one thing today

College. I live across from semi-Black Panther Larry Davis. Rare days or nights I’d say to my housemates …   boys, I’m feeling small.   They put me in a big plaid cloth suitcase. I was bamboo thin. They left me on Larry’s porch and ran full out back to our hovel.   Larry, oh I forgot -   he was tripping. He opened his door, stared down at the suitcase, upzipped it. I knelt facing him, stretched my arms way out and flexed my fingers.   dadda, dadda I impeached.  

Cookie Mueller lived a couple of blocks away from me in the late 70s/early 80s.  She was an actress - in a lot of John Waters movies  and downtown hardly plays, a skilled writer, drug dealer, a fashion icon in her fashion.  She once bolted from a hotel bill in Berlin and tried to climb a wall, not knowing that it was THEE wall with nothing but communism on the other side. One time she and a girlfriend rented a car that stalled on a train track and its roof was dented big time by the cross guards. They weren't charged for the damage because when they returned the car they dealt with a dwarf.  

  Words are the clothes thoughts wear.  Samuel Beckett

Sunday afternoon river walk. Light on water dancing like inside Tiffanys. Out the side of my eye - mistook a stroller for a Doberman Pincher. Saw Andrew Shue from the old soap  Melrose Place . He's short. Two giant geese stood next to a park benched couple and I was tempted to inquire … they’re adorable, how old are they? Young folks are reading real books … maybe they’re coming back like LPs. Sundays are well not always but sometimes bittersweet lonesome almost, more sweet remembrance of peeps past. Peeps who once had a purpose and something to do tomorrow. Be here now, Buster Crabby.

  Oh, I got a message from below 'Twas from a man I used to know About a year or so ago, before he departed He is just as happy as can be I'll tell you what he said to me He said, "If ever you get heavy-hearted Pack up your sins and go to the devil in Hades You'll meet the finest of gentlemen and the finest of ladies They'd rather be down below than up above Hades is full of thousands of Joneses and Browns O'Hoolihans, Cohens, and Bradys You'll hear a heavenly tune that went to the devil Because the jazz bands they started pickin' it Then put a trick in it, a jazzy kick in it They've got a couple of old reformers in heaven Making them go to bed at eleven Pack up your sins and go to the Devil And you'll never have to go to bed at all If you care to dwell where the weather is hot H-E-double-L is a wonderful spot If you need a rest and you're all out of sorts Hades is the best of the winter resorts Paradise doesn't compare: all the nice peo

  Was a slow night. I spent some of it pondering who knocked me around the most in the romance ring. It's never been much of a contest. Two minutes after I dwell in a place of easy wonder, the contest winner phones me from thousands of miles away. This has not been a frequent occurrence -   maybe a half dozen times over twice as many years.  I  wonder what’s to be gleaned by the timing, how much is coincidence, how much is not, something else. It’s hard to tell, hard to believe, hard to acquire certainty. I just read in a history of the earliest Hollywood studios they all agreed on one thing. Sex is theft.  

  Spotting the first daffodils today ... I thought of my mom's favorite poem or maybe her second favorite. She really liked  The House with Nobody in It.   This one is Daffodils .  I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. A

  I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town It hovered in a frozen sky and gobbled summer down When the sun turns traitor cold And all trees are shivering in a naked row I get the urge for going but I never seem to go I get the urge for going When the meadow grass is turning brown Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in I had me a man in summertime He had summer-colored skin And not another girl in town My darling's heart could win But when the leaves fell on the ground And bully winds came around pushed them face down in the snow He got the urge for going and I had to let him go He got the urge for going When the meadow grass was turning brown And summertime was falling down and winter was closing in Now the warriors of winter they gave a cold triumphant shout And all that stays is dying and all that lives is getting out See the geese in chevron flight flapping and racing on before the snow They've got the urge for going and they've got the wings so

  I just had to take it out of the library. A 717 page bio of Carol Lynley … the epitome of 60s Americana fresh faced dewey starlet, the songbird in The Posiedon Adventure who had to travel upside down to sunlit salvation. When I was a brand new adolescent I went to see her in a movie called Under the Yum Yum Tree . I had no idea what constituted yum yum . Ah, but Carol - lecherous Jack Lemmons crazy pretty prey, Bunny Lakes' maybe ma, Hollywood High’s highest girl, well maybe on Wednesdays, after Tuesday Weld. Really? 717 pages? OK.

  I love to visit Eric and Jess in their little bookstore on Perry street.   It’s about the size of my living room and it's filled with books and magazines that dazzle - first editions and photographers I’ve never heard of, pulp paperbacks and covers on things that I have a Pavolian response to.  T hey love to show me their favorite new stuff and they know tons about Pop culture way before they were born. I was in the store yesterday and asked Eric what’s rocking his world lately and he says “oh, I love all my stuff but here’s something …” and I thought wow, how great is that. Wouldn’t it be great to own a little store and love everything in it?  

 

  This is my self portrait collage.   I made it maybe fifteen years ago. It contains a shrimpy little kid with   a dream of adventure floating above his little head … of course, a christian shortie who’d rather be killed and held dead in a soldiers arms than deny his allegiance to almighty god the father … there’s a shepherdess grandma with her fleecy flock, a mom on her way to Cuba doing an on point impersonation of Katharine Hepburn, skyscrapers, me at camp looking tough with my jeans almost yanked up to my nipples, my sweet inspiration Laura, my bff Sak looking over her priest in the bar pal.   more. less.

    I almost got weepy in a bookstore yesterday. Clump in throat time. I thought about my first memory. In the back seat on our car, bringing my sister Jessie home from the hospital. My mom gave me some cowboys and indians. A big surprise.   What a sweet thing to do. It filled me up. Yesterday.

