July 2008 Archives

It didn't occur to me until I put this Hy-Art up that there's something very Cave-Man Drive-In about these Daumier train passengers up on this Bocklin rockwall.

Last night I went to see the most excellent one-man show written and performed by my friend David Waterman.  I went with my beautiful neighbor, Jayne, an actress who knows David as well, and we plotted and conspired to produce a play or our own.  This morning, while looking for the script I have in mind (not written by me, but that's okay, I'd direct) I came across the essay I wrote about my mother cleaning up her cleaning lady's house back in 1964, when child protective services were threatening to remove her children. I spent the morning rewriting that essay, before submitting it to NarrativeMagazine.com.  The July 31 deadline had been dancing in the back of my mind, but I pretty much let go of the idea of submitting anything. It seemed very unaccidental to come across this essay while searching for something else.

It would be great to produce this play, to win the writing contest, to go to France when I want, to be a well-compensated writer and maybe even to live in Barcelona (you didn't know about that one did you?) But I'm pretty cool with none of that happening too. It's the living in possibility on a daily basis that I find so gratifying.

MCO 2008

P.S.  I found a dollar while picking up trash this morning.  Almost immediately a young lady with a cell-phone on the blink asked if she could have 50 cents for a phone call. I had 40 and gave it to her, which meant I cleared 60 cents for about 20 minutes of trash picking, or 3 cents a minute. That's $1.80 an hour, $43.20 a day, $302.40 a week, and $15,724.80 a year.  I amused myself with this fantasy Math, until the morning news revealed the amusing tidbit that  Exxon/Mobil made $1500 a SECOND this quarter.  Or literally, bested my rate of yearly trashpicking fantasy remuneration in about 10 seconds.

This Spanish Flamenco temptress is from Sargent, the street scene via Van Gogh.

Yes, I felt the quake! Big time! I was sitting right here at the computer, and David was on the couch. There was quite a jolt, and then a rumbling.  David almost immediately ran down the hall, I hooked up the dog but didn't follow.  I've always wanted to be buried under a beam so that I can be on TV as Eyewitness News pulls me out, and that can't happen if you run outside. Unfortunately, nothing even fell off the shelf. But we were so excited! Earthquakes are fun! They're such an equalizer--in a few short seconds, no one is more powerful than anyone else. It's a sort of geological communism. (Yes, I'm sure I'd sing a different tune if it was an 8.7, but I'd probably be too dead to complain.)

According to the memory tests, my mother is not suffering from Alzheimer's, but from a form of depressive dementia. There's some real memory loss associated with normal aging, then anxiety about the memory loss, and depression about all the changes that come with getting older,  Each feeds on the other in  a looping cycle exacerbated often by medication that is not always well-taken or needs to be adjusted.( This is what I have suggested all along, but started to doubt when I witnessed moments that seems to indicate something more severe.) 

We are relieved and frustrated, because we keep trying all the strategies used to counteract this sort of cycle. The bladder problem does make it hard to encourage her to engage in more activities, she's very resistant to any of the obvious solutions. But the doctor termed her "extremely intelligent" which is no surprise to us.

I've booked my trip to see her for mid-September, and we'll have a family conference appointment with the doctor.

MCO 2008

PS.  Somebody submitted a Chapter III to my "blogvella"

http://journals.aol.com/luvrte66/nutwoodjunction/entries/2008/07/29/mrs.-marstons-mystery/4053

Albers is the creator of the geometric form that frames this beach-combing woman rendered by Winslow Homer. 

A rather appropriate Hy-Art, given the rising concern I'm feeling today about my Mom, who seems to be peering into an ever-increasing fog.  My sister is with her right now, and today she will be undergoing a barrage of memory tests.  A 3-day trip up to the country home they just returned from will almost certainly be my Mom's last there. She just can't take the disorientation of travel anymore, and the challenges presented by a requirement to be very close to a bathroom at all times. (I'm being respectfully discreet about this issue, but it is becoming a major difficulty.)

I am torn whether to go ahead with this trip to France, instead of just planning to spend more time with my Mom. I'm also taken aback, as are my siblings, by the acceleration of her deterioration. I guess we always assumed that my Mom would be like her Dad, Aunts and Uncles, most of whom lived well into their eighties and none of whom suffered from severe loss of mental acuity, or did so only near the end, and closer to 90 than 80. (Her mother died of tuberculosis in 1946.)

On a happier note, I got feedback from the editing job that kept me at home this weekend instead of visiting my niece and nephews. (The guilt-$ is in the mail to them--my fondest memory of MY uncle is the money he sent on our birthdays!)   My editor wrote: "You make my day with your attention to detail and the colorful texture of suggestions."  (What I do is take the already-translated subtitles and make sure the English is completely clear. About every three minutes there's a mistake in tense, or the use of one word when another is better or more evocative.) You couldn't possibly find a job more suited to my particular abilities. Unfortunately, I'd need to get about 10 times the work I get so far to make a living at it, but globalization is on my side. Much of the work is from Russia, which is so flush in oil wealth that money is flooding into all sectors of the economy, including film and TV production, and subtitling is obviously required to expand outside of the domestic market.

The thing about walking in the fog is that it's easy to interpret the lack of certainty as to what's ahead as a cause for pessimism. But the good things are just as shrouded as bad things. The trick is embracing the "I don't know" - which is what faith, after all, is all about.

MCO 2008

A few days ago, I posted the first chapter of a possible group serial novel, hoping to inspire someone to add the next installment and possibly creating a viral work of internet fiction as whoever wants to adds to it.

As I suspected, loyal reader and commenter #1, Sheria, took up the challenge. My only modification to her most excellent work is in the illustration I originally supplied.  I realized a previous Hy-Art conveyed the Widow Marston much better. She is hatless as befits attendance at a ball, her dress is rather more unambiguously black, and she rather looks to be in her 30s, albeit holding up very, very well.

