At some point, either while I was packing for my December trip to California, or during my train ride there, or while I was there, I either misplaced or lost my passport. And it’s been driving me nuts this whole time, not even being able to remember if I actually Did pack it, or when it went missing during the trip. It’s like a black hole in my memory. If you’ve ever experienced anything like it you know how disturbing it is.

I’ve been mostly assuming it was stolen out of my luggage while traveling, but something that argues against that is it would have been in the same luggage pocket where I also had $200 in cash for miscellaneous trip expenses, and all that money, less what I spent, made it to California. I just can’t remember if the passport did or not, or was even in my luggage at that time. I remember unpacking when I got to my brother’s house, but I don’t remember if I saw or did anything with the passport. What I do remember is when I packed for my return home I looked for the passport, could not find it anywhere, and assumed I must have left it at home. But when I got back home I checked the safe for it and it wasn’t there.

I looked everywhere in the house for it after that, and began to panic when I could not find it, and worse, could not remember what I did with it while packing for the trip, or during the trip, or after the trip. I remembered taking it out of the safe while considering whether to take it with me because of all the ICE activity happening just then, and thinking I might need it for identification. But I kept drawing a complete blank as to whether or not I actually packed it along. It was maddening because I know I would have been careful about what I did with it it and yet I could remember nothing about what I did with it.

For weeks after returning from California, right up until last Wednesday while I was packing to go visit a friend in Sunbury Pennsylvania, I kept revisiting all the places in my house that I searched, hoping to find it in some nook or cranny I’d overlooked, or that it would just magically appear right before my eyes somewhere I’d looked before and hadn’t seen it. I checked every piece of luggage I own for the umpteenth time. I checked my briefcases. I checked all my backpacks, including the ones I plan to give away because I don’t use those anymore. I checked the other safes in the house. I checked my file cabinets. I checked every drawer in the house. Oh…and under the bed.

I asked my brother to double check my bedroom there in his house and he could not find it anywhere I suggested it might be. Which must mean it was stolen on the way out to California. But not the cash too? Nothing made sense, and I could remember nothing.

Since my Parkinson’s diagnosis, which I got finally some months after the December trip, I’ve been wondering if the Parkinson’s brain fog hasn’t played a part in all this.

So I felt that I had to tell the Feds that I’d either lost my passport, or it was stolen, and get a replacement. I didn’t want my passport being used for crime, so the Feds needed to know I didn’t have it.

Reporting it lost or stolen was easy-ish. I got online and filled out a form. But where it asked if it was stolen or lost I had to say I could not say. Maybe it was lost somewhere or maybe someone stole it while I was on the train, or while my luggage was in the luggage room in the first class lounge in Chicago. Those Amtrak bedrooms don’t lock on the outside, and anyone could have got in and rummaged though my luggage, which I hadn’t locked because I was carrying it with me. A mistake I won’t make again. The form asked when the passport was issued and I did not know because I only copied down its number not its issue or expiration date. Another mistake I won’t make again. I made an awkward guess as to the issue date.

I discovered I could not simply ask for a replacement passport, I had to apply for a new one. So I downloaded the application for a new passport form. I would need to submit it with a birth certificate. And so I came to another difficulty: I’d lost one of my birth certificates too. And once again it was a situation where I could not remember what happened to it, and looking everywhere in the house for it and not finding it.

I think the last time I had it in my hands was when I went to the Maryland DMV to get the Real ID thing on my driver’s license. I might have left it there. But I don’t know. I would have taken a folder of identification things with me, including the passport, and like when I applied for TSA Precheck the person behind the desk just glommed right onto my passport and ignored everything else. Which convinced me that a passport is the gold standard for ID.

Luckily I had two copies of my birth certificate. For some reason mom had ordered two copies and I inherited the second one after she passed away. But the second one, identical to the first one, did not have the notary seal on it, but on a separate California document stapled to it with the notary’s signature. I wasn’t sure that one would be accepted, but I went to the post office with it anyway and the application for a new passport I’d downloaded when I submitted the lost or stolen document.

The lady at the post office looked that other birth certificate over and didn’t throw it back at me so I felt a little relieved. She took another passport photo of me, bundled everything together and I paid the usual, not the expedited service fee, since I mostly wanted it for whenever I needed that gold standard ID, and maybe some possible trips outside the country when I retired a second time.

A couple days later I got an email saying my passport application was being processed and it might take six to eight weeks to arrive. I felt a wave of relief. It was short lived. About a week later I got a letter from the State Department telling me my application was put on hold and I needed to submit a birth certificate and, confusingly, the lost or stolen passport form that I’d submitted digitally on the website.

I found myself thinking the digital submission didn’t take for some reason. But the request for a birth certificate was more troubling. The one I submitted was identical to the one that got me my first passport, but it didn’t have the notary seal directly on it, but was stapled to it on an official document with the notary’s signature. I figured that was that sticking point.

So I looked up what the State Department regarded as a legitimate birth certificate and neither of mine looked anything like the sample on their website. They were both official documents from either the State of California or the hospital I was born at, a “Certificate of Live Birth” (that phrase always creeped me out a bit). But apparently they did not meet the standard. My mom’s birth certificate, which I have, looks exactly like the one on the State Department website: a very ornate thing like something you might frame and put on the wall next to your Employee of the Month Performance Award. (Here is my certificate of Live Birth, and here is my Five Years Without A Sick Day Service Award…) Until I looked it up I had no idea birth certificates were so…official looking. Mine looked something like a W-2.

