one thing today

My fab nephew came into town today with his Julia and Ari and Annetta. We hung out at the Farmers Market and they almost adopted a foster mutt.   We watched a guy ride a bicycle while balancing a garbage can and a truck tire on his head.   H e was outdone by his buddy who ate an enormous container of cheese balls. He was the hit of the afternoon. We played in the park and the kids ate SpongeBob ice cream bars before they drove back to the Garden State.

  I can’t dispel you from my thoughts -  Burton says to Taylor in  The Sandpiper  - on right now on TCM … a super cheesey Minnelli pic with beautiful vistas and a made up studio built cabin right on the coast where she paints and poses and seduces anyone she chooses to    … she’s kind of stumpy but with a face that … well, you know … there’s a scene at Nepenthe -    an exotic restaurant in Big Sur where PCG and I had a drink one dark night before we kissed on an overlook while listening to laughing elephant whales down below playing in the crashing waves     … a brand new sound that promised more promise ... Orson Welles built the place for his new bride Rita Hayworth -   I embedded two boyfriends in Big Sur, one at a time … what times … ruminatin’ today about movie star life for real once upon a time a long time ago for a moment.   

When Carol Burnett was eighteen she was an usherhette at a movie house in Hollywood. During that time, it was very common for audience members to enter anytime during the movie. When  Strangers on a Train was playing she barred a couple from entering the theater five minutes before it ended. She was immediately fired. Years later, when she received her star on The Walk of Fame she requested it be placed in front of the theater and when the building was demolished her husband bought the door she wouldn’t allow the couple to pass through. She also has a poster of Strangers on a Train in her home inscribed by Hitch himself. His message - sorry about your job.  

  The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too. Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.   -Philip Larkin

  ...  comes from the word desiderare , meaning to long for. Connections between desiderium and nostalgia have also been drawn; the former can be seen as expressing the latter for things that can't be experienced any more, or things that someone may have never experienced themselves. Paul Simon's The Only Living Boy in New York City  always makes me feel that way. I was as old when I first heard it at twenty as I am today. Maybe older. 

  I haven’t been to Mantiques in a very long time.   I thought it was closed and gone.   It’s a strange concept - a store full of manly antiques for the manly man. Lots of steel and wood and sharp edges and oddity. There are lots of things there I’d like to own but don’t need. Some things I don’t know what they are or what they do. Lots of good foto ops and very tight lipped proprietors who often make a call to some cryptic somewhere antiquelord for a price quote. It’s a fun place to visit.  

  ... to start jury duty today. I postponed it until July - after June at the beach. I wonder if I would have been  the 96th person to be dismissed on the Trump Stormy Daniels dirty dancing deal.  They're finding it difficult to find impartial individuals. Duh.

  When you don't feel like yourself - who is feeling that? 

  ...   is a young comedian with an HBO reality show.  He didn't come out until he was 30 so he thinks he's really a gay teen, round 17. He is in love for the first time and is cheating a lot and he chronicles all of it on the show.  It's very brave and new for television and I can relate to so much of his anxiety as a young man, his questions, desires, doubts. When he talks about his sexual escapades his therapist asks "ballpark" - he answers "thousands" and adds "I'm scared I'm lowballing that." the show is smart and scary and relatable and complex. 

Deli Larry asks me about the eclipse. I tell him I lack some standard American gene.  I couldn't care less about the eclipse, whale watching, the Royals. He asked me if I ever saw the Captain Peabody cartoon (*** couldn't find a pic of him, had to settle for Captain Underpants)  where he's at the edge of a cliff, surrounded by his enemies and he raises his arms in the air when an eclipse happens and the guys round him run off because they think he's a god or something.  "nope, missed it." 

  am watching Elton John and Bernie win the Gershwin prize.   So far Annie L and Garth B and Brandi C singing Madman Across the Water . I have the captions on and read lyrics I’ve heard for more than fifty years - and they are near granite gold perfection still and still make my insides slide with thoughts and something beneath words. Reggie sits in the audience while Paul C who still has his hair talks his envy and praises - and plug into the faithless makes me realize I shoulda listened more carefully to Bennie & the Jets when I was crazy young and all was new. Joni dances to it front row and makes me happy she can. I Guess Thats Why That Call it the Blues (cry in the night if it helps)   - dear god, what to say.   Billie Porter sings Bitch is Back and shows off fringed Tina gams and the lead Metallica guitarist looks sexy in his tight leather and he's 61. and its so fab when you feel more than fortunate to live at the same time as certain artists - joni, elton, dylan, rhy

... were walking in front of me for a block this afternoon. all three of them non stop talked and laughed like it was a clear advancement in the ever changing evolutionary process ... speaking and listening simultaneously ... not a syllable missed, not an inflection lost, a kind of ancillary, supplemental sense, skill, willful want manifested .  or is it? 

  One of my best friends ex-husband just passed away. Mortality is on her mind. She asked me would I please write her obituary. I told her I'm pretty certain I’m gonna go first and then said - I guess that makes you want me to do it even more and as soon as possible . I told her I would if she begins to read my blog. She said she would. Time will reveal all.

and came across this. don't know where or who  ... but ... The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the world predictable by reining in creativity and enterprise. Progress as a neat blueprint, with no deviations and no surprises, may work in children's cartoons or utopian novels. But it's just a fantasy. I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfill our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

my lovely niece never misses an opportunity to turn out and up big time when it comes to holiday celebrations ... a fine repast was had by all while some of the kids played in the backyard