 ...   is t he word of the day. It sounds like what Ralph Kramden said when he got caught and felt guilty.  Is it ...  triggerfish in Indian coral reefs. a bamboo pontoon in Carribean countries vintage Eskimo female undergarments

  The amazing John Waters’ father hated a Cy Twombly work that his son bought.   He made John a piece of art.   It is currently in a show at the Baltimore Museum .   The tree doesn’t fall far from the apple.  

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s nothing more fun  than watching the Oscars with a gang of gabby gay men - riffing on Nicole Kidmans  Prada schamata,  spewing  sacrilegious about the stars who worked their magic long before we hit the planet, roasting fashion, noticing tiny, nutty things, sparing no one, being way more mega witty than easy mean. I was famous for my O parties for decades. Not tonight - the 95th ceremony. Not quite there yet but feel like it on days - friends long gone, some go on somewhere, some not that lucky but all of us, we’ll always have the Oscars. Paris smarish. 

  One of those rare, sad days when you can’t think of one thing you want to do - no project or book or movie, no phone call, no  face, you’ve had too much zzzzzzz, you don’t want to travel or see art or a bird, meet a pal for a meal … you don’t want to clean up your mess or draw or run or paint … it’s a scary feeling - if you imagine how terrifying it would be if the feeling never fled, if it stayed and never left. The feeling that you don’t want to do anything.  Not really.  The day is gray and long.   I come upon an article in the paper with a title like … how to snap out of it - something close to that.   The it I’ve felt all day. And basically it advised … do something small.   Take a walk. I recall the best advice I ever heard about depression - if you are, be depressed outside .  I took a walk and felt better. A little. For a while.  

  I’ve been reading ...  Everybody Thought We Were Crazy ...  and am   obsessed with Brooke Hayward and Dennis Hopper  … Mr. and Mrs Zelig of wild busting out endless summer 60s LA - the blaring bright time and place to be … they bought the first soup cans and were effortlessly charming & smart & curious & fine & lucky ... acting work just came to them and a lot of the time they blew it off or didn’t care much about the corny storybook industry when making their own new fun was way more fun … they knew everybody and everybody thought they were crazy raising three kids with tons of Black Panthers sleeping bags all over their famous party home. Every Life magazine cover in that craziest decade … they were there, saw it, did it, knew them, met them, fed and danced and kissed them  … a blurring blasting swirl of music, art, drugs,  beach, old Hollywood - easy vivid color and sound and didn’t stay around how could it - that churning bigger more&more velocity racing to e

  Art is everywhere in every corner that you choose to frame and not just ignore and walk by.  Dennis Hopper

  I don't know anything about this beautiful portrait. I found it online and went back to see if I had missed some information about it but I couldn't find it again. There is nothing more interesting than faces. No two alike. Every one different. So much beauty and sadness, emotion, fright, sweetness, joy, hatred, indecision, hope, wonder. Who is this man? Who is the painter? Who placed it where I found it? As many questions as faces.  A lifetime of both to take in.

flipping around the channels and came across dr zhviago and scarfaced Pasha was professing his commitment to the revolution to rod stieger and I remembered how important it was for my 15 year old self to copy his eyeglass anti-fashion choice. yup. I wanted those just like grandma wore with the wrap around arms ... that was an important detail for some bizarre reason ... they're now called vintage retro and they were called that even back then. it was the time when we were making our own first choices about how we wanted to present to the world and how much combat we were willing to do with the parental units.  I wore an equality medal ... two horizontal bars on a bronze circle the size of a 50 cent piece. my pops went bonkers.  oh, was a time. so much newness, so much fun.    

  I love the once a year Outsider Art Fair. This year … my favorites … John A Adams 1933 sand bottle paintings are amazing … on both sides … the two pics above is one work ... and he had to make them upside down.   Almost impossible to believe someone could create them .   Claire Cusack works with ordinary objects. She finds meaningful trash/treasures she transforms into unexpected sculptures. Her materials are from rural roads, beaches, old garages and railroad tracks. And this woman’s beauty was breathtaking. Living art.  

Trained out to old friends on the north shore and things went a just a little south eventually - ZOOMed with an old tight bf in another country who currently has a taste for rum and weird creation still ... went to look at famous photos of dustbowl famine, war, artists in their studios and big nobodies in their kitchen, a beautifully lit down on its luck street, radiant asian women ... talked with new folks about their sailboat and a homemade plane any year now in a basement and the Library of Congress  ... watched the Daily Show and critiqued the interview ... ... I dealt with a taunting toothache ... Lynda woke up deaf in one ear and saw the doctor while Jay and I sugar highed in Garden City before I hit the road home.

  I stick my finger into my Pocket Pema Chodron and read ... Sharing the heart is a simple practice to use at any time and situation.  It enlarges our view and helps us remember our interconnection. When we encounter pain we breathe with the recognition that others also feel this. When we encounter pleasure or tenderness, we cherish that and rejoice. Then we wish others could also experience this delight or relief. This is the way of bringing whatever we encounter onto the path of awakening ourselves. 

Your thoughts and opinions change as you grow older.   All thru my early adult decades round here, as I covered the city, I’d see old ladies resting their crepey forearms on window sills watching watching watching the action on the street and I’d think - wow, it’s so sad - about how little they had going on and now I think, wow, they were hip to the best game in town. I have this weird thing, have had it for a long time, I hear the walk even though it’s silent. There’s a beat between my ears thats made by looking at how the person lands their feet on the ground and I wonder if others have this thing.   Most likely not.