I had a co-worker who was born at the same hospital I was (small world). He retired but I saw him one afternoon in the Institute cafeteria and asked him if he knew how hard it was to get another copy of a birth certificate from that hospital. He told me the hospital was closed some time ago. It was considered a California heritage site but the building had a fire that destroyed a lot of the interior. Our physical records he said, might have been lost.

I began to despair. I stalled for weeks about going to the California website and at least seeing what I might have to do to get a new copy of my birth certificate. I checked a few places. One thing I saw was if I had a passport that would make the process easy. Swell. I considered waiting until I could get out there with whatever documentation I had, Real ID driver’s license, past tax forms, mortgage statements, the old passport with holes in it, anything that might help, and throw myself on the mercy of the bureaucracy.

It was getting scary. In this day and age of Trump/ICE if I’m asked suddenly to prove I’m a citizen, how do I do it without either a passport or birth certificate? That fear was why I’d thought to take the passport with me to California last December in the first place.

This whole thing was severely stressing me out for weeks. Not just that the only ID I had now was my Real ID driver’s license, which I kept hearing was not good enough for Trump’s goons, but also that I could NOT remember what had happened to either my passport or that birth certificate that got me the first passport. And now I didn’t even have the other one because it had been sent to the State Department which it seemed didn’t like it.

Every time I began gnawing at it I would stress myself into a state of despair. It was the perfect storm of executive disfunction: having an array of paths to take, none of which I liked. All I did was stress every time I tried to think my way out of it.

So I just sat on it for weeks.

Last Wednesday I began packing for a trip to Sunbury Pennsylvania to visit a friend, Peterson Toscano, and maybe get my photographic eye opened again because Sunbury always gives my cameras something to love, and I desperately needed to feel that fire in me again after what Parkinson’s has been doing to my mind. While I packed, I took yet another opportunity to visit every place in the house I thought my passport might be. Again. And once again I could not find it. It was becoming a routine.

When I came back home yesterday I saw I’d received a priority mail envelope from U.S., Government Official Mail with a tracking bar code on it. As soon as I picked it up I could feel something like a passport inside of it. I bolted for the kitchen table and opened it up. There Was a passport inside of it.

I was so overjoyed you can’t imagine! All these weeks of stressing over it suddenly over. The wave of absolute relief practically swept me up off my feet. And then, more confusion.

My first thought was this was my lost passport and someone found it, sent it to the Feds and they’re sending it back to me. But no…checking it more carefully I could see it was a replacement, in fact it says on the first page that it is a replacement for a lost passport. It had been issued only a few days previously, and it arrived within the six to eight week timeframe they originally said a replacement would arrive in. But why then did I get that letter telling me my application was on hold until I got the correct documentation submitted?

I have no idea what was going on. None. Maybe my stalling over it for weeks had left it in someone’s inbox and a supervisor took another look at it and decided my old California birth certificate was good enough and yes I’d submitted the lost/stolen form digitally and that was good enough. Maybe my passport Had been stolen and some crook tried to use it and got caught and my passport confiscated and sent back to the State Department, which caused somebody to look and see if I’d reported it lost or stolen, and that broke the logjam on my application. I have no idea but I am So glad, So relieved, that I have a passport again and I’m not without that gold standard of identification anymore.

These days being without ID is risky. I keep thinking of this from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long by Robert Heinlein:

“When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere.”

Heinlein seems to have thought of himself as a “rational anarchist”. The older I get, the more I have to live in Donald Trump’s America, the more I find myself moving toward Heinlein. But I’m not there yet.

And this is the here and now, and my passport is Not leaving that safe again unless I am travelling with it or going somewhere to have some sort of ID background check done (like another Goddard badge, which isn’t likely now since I’m about to be retired again after Roman launches) and if that’s the case it is going in one of those around the neck passport wallets and Not Leaving My Body until I can get it back into the safe!

Hopefully they send me back the birth certificate I submitted my application with. But I am going to try and get another good one from California. Having the passport now might make it easier. If my original documentation didn’t go up in flames when my birth hospital burned.

I ordered a few books on the subject from Barnes & Noble and I had to laugh when I saw the “For Dummies” title in the list. But then I thought that one would give me an overview that would point me to topics to dig into further, and I ordered it anyway. In addition to these two I also ordered Navigating Life With Parkinson’s Disease (second edition) by Sotirios A. Parashos, MD. PhD and Rose L. Wichmann, PT.  They came yesterday.

Today starts my second week on the meds and I go to one pill three times a day. Last week was a half pill three times a day and those darn pills are a bit too crumbly. I have to be really careful when using the pill cutter on one or I’m taking a dose of pill dust. But for some reason the doctor needs me to ramp up to the correct dose over three weeks. It might be because a common side effect is nausea and they want my body to get accustomed to it gradually. I can say that so far I’ve experienced zero nausea. Which is good because that is the worst feeling ever. I’d rather have a toothache than nausea.

I’m hoping to see some improvement now since I really didn’t see any on the half pill dose. This morning wasn’t a good one when I first got up and took my morning coffee walk, but I’m feeling noticeably less unbalanced now. I have some work in the backyard I want to take care of so I’ll see how it goes.

Nobody is more self aware than the overthinker. I’m getting used to taking the measure of things as I’m getting ready for my day in the morning. How is the balance? The finger tremors? I do some practice quick turns to see how bad the unbalance is this morning. As I make my morning coffee I pay attention to how well my fingers are doing my bidding. Where once was a really irritating loss of focus and precision I had no explanation for, other than every doctor I talked to about it saying oh its just you’re getting old, now I have a reason for what’s happening. I have something to take a measure of. So how’s the Parkinson’s today?