If either one of her or one of my readers come up with a Chapter III, I suppose we'll have to start an entirely blog entirely, just for the novel!  Of course, if it was really viral, it could spin off into several different parallel versions, and we could lay claim to a new internet art forml!  In any event, if you write a Chapter III, leave the link here and on Sheria's blog.

The man in the hat is via Agasse, the woman on his mind is from Gertler. What worked for me was the way her arm follows the contours of his hat.

Today I wrote my Aunt about the possibility of celebrating my 50th birthday in France by having a party with two of my cousins who will also be celebrating their 50th this autumn--one month ahead and one month after me.  Family lore recalls all three women--my mother, her sister, and their sister-in-law--being pregnant together in the summer of 1958, when my mother flew to France while she was pregnant with me.  The thing is that it would have to be in September, a month before my actual birthday, but I figure if I've had a big party ahead of time, the pressure will be off on the actual day.

Neighborhood Report: On Saturday I went into the local police precinct and reported the incessant loitering in front of our building and on our driveway. They wrote down the address and "narco-activity" and told me it would be mentioned at rollcall so that the police would increase patrols at night and ask questions. Ironic, hunh? The ex-dealer turns low-level vigilante. Maybe I should just walk the dog at night made up like Heath Ledger as the Joker. (I saw "Dark Knight" this weekend.  He was, indeed, brilliant.)  

Also ironic: a news helicopter hovering over Sunset and Wilton because a station was giving out free gas for the day, and the lines stretched around the block. I wonder how many gallons of fuel the helicopter wasted to report this urgent news about the state of gas prices?  This is nuts. And yet all they are doing is trying to make the highest rating to make more money because they're can charge more to advertisers.  This is capitalism at work people.

When I go to France, I may never come back. They don't have Eyewitness News there.

MCO 2008

This mini-story brought to you by the art of Washington Allston and Giovanni Boldini.

 

All eyes were on the Contesse de Vermeil when her former lover, le Baron de Genolhac, arrived at the ball with Mrs. Owen Marston, the widow from the United States known simply as "l'Americaine" ever since she'd taken rooms at the Georges V less than a month ago and rapidly insinuated her way into every lesser salon and drawing room in the 16^th arrondissement.  Emma Marston's late husband's fortune had been made supplying the Union Army with uniforms during the American Civil War 20 years earlier, which he made with Southern cotton smuggled through the blockade and repurchased from the warehouses of the Baron.  It was an exquisite arrangement that meant the Baron had been hosted numerous times over the years in Marston's townhouse on lower Fifth Avenue.  When a taste for rich food and a surfeit of cigars eventually felled Owen Marston with an attack of apoplexy as he walked up the stairs of his favorite Chambers Street bordello, what could the Baron do but introduce his dear and now considerably wealthy widowed friend to the lights of Paris?

 

Mrs. Marston continued to technically acknowledge the convention of mourning by wearing black, even as its positively festive style indicated the true spirit of its wearer. She had married at 19, when her husband was 47, having been governess to his children after the death of his first wife.  She was now past 30--how far was a matter of some debate--but they had rather less of an idea in Paris than in New York.  Only the Baron knew that her origins were rather more humble than the vaguely Bostonian Brahmin biography floated when necessary at dinner parties.  In America, money could buy anything, including a past.

 

Emma timed her entrance into French society well, as the advent of the Second Empire was creating all sorts of opportunity for reinvention. Money talked rather fluently in France as well as it did transatlantically, but while it could get you in the door, it would not necessarily grant you a second invitation. Unlike their British counterparts, the doyennes of French society considered less the social class to which you were born than the breeding which you exhibited.  Style, wit, the ability to make interesting observations about the events of the day--this is what mattered most.  At least to the Contesse.

 

She had no idea that she was about to meet her match in Emma Marston.

 

MCO 2008

 

P.S. Feel free to add to this. Those likely to, know who you are. I sheria know who you are. 

This Hy-Art is atypical, because theres's only one artist, Agasse. The whimsical idea I got was to use Photoshop's mosaic tool on everything but the giraffe, who clearly didn't need it! Maybe I should call it: "How a giraffe sees the world."

It's not a bad metaphor for the point of view of an active addict, actually. Not to bash giraffes, who are one of my favorite animals, but if you feel cragged and incoherent inside, you tend to perceive the outside the same way; you need to match the inside and outside. For any non-addict who doesn't think they can identify, just remember the first time you fell in love, or at least had a huge crush.  Everything seems colored by your feelings for the object of your affection, who becomes the reference point by which you perceive the world. 

When I was active, I surrounded myself by tweakers, and it felt to me that we were the majority, the "real" world;  non-users were  the uninitiated, the ones who didn't know the ultimate truth of this taboo elixir.  It seemed completely normal to me to view my world as some sort of  perpetual porn movie. The possibility of sex infused everything, until the meth barely worked even for that.  Then I lived in the outtakes, on the cutting room floor.

Last night I caught up with the final episodes of Season 1 of MadMen, and Episode 2 of Cranford.  I was immeasurably content watching the marvelous acting and writing. It would have been nice enough to be watching it in someone's arms, but David was on the couch and we enjoy a running commentary that's so comfortable and funny that I may even prefer it.  I did not have to suck on a pipe every 10 minutes, I was not transfixed on the computer, switching from Manhunt to M4M to AOL chat rooms while greeting customers with little baggies.  The insanity of that life gives me chills now.

I get to wake up to a mere cup of coffee, remembering it is the birthday of two people close to me, to whom I can give the gift of coherence and love, as well as two books I remembered to send last week.  The prospect of going out to walk the dog does not scare me. I no longer see the world through the lens of a shattered mirror, it is a merely a window which I have the responsiblity of keeping clear.

MCO 2008

I can already hear the Republican attack machine preparing the ads and the email campaigns with various attempts to portray Obama's assertion of global citizenship as some kind of knife in the back of the good old U.S.A.  To them may I pose the question:  What planet are you a citizen of?  Or to put it in a way you'll understand, when the evil aliens come and place giants saucers over every continent, do you think when you shout out "But we're Americans!" they'll politely retract their zappers and move on?

