one thing today

I had lunch with an old friend yesterday.   We worked with each other for decades. After we ate, he said he wanted to go to a store that’s just a couple of blocks away from where I live. It sells sculpture supplies. It’s huge and full of things they’d discuss on  This Old House  segments - W hat is it . The place is lower level huge with amazing things I never saw before. Steps from my apartment.  What else don’t I know about?

  ... live so that there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.   Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away.   Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption.   Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world.   Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart. In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.” ―  William Saroyan

  A guy I worked with for years at Thirteen killed himself recently. He was a production manager and worked on talk shows mostly. He told the money guys who began an investigation he needed a couple of days to get paperwork together. He killed himself during that time in his place north of the city. It made me wonder why people need more $$$. What do they need to buy? Who do they need to impress or save? That's the untold  story. His died with him most likely. Killing yourself over cash ... no swimming pool cool. 

           COMPARISON IS THE              THIEF OF JOY

  They’re filming in my building, a movie called The Friend . Naomi Watts, Bill Murray. Big Great Dane. Talking to a couple of crew members made me miss my TV buds. Talking bout this and that - city life and times.   If you’re ever in a bad mood, go to the library and see all the nannies with their kinetic kargo fruit salads - the most beautiful flawless peachy skinned blueberry eyed teeny tiny toothless peachy homosapiens.    Walking home a guy a foot or two behind me was talking on his phone to someone - he was just being way too naturalistic. Way to naturalistic. I wanted to know what he meant. I listened closely but never found out. It was Andy Cohen.  

  I met Florence at the Twyla Tharp performance tonight. She is 105 with a good haircut and a Crown Royale in her hand most evenings while she reads the Times .   She said her last couple of years have been challenging. Wow. She was born the same year as my mother. As we passed in front of an usher, I said 105 - and he said, yes , he knew she was in seat 105. Wow. There was something thrilling about meeting the oldest person I've ever met. 

 

  Maya Angelou said that sometimes all people want is to go out and have some fun on Saturday night. I decide to walk to the bar and find the man who most mesmerizes. I will observe him for a time. Maybe fifteen minutes. And report back here upon my return.   Stayed in the bar for less than three mins - like a quarter of the way in. Deep throated baritone birdsong overkill and no room at the swinging inn anywhere. Bumped into a guy with a bank vault chest and left. The only kick was walking over there and spotting Christopher Meloni walking behind his wife and daughter. He has very naturally cruisey eyes. We locked 'em.

  I'm really not much for similes.  When you start noticing them too much, they tend to take you out of the story, at least they do for me.  But there're always exceptions. They can also be thrilling, fun, unexpected, lovely, perfect. Take for example Eudora Welty ... describing an ancient collie dog - he rose from a quilt by the door and moved over the square brown rug, stiffly, like a table walking.  

One of those days that seems more holy than most. Windless. Sun galore. Tall men with tiny talking kids. Garibaldi statue ( he is one of the makers of modern Italy and has a biscuit named after him, too) is content to stay put and protective in the park. Teen girls showing off their love for each other much more than their guys do. Silver river. Old places one more time. Again. One more day. All free. Here. For me.  

I just watched an American Masters on Alvin Ailey. I saw his company recently. They maintain their flawless, towering standard. In my twenties, I was foolish - or not- and left my job at Thirteen to become a dancer. I’m not certain how long that idea went on. Luckily, the station took me back. The studio I worked in late at night writing news copy became the Alvin Ailey Dance Company .   It remains a beautiful studio full of sunlight and young, godlike bodies.  

  Felt like I was in some year in the 20th century - Joni, Stevie, Annie, Billy J … the Grammys shined with artists of our yesteryears.    Sak called right after  Both Sides Now  and said she cried which made me cry before a text from Lynda that simply said …  weeping . It’s hard for me to see her so old … much because it means we are so   old, much because we have reached the time when we are grateful to know we’re old and can still know it.

I seem to be afixed to wanderings on days long gone lately. One of my friends or maybe me to one of my friends … recently said …   everything seems to be fifty years ago now. For instance, fifty years ago Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. I was obsessed with the story. A lot of us were. The real life deluxe soap of soaps. Swings and turns and phone exchanges with buds. Conjecturings, red herrings, hard to believe photos in banks with machine guns and berets, painting in Rolling Stone of Patty as Cristina in Hoppers Cristinas World … sky high Stockholm Syndrome-oramadama. Was a time.   BTW - she married her bodyguard. Wouldn’t you?

  It's black history month. TCM has a doc about Oscar Micheaux … a black filmmaker in the 20s and 30s who began as a Pullman porter, then a homesteader, then a self published novelist and then a movie maker. There’s a flash of a very young Ossie Davis in the doc - the person who most impressed me in my 35 years at 13. He was big and well dressed with a musical rich voice and curious about me.    He did it all re the performing arts, he was well passed middle age when I met him and still sexy in a crystal clear American way. He was stunnng.   

  This is my good friend Pattys childhood living room in our hometown.    She drew this picture and I never quite finished painting it.   That boxy brown record cabinet in the upper left quadrant held the movie score to our summers. It swung around like a paperback stand in an old school drugstore.  It’s a Stanford White house, very big and comfy and a place I dream about at least a few times a year. Her parents were hardly ever there. I lived a block away during college and spent hours and weekends in this room listening to music, smoking pot and talking with my buds about where we were in our lives and where we wanted to go.   It was a vivid, defining time full of angst and wonder. It's a photo album inside my skull I still access when I want to remember some heady days.  I should finish painting it and put it in a frame. 

  so excited to see Joni perform on Sunday at the Grammys Tracy Chapman too.  Harry's House  Heatwaves on the runway As the wheels set down He takes his baggage off the carousel He takes a taxi into town Yellow schools of taxi fishes Jonah in a ticking whale Caught up at the light in the fishnet windows Of Bloomingdale's Watching those high fashion girls Skinny black models with raveen curls Beauty parlor blondes with credit card eyes Looking for the chic and the fancy to buy He opens up his suitcase In the continental suite And people twenty stories down Colored currents in the street A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof Like a dragonfly on a tomb And business men in button downs Press into conference rooms Battalions of paper minded males Talking commodities and sales While at home their paper wives And paper kids Paper the walls to keep their gut reactions hid Yellow checkers for the kitchen Climbing ivy for the bath She is lost in House and Gardens He's caught up in Ch