NOT REALLY QUARANTINED DAY ____.
Monday was yet another windy day in mid-Michigan, and other than some brief time reintroducing myself to the dread-mill, lifting heavy things for no reason, and my thrice-weekly trip to the grocery store, I did nothing.
I did manage to work on losing what’s left of my mind by going through and processing some photos I took late last July during a brief visit home to Pennsylvania.
I had gone back to see my dad after his heart surgery, and I had to stay a night alone in my boyhood home. To kill some time before going to bed in the dustiest, most Jesus-filled bedroom in the world1, I rummaged around the cellar of the house—hoping not to find a body—taking some photos with my Ricoh GR. I knew there would be some old branding, grungy typography, junk, and a giant, heaping pile of What The Actual Fuck is That?? to make good subject matter.
1 of 15 in the bedroom. If you think the wall looks bad, you should see the ceiling.
However, the combinations of seeing my father in the hospital, his deteriorating physical and mental health, as well as his utter neglect of the home I grew up in, and the squalor he chooses to live in2 left me with such a level of stress, rage, and depression that the thought of looking at the images left me sick in the stomach.
My grandmother canned these beets. She’s been dead 16 years and probably hadn’t canned since at least the late 90s. Want some?
Part of me wanted to delete them from the memory card and forget I ever took them. Instead, I downloaded them and did my best to bury those emotions deep in my psyche that is already crowded with rotting emotional corpses.
Now, 8+ months later, our little global Pandemic-A-Go-Go has allowed me the time to revisit and let go of some of the emotions I felt that day. Well, at least enough to separate my personal feelings from the images themselves. Images that, for the most part, I quite like.
***
***
***
I’m not sure Wifey thought me revisiting the photos was such a great idea for my mind during a global pandemic, and she was probably right, but sometimes I just can’t help myself from pissing in oceans of depression and emotional baggage. Nothing a little liquor and antidepressant can’t help with. I’m joking! I joke. Not really.
Mork calling Orson, come in Orson.
***
In the near future I will be posting pic or two a day from this post on my Instagram account with a bit more detail on what the hell you are looking at.
***
Climax, meat, that logo. SO much to say about this.
***
***
***
***
***
I have no idea what substance is in this jar. I’m sure it’s toxic.
***
***
Rollin’ blunts?
***
Can of Spaghetti O’s that expired in 2000. Meaning it was probably canned in the 80s. It was empty, save for a nugget of some sort rolling around in it.
I’m hoping to get out for some time in the woods today, maybe all that wind will blow any remaining funk off of me.
Later.
- In that bedroom alone, I counted upwards of 15 crosses, paintings, statues, and candles featuring Jesus and/or his posse. I prayed to all 15 in the hopes my sneezing and watering eyes would ease, but I was denied and left an itchy, snot-filled mess.
- Please note that I spent years urging him and offering to help him get his body and his house in shape but was ignored.