RESTORING 'AUNT LILLIAN', MY GRANDMOTHER'S OLDER SISTER, FROM A FADED, TATTERED OLD PHOTOGRAPH LEFT IN MY GRANDMOTHER'S ANTIQUE, STRAPPED TRAVEL TRUNK....

an hour of work, cleaning up this old, very Victorian, funereal postcard photo of Great Aunt Lillian Cook......As she aged, she became much more beautiful and more sophisticated than her 4 sisters.......

EVERYONE SEEMS TO NEED TO GET "IN".......

It was uplifting to discover, today....that I would still be admitted to my College........However, I noticed that it NOW costs about $71,000/YR to play and live in the Academic arena......A friend and contemporary of mine, who is 'out of work', has two 'children' there now.....always begging for 'some spending money', clothing, vacations to Europe and 'summer sailing' trips....; and, had to 'borrow' $160,000....to support his two 'kids'...who are now 'begging' for new vehicles.....,ashamed to be seen in their 'old cars'....(or 'last year's' mobile phones).....Get a Life, 'kids'!.....and 'kick those freeloading kids out of the comfy nest of irresponsibility........ I can barely 'imagine' shelling out $71K to take creative writing, painting and drawing, ancient philosophy and Latin Poetry of Ovid courses....then, as I did, get a job selling clothes at a department store.....,,or 'waiting tables', bartending or.....worse scenario....working on a garbage truck, dumping trash into a compactor....

Blake and Francis - Swimming Home to some insipid "Polish" pop song in this Teratological Films Study

from the Films On DVD "stack"....BROTHERS OF THE HEAD, DEAD RINGERS and TWIN FALLS IDAHO......a film festival of movies about co-joined twins......just finished TWIN FALLS IDAHO.......written, directed and with music written by twins, Michael and Mark Polish, and co-starring Michele Hicks (wife of Jonny Lee Miller).....in whom I've developed an emotional bond. I was born with an identical twin that died in infancy, and this may be the source of my interest in twins, as I have had many friends who were also twins.....Two of my great-uncles were identical twins as were two of my paternal aunts and five pairs of close neighbors, as a child......All of us want to be "connected" to someone and a great fear is the inevitability of separation and loss:

I HAVE THE TOY BUNNY, STILL.....BUT....NOT....THE OBJECT OF MY FIRST 'REAL' AFFECTIONS.......

 I 'dug out' the old Agfascope200 from the basement...for a current project.....Within it, was stuck..crooked in the carrier....a 1965 'color transparency' of my first 'boyfriend', Lex, with his Sebastian Flyte stuffed animal......a gentle Praxitelian picture of perfection, then.....beneath his soft beauty...there was an egghead philosopher/poet, Greek-style wrestler, French-style fencer, and Theater Set lighting designer, who eventually majored in theoretical mathematics, and, later, while in Atlanta....gained a PhD in Radar System Design....Who'd a thought it!.....When this photo was taken, he was a Rimbaud scholar and poet!....thus, our 'connection'.....

my first roommate, during my senior year of College.......whom I became fixated on.    the 'feelings' were, at that time, mutual........but, temporary...like most early infatuations...  We exchanged long letters, poetry and dream revelations for a year after being separated by a couple of thousand miles.......My letters were returned, bound lovingly with margin notes....in the romantic tradition of Keats, Byron and Shelley.....and a request that 'this must end!'.......alas.....   I do have the stuffed bunny...its ears in a knot....six decades hence..........

Reading the bound blackbook that I sent 'Charles' in 1968....the hundred pages, written on the IBM Selectric, the pages began to fall from the volume...pages that had been scotch-taped over the more revealing words, written before....now 'beneath'.....a representation of conscious repression.....with fading ink on decomposing paper......I remembered neither of the 'storylines'. However, isn't this the definition of 'repression'? .......forgetting, then forgetting you've forgotten? The brittle yellow tape, having released the 'underneath' from the ablative conjuring, masking the shame of confessional exploratory....

AS TIME GOES ON.........I JUST VIEWED THIS PHOTOGRAPH OF CHARLES, TAKEN YESTERDAY, AUG. 17, 2025........IN A HOSPITAL BED....TEMPERATURE @ 104F.....AT RISK OF DEATH FROM A URINARY TRACT INFECTION........I WOULD NOT HAVE RECOGNIZED 'THIS PERSON'!    

OFTEN, IT TAKES A LESS-TRAVELED PATH TO GAIN A REALISTIC PERSPECTIVE........

YET, ONE CAN ALWAYS FOLLOW THE WORN TRACKS OF THOSE WHO HAVE GONE BEFORE,  IF THE IMPENETRABLE JUNGLE OF LIFE SEEMS FAR TOO INACCESSIBLE OR CHALLENGING......ALTHOUGH....THIS WILL NOT LIKELY LEAD ONE TO THEIR OWN 'PERSONAL' DESTINY, BUT TO ONE OR ANOTHER DESTINATION, SHARED BY PREVIOUS PATHFINDERS AND EXPLORERS....