I don’t have to watch very long to have seen too much.

“Lot Lizards” is the name given to prostitutes who work the parking lots at truck stops. The social observers and commentators dropped the “lot” but kept the “lizard” to dehumanise the prostitutes who work the streets like Figueroa in LA or 27th Avenue in Phoenix, as if it is possible to further dehumanise these women.

I suppose it’s all a matter of packaging that compels the women to negotiate uneven sidewalks in stiletto heels. I watch as a woman walks, one foot in front of the other, as if she were walking an invisible tight rope instead of pavement.

The determination that a woman is a lizard is up to Lizard Hunter’s trained eye. I hope he edits out slack periods in his trolling. Lizard Hunter claims to have fifty thousand followers. 50,000.

This is a scene I could see Diane Arbus photographing. It has the garish quality. The whores in their red sateen shorts or yoga pants contrast with painted cinder block, the facades of 7-Elevens, the signs blinking Checks Cashed or Vapes. The coin laundries, motels, churches offer the back drop. The scenery becomes very familiar I’m sure the lizards must get used to this lizard hunter recording them, cruising in his vehicle, stopping, operating his camera, then driving around the block again. I’m sure if I made the effort and watched long enough I would recognise the women working 27th Ave. I know the businesses already, Quick Corner, Mamoun’s Auto Sales.

The streets carry the vehicular traffic, pick-up (fitting) trucks, sedans, the occasional SUV. One woman is ignoring a man in a blue sedan who said something to her. The self-described “Lizard Hunter” offers a running commentary on the women he features in his videos. What if he just kept quiet?

Say you get tired of watching women in Phoenix. You can watch women in Medellin or Bogotá or Rio de Janeiro hanging out on street corners. The Johns just don’t come by in cars.

If I’m getting bored, I’m wondering how the women are bearing up.

This nightmare is ending. It will be written about, talked about for generations. The pandemic was the pretext for starting new things. The Church hierarchy wants to try new new things, like permanently ending the Traditional Latin Mass and reception of The Precious Body of Christ on the tongue.

Every revolutionary, whether political or ecclesiastical, took the plague as the excuse they needed. I get government money in the mail I didn’t earn. I spend it before it becomes worthless, which it will.

Incredibly wealthy people want to change the definitions of money and wealth. We’ve gone from specie currency (money backed by gold or silver) to fiat currency, money declared valuable by government decree, to virtual currency, money that exists in a digital universe.

Hopefully we will keep our faith in virtual money. If we no longer trust its value, whatever tangible and desired items you possess will be your currency for barter. Books for butter, liquor for meat,

They will manage to have enough money to have wars The idealism will be the veneer to cover the baser woods, the poplar, of greed, power that the war mongers use in constructing their furniture of fate. And we will buy their goods, to give meaning to the empty consumerist lives we all live. We will buy goods to replace what the wars have destroyed. We will rebuild the bridges and buildings the warriors have destroyed.

In chess, do the pawns ever complain?

Am I the only one who has noticed how difficult it is to find a strong team of oxen these days? You would think it was on purpose. Sure pickup trucks are everywhere, with the carbon emissions, rubber tyres,and no need for expensive straw or barn to house it. 

This transportation revolution is down right aggravating sometimes.

It’s been a good day, or couple of days, depending on how you count. I started listening to music, then took a shower, listened to more music. Doesn’t matter what I listened to. The I put my DVD of Viva Zapata into the DVD player. Brando was a great actor, as were Anthony Quinn and Joseph Wiseman. Yet the star of this film is the exquisite black and white cinematography.

I feel as if I could stay up all night and watch movies. So many films, too many to list.

I’m watching Zapata! and I suddenly want a sombrero. This is an Elia Kazan film, one of many great ones And I am going to buy tortillas when the grocery store opens,along with fresh cilantro, limes and avocados.

I am tired, however, I should go to bed. I shall pause the film.They are speaking English, John Steinbeck’s words.

One last thought:

Will the pain of Mexico ever end?

I’ve been looking at “live cams” on YouTube.I watched a couple of Florida beach views,from Fort Myers and Hollywood Beach. They were OK, I suppose,but not really what I wanted to see. So I returned to my perennial favorite, the Brooklyn Bridge live camera view of the Bridge, spanning the East River, looking into Manhattan. In the distance one can see both the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. Ships, boats, barges , and pleasure craft, both motorboats and sailboats, ply the River, passing under the Bridge in all of its granite majesty.The Brooklyn Bridge is the modern cathedral, devoted to function, its span an elongated altar to commerce.