Thank God we might have a President who actually knows that giving the German chancellor a neck massage at the dais might be a tad inappropriate.  Thank God we might have a president who understands that no country with 3% of the world population has some sort of divine right to 28% of the world's resources. A President who could fill a blank map of the world with all of its countries and only get a few wrong. (Yeah, I'd have a little trouble with Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Guinea myself.)

The reason so many Limbaugh-listening xenophobes love to hate Europe is because, for all their bluster, they feel inadequate in the face of their own ignorance. They either couldn't learn a foreign language or more likely, didn't really try. I've seen them in Europe, (many more never have even gone there, like our dear Cowboy-in-Chief pre-2000)  they usually speak broken English extra loud, and then get offended at the weary impatience with which they are greeted. (Whoopee. Another American who thinks all he needs to speak is money to get slathered with affection by the natives. )

What kills me is that these are the same people who hold immigrants to the United States in contempt for not learning English or speaking it poorly. Immigrants who come here to work, precisely because they aren't doing so well in their own country.  (The Statue of Liberty says "Give me your tired and your poor" -- not "Send me your successful and educated.")    And yet, if Rush went to Mexico, all he could say is  "Tiene Oxycontin?"

Granted, I had the luck to have a foreign mother who raised me fairly bilingually, and I love languages. You didn't have to push me into Spanish, Italian and German classes. I even took some Rumanian and made Brazilian boyriends talk to me in Portuguese. It doesn't make me better than anyone, but it does give me a slighter biggger sense of how other people think around the world, and that's a good thing I would wish on anybody, 

All I ask is that you don't defend your ignorance as some sort of mark of cultural superiority, and that you don't attack Obama's understanding of different languages, cultures and mindsets as some kind of further proof of a lack of patriotism.

What the hell is so terrible, anyway, about a continent where almost everyone has health insurance and speaks at least one other language, usually English? ( Obama didn't even need his speech interpreted.) As for McCain's assertion that he'd like to speak to Germans too, but only as President, OH PLEASE.  He'd go in a flash if he thought 200,000 people would show up to see him.

MCO 2008

P.S. NOTE TO THE HATER WHOSE COMMENTS I'VE BEEN DELETING: Rich, I'm not taking the bait, friend. even though it's a pretty evil thing to predict I'll be back on the meth. All I can figure out is that you are in such pain from your own use, that if I got high again, you would somehow feel a little better because it would constitute proof that no one can really recover, and therefore it's not your fault that you can't.

Well, that's incredibly sad. I'm sorry the addiction has its claws so deep within you, but do you really think it does your spirit any good to keep attacking me?  And I imagine you don't confine your fury to me, that you spread it across the net, but I think whatever relief that somehow gives you can't compare to the damage it does to you by staying in a state of perpetual resentment. Ain't no way God or recovery can work its magic when you're subsisting on that kind of energy. It won't hurt me, but it will kill you.

So my friend Jayne, who I saw in this show, asked me to help spread the word.

IT"S VERY GOOD, especially if you find sex, opera or death interesting--c'mon admit it--you do. If you live in L.A. and are free Sundays at 3 through August 17, GO. Mention the blog and you'll get $5 off.

Marc 

That provocative lady is via Balthus, on a boat of Monet's. I like to think this takes place on a lake in Berlin because our naked lady is desperately trying to get Obama's attention!

Yesterday was a good news/bad news kind of day.  The good news was that I got a big subtitle-editing job in my inbox yesterday, the bad news is that is has a very tight turnaround, and I had to cancel my trip up north to see my sister and her kids. (I''ll miss the play they're in.)  I just can't afford not to take every job I can get and do it quickly and promptly. I can't say part of me wonders if this also wasn't the God of Travel and Safety intervening. I haven't been making it until noon without a nap, and that drive on the 5 gets very, very boring. Oh well, as soon as David and I get the house, the kids and the mom get have a SoCal vacation spot.

Speaking of which, that's the other gn/bn. The good news was that we saw a very nice mortgage broker, the bad news was that he called me yesterday and it was impossible not to clear up some items on my credit report without telling the broker about my past, and told him I'd actually done time over some of it.  He turned out to be incredibly nice and understanding--I think he had a few stories about a rocky decade of his own he could have told. He thinks he can work around it.

I am hoping that working with Steven and Mike (still inside) might somehow be burning off enough of that old bad karma. I actually have a pretty elegant plan for what to do when I've made as much money legally as I did illegally.  But I'd rather do it, then talk about it, then talk about it, and not do it. (In any event, it's nothing that'll happen right away.)

MCO 2008 

I love the way this Boldini diva fits so perfectly against this Turner landscape. When I get to the Afterlife for Artists, I will either be surrounded by hugs for all the homage or stoned for the most egregious run of unapologetic plagiarism ever devised.  I like to think that that the Hy-Art serves to redeem all those hours at the computer learned how to use Photoshop while high, some of it in the service of forgery. 

I have a confession. I secretly love natural disasters.  When they show that hurricane tracking across the Gulf Coast, I get a thrill.  I ache for another earthquake. Tornados turn me on.  I can't help it, it's the grandest theater on the planet, Mother Nature putting on a production that puts all the extravaganzas of Broadway to shame.  And here's the thing: I know you do too. I know we all get a frisson of excitement when we see "Stormwatch" across the screen. I'm not the only one who watches "MegaDisasters." 

Oddly though,  you can't get me on a rollercoaster. What's that about?

Steven had a great first day of freedom--you can read about it on Prison's a Bitch.

Tomorrow I drive up to Chico to see my sister and little niece and nephew in a play. Yes, that's "drive up."  Once I committed to the bus, David saw that it made little sense for me to add 3+ hours both way and told me to use the car.

I'll borrow Sam Harris' sign off: "Do something wonderful for someone today."

MCO 2008 

First and foremost, it is impossible for me not to be hyperaware that today, after a decade, Steven gets out of prison. This is like the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. For him, walking in them, for me, watching them. He's probably just now getting on a bus to a halfway house in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Wow.

