A caustic decree. A caustic decree.

2:37pm.

When the shower is running on warm and your nose is bleeding and way the light filters into the room and the small droplets of blood splash in the water that divides around your feet as it runs, and you look like two rocks or trees or nameless pillars in a white water stream, and the red blood splashes everywhere, it looks pretty.

As a small tyke and even in my early teen years, my nose used to be a constant fountain of blood. It proved a splendid recourse from class, as I could only just be excused to the Boys Room, where I didn't have to do anything but stand there and pretend I was hurt instead of remaining in class letting life drain through me like wind eddying through canyons and wiping away centuries of stone.

I liked blood a lot, and I always figured girls were into cuts and scars, but girls aren't into nosebleeds, let me say for sure. You don't get pretty, batting eyelashes when your nose is bleeding in school because it looks like some bigger kid just beat you up. And girls don't like a loser.

I wish I'd had chronic stigmata instead of nosebleeds. I bet girls would have been into that. And maybe I could have even been on a television talk show and answered questions about it.

"Yeah, I miss school. I miss being home. But with this stigmata, I just don't have the time for that kind of stuff anymore."

The bleeding's stopped now. Maybe I should start taking vitamins. This late in life, I don't know if I can erase the damage done from a lifetime of malnutrition and then the extra addition of a hobby like alcohol consumption. But maybe vitamins aren't so bad anymway. I'm covered in a lot of little bruises all over my body, by the way. From shooting photographs or falling down, I can't say where their origins were developed. Mickey's is a powerful drink. Thanks, Coffey/McDermott.

Julie's still here at the house, so to speak. We've been shooting for a few days. I think Andrew Kaiser is downstairs in the house. He's taking Julie and Sean out for photographs. Andrew is a wonderful photographer who lives here in Portland too. She's been writing about it in her travel blog.

I have to get going now. The hospital staff is starting to panic and my telephone keeps ringing and it's doctors, and I'm supposed to be picking up a shipment of camera film in the hospital reception area in the sea and I'm late.

Yours,
JARET.