I feel like I should be more angsty about it, but it’s not even close to debilitating just yet. It’s not great, but I can handle it at this stage. See my previous post about altered states of consciousness. I really want to be able to focus on some of the art projects I have in mind before it gets too much worse and the focus isn’t there. I’m really hoping the new meds give it at least some of that back for a while longer. I want to take more road trips while I’m still good to drive, but thank you all the idiots who voted for Trump, fuel prices are making that impossible, especially on a retirement income.

But the big factor as to why I’m not more upset about it is I’m in my 70s now and it’s not like I got this diagnosis in my twenties or thirties (that does happen), and the life I thought I had in front of me suddenly isn’t there anymore. I can look back on a lot of…interesting times…my only regret, and it’s a big one, is I had nobody to share it with heart and soul. But at least most of that is behind me now, not a lost life I could have had in front of me.

At this age your sort of expect it’s going to be Something. I just thought it would be the heart.

Some morning’s when I get up I’m a bit more out of balance, have a bit more hand tremors, then others. At least now I know why. Knowledge is grounding in its way, but the fact of it is still irritating. That said, I and my particular generation may have a slight advantage navigating Parkinson’s. At least some of us.

A friend told me once about how his elderly mom had been given an opiate for pain relief, and how the side effect of being all fuzzy headed was distressing her. He reassured her that it was okay, that happens, and it was all part of the treatment. Then he mentioned how since back in our younger days we’d all been getting high on all sorts of things, we’d become familiar with the feeling of being high, and navigating on foot while a bit wobbly. We had experience with altered states of consciousness, while his mom had not and it was all new to her and a bit frightening.

This may have played a part in why I hadn’t pushed more vigorously about getting a diagnosis. I could navigate the wobbliness because I’d done it often enough before. Coming on out of the blue like that it didn’t scare me so much as irritate me. And confuse me a bit as to what was going on. No, this isn’t just getting old. Something’s up. Maybe if it had sacred me I’d have pushed harder for a diagnosis.

It still irritates me, but at least I know what’s happening now.

I’ve already told those closest to me about this. Yesterday I talked it over with my project lead and his deputy at Space Telescope. Now I’m going to share it with the rest of you. Because at this age sharing our stories about aging is something we can all do for each other. Also, I’m an artist and wearing our hearts on our sleeves, and on the canvas, is just something we do.

For just over two years I’ve been struggling with our wonderful health care system trying to get a handle on what’s been happening to me. I’ve been getting forgetful, fuzzy headed, can’t focus. I’ve been losing balance, nearly falling over sometimes when I have to change course while walking through a crowd, or going back into the house because I keep inevitably forgetting to take something with me. I have tremors, mostly in the left hand thank goodness because it’s my right hand that’s the drawing hand. But that one’s getting them now too ever so slightly. I favor writing with one of my good fountain pens, usually my Mont Blanc 149 (the Diplomat), and lately I’ve had to be extra careful putting down some of the curvy letters of the alphabet while writing. Sometimes when I’m trying to draw I need to steady the pen with both hands. But I’ve also lost a lot of ability to focus and that’s kept me away from my drafting table and my cameras for going on a year now and that alone is killing me inside. For over two years I’ve been trying to get doctors to look at me and tell me what is happening and all I get is oh you’re just getting old take some vitamins. Okay, fine, I’m 72 now, so I reckon yes that’s old, but this didn’t feel like normal aging.

I ended up changing GPs (general practitioner) because my previous one retired and the new one they gave me at Whitman-Walker just didn’t take an interest. I looked for one at Union Memorial because they’ve done all the work on my heart since the heart attack in 2019 and I’ve never felt better cared for there. It’s an easy place for me to get to from home and I thought it would be good if I had all my doctors working from the same sets of data about me. The new GP I got took an instant interest in what was going on and she gave me several referrals.

First was for a brain scan. It showed nothing out of the ordinary for someone my age. Then there was one for a sleep study that I didn’t follow up on because I’d had a really bad experience with one at Hopkins about a decade and a half ago. Third one was for a neurologist. I had a session with him last Thursday, and finally got clarity.

The session was in thirds. First third was he asked me about what was going on with me and I gave him my laundry list of complaints. Pretty sure he was observing my body language and occasional difficulty getting words out. About halfway through he started asking me questions I wasn’t sure as to their relevance. How is my sense of smell? (it’s been nearly gone since the mid 1980s) When you wake up are your blankets all tangled up? Answer is somewhat, but not much unless I’m too hot and kicking them off.

Second third was your usual neurologist reflex/coordination tests. The little hammer on the knee, can you feel this vibrating here, does that feel cold there, follow my finger with your eyes, touch your nose. He had me walk back and forth in the hallway outside the examination room. I think by then he’d already figured out what was going on and he was trying to see how far along it had progressed.

Tests done we had a chat, which he began by saying to me “What I’m about to tell you isn’t good, but it’s not as bad as you might think.”

I have Parkinson’s.

And this might sound strange, even for me, and inappropriate, but my first reaction to that was an overwhelming sense of relief, because in that moment everything Just Clicked. Finally, after over two years of fighting with the American healthcare system to take my complaining seriously I had an explanation for what was happening to me that made sense. No it’s not good, but going for years and years and still not knowing could only let it keep getting worse and worse when I could have been taking the right meds and doing whatever I need to do to keep it at bay for as long as I can.