Like many of us, I am entranced by Obama's trip abroad, thrilled by how well it's going. I loved the cheers of the troops as he sunk that three-pointer--I'm sure Dick Cheney had to adjust his pacemaker to "apoplectic" that Bush-friendly troops were not pre-chosen to guarantee a stony instead of an obviously warm reception to the other "O." (Who'd have thought she'd have competition?) I loved loved loved when McCain, the supposed one with foreign policy expertise, talked about the non-existent "Iraq/Pakistan" border (they are 750 miles apart, separated by Iran), especially as I imagined Dumbya being told by Condi that McCain had made a mistake, because he still can't find Afghanistan on a map.

I am of course dismayed by the continued tenacity of the "radical muslim" perception that seems firmly entrenched in the minds of the the under and miseducated. I have a theory about that, particularly when it comes to the elderly.

One of the reasons it was so nice to be an American in the 40s and 50s was that it wasn't an illusion that we were "the good guys."  The Fascist ideologies we fought really were evil, and we really were liberators who could be trusted not to torture. By the 60s, things got a bit more ambiguous, but it was still relatively easy to feel like whatever our flaws, the Russians were worse--as any Hungarian, Czech or Ukrainian who got out from under the Soviet boot could tell you.  If you'd made it into your 60s or 70s, you were used to 4 decades of good guyism, but probably just a tad disoriented by century's end that there was no clear, monolithic enemy to reinforce your sense of contrast.

Then comes 9/11.   A tragedy to be sure, but there's the comfortable feeling of certainty you had after Pearl Harbor that you are the wounded and righteous party. But these bad guys, who are they? Senators couldn't tell the difference between Sunni and Shia--or is it Shiite? Oh, it was Saddam Hussein? Well, there you go. Oh but it wasn't?  Finally, you throw up you hands, settling on the idea that our enemy are Radical Muslim Extremists.  True, Bush is not Einstein, but at least when you look at him, he seems to be without any doubt as to the basic certainty that we are the good guys. You need to believe that about your country, about yourself. Children can turn against you, spouses can die, businesses can go belly up, life can be cruel and uncertain. But if America isn't the good guy, what does that make you?

Barack Obama represents a nuanced view of the world that makes you uncomfortable. He asks America to take responsiblity for its foreign policy mistakes, to understand that if so many hate us it may be related to how we operate in the world.  If you agree with that, then you may have to question whether you have something to do with why your daugher never visits, why your husband or wife divorced you, why you have to live on $1800 a month even though you worked non-stop since the depression.  (The equivalent scenario can be painted with working class whites whose patriotism also gets all tied up with compensating for poor self-esteem.)

Casting Obama as a muslim extremist, as ridiculous as that is, represents a need for a clear and defined bad guy, like the good old days of the Nazis and the Russians. Killing Saddam didn't fix terrorism, and who can keep all these Arabs straight? McCain is 72, an ex- POW, unambigous.  Obama is mixed race, his middle name is Hussein, he even looks like an Arab. Most of all, he's unfamiliar in a time where familiarity is craved.

They fear Obama, because he represents a new world where being American is not an automatic grant of moral superiority, in which the survival of the world may actually depend on some hard long stocktaking in the mirror. To them, Obama's a Pandora's Box of guilt and self-questioning that must not be opened. Better to slap a simplistic label on him and play some mah-jong.

MCO 2008 

 

P.S. The Hy-Art is Reni/Fidler. Can't say it's much related to the blog entry, but it's what created itself last night.

When I was a kid and my mother told us we had to wait a 1/2 an hour after eating before we could go swimming, I thought she was the only Mom who did that. I was rather deflated when I saw on 20/20 that this was one of the"10 Biggest Myths That Endure."  According to Jon Stossel, every mother did it.

When my father would come out on the porch at 10 of 6 every night in the summer, and do a long low two-toned whistle, summoning all us five kids home, I thought he was the only father on the planet who did that. It didn't occur to me that one of his friend's fathers did it when he grew up, and probably a lot of other dads too.

I thought we were the only family in America in which the kids had to ask at dinner's end: "May I please be excused?" and fold their napkin.  (I also thought no one else had napkin rings.)  I thought my mother was the only one who scrubbed  the floor on her hands and knees instead of using a mop. (She said they just "push the dirt around.")  I thought for sure we were the only family in which glass cups were used to put the tea bags while awaiting reuse.  I was literally shocked when my friend Claudia told me they did exactly the same thing, and had the same cups I somehow thought existed exclusively in our cupboard.  I also thought we were the only family who used "the mudroom" to describe where we took off our wet or dirty boots.

Of course I thought I was the only boy in the planet who had strange stirrings when he watch Robert Conrad in the "Wild Wild West," and certainly the only one ever who fantasized about being bound, gagged and kidnapped.  (As an adult, I discovered it is a veritable industry, with many a porn magazine or video devoted exclusively to just that fantasy.)

I could cite a few more esoteric examples of things that did make our family one of the quirkier on the block, but after reading enough David Sedaris, I realized that American suburbia was a very big umbrella indeed, shading all sort of bizarre secrets and cultural back histories, not to mention a budding homosexual in practically every house.

It's been rather wounding to my exceptionalist fantasies to discover there is indeed, nothing new under the sun.  In prison, and in AA, there's always someone who can top you, or worse, did exactly the same thing. This is one of my biggest character defects. A desire to be uniquely unique, first among equals, extra-special, and recognized as such by you.

So it gives me particular pleasure to be pretty damn sure that no one has ever combined Eakins, Whistler, Watteau and Wyeth in one picture before. I can't help it. I NEED to find something that no one has done so far.

MCO 2008

The Japanese are via Utamaro, the dark-eyed women from Christian Schad.

It's a pretty good illustration of how my weekend is feeling. Juggling all these points of view, including my own.

We're all trying to be there the best we can for my Mom. My sisters, my Aunt, myself, and her best friends are all trying to figure out how much and when to visit, how much to encourage her to engage with the world while balancing it again her increasing tendency to feel disoriented by unfamilar situations and too much stimulation.  Sometimes it feels like we're trying to hold back the tide. At least she never forgets I'm her adoring son, even if the content of yesterday's conversation seems to evaporate overnight. I only half-joke that this is her best opportunity to live in the present.

