Photo of the day
Eddies Tattoo Parlor, Philadelphia
The tattoo parlor was warm so I hustled they’re inside
Don’t misspell her name Buddy she’s the one that got away….
Lyric by Tom Waits
Photo by me
The One That Got Away
Travel
MATATUS
Public Transportation in Nairobi, Kenya
Busses in Nairobi are called Matatus. They are painted bight colors and are loud.
70% of the population use them for transportation. They are cheap and convenient, but like everything else in Nairobi, they are chaotic.
The name comes from Swahili meaning three. It is unclear as to three what, but it is commonly believed it refers to a coin worth about ten cents which would equate to 30 cents per ride.
LUST
The editors of WordPress have chosen “Lust” as the word of the day for my daily inspiration. I am happy to accommodate them with my own interpretation and inspired rendering of this volatile, combustible, and knocked out loaded word.
I take you to the lust capitals of the world, two sister cites really, which gives an extra added dimension to the word lust, if you catch my meaning.
So here we have visual evidence of the lusty nature of these two great cities: Philadelphia and Paris.
A Philly stripper goes into the Candy Store for stripper supplies.
“Of all the worldly Passions, lust is the most intense.”
-Buddha
Purple Orchid, Philadelphia
“She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it.”
– Charles Bukowski
Ozz Gentleman’s Club, Philadelphia
“Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.”
― Blaise Pascal
Club Ozz, Philadelphia
“I live for sex. I celebrate it, and relish the electricity of it, with every fibre of my being. I can see no better reason for being alive.”
― Fiona Thrust
Sex Shop on South Street in Philly
“The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not—when they strayed from the straight and narrow it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Leather and Latex, Philly
“Lust’s Passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.”
-Marquis de Sade
Moulin Rouge in Paris where girls who can Cancan
“Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.”
– Marquis de Sade
Pussy’s Gentleman’s Club, Paris
“I can resit anything but temptation.”
– Oscar Wilde
Sex Shop, Paris
“There’s something here, my dear boy, that you don’t understand yet. A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman’s body, or even a part of a woman’s body (a sensualist can understand that) and he’ll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, Russia, too. If he’s honest, he’ll steal; if he’s humane, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll deceive.”
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
La Diva, Paris
“Only the united beat of sex and the heart can create ecstasy.”
-Anais Nin
New Girl’s, Paris
“To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth – I count that as something of a miracle.”
-Henry Miller
Paris Museum of Erotic Art
All photos by me.
The Gates of Hell
“Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
Th Gates of Hell, Auguste Rodin
The Gates of hell is a sculpture by Auguste Rodin that depicts a scene from Dante’s The Divine Comedy. There were three bronze casts made; they reside in The Musee Rodin in Paris, The Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, and the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno Park, Tokyo.
This photo was taken in Philadelphia.
Of Cell Phones, Lap Tops, and Books
Young Parisian couple, about a generation apart, one reading a book the other a cell phone.
Before there were cell phones there were laptops. Before there were laptops there were TV screens. Before there were TV screens there were books. I’m reading a book right now, which is what I am usually doing. You would be surprised how much trouble I used to get into just for reading books. I have been called anti-social. Bosses didn’t like it. One of my wives tossed my books out into the backyard into a mud puddle. And my own mother come into my room one day, and tipped my bookcase over, spilling my books out onto the floor. What was a poor boy to do?
Most of the time nowadays people don’t seem to care much if I am reading a book. They are too busy with their own noses stuck into their cell phones.
Next time you get a chance, try reading a book. Remember, Mark Twain once said, those who do not read have no advantage over those who can’t read.
Bridge
Benjamin Franklin Bridge, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I have always loved bridges….I have been photographing them my whole life. This in one of my all time favorite bridges in the world which spans the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Camden. Informally it is known as the Ben Franklin Bridge. Work began on January 6, 1922. At the peak of construction, 1,300 people worked on the bridge, and 15 died during its construction. The bridge opened to traffic on July 1, 1926, three days ahead of its scheduled opening on the nation’s 150th anniversary. At completion, its 1,750-foot span was the world’s longest suspension bridge.
Sail
Commotion in the Ocean
Sunset sailing on Fury in Key West, Florida
BETH HART IN NASHVILLE
At the Ryman Auditorium
Beth Hart killed last night (3/10/2017) in Nashville at the storied Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. Killed in the sense she slaughtered her material and slayed her audience. I have never seen a performer so committed to her material as Beth Hart. She has a power and a force that will blow you away! She simply gave it all she had. She is one of the best blues singers I have ever heard and she just keeps on getting better.