Neurologist says I have at least five, if not ten more years before I’ll be needing help. I’m going to make the most of this time, however long it turns out to be. I feel suddenly unchained from worrying so much about my future. I’ve never liked that live for the moment philosophy but now I can see some benefits there after all. I’ve been put on a medication that shovels dopamine into the brain and the neurologist said I should notice an immediate and significant improvement in mental clarity, balance and motor functions when I start taking it. I’ll reach a plateau of improvement that will slowly decline because there is no cure for this, only management. Fine. Whatever. I’ll manage.

I’m not going to troll for sympathy. I don’t even like playing the senior citizen card (just give me my discount). But you get to the ages I and my classmates are now and things just start dogpiling on us and one thing we can do for each other is tell our stories. I’ve been blogging my life ever since blogs first became a thing, and I reckon I’ll keep doing that. Also searching out others who’ve had this diagnosis and listening to their stories.

So now the rest of you know. I’m okay. I’ll deal with it and keep you posted.

For decades this blog has been my way of journaling. I’ve said often that it is a life blog. It gets political at times because that’s life in these United States these days. But it’s a life blog, not a political one. It’s where I write about my life. If it gets strange, I’m strange. If it gets disturbing, you should see my life from my perspective. Welcome to my life. Blog. Thing of it is though, I don’t get a lot of feedback here. And even if I did, it wouldn’t be of the kind we all really need. I never found a boyfriend. I never found that significant other to talk with, to share our innermost selves with. It leaves you disconnected, drifting through life. I can get things out of me in my art, and here on the blog, but it’s a one-way conversation. I’ve never had the chance to share my life with anyone, who would share theirs with me. I’ve had no companion on this journey.

I recently bought a couple journaling books in the hope that, at this end stage of my life, I can gain some better insight into myself. Self acceptance is a hard thing to achieve, especially when you believe you’ve already achieved it. I’ve often prided myself on never feeling ashamed of my sexual orientation, but that is one aspect of personality among many, and looking back I had it very hard growing up, in a bunch of different ways. Picking through all of it to rescue the exuberant, curious, expressive boy I was before getting tossed into grade school has been a lifelong journey. He got suffocated, first by my maternal grandmother and most of her family out of hatred of my dad, then by my grade school teachers who thought I talked too much and took excessive interest in my art projects, then by the pervasive homophobia that surrounded me as I came of age. After mom passed away I entered therapy for a brief period, but it was shallow at best. I was told being an only child was a “toughie” and that I “present young”, as if that was somehow a bad thing and not a lost little portion of that exuberant and expressive boy I once was, still trying to live.

I came across a card game with the title “How Deep Will You Go”, and bought it not to play with anyone, but to draw a card every morning and try to answer the questions: What is your biggest struggle right now? What’s something simple that makes you smile? Is there closure you never got to have? What are you afraid to let go of? I thought these could be helpful for solitary me, who never found a soulmate to have these sorts of conversations with. 

Later I saw a daily journal book, each day a page with a similar sort of question at the top for you to write about on the page below it. Write something you’ve been wanting to tell someone. What’s something you haven’t said out loud yet? Write a letter to someone who hurt you. When I went to order one there was another journal you could get bundled with it, inviting you to dig deeper. Where do you go to feel closest to yourself? 

These were both hardbound books and I figured I would write out my answers with my good fountain pens, my awful handwriting might even improve a tad since I seldom write longhand anymore until I’m signing a document or putting my name on some artwork. My handwriting is very scrawly. But the books have arrived and I’ve begun the work, and immediately discovered a difficulty. I have nowhere to actually write, that isn’t a computer desk with a keyboard taking up the space where handwriting would otherwise happen.

In grade school my maternal grandmother bought me a student desk with open shelves instead of drawers so I couldn’t hide anything from her. I used it all through school and when I finally moved out of the apartment I shared with mom and broke it into little bits because I didn’t want anything of hers to follow me into the rest of my life. I’ve not had a writing desk since, but I bought a very nice drafting table while I was still living with mom and it’s followed me to the little Baltimore rowhouse of my own. I’ll do the journaling exercises on that. Seems appropriate. 

I thought I knew what being a solitary was like after all these decades. But I didn’t. I thought I could always handle it. And unfortunately, I can. But I see something I never really appreciated before. And having that significant other, a body and soul connection where our innermost selves feel completely at ease with each other, embraced, loved, seen…grounded…home…would be really good to have now.

I never found him. I’m an only kid. Maybe that made it easier for me to get used to the inner solitude, even in those times when I tried to escape it and couldn’t. Plus the torrent of abuse gay kids got in the 60s/70s, to remind me that love was not mine to have. I tried to find him, but as I became a senior citizen I settled in to the void because there was no where else to live (people who look like that want people who look like that…) and by then I’d made it comfortable. It was the room of my own I always had ever since I left the cradle, where I could occupy myself with pastimes, where love could have been but never was. I never really grasped how it would feel, when I finally came to this moment, and I saw the void was bigger than I realized without that significant other to keep us both steady.

Got my brain imaged at Union yesterday morning. They said they got good data because I didn’t move throughout the procedure. I perfected the art of playing rag doll for the doctor ages ago. The only time I have trouble with it is when they need to examine the area around my stomach because I am massively ticklish there.

The slow steady increase in my memory problems, combined with my having subtle but definite balance issues, and trouble getting words out sometimes, is troubling me lots. So I am keen to see the results of this. There are two possible things that could be causing it, neither of them are good outcomes. But hopefully it’s just I need to be more regular about taking my vitamins at my age, and getting out of the chair in front of my computer more.

