was a hell of lot shallower then I’d thought it was? I thought we were friends. I don’t just say that word to everyone I know. Friends. I put my heart into your hands, hopes and dreams and wounds and all, and you let it drop on the floor. Is it my fault that it broke? Maybe. If it was my fault I put my heart there in the first place. Should I have known better?
I don’t think of myself as a particularly high maintenance friend. But I have my tender spots and in my defense I practically wear some of them on my sleeve. You had to know what you were doing to me when you did that. Or you’ve just been so goddamned lucky in your own love life it’s so completely so utterly blinded you to how hard it is for others, that you thought it wasn’t any big deal. Or maybe you just decided on your own that it wasn’t right for me. Would have been nice to have had the chance to decide that for myself.
A chance. That’s all I ask of my friends, is when a chance comes along, they let me have it. Maybe nothing at all comes of it. Fine. At least I had another chance, and it’s seeing the occasional chance still coming my way that keeps me going at my age. A chance. It fell into your lap. And instead of letting me have it, you kept it, and let it slowly wither into nothing. It’s gone now. Gone. And I’m left wondering what the fuck you were thinking when you let that happen. I suppose now you’re sorry you even told me about it to begin with. Of course the thing to be sorry about is you told me, not that you let it die.
I am not angry. I’m sad. But life, and the one great grief in my own, go on. I’ve been dealing with the big grief for decades now. I can deal with this.
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