My sister asked me up to Northern California to see my niece and nephew in a play next weekend, and that brings up a whole lot of other points of view with David about use of the car  Which really isn't about use of the car. It's about what kind of relationship we have. Peridoically this netherworld of unmarriage gets a little murky. I think I may just take the bus.

I'm watching the Harvey Girls, which is free on Video on Demand this month. That Judy Garland. What a perfect talent.

MCO 2008

So, last night my friend Michael and I went to see Mamma Mia! What glorious and total fun.  The Greek Islands were to DIE for, the story is inspired silliness, the songs are defiantly hummable, and the actors commit to their parts like their lives depended on it. Pierce Brosnan, for example, is no singer, but he acts like he is, so what comes out of his mouth is totally listenable.  And Meryl Streep--good for you girl. She has so much fun up there it's infectious, and she can sing.

So then I get home, and after walking the dog, decided to check out the first two episodes of "Cranford," which I'd missed on its first run on Masterpiece Theater because it competed with Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters. What an idiot I was for that.  The most extraordinary ensemble of Brit talent I can think of, bar none, and a story that's engrossing while deceptively simple. One half an hour was more memorable than a whole season of either of the other shows. 

When I went to bed, humming the tunes to one movie while thinking about the artistry of the other, I wondered how such disparate entertainments could feel like bookends to me. Except for the fact that both were put together and acted by consummate professionals, you couldn't find two more dissimilar plots or styles.  It finally occured to me that while both sets of characters, like any human beings, chased contentment, in Mamma Mia the pursuit exists in the veritable absense of any social conventions--everything goes, basically. In Cranford, the search is conducted within the confines of the most rigid social conventions imaginable.  Propriety, correctness, what is done and not done, these form the rules and regulations that few of the characters even question, much less test. They were two sides of the very same coin.

But within the atmospheres of complete, uninhibited freedom, and of practically none at all, the questions posed are exactly the same. How do I choose to live? What is fun? What is service?  How far do I go to get what I want while remaining a person who respects who he or she sees in the mirror? Who do I love? How do I love them? 

Caught up in these stories, I had the wonderful sense that when life is viewed through the prism of these questions, whether you live here or there, now or then, under this system or that, our interior experience remains much the same as human beings.  Ask almost anyone on his deathbed what his  life was most about, and if he's honest the answers will almost always revolve around how much love he was able to give or to receive.

MCO 2008

The original Vermeer has a completely dark background, it has always seemed unfinished to me as Vermeer rarely missed a chance to illuminate with either soft daylight or evening candle. As sacrilegious as it is to say  such a thing about a Vermeer, inserting a window from Wyeth feels like an improvement.

It's Mandela's 90th birthday, What a chance to acknowledge an amazing life. His 27 years behind bars would have broken most men, instead he turned it into the single most powerful act in the movement to bring down apartheid.  What a mindblowing concept.

I'm thinking of such things as we count down to the last days of Steven's imprisonment. After 10 years, on July 22 he will be paroled to a halfway house in South Dakota.  How do you make sense of spending your thirties in prison? You accept the things you cannot change, and change the things that you can.  Steven accepted the reality of prison, took responsibility for what he did to get there, and slowly and painfully learned to maintain a spiritual sanity in the midst of insanity.  Through the blog, he's been able to crystallize  the last year of his bid into the most amazing writing.  He rendered an experience which could have been meaningless into one that is redeemed by art. Because his writing can only be termed art.

One thing about windows in prison. You can see out--usually a dismal view of other parts of the prison--but no one from the outside can see in. The blog gave the outside world a view into his life, and the lives of many of the other men who would have otherwise remained invisible.  Knowing he was read by those on the other side of the wire was like a breeze through that open window.

MCO 2008 

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The boxing match is via Eakins, the peasant wedding beneath it is via Brueghel the Elder.

This is one of those Hy-Arts that provoke wild meanderings in my brain. I wonder whether the spectators at the boxing match might be reincarnations of the peasants at the wedding below, and if it is their energy that directed me to find these two completely disparate works to conjoin.

I wonder at the life of the baker carrying the pies in with his co-worker, I wonder about the functionary scoring the fight, at the boxer himself. I wonder what the painters wondered when they painted these subjects. I wonder at  time and dimension and art and how little we really understand. Are all things happening at all moments?  Maybe I should have been a physicist. I can certainly add that to long, long list of alternative paths I might have taken. Here a few of those might-have-been scenarios:

1) I went to Yale School of Drama, and became a New York City-based director and playwright.

2) I went to Columbia School of Journalism and became a foreign correspondent.

3) I went to Middlebury, became a Professor of French Language and Literature and had a career in academia.

4) I stayed in France, inherited my grandfather's shirt store, and created a successful chain of them across Southern France.

5) I went to McGill, fell in love with Montreal and did something combining all of the above--perhaps a career in linguistics.

The funny thing is that I can't imagine having taken any of these routes without having eventually been drawn to L.A. (or Paris maybe) to try a career out in screenwriting. I can't imagine not having become HIV-positive, because I was a tramp in 1980-82 when I got the virus. And I would have had the same taste for intoxicating substances in any case. So it would seem that no matter what my trajectory, I might well have ended up pretty much where I am, doing exactly what I'm doing,  writing this very blog entry (though perhaps in French), simply with some different ex-boyfriends to remember. I find this thought oddly comforting.

Dare I make this a meme?  What are your top 5 alternate untravelled roads?

 

MCO 2008

 

So yesterday, David and I went househunting.

I've told you what a particular friendship I have with David. There has been nothing romantic or sexual between us for 15 years. After we were together in the early 90s, he had a lover for a decade, as I spun out of control.  In 2005, when I was a year sober, his lover died. David didn't walk away empty-handed, but it was hardly what had been verbally promised.  Had gay marriage been legal, this is the perfect example of a wrong that would have been prevented.