Like…now for instance.

This came in the mail yesterday, and I gave it a first try this morning here at Casa del Garrett…

How Deep Will You Go is advertised as a connection conversation card game to play among friends or lovers. “What if the next time you hang out, phones were away and you saw a side of them you never knew?” There are three types of cards: Ice Breakers, Confessions, and Going Deep. But I didn’t buy this deck to play with others. I’m really not comfortable exposing myself that much to anyone, except the boyfriend I never had, I bought it because it looked like it would give me a more structured way to deep dive into my own self, by randomly picking a card every day and thinking about its question. Self psychoanalysis if you like.

This first morning I tried one of each type. Going forward I think I’ll just pick a card from one type depending on my mood when I wake up. The going deep card I pulled asked me to describe my biggest heartbreak and what it taught me.

Oh boy…

That would not be when I discovered my first crush had moved far away, like out of the country far away, and I’d probably never see him again, and I almost jumped off a bridge in front of a train. Which I didn’t do when it occurred to me that it would probably traumatize the engineer. Isn’t it always the case that when you think about how your life affects others it makes you a better person. But then Elon says empathy is western civilization’s biggest weakness.

No…it was my second crush, a few years later, which when it hit me left me overjoyed to think I’d been given a second chance at love after I was certain it was over for me, and we became very close, to the point of intense heart to heart conversations when we were alone, sending love letters while I was away with other friends on a road trip, then only to realize sometime later that I’d fallen in love with a straight guy, and it would never be.

I think I knew then what the future held. And in a culture that back then gave gay guys nothing but venom and static from every direction…

Mad Magazine, July 1978 by Jack Davis

…who was I to think it would be any different?

Well the card deck is working. I probably gave that question more serious thought than I ever did before. What did I learn? Well…it wasn’t a lesson I was ready to take to heart just then, but I knew it all the same: that we are all utterly, totally, completely alone in this life. That the universe does not care about our deepest heartfelt hopes and dreams, and if we cannot make that heart and soul connection with another, then we either treasure and care for our own heart, so as to at least keep being good people and doing our part to keep civilization moving forward, and loving as best we can our families and friends in this life, and somehow some way endure the empty loneliness ahead of you, or you just go find a bridge and jump.

Obviously I haven’t jumped. But there have been moments it really came close. What I have to think about now is I made a bunch of young gay friends during the Love In Action protests, some of whom still stay in touch with me, and I don’t want to set that example for them. It’s such a stereotypical way for gay guys to go. I don’t want them thinking its inevitable. I want them to see a future.

Empathy isn’t a weakness. It’s what makes civilization possible. It’s what makes moving on with your own life possible, absent that body and soul romance you never got.

My new GP set me up with appointments with a neurologist and a CAT scan, to try and get to the bottom of why I’m tired all the time, slightly dizzy all the time, and have a hard time focusing on tasks for more than short bursts of concentration. She also wants me to schedule a sleep study. So naturally I keep ruminating about the results I might get, particularly regards the CAT scan and what the neurologist might tell me.

I’m 72, and I can feel myself losing it. But if I look at it logically I’m actually in pretty good shape for my age. I’ve outlived some of my classmates, but most of the one’s I’ve kept in touch with are still hanging in there. But anyone with the artistic nature I possess, plus a powerful imagination that I’ve daydreamed in since I was a kid…

…can’t really help but ponder all the possible things a CAT scan might reveal, and what that might me for how much longer I have to live, and all the art projects I never got around to starting, let alone finishing.

So it really doesn’t help when you wake up in the morning hearing your mom calling your name. Especially when she’s been dead for over two decades.

(Panel above is from A Coming Out Story)

The trip back on the Silver Meteor was nice, but I’m glad to be back. My deluxe week in my DVC one bedroom villa was worth the time spent, even though I didn’t do much but eat at the nice restaurants and drink at the good bars and wander around Saratoga Springs. This is a problem that’s only getting worse as time goes on. I have no energy, and no motivation to do art much anymore, other than work on my “ghost” story novel. Which I hope to start serializing here eventually. If I can get motivated to make the illustrations I want to include.

Tomorrow morning I have a first visit with the doctor who will hopefully become my new GP, since the one they connected me with at Whitman-Walker after my prior one retired has been very indifferent. My new one will be affiliated with the same hospital my cardiologist and the surgeon who did my ablation are, and hopefully this results in better care for this 72 year old body. I’m going to talk to them about how I’m tired all the time anymore (it was almost too much just to walk to the grocery store a few blocks away to restock some items), and getting way too forgetful.

I put a lot of things down to being single and lonely, but I’m pretty sure I don’t fit the description of someone who is clinically depressed. On the train ride back I had a wonderful time chatting with my fellow travelers in the dining car and at various stopping-refueling points along the way, where passengers have a few moments to step outside the train and get some fresh air. I am not so introverted that I can’t enjoy the company of people I’ve never met before, where the situation provides natural ice breakers. It’s different than the highly competitive and very cliquish crowd at a gay bar, which was my problem with socializing in that environment. Not that they likely ever wanted to give solitary me an assist anyway, but all I ever needed was an ice breaker, and all I ever got from them was gaslighting about being too shy. Tico once told me I was good at getting a stand-offish table at Biergarten talking to each other and having a good time together, but that was Disney World which has an assortment of built-in icebreakers I could use. Actually, I really dislike sitting quietly by myself when I’m out and about. If I want solitude I can get it at home. Or just take a long walk. Go on a road trip.