Beth looked great in a sparkly mini dress and high heel shoes which showed off her toned legs to great effect. She wore sheer nylon stockings with seams down the back. How sexy was that? She must be eating right because her tiny waist, beautiful skin tones, and irrepressible energy were much on display.
And the music! She has a great band around her including her guitar player who has been with her for 17 years. Beth writes a lot of her own material and there is as story behind each song which she generously shares with the audience before she delivers the goods. The audience loves Beth and she loves them back!
When she performed the song California, which is a paean to the one she loves, who should appear from behind the black curtain but her husband, who rushes up behind her and hugs her close and kisses her neck and we are swept up in the moment of an emotional highlight.
Throughout the show and on numerous occasions I was moved to the point of tears and the goose flesh was in motion.
She will be appearing in at the Louisville Palace in Louisville, Kentucky on March 19 as part of the Jimi Hendrix experience. I’ll be there.
I Feel Bad About My Leg
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
When I was in South Florida recently I injured my right leg. I don’t know how exactly, I just know I got up early one morning and I could barely walk. With every step I felt an excruciating pain in my right knee. It slowed me down for sure. Stairs were out, which meant I couldn’t get down the staircase to walk Gideon the Dog, a little white Shi Tzu with a boatload of energy. I took to wearing a knee brace which seemed to help. I hoped my leg would heal in a few days if I stayed off it and I would get back to normal again. I am a pretty active guy.
Gideon, the Dog
It did get some better for which I was grateful, because I had to travel back to Kentucky in a few days and there would be a lot of walking and schlepping of suitcases and bags. But as luck would have it, on the day of travel, I aggravated the injury to my leg as I stepped up onto the train platform. Ughhh!
Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgefulness
I had to take a train from Delray Beach to Ft. Lauderdale, a bus from the train station to the airport, then upstairs to the ticket counter to check in. I was carrying a backpack, a suitcase, and a small carry-on item. I checked the suitcase at the ticket counter and stumbled through security with the other two bags. It was more like a shuffle than a stumble but I managed to get through. There was more security than usual due the fact that there was a mass shooting at this airport just a few days earlier. Guy took a gun out of a packed suitcase in the baggage claim area and started shooting people. This would be your worst nightmare. He ended up killing five people.
I sat a moment in one of the ubiquitous lounges that lined the terminal and had a cheeseburger and a beer. Pretty good. So far so good. When the appointed time came I made the queue and boarded the aircraft. It was short flight to Atlanta but sitting on the tarmac and waiting to take off, then the time in the air didn’t do my leg any good. I was pretty stiff when I got off the plane and not just from the drinks.
I had to change planes for the final leg of my journey back to Louisville. I arrived at Terminal 1 and had to make my way to Terminal 2. Thankfully there as an escalator, a moving sidewalk, and a train to take me to my destination. Then I had to walk the distance to gate 32, which of course was the furthermost gate away.
It was 7:30 at night when I finally got home. Had been traveling all day. All the sitting made my condition worse. By the time my daughter picked me up I could barely walk again. Once home I fell into bed exhausted. Weary, but glad to be home.
I continued to wear the knee brace and took it as easy as I could and gradually my leg began to heal. I was pretty worried actually, losing one’s mobility is a pretty frightening prospect. All this time I was thinking well this is it, this is how it’s going to end…I will lose my mobility and my life will change forever…
I got a little depressed while convalescing. I picked up a book I had recently purchased by one of my favorite authors, J. M. Coetzee’s , the novel Slow Man, and began to read. Turns out his protagonist, Paul Rayment, an older gentleman much like myself, as a matter of fact the same exact age, sustains a knee injury in a bicycle accident in the very first chapter in the novel. Only his injury was much worse than mine. He lost his leg just above the knee. Ironically, the things he thought about were the very same things I thought about. Here is what he had to say about it.
“A circumscribed life. What would Socrates say about that? May a life become so circumscribed that it is no longer worth living? Unstrung. That is the word that comes to him from Homer. The spear shatters the breast bone, blood spurts, the limbs are unstrung, the body topples like a wooden puppet. Well, his limbs have been unstrung, and now his spirit is unstrung too. His spirit is ready to topple.”
My spirit was ready to topple too. But, as previously stated, I got steady better and now I am back to nearly normal. I don’t know what I would do if I were to permanently lose my mobility and my being became so circumscribed. It might not be a life so worth living.
DESIRE
You take a streetcar named Desire
and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks to the end of the line and get off at Elysian Fields!
Ghost Dog 