Anyway, no matter what affairs of the heart (or parts lower) either of us have, 9 days out of 10, we spend most evenings having dinner and watching TV.  We never say anything "nice" to each other, but we laugh at each others jokes and that stands in quite well for affectionate banter. We never fight.  We trust each other. I don't judge his nightly cocktail and he accepts (grudgingly) that I can't join him.  All in all, I believe there are a lot of people who would give their left eyetooth for the kind of "marriage" we have, thought it's taken both of us a while to accept that that's probably a more accurate term for what we have than anything else.

Between his good credit and income, and my access to a low-interest loan, we are in a position to take advantage of the downturn in the housing market, which has brought prices in certain areas of L.A. down from stratospheric to merely unreasonable. (People lament the housing crisis, but I have to note this considerable upside.) 

With our absolutely fabulous agent, Paula, we went to a slew of houses yesterday, mostly around Echo Park. Some of the fixer-uppers were really need-to-be-torn-downers, frankly, and some of the sweet finds were also so tucked away as to make going out for a quart of milk a pain-in-the-ass. But one place we could only see from the outside for now was in a neighborhood that was both adorable and perfectly located (David wants to be close to downtown, where he works, I want to be close to my favorite meeting). It is in Angeleno Heights, one of the only neighborhoods in LA where you find several blocks full of restored Victorians from the turn of the century.   (Our house would not be, it's a modest duplex, but just to walk the dog there! Heaven!)

Sobriety isn't about cash and prizes, it never has been. But it's beyond doubt that one of the costs of addicition is that you don't make healthy economic decisions. I had some windfalls in the past, and buying a house was never seriously on any agenda. Yesterday, for me, was definitely one of the results of being clean and living like a responsible adult.

The odd thing is that last night, I had such a severe using dream that it took me a good 10 minutes upon waking to really get that I had not, in fact, slipped.  The disease of alcoholism, one discovers, takes increasingly desperate last stands the longer you stay sober. It penetrates the subconcious because it one of the last places it can find traction.  

Luckily, no nightmare is about to rain on my parade. I'm gonna get me a slice of the American dream.

MCO 2008 

 

Waterhouse and Raphael are the two artists helping me out today.

Last night I was getting gas (for only the 2nd time since I got the car!) at the Arco on Franklin and Gower, and I noticed, as I paid, a woman dialing for a taxi and asking the cashier what the address there was.  She misunderstood when he told her the cross street was Gower that the address was 6100 Gower, when I very much knew it to be 6100 Franklin.  I told the woman exactly that, and she realized of course that was the case, but she seemed very flustered at having to call the cab company back. I asked her if she was going far, and the address she told me was maybe a mile out of my way, so I offered her a ride.

In the 12 minutes or so that Kelly was in my car (she was early forties, a bit overweight, long brown hair, rather non-descript all around but pleasant-looking enough) she told me that "Mark" (ironically my name) had "pushed" her, so she got out of his  car when he pulled in to get gas. It was the second time in three years he'd been physical that way, and she didn't know why she didn't break up with him the first time, she should have known when his own mother had warned her to be "careful."   She said he'd never actually hit her, but he was very jealous and possesive, if she left the house without a bra he'd say things like "who're you going to fuck!"   She couldn't believe she was almost going to marry him, especially since she's awaiting a big workman's compensation settlement, and plus her daughter didn't like him and so on and so on.

You get the idea.  I said what I could  that I thought might be helpful, but much more important was the simple act of being a stranger who showed her a kindness. I was relieved to be just gay enough that she sensed getting into my car was not opening herself up to some nightmare scenario, but even more than that, I think she sensed the spirit of my Dad. My Dad was the ultimate "nice guy."  He would direct traffic at accidents, give young black men who were hitchiking rides, intervene to protect a woman being threatened.  This was how he was raised and this is how he raised me.  Of course this urge does battle with my streetwise sense that there are a lot of bad people out there who might take advantage of you, but between years of my own badboyosity and 10 months in prison, I pretty much trust my instinct in these matters. Kelly was harmless, if talkative.

What struck me more than anything was the sense that there are millions of Kellys out there. Single mothers with a high school education who don't know what else they can offer besides their looks, and as those fade, end up so fearful of being alone that they enter into relationships with insecure and possessive men who end up abusing or stalking them.  I also felt this was the kind of disengaged soul who is so precoccupied with the dramas of her personal life, that she either doesn't vote or votes based on irrational and anecdotal impressions, like seeing the New Yorker cover at a newstand and saying: "See, I thought he was an Arab!"

I hope Kelly makes the right choice, but I have a feeling she'll make up with "Mark," and he'll end up spending most of her workman's comp settlement.  She's going to be mad and broke, and have no one to blame but herself, just like the battered spouse that is America these days, my poor black-and-blue country that should have known better.

MCO 2008

I love Caravaggio, but he's so dramatic that I've found him hard to Hy-Art.  It seems a solution might be to match him with an equally dark artist, like El Greco. This combo certainly says to me that in every serene and learned old man, there was once a young man who lurched from one emotional crisis to the next.  God knows I can relate. When I think back at how utterly tempestuous my inner life used to be, I grimace.  In my teens and twenties, I was always in love or pining, heartbroken or in an intense state of anticipation.  There was a semi-constant state of intrigue in my friendships, and I was a great lover of office politics.  I almost never lived in the moment. Except maybe between the third and fourth drink.

When AIDS came in the door, there was suddenly a legitimate source of drama, everything really was fraught through with life-or-death implications.  Boy, did that feed my alcoholic love of drama, not to mention rationalize medicating my emotions.  Then the drugtaking created its own set of dramas, of necessities. I had to obtain, I had to find the money to obtain, I had to manage all the consequences of that process.  Well you know the story.

I am amazed at how nothing ever seems to rise to the level of a "problem" anymore. There are things I haven't done yet that I would like to do, places I would like to go, things I wouldn't mind having but that I can completely imagine continuing to live without.  I am concerned about my Mom, as you know, but given that she is in a wonderful place and healthy, the pluses of her situation so outweigh the minuses my gratitude far outweighs any worry.

