I told my friend Lynda that I want to read old and important books cause I'm old and being important wouldn't be so bad. I have this great book ... 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I better get going. I come upon Rosseau. I thought he was a painter, a Naive one, the one who painted the big very flat lion in profile. Rosseau the writer wrote Reveries of a Solitary Walker which is described as a wonderfully lyrical, heartfelt and somewhat obsessive account of an aging man's reckoning with his past. I'll give it a try if reading a bit of it at the Strand doesn't turn me off. They say its a vital precursor to the great novels of isolation and despair: Dostoevsky, Beckett, Salinger. Franny and Zooey is one of my favorite books.
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a cool word
Use the noun panopticon to talk about a circular building — especially a prison with cells distributed around a central surveillance station. Eighteenth century philosopher Jeremy Bentham dreamed up the idea and was kind enough to bequeath us the word as well, from the Greek pan , or "all," and optikon , "of or for sight."
You know how in the movie ...
Barefoot in the Park ... Robert Redford's character tells Jane Fonda they have downstairs neighbors in their Village brownstone and they're both the same sex ... but nobody knows which one ... like that.
Look at this ...
... photo of a guy so in love with language and a big sister type who took one of his songs with her mates and ignited both of their projectories . he looks like he's saying something very personal and she looks like she thinks ... do you really think that or do that ... aaahhhh, that's so sweet or that's so weird or wrong or right ... and he looks like he's ready to hear things that he'll make his own and then ours ... things about love ... or songs that have a lot of guts ... songs that seep into bone and time ... casts of characters and circumstances that grind their ways into fine powder we wear, girls who treat mink capes like ponchos ... damaged men who get breaks that resurrect them from the dead ... Mary went to Florida one winter but wasn't allowed to get a tan and thus began the great folk rock scare and all that followed that aligned with certain peoples lives and shines all day still today.
“It is a battered tree, long suffering and much climbed, held together by strands of wire but beloved of those who know it. In a way it symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the midst of concrete, and the steady reaching for the sun. Whenever I look at it nowadays, and feel the cold shadow of the planes, I think: ‘This must be saved, this particular thing, this very tree.’ If it were to go, all would go — this city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death.” ...
O Superwoman
Hi Laurie I just walked past you on Charles or Perry street, by the river - you were putting luggage in the trunk of a car. I almost stopped to say hey. I tai chi-ed with the crowd while you played violin the other night at Little Island. We worked together one day thirty plus years ago … at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. You did intros for a Channel 13 independent film series - I remember Jim Cohens Lost Book Found was part of it. Home of the Brave was the best concert I ever experienced and Here With You will be played at my gathering when I kick. Thank you for your art. Regards,
Hey kiddo ...
thanks for the old school correspondence. I was just talkin' to Bonner the other day and mentioned when I did my annual Labor Day rumination bout summer '26 - what popped up in my head was our fab Fire Island Louisiana Bollfest - when fun and talk and tales and laughs and music and tastes and drink were had by all. and yes, the place is easy to feel memorable - a touchstone about how easy and right and lovely life can be. and yes - as you mentioned - it does sustain me year round - the wonder and warmth of a perfectly beautiful place.