But that’s probably also a problem, and partly at least, if not more, why I’m so tired and unmotivated anymore. My house is a lonely place. I walk alone. I go places, driver here and there and meet people along the way, but on the road it is just me and my car. That has been slowly killing me for years, I see now. 

There are dark times I keep picking at that I shouldn’t by now, but I can’t help myself. Tico telling me to go away would be one. But seeing, finally, the total indifference of the gay guys I trusted, and thought of as friends, was another, and it is worse. Tico got angry at me. The others stuck a knife in my heart like it was no big deal, and I’m pretty sure to this day they think I overreacted. It is indifference, not hate, as Elie Wiesel once said, that is the opposite of love.

I would add one more thing: friends get angry at each other, strangers just stick the knife in and walk away.

I think I’ve over all that. Or just getting old. Whatever. This is not a day to be spoiling other people’s joy. Instead I’m going to try and cultivate some of my own. Or at any rate, at least some peace of mind.

Alas, the nice local upscale restaurant I would have treated myself to today, La Cuchara, has been closed for over a month now due to a fire in one of its kitchen vents. I’m really hoping they come back. It was expensive but worth every penny.

Probably do Wicked Sister’s. I love their crab cake dinner, and some of their house cocktails are pretty good.

A classmate shared on his Facebook page something from a fellow traveler about how just the act of leaving the comfortable United States and going somewhere else. He begins his post with…

To the People Who Have Never Left Their Zip Code:

You Need to Come to Thailand. Not for a Holiday, but for an Intervention.

I look at my friends back in the West. Their lives are perfect. They have sub-floor heating. They have lanes for everything. Their biggest stress is if the Amazon package arrives late. And they are bored out of their minds.

You need to visit Thailand at least once before you die, just to remember you are alive.

His post is about getting Out Of Your Comfort Zone from time to time, and seeing that there is a world beyond our own borders, and that world is different in many ways.

I’ve only done it once in my life, and most likely never will again. But yes, definitely yes, and my beyond the borders awakening happened in Puerto Vallarta. I offered this comment to my classmate’s post…

This is sorta-kinda like what I experienced when some people I once knew took me to Puerto Vallarta some years ago. It was the first, and so far only time I’ve been outside the country.

We stayed at a bed and breakfast in the old cobblestone part of town. It was a lovely residence that was probably once a very well to do family’s hacienda with many nice rooms and a large open courtyard with flowering plants, fountains and a swimming pool. Powerlines hung within a foot or two from the second floor balconies and the landlord told us not to reach out and touch them or we’d be going back home in a wooden box. It had its own water filtration system but we were warned to use only the bottled water for things like brushing our teeth.

Outside on one of my walks I saw men working on repairing a set of steps leading to a back door. They had taken the electric meter off the side of a building across the street, stuck two metal tangs into its base and from those ran jumper cables across the street over to a power drill’s cord that only bare wire at the end, instead of a plug. Everywhere I looked in that old part of town I saw stunningly beautiful examples of old Mexican architecture that were lovingly well maintained, alongside of places that looked a little iffy. I eventually found myself always looking around to make sure I wasn’t getting too close to any live power lines.

The landlord told us the general rule on the streets was if a pedestrian gets hit it’s their fault. It wasn’t just a matter of paying attention to the traffic signs and lights. I saw one four way intersection that only had one approach controlled by a light, the other three were place your bets and take your chances.

The people were wonderful, friendly, and appreciated tourists who made an effort to communicate in their language. Arranging purchases and asking for directions turned out to be very easy. I quickly mastered several important language items such as “Please”, “Thank you”, “Which way to the bathroom”, and “No thank you I am not interested in buying a timeshare.”

On one of my walks I noticed I was getting a blister on my right heel, and started looking around for a place to buy a bandage. I wasn’t sure what they called a drug store in Mexico but I looked around, and eventually saw a very Very small storefront tucked in between much two larger ones with the word “farmacia” on the overhead sign and thought, close enough. When I got inside it was obviously what I was looking for, and I said simply “bandage?” to the man at the front counter, hoping to be understood. He just nodded and pointed, and what needed was there. Paying for things was easy since the ATMs dispensed local currency and accepted my American Express card, and calculating dollars to pesos just then simply meant moving the decimal point one over.

I would love to go back, but I have no one to travel with alas, and getting too old for it now anyway. But I have a lot of lovely memories of that place. Wish I’d done more of it now.

Yeah. I reckon I should have done more of that before I got so old. So it goes, so it went…

From our Department Of Oversharing Yourself…

[Note…this has been edited massively since I first posted it. Maybe read it again?]

The other day I shared a post on Facebook about something that interests me very much, and touches on a muse that informs my artwork to a large degree. And it was just to share something that interests me but was also, in a way, like everything I put up there or on my blog, about me. The response was not exactly what I expected, but weirdlings like me get that periodically.

