The Sheila Variations

I love this shot

(I do not post this in any way to comment on the character of my OWN weekend, which has not been "lost" in any way ... I just loved Billy Wilder's choice here.)

A depraved mind reveals itself casually

Michele (looking at photo): "It looks like --"

Me (interrupting, nodding, thinking I will be agreeing with her): "Everyone is about to be murdered."

Pause.

Michele: "Actually, no, I was going to say a nice suburban picnic."

Me: "Oh. Oops."

"She got the idea all right."

Martha Vickers, a young pretty actress, was damn unforgettable and creepy as the sociopathic thumb-sucking nymphomaniac in The Big Sleep. How on earth did THAT get by the censors??

There's a really cute story about her and the filming of The Big Sleep - I came across it first, I think, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood. But the anecdote also shows up in a couple of Bogart biographies - the story was told by multiple people - all of whom witnessed it, so I guess we can assume that something along these lines occurred. I just love everyone involved in the following anecdote. I love it for the kindness shown to her, but also that it really does reveal the mystery of what is called "acting". You don't just need to draw from your own experiences. That is a misunderstanding of what acting is - and you can definitely see it when certain actors attempt Shakespeare, and what they do is try to drag, oh, King Lear down to THEIR level, where it can be understood by them. How can I "relate" to Macbeth? How about I try to just imagine what it was like for HIM? This is obviously way easier said than done, but this anecdote about Martha Vickers is a small slice of life showing that you don't need to just draw on what you yourself have experienced. If you have an imagination, you can play anything.

Good for her for just going with it. She could have been mortified, humiliated, and damaged. But first of all - these big macho guys all treated her quite nicely, despite the obvious, uhm, fact of her inexperience ... they did not shame her ... and second of all ... she obviously just listened, took it in, "took the coaching", and went forth and played that part to the best of her ability. She's terrific.

So here it is:

Howard Hawks had an idea for one of the scenes - where Marlowe (Bogart) comes into the house, and finds Vickers sitting, all dressed up in the empty house - drugged out, sexed up, in the aftermath of some sexual event. Marlowe can immediately tell that obviously some kind of porno photo shoot had been going on. And Marlowe comes upon her, she is high on drugs, and completely out of it. Anyway, Hawks had an idea for this scene (which ended up not making it into the movie - no wonder, with the censorship of the day!): He wanted Vickers to simulate an orgasm, as she sat there, looking up at Bogart. He wanted her to be in that quivery zone where you basically don't even need physical contact to "get there" - he wanted her to be the kind of woman who lives in that state.

So Hawks asked her to do so. He gave her this piece of direction in front of Bogart, Regis Toomey (who plays the DA - wonderful stolid character actor), and a couple of other people, members of the crew, etc. You know, moviemaking has a mystique about it but there is also a no-nonsense quality to it that I find refreshing.

Hawks said, "Sweetheart, what we want here is for you to simulate that you're having an orgasm."

Martha Vickers asked, "What's an orgasm?"

Nobody spoke. Nobody knew what to do. They all just stood there, awkward as hell, stunned to silence. Hawks, Bogart, and Toomey - grown men - standing there with a teenage actress - who was asking them (in all innocence) what an orgasm was. Dead silence. Hawks called a 10-minute break. (hahahaha) I mean - what else could you do? Hawks then pulled Toomey aside and asked Toomey to please go and "explain to Miss Vickers what an orgasm is". I love that Howard Hawks, supposedly the most macho guy in the universe, couldn't bring himself to go explain it to her - he had to have someone else go do it.

Toomey, who apparently was a good-natured fellow, married with a bunch of kids, the product of a strict Irish Catholic upbringing, gamely went over to Martha and explained to her what an orgasm was. (Wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that one.)

Toomey said later to Bogart, "The girl didn't know anything. I asked, 'Are you a virgin?' 'Uh yes.' 'Do you know what an orgasm is? Mr. Hawks wants you to be having an orgasm here.' 'No, I don't know what it is.' 'You don't know what an orgasm is?' 'No.' And so, dammit, I explained to her what an orgasm was. And she got the idea all right. Howard liked the scene very much."

"She got the idea all right."

