one thing today

  a long desk an afternoon in the east a park music a day   thoughts   others   gone today ‘cept here inside full now - listening to Judy sing her “Houses” and feeling like Joni when she made Blue

  Gena Rowlands died after living a very long time. She may have been my favorite - I write may because of Julie Christie. But Gena did my favorite acting of all time in Woman Under the Influence , playing a going deranged mom and the wife of a very frightened and knows- not-what-to-do Peter Falk. It’s hard to describe what she does in this movie directed by her gifted, dreamy husband. I read yesterday that she said she dreamed as her character. That’s how far she went for our entertainment and edification. What a fab, classic 20th century Hollywood haired broad. She knew the score.

  My 500th entry here. amazing. Five hundred days that raced by like a Lionel train … like a turn of a chapter … like twenty seven blinks of my eye. What to put down here. What to account.   As I race to the train, I go to buy coffee and there are six young girls behind the counter having a fine old time … making somethings out of nothings, laughing away and not giving me my order so I can make my train in an orderly fashion. But I like watching them make work play. I stop to get a paper and the girl is flirting with some guy, showing him her phone and he’s saying ….. wow, is this you. I didn’t know you could look so fine. The station looks good. cleaner. brighter.   I am on my way to cleaner, brighter … the beach for a few ways. Rows and flows of wavy waves and seagulls soaring very brave … things like that … on this day when my 500th entry is here now some how … oh wow, for me and you here still in the still of more nights and dawns of dazzling days..  

I am watching a lot of Belmondo movies - it was his day on TCM.  In Love is a Funny Thing , his co star is Annie Giradot.  There is a deep imbalance. She's not beautiful enough. He needs Anouk Amiee or Capucine or Charlotte Rampling or Monica Vitti to rival his endlessly take it in beautiful mug. Or maybe she just needs a better haircut or a cigarette. Or maybe she just didn't give him a hard enough time. 

Was just listening to Ray Charles sing you don’t know me and thinking about how beautifully Meryl Streep sang it in postcards from the edge and it made me think of how awful it’s must be to never have been in love. There are some people, many people, unfortunately, who missed/miss that during their lifetime. How to describe it … electricity and desire … wanting and finding. There is so much to grieve when you think on the world in the dark and it feels like final hours even though you know it's not. 

  Have been indulging in all things mid century Roman lately - reading about the beginnings of neo-realism, Pucci fashion papparazzi. Watched A Special Day last night on Youtube (free, no ads) - a very special movie. Sophia and Marcello are skyrocket superb. The script is, too. At one point while she’s making coffee, prettying up for him in front of the bathroom mirror and dealing with an old nosey neighbor - he looks at an album of Mussolini fotos he assumes is one of her six childrens. It's hers - a scrapbook of her savior and sex symbol. Brilliant.   Watch a ’77 Cavett interview with SL and MM on the Tube. It affirms you don’t have to be skinny and blond and twenty to emit  heart stopping sex appeal.  

My friends and I are so old everything reverberates. My lovely lifelong friend Mrs Johnson sends me a birthday greeting that encourages me to go buck wild but not too buck wild .  When I was around ten, I thought my name was too plain. My large family was upstate in the country on vacation.  There was a neighbor dog named Mitsy. I saw him one evening in our yard and forgot that on the other side of our large screened in porch, my family was finishing dinner. I felt like I was alone and commanded the dog - Mitsy come to Buck. Big howling ensued from inside the house. It became intergenerational family lore and I recalled it today when I opened the card from my dear companion. 

  Night fell. The darkness was thin, like some sleazy dress that has been worn and worn for many winters and always lets cold through to the bones. Then the moon rose.  A farm lay quite visible, like a white stone in water, among the stretches of deep woods in their colorless dead leaf. The moonlight covered everything, and lay upon the darkest shape of all, the farmhouse where the lamp had just blown out.                                                                                                - The Whisper