It was a post about the geology of the east coast and how it shaped the history of european migration into north America…

“So there is an invisible line that’s just going through the eastern US. You probably haven’t noticed it, but this line is important. You’ve crossed it again. You didn’t notice. You didn’t even know existed. But this line determines where the cities are when the rivers start getting all wonky. It’s called the fall line. Not because it’s where people fall, but it’s actually. Well, it’s where the rivers fall. Like, they. They stop being chill rivers, and they fall violently. So the fall line is the boundary where ancient hard bedrock meets softer coastal sediments. This means this is where rivers go from being chill and navigable. Navigable to white knuckle chaos. This all happens within a mile. And that’s because we have the Appalachian Mountains right there, and they’re pretty old. And over hundreds of millions of years, they eroded and dumped to this sediment along the coast, gradually dumping it eastward, creating this coastal plain. So now we have solid rock on one side and soft clay and sand on the other. And water hates this transition. That’s why every major East Coast city sits on this line. You know, you have Philly, you got Baltimore, you got Raleigh, you got Atlanta, Richmond, DC, Columbia, you name it. These are all the furthest points that settlers could reach inland before the water turned to waterfall chaos. So they stopped there, they said, that’s good, built cities, installed Mills, collected money, and the rest is literally history. Fall Line created a hydro power. Before electricity. It created trade routes. And this fall line is important today. You know, soil chemistry, flooding and seismic activity.”  (post by Active Earth on Facebook)

As you can see it has a bunch of awkward language in it that I just glossed over for the fresh take on the information in it. I’ve seen badly constructed sentences like that before and it’s not always an AI artifact. People will often fiddle finger a keyboard and/or express themselves awkwardly. I can relate, I have thoroughly mucked up language in my own text from impatient editing and re-editing and then posting it somewhere I can’t fix what I later realized I mucked up. Now I try to let the words simmer a while before clicking on PUBLISH. But I understood the facts presented to be correct so I shared it. Because the artifacts geologic time and human history leave behind have fascinated and enchanted me ever since I was a small boy wandering around on foot. I just assumed everyone else I know on Facebook would be enchanted too. I make that mistake lots.

Here’s the image of the invisible line that accompanied the post…

It’s not exactly invisible, in fact it’s pretty obvious once you know it’s there, but you have to have driven up and down the east coast to figure that out. I’ve been pondering it for a long time. Ever since I got my first driver’s license actually. The thing is, you don’t have to drive the roads of North America very much to appreciate how its geology has shaped human migrations and history. What gets surprising as you learn more about it is how deep into the details of our history that goes. 

Well before I was old enough to really grasp what it was I was seeing in things like a meandering creek beds, highways, or rows of storefronts, I was thinking to myself, why is it like that? The different scales of time, human versus geological, and then to the astronomical, was a source of deeply felt awe even at that age. Mom eventually gave me a Little Golden Book Of The Stars And Planets that I still have, because she kept seeing me looking up at the night sky in wonderment.

Now I take long road trips. I remember one moment I was driving through a little town called Mexican Hat in Utah and saw layers of rock in cliffsides not far from the road, bent like liquid waves in an ocean.

It was amazing. I had to pull off the road and get my camera out, and I just stood there for I don’t know how long drinking it all in. I tried to get a sense of how long it must have taken to bend that rock above the town into those shapes. I later learned that the rock was uplifted and tilted on its side, and then it eroded into those shapes, something like what happened in Arches National Park. I was staring at evidence of time on a scale I knew I could not grasp and it was thrilling. And then I remembered that was sedimentary rock. How long did that take to form? Right…this was all an inland sea at one time wasn’t it? And now it’s how far above sea level?

Every time I take the drive to Florida and Disney World I think about how I-95, at least from the part of it I know well from Pennsylvania to Georgia, practically defines the line between the piedmont and the coastal plains. The first major north south highway wasn’t Route 1, it was the Atlantic Highway, which brought people and settlements that they kept building because that’s what humans do. To expand, add new pavement and towns, they had to do that west of where they built that first auto trail because to the east was the sea. So that’s where I-95 eventually ended up, right along the boundary line between the old mountains and the coastal plains the erosion of those mountains helped to form, because building it there was cheaper and by then there were already local roads, like route 301 (which I still want to drive one day).

I have walked and driven it lots, that sudden transition from piedmont to coastal plains. Those shots of Great Falls in that article…

…I’ve stood there, hiked Billy Goat trail. The Potomac River is still cutting its way down to the coastal plains as you watch. Back in the day it made the river unnavigable, so they built a canal with locks on the Maryland side. An attempt to build one on the Virginia side was made and then abandoned. Then the first steam powered railroads became a thing and a railroad was built along the river that killed off the canal, which is now a park and tourist attraction. I used to hike the towpath lots.

Every time I swing around the Baltimore beltway from US 40 down to I-95 I get to see a lovely view looking down from where the Maryland piedmont drops onto the coastal plains. Early on the B&O Railroad put a tunnel under Baltimore because they figured it would be cheaper than trying to do it over the Maryland piedmont or crossing the Patapsco and it nearly bankrupted them. Baltimore straddles that divide. I live in the piedmont part of the city and can walk and few blocks and look down on the coastal plains part. I’ve seen the drop even more spectacularly whenever I went south after a visit with mom in Hillsville, down I-77, but even much more so on route 52 next to it, in the place they call Fancy Gap.

That natural barrier, one of many across North America, changed the way people migrated and you can still see it in the maps of highways, railroad and cities and towns. And here’s the thing: he past isn’t really past. It’s still there in the old main streets. In the earth beneath our feet. In the atoms and stars.

You can visualize towns forming like crystal growth around a sweet spot in the earth. Then as time goes on there is evolution. Old buildings retrofitted and made new again and again, and if you look closely you can figure out what they started out as. There’s a pest control company in a building not far from my house that was obviously once a trolly car barn. But that would have been before Hampden was part of Baltimore city and The Avenue was third avenue, not 36th street.

The story of humanity is laid out in front of you as you walk or drive, or just look at the map. It is also the story of the Earth. Which is also the story of the universe.