Bless you, Martha Vickers! And bless you, Regis Toomey!

After that, it became a huge joke amongst the three men.

Hawks would say to Toomey, "If I ever have to explain an orgasm to anyone again, I am calling on you." And Bogie would laugh and laugh like a madman.

Clip from The Big Sleep below, of the scene in question. Seriously: this young actress who led a protected innocent life - gives a HELL of a performance.

Brave.

Fragmentation, Fitzgerald

I am still not able to read like I used to. I try to just "go with it", if I feel like reading - but the impulse comes over me intermittently, randomly, and I certainly do not have the concentration to read anything like a novel. Nothing requiring commitment. In the middle of the night, when I am lonely and alert, I'll suddenly feel like reading Joan Didion, so I'll pull out one of her books and start to read a favorite essay (not "Goodbye to All That" though - I'm staying far the hell away from THAT one right now) - but I usually don't make it all the way through. The need to read passes almost the second I take up a book - it is quite strange. It would be like having the voracious desire for sex and suddenly, as you engage, you're no longer in the mood, with all the desire immediately dissipating. Disappointing, no? And it happens to me repeatedly. (The reading part, not the sex part.) So I'm just trying to go with it, and thankfully I am so busy right now I would barely have time to read anyway. But it is strange and kind of lonely. I do miss reading.

Short nonfiction pieces seem to be all I can handle right now - and even there I can only read one or two paragraphs at a time. Recently, I picked up the collection of nonfiction essays by F. Scott Fitzgerald called The Crack-Up, sent to me by my wonderful blog-friend De a couple of years ago. I have read a couple of them already - it's more of a dipping kind of book - pick it up, read a bit, put it down. His essay on being an "early success" is pretty much a masterpiece - but so many of these essays are mini-marvels. His writing stuns me. It makes me feel very quiet and still inside, as I try to be placid and open enough to even receive it. It is not complex writing, or clever or pun-nish - it is clear and true ... but filled with so much wisdom and piercing insight that it makes all other writing look shallow. It's hard for me, right now, to "take things in". Mainly because everything seems to be happening so fast, and I honestly don't have time (yet) to sit down and absorb what has been going on. Also because I am in denial, let's not sugarcoat things. Regardless, it doesn't matter.

I was sitting on a bench yesterday evening, staring out at the Hudson, it was a cool spring night. The lamplights had gone on. People were running by. Big barges plowed through the river, the sun on its way down. I read three pieces (a record!) as I waited to go meet my friend: "Show Mr. and Mrs. F to Number --", "Auction -- Model 1934" and "Sleeping and Waking". The first and second are said to be written by Scott and Zelda, the last is by Fitzgerald alone.

I know there are people who pretty much only read books they can "relate" to, and I have never really gotten that. I like to be "recognized" by a book, sure, but that's not my main criteria for liking a book. I don't feel "recognized" by Imperium or The Great Terror or, for that matter, by most of my books. I like to learn new things. I read mainly to get OUT of myself. But right now, I am the most self-absorbed I think I have ever been - it's part of hunkering down and recovery, it's part of being wounded - you hover over your own injury, hard to look around and be interested in other people's lives and circumstances - that's all good and right, I feel no pressure to "snap out of it" or anything like that). But I find it hard to concentrate on anything, first of all - because I am too caught up in my own life and circumstances and the unfolding narrative that I keep alluding to but never describe. Not time to describe it yet. So I'm not looking to other people's words right now to put words to my experience. Not yet. But also, I just flat out can't concentrate. I can't "lose myself" in another story. At any other point in my life, I never would have picked up Necessary Sins by Lynn Darling (one of my reviews of it here). Just not my cup of tea, unless I am already a fan of the writer in question. I don't like memoirs, I don't like books about marriage, I don't like touchy-feely stuff in general. But things are different now. My needs have changed. It was almost spooky how much Necessary Sins dovetailed with my own life. There were times when I almost put it down. I'm not saying I gravitate towards mirrors right now - and only want reflections ... It's more complicated than that.

I am trying to figure out what I need. This takes some doing. But at the same time, I am absolutely certain of what I need, and despite all of the inherent risks, and the insanity of opening myself up for possible crushing