There are some dust-ups in my personal life or among blogamis. I communicate about it, the dust settles.  I finally returned to the doctor about my foot, and was reminded I could take ibuprofen for the inflamation. I have been. The pain is much less.  I often need to nap at 11 am instead of 4.  Oh well,  I guess I'll never be in the Olympics.  How great that I get to sit back and cheer for them.

I don't have a boyfriend and there is none on the horizon. But David is over every night and we giggle like madmen, (though not while watching MADMEN, which we caught up on all day yesterday--fabulous.) I'm getting positively boring, which is a good thing, because you may not miss much the blog entries I may need to skip writing as I try to crank out more chapters of the math book and still do some subtitling work that's coming in. 

Yes, I've even accepted the world will not shift on its axis if I skip a few blog entries. I know, hard to believe, but it's true.

MCO 2008

I took a lot of time coming up with this Hy-Art.  Although I inmediately knew I loved this Spilliaert figure, climbing the steep incline, her smoky mane wafting as she approached the breezy summit, it took many false starts before I teamed her with this Sargent portrait of a woman who seems to know who she is in the world.

The journey of life, after all, certainly involves climbing the mountain of self-knowledge.  And of course you never really get to the top, but the more you climb, the better the view.  And no one should know the trails and pathways better than you yourself, all the hiding places of your secret caves and forests.

Oh brother. Am I trying a little too hard to sound full of fire, music and spiritual insight? Methinks yes.

Last night, in an attempt to make sure I don't get too stuck living in my inner biosphere, I went to Outfest's 10th Annual Video Gong Show at the Gay and Lesbian Center.  This fun night had started pre-You Tube, and continues because even though the clips are nothing you couldn't probably find on line, people do bring some originals in and it's great fun to cheer or gong them along with the panel of faux celebrity judges--we had Julie Brown as Paula Abdul, Joe Cera as Paul Lynde (back from the dead but frozen in time), and Nadya Ginsburg as Madonna.  They were very, very funny, with Nadya as the Caballah-gal taking the cake.

Maybe that's what reminded me of the perils of taking oneself too seriously. Lighten up Madge!  If I can, you can! (We're born a month apart, you know.) 

One thing I need to take seriously is WORK.  Off to work on the decimals in my sister's Math Textbook.

MCO 2008

That's Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Little Indy Mac, rendered by Leger and Ault respectively.

I saw a small house, a one-bedroom with a large dining room, renting for $2150 yesterday. In Echo Park, which was considered a crappy neighborhood until very lately. That's crazy!

When I was in New York last month, I remembered what a big deal it was when my friend Eric found a very small one-bedroom in the West Village for $385 a month, (this was in 1979.)  Even with inflation factored in, that apartment shouldn't be more than $1000 in today's dollars, and if it isn't, it's only because of rent control. Deregulated it would go for at least $2500 (it was a cool neighborhood.)  That's just nuts. It was tiny!

You know I'm getting old because I'm waxing rhapsodic about the good old days.  What scares me about the way things are going economically, is that I don't know if anybody young is going to remember these days as good.

Last night I also spend some time in dreamland with Paul, a great first love of mine who died in 1995 of AIDS. When I met him in 1976, I was almost 18 and he was 29, and though I didn't think that old, I sure could never really grasp that I would one day be over 20 years older than this decade-older-than-me guy, much less that I would survive him. I can't remember quite what happened in the dream, but I woke myself up crying, so I probably realized Paul was not really alive again.

New York in the 70's was considered a dirty, dangerous place in decline, but it was a fantastic time to be gay, and I treasure the memories. The good old days turned very sad, and now we have hope again, and yet change may come too late for the planet. Life is just inherently both wonderful and terrible, whether it's the Roman Empire, the Crusades, the Civil War, World Wars I or II, the Cold War, Vietnam or AIDS or 9/11.

There's nothing to do but revel in the beauty and the sadness of it all, while doing the next indicated thing.

MCO 2008

This woman and the young girl waiting for a train are via Manet; the splash of color from Klee.

I particularly like the sense of quiet in this Hy-Art.  They are doing something modern--waiting for a train--and yet the Mother (or Aunt or Governess) is content to read a book; and the girl seems happy to just stare through the railing and daydream.  Makes me ache for a simpler time even as I live so entirely in this hyperconnected one. 

This is one of those days where emails and phone calls are flying about the nature of serenity, modern technology, funny nephews, launching a talk show in China, going to the beach tomorrow, fires in Northern California, getting a Lojack, and the potential merits of Hellboy 2.  You'll just have to fill in the blanks. Sometimes my brain is just way too busy for my fingers.

I did take a timeout to stop by the auto shop of the mechanic who was shot two weeks ago when he confronted taggers.  He wasn't there, but I left the message that I think he's  a hero, and the staff  seemed very touched on his behalf. I also left him a set of Hy-Art cards, as I figure he might have some thank-yous to write for all the Get Well wishers.  As I turned to go, one of the other mechanics said: "Wait!"  and he handed me a business card. "If you need any work done..." 

For a second I thought I would ask what he was charging for a liposuction.  Hey, this is L.A.! Everyone has a sideline!  Every waiter wants to be an actor; every blogger, a screenwriter;  every messenger, a stunt man. And EVERYONE wants to be on TV.

In fact, the Serenity Prayer here starts: "God grant me the celebrity...."

MCO 2008

This Hy-Art is a landscape from Rembrandt, in which I filled the mountain with a Rossetti creation.

I realize one of the side-effects of creating the Hy-Art is that it keeps jiggling my view of reality. If I imagine the spirit of this woman inhabiting the summit under a windmill in a painting, I am more likely to see reality with a recognition that there may be more  there than what I can perceive with my 5 senses. Perhaps the animists, who see everything as having a specific spirit, have it right. My friend Chris, who writes often of matters spiritual over at Last Chance Texaco, responded to one of my comments like this:

Perhaps Hindus have so many demi-gods and deities, lower case 'gods with attitude,' for the same reason. We want a god that we can relate to; a god we can approach. We want god to be like us in some way. All these smaller gods, deities, demi-gods, prophets, sages, saints, angels, gurus, etc., are THAT, of course. All of this is THAT. But they are not ALL THAT. They are simply our GUI -our God User Interface. And like every GUI, they prevent complete and total access to the operating system.