But this muse is something, I reckon, that sets me apart. Even among the freaks and geeks.

I get a paper cut and pause while dripping some antiseptic on it to consider how it’s red because of blood cells that hold the shards of an ancient sun. Some decades ago in a science magazine I saw a schematic of the atomic structure of a hemoglobin molecule and it indicated four iron atoms. Those iron atoms are what make it work to transport oxygen throughout the body. My weirdness tells me that, in a sense, we still burn from the heat of that ancient star. Okay, its ash. But still…

I know where you can look up and if the sky is dark enough see a fuzzy blotch of light that took two and a half million years to reach your eyes, which themselves evolved from the first mammalian eyes two-hundred million years ago, made of stardust that’s billions of years old.

That sense of the scale of time informs my art…weirdly.  Where you really see it is in my pure art photography galleries. But I can see the weirdness of me in all of it, even in the photojournalism galleries. For a while I was doing oil paintings that were weird imaginary landscapes that were my musings about the infinite disregard of space and time.

I have a friend who gives me the same lecture practically every time we’re together, about how it’s okay to be crazy as long as you don’t let Them know it because you might lose your freedom. I’m not sure exactly what he’s trying to tell me but in these Donald Trump days I feel like I’m not crazy I’m just ahead of the curve (that was a Heath Ledger Joker reference). But I’m fine with me. It took me decades and finally reaching my 70s, but I’m fine with me. Mostly. I’m not hurting anyone by being me. I do my work, I pay my bills, I keep my promises and the trust of others. I look out for my neighbors. Yes I’m stubborn, I have a temper, I get impatient over trivial things. I take things to heart that maybe I shouldn’t while other things I maybe should pay attention to go right over my head. I hate being talked over, and I don’t socialize very well with more than a few people I know at a single time. Sometimes what comes out of my mouth is the tail end of a train of thought no one else in the room was privy to. Which is probably why I get Those Puzzled Looks from time to time. I make strange art.

And sometimes I toss things out there on Facebook because something about it completely enchanted me. Like that video of the blue grey gnatcatcher, or the one of that alligator attacking a painting of a deer, or the musician playing Vince Guaraldi on his electric keyboard accompanied by the clothes dryer. Cool stuff. I’d share them here but embedding videos in your blog has become a lot more problematic now that they’re business assets.

And that post about the line between the piedmont and the coastal plains.

If you don’t get what I’m sharing or why, just keep scrolling…swipe left…whatever…

[Edited Massively… Apologies if you read the previous version I put up here while I was still feeling stung over the comments I got on Facebook. I’m still feeling stung, but I think I’ve handled it better now]

Way too cute for my own good college age guy behind the counter at the camera store in San Luis Obispo when I went there looking for red filters for my Canon F1n and Miranda Sensorex. Even worse, he knew everything about my F1s and really liked that I had that Sensorex and we talked film photography all the while he was digging up filters. Or trying to.

Searching for parts for film cameras these days is a lot like browsing flea market tables. You find a camera store that stocks used equipment and asking about things like filters and lens caps quickly turns into a deep search through boxes and trays. But that’s how it is. I feel lucky there’s even a decent camera store nearby.

They didn’t have any to fit the 28mm lenses I had on those cameras, but instead of just throwing up his hands and telling me he couldn’t help me, this kid digs up a 62mm red filter and proposed finding me some step up rings for both lenses for that filter.

I liked the idea because I didn’t want to have to go online for the filters I wanted. You find any camera stores now that have stuff for film cameras and you want to support them so they stay in business. And this kid’s creative solution to the problem was appealing. I could tell he wasn’t just trying to sell me something, he was trying hard to help a fellow photographer. I mean…he just took one look at my cameras and we instantly clicked. So to speak.

Eventually the counter top between us filled up with step up/step down rings and he kept trying this and that combination until he found ones that worked for both cameras. All the while we kept talking photography and film cameras. While checking my F1n to make sure the step up rings weren’t causing any vignetting with the 28mm lens he looked confused momentarily, then we both realized I had installed a diopter on the viewfinder and his eyes, being still 20/20, couldn’t quite focus with that in place. He was super impressed that I’d managed to find a genuine Canon diopter. I told him I’d got that camera body long enough ago that parts for it weren’t so hard to find, but I still had to look hard for diopters.

Then he realized the Canon F1 I had with me was an F1n…the slight improvement over the original F1, which he had one of and loved. I think my heart skipped a beat right just then. I remarked about how one tiny but very nice improvement over the original was the battery check button position was spring loaded so you couldn’t accidentally leave the battery check on and drain the battery. He emphatically agreed and wondered why they’d not done that on the first generation F1s.

I showed him some of my shots of Monument Valley as a way of explaining why I like to work in black and white with a red filter. He loved them, told me what he liked most about them, and about the film he likes to use that gets him similar results. And it really cheered me up to see how another generation of film photographers was coming into their own.

I think a good rule of thumb now for film photographers is if you need supplies go find a college town nearby if possible. The kids there are into it. I often see Hopkins students at the camera store near where I live in Baltimore.

So many times I run into other middle age and older photographers and we start talking and it turns into a subtextual duel to see who the alpha photographer is (that happens with software developers too). This kid (yes I got his name but I won’t repeat it here) and I just started talking like a couple fellow countrymen. We had a perfect affinity, at least regarding our mutual love of photography. Made me feel very good.

And wishing I was 40 years younger so I could ask for his phone number, and could he take me someplace he knows where there are good photos to be had, and I’d bring my camera. And some film. And that red filter he just sold me.