I keep telling myself to go back to bed. I have an ache behind my eyebrows that I think are tears not shed , but more likely, it’s congestion from seasonal allergies.

I switched back to the Ashland rail cam to watch #67 stop on its way to Newport News. A big freight is headed North, the cars nearly all marked with graffiti, as if their function is to serve as the substrate for the artists’ garish colours and gargantuan cartoons.

Life goes on.The workers, wearing hard hats and blaze orange vests, are finishing the improvements to the Ashland Amtrak stop. One day, a “high speed” train will stop in Ashland, the Northeast Corridor has spread South of the Potomac, the Rappahannock by now.

Truth be told I can’t keep my eyes open. They are dry too .And I can’t write comfortably

Later, friends.

Woke up.I felt very vulnerable asleep .I got up, got dressed, came downstairs to pray The Rosary.

Having done that, I considered my loneliness, wishing it would end.

A fourteen year old boy shot and killed a thirteen year old girl Friday, here in the affluent Western suburbs of Richmond, Virginia.

Thirteen. Fourteen.

There’s a child dead, another child whose life is, for all intents and purposes, over. Do the races, religions, sexual orientations, or any other marker we use to characterize human beings matter?

If you want further evidence of the dysfunctionality of our time, consider that one of the dead girl’s classmates, a girl I’ve known since she was a toddler, made a suicide attempt last fall. Unsuccessful. Still.

Explanations, analyses, commentaries on cable news channels, Congressional testimony won’t change a damn thing. How much money should we throw at these problems? Members of the intellectual/professional class might get grants to research violence among children, but none of them can resuscitate the dead.

Let’s stop thinking we are one published paper, one drug patent, one comprehensive law away from Utopia. ‘Cause we ain’t.

Well I got The Shot. I was given The Shot about 26 hours ago. Now I can’t stay awake.

The Shot kicked my butt but good. I’m sitting up now, watching Women’s Collegiate Softball. It’s my favorite college sport. There is such enthusiasm and the women are fiercely competitive. Most importantly, the players are having fun through it all.

We had a murder in our community. A middle school kid murdered another middle school kid. That’s all I can say, because I’m still trying to wrap my head around the sheer mindlessness and evil of it all.

We bought a Dyson vacuum Friday. We hear it can suck the chrome off an exhaust pipe. This is what we need around the old dust pile we call home. As soon as I find the energy, I will take The Sucking Beast out of the carton and give her a spin.

Yes. I’m stoked about a vacuum cleaner.

The Shot (#2) has a reputation for being a butt kicker., a reputation well-deserved. I’m done, for now.

I woke up around 4, maybe earlier, maybe I was never asleep. I take a shower now, so the water heater can heat more up for J. I am clean. I trim my fingernails, go downstairs, fix a black cherry Italian soda with Sugar-Free Torani Black Cherry Syrup.I add a slice of line to help with the aftertaste the sugar-free syrups all have.

It is now 5:15 AM. The shot is at 8:30. We leave the house at 7:30, hoping to get through the crowd with a bit more ease.

The noise I hear in my ears is tinnitus, I think. Kind of annoying, it is. It’s the least of my problems.

I’m watching the Ashland railroad tracks, with its road noise, from I-95 picked up by the microphone, even though the road is a couple of miles away .

I just want to get away from Richmond for a short time, hopefully soon to New York. Maybe a trip to Charleston or Savannah’s would be nice, or St Augustine. That’s an interesting place. Tourist-y but interesting but I’m a tourist, so why not?

Back to Bed.

530. Been up two and a half hours, I think. I’m listening to Joan Armatrading. Again. Thoughts come back of Ayer . That was her name. I guess if she’s been dead 5 years and 4 months and 23 days, her anonymity doesn’t need protecting .

I don’t think I’m the only person who has fallen in love with the wrong person . I’m a repeat offender. Done it twice. At least twice, maybe more.

Joan Armatrading was part of the background music of all that newly ignited passion. I kick myself when I think of the pain I caused her. Oh well , she’s dead now and so are her parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents And that White Folks World she rebelled against and I aspired to .

Paradox is what you call it, I wanted to be in the John Cheever short stories she wanted out of, with the alcoholics and bisexuals, the suicidal relatives and the beach cottages of soulless beauty that trap the memories like a bell jar holds a specimen.

J is home now. The third time. She’s The Charm, so it is said. Who said it?

And there is nothing but the memories. And the child, now a man , that melding of us together .

I should say more, the longing demands more words, more Acts of Contrition, more penance. I was hoping, God, for another penance, besides celibacy without end. But I do get your well-taken point.