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Oh, boy - he's on my wall, too

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  I n   Quentin Django Unchained , the main character Django, a freed slave, chooses to wear an outfit similar to that worn by Gainsborough's subject in   The Blue Boy . In a 2001 episode of  Who Wants to Be a Millionaire  the exact contents of the painting was the subject of a $500,000 question. It inspired the 1980s  Garbage Pail Kids  "Blue Boy George" (fifth series). In 1985, the picture was referenced in the song  Art is for Your Heart  on the  Muppet Babies  episode "The Muppet Museum of Art", with  Gonzo  wondering about the painting and  Kermit  stating the subject's possible preference for green clothing. The painting is seen in the movie  Die Another Day  (2002), where it hangs in a London fencing club, and is slashed by Gustav Graves while dueling with James Bond. The painting is also seen in the movie  Batman  (1989) as hanging in Gotham museum, and again in the  Joker  (...
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Noctalgia

I remember nights like other lives, coming off a dance floor in a sweat and then the shock of cool dark. I’ve never loved New York more than in the dark, all those electric hearts beating, buildings with lit-up rooms and the rest like knocked-out teeth.  New York was once the city that never sleeps. Now restaurants drop their grates well before midnight. The law still says that bars can let alcohol flow until 4 a.m., but they don’t, whether to be good neighbors or because their patrons are just too tired. Twenty-four-hour coffee shops and diners are dying. The lights are on but everybody’s home, in bed. Some of our minds bloom only after sundown, like those flowers that hold themselves in until the day plants close their petals. 
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Life ...

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  ... as my sister Suzie is wont to proclaim out of the blue. I've written back and forth with a guy online for quite some time now. pleasantries, mild missives. nothing much.  never spoke to him on the phone. recently we've begun to text. He lives far away and is a very fit  6'9''. 70. For the last few days he has apprised me of his heart surgery - which he told me just moments ago - he's being wheeled into. he just typed ... love ya little guy.  o my. better sweetness thru chemistry. I guess when you're taller than some trees - everybody's puny. I worry he hasn't close family/ peeps. why me? who he hardly knows. I'm stumped - so what's new.
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Panpsychism ...

  ...  is the idea that everything, every particle, the ink on the page, the atoms, all have some infinitesimal degree of consciousness, and somehow this consciousness is combined in some way from our cells and the rest of our bodies to create superconsciousness. Consciousness has become our secular substitute for the soul; we talk about consciousness the way people in the 16th or 17th century talked about souls. Some people’s interest in it is the fact that it floats free of these mortal bodies and maybe gets folded into a collective consciousness after we’re gone.
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If ...

… there isn't a word for it, there should be.  I go to the library and check out Of Mice and Men . I ask the guy at the desk if I can get on a list to get Flesh , a new novel that got rave reviews. I say to him I hear its really good . He says it is and points to the desk where it sits opened. He’s currently reading it. I return a book about Dylan and ask if he needs my card. He says no, you’re Paul, right. I say what’s your name -  Dylan . I asked were you named after him … yes. I tell him the book is very good.  I
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Dolls

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  A doll in the doll-maker's house Looks at the cradle and bawls: "That is an insult to us.' But the oldest of all the dolls, Who had seen, being kept for show, Generations of his sort, Out-screams the whole shelf:  'Although There's not a man can report Evil of this place, The man and the woman bring Hither, to our disgrace, A noisy and filthy thing.' Hearing him groan and stretch The doll-maker's wife is aware Her husband has heard the wretch, And crouched by the arm of his chair, She murmurs into his ear, Head upon shoulder leant: "My dear, my dear, O dear. It was an accident.'                                                                                                     ...
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Rear Window

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Well, not really. More like front window. Mine and those across the street. But it smacks of the Hitchcock movie. Very New York summer, all kinds of neighbors living all kinds of ways.  And mine -  an old woman who combs her fat, white cat a lot on the window when the sun most strikes her place in the afternoon  a young guy who looks like he’s living in a disco, room flooded with flashing colored lights and undulating streams of choppy video 24/7 as they say   a young couple watch their two little girls in their pajamas dance a lot   their next door neighbor - a young single who spends the vast majority of her boring day invisibly chained to her keyboard and desktop.  But the biggest thing I notice is how many windows hold no life most of the time. No bodies, no soft light. It’s 9 PM now. I see about 80 windows and only 13 of them are lit from within. 
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