I think he's onto something big there--or something small, as it were.  A God that could create the universe is rather difficult for the human brain to grasp.  We need to create lesser gods, demi-gods, angels, saints etc., as Chris notes.  Though I don't necessarily agree with Chris that they prevent complete and total access to the operating system. Can't we consider them alternatively as portals that provide access to the operating system?

Every morning when Gaza thumps his tail on the couch as he anticipates his morning petting session, I feel like he is opening me up to God. On a daily basis, I'm being presented with clear evidence of unconditional love , with a willingness to be in the present, to be of service. He is endlessly patient and accepting of whatever occurs the second it occurs. He doesn't judge, he doesn't dwell.  Dogs are better representatives of God than any priest I've ever met.

I often hear this prayer: "Let me be the man my dog thinks I am." And while I find that a laudable and charming sentiment,  my prayer is simpler: "Let me be like my dog."

Except I need to use the phone. To call my Mom.( I am in that way, a superior being to Gaza, as he never calls his Mom. )

MCO 2008 

How nice of my friend Daniel to have an album coming out just as I was looking for a Hy-Art to put up today.  He's such a handsome man (sorry, boys, he's straight), I would have put it up just for his beauty, but guess what? THE ALBUM'S REALLY GOOD.  Daniel's from Hawaii, and the music falls under the rubric of "Hawaiian Country."  The man's voice is as soulful as it gets, and the music is plaintive while never maudlin, with nimble lyrics that give you something to think about. (May I add here that Daniel is a nice as he is easy on the eyes. I'm so glad his music completes the picture.)  Available on iTunes.

Today is one of those days where gratitude is not something I have to make a list to get in touch with.  Everything feels organic and flowing, just a little bit miraculous. I love having a car that gets me from point A to B without killing the planet so much. I love being able to buy $43 worth of groceries, to have this blog to write and the music of a friend to listen to. I love NPR to keep in touch with the world, I love the mere 25-yard walk to the laundry room. I can call anybody and anybody can call me, I have work to keep me occupied and make a little money. I have All My Children and One Life to Live, and it doesn't look like I'll have to go to  General Hospital any time soon.

On days like this I have no good answer to those who would point out all the lonely, tired, hungry and suffering people in the world and ask why God feels at my fingertips while  all of their prayers yield no relief.  I don't know why. The God of my understanding is really the God of my misunderstanding.   But just because I do not understand why I am so blessed when others are in such pain, does not make my gratitude any less. Tomorrow or the next day I will probably feel quagmired and alone again, railing at the illogic and injustice of the world as presently constituted.  But today, for me, the glass is full.

MCO

P.S.  Steven is really outdoing himself as he near the end of his imprisonment. Please visit Prison's a Bitch--there's also an entry from his friend Andy.

The women are via Hopper, the observer is from Michelangelo. Everytime I think I've run out of gas on the Hy-Art, I fall in love with a new one.

There are about 6 guys who hang out every other night or so where my apartment building parking lot meets the street. None of them live in the building, but they have decided this is one of their favorite spots to buy, sell and use pot, heroin, and crack.  Frankly, I wouldn't give a shit if they did it all indoors, I'm the last one to judge that, obviously.  But no apartment will host them. They are the barely-tolerated brother/son/nephew who is allowed to crash on the couch but nothing more, probably protected by the long-suffering mother or grandmother who still remembers them as sweet and innocent 5-year olds, or needs the bit of cash they do bring in from various scams and deals. 

I mostly care because they leave a mess. Every morning I pick up bags of chips, empty cans of beer and redbull and gatorade, and sometimes, used needles. The Filipinos who live in the front of the building could surely object on the basis of the nightly noise and general sense of menace, but the relationship between different groups of immigrants is complex. I don't think they quite feel they have the right to protest.

Yes, the police are called regularly, though not by me. It's hard to catch them in the actual commission of a crime, and I know what jail is like. I might actually think they belong there but I can't be the one to send them there. And frankly, now that I have a new car, I don't want it vandalized as an act of revenge. Catch-and-release in an overwhelmed system usually means they're out very soon..

As a recovering drug addict, its up to me to realize better than anyone the insanity of a life whose sole "purpose" is the next high.  These guys are miserable inside. And yet, the language and cultural barriers alone make any approach on my part ineffective and even counterproductive, not to mention falling on the scale closer to promotion than attraction. I am thinking of posting a listing of Armenian-speaking AA meetings in Glendale. I suppose I fear being cast as a "church lady," but mostly it just feels like so much spitting in the wind.

The brutal truth is that a small portion of alcoholics and addicts ever get better, but the ones that do invariably have to choose to do so.  They have to make the call, go to the meeting, reach out.  Sometimes a nudge from the judge helps get them there, but that will never in and of itself creates the willingness to get better.

I don't have to impose any consequences on these guys, the disease always leads to disaster, every time. I will probably continue to alternate between glaring at and ignoring them, and of course, picking up the crap they leave.  My challenge is to try to withhold judgment in my heart, to send a prayer to God asking that she keep watch over them and stay alert for any who decide they've had enough and want to get off the not-so-merry-go-round for good.

MCO 2008

Casting about for a Hy-Art idea this morning, it occurred to me to place a rather serene and contented child (from Liotard) into the middle of Munch's very famous "Scream." 

See? It is possible to keep one's head when all about are losing theirs.  (That comes from a famous poem that no doubt Sheria can identify to the pleasure of her little researcher's heart.)

I woke up to an email that moved me a lot.  A young man who watched the vlog of me and Sam wrote me.  He started out talking about that, but opened up about other things, specifically his battle with HIV that is of far greater severity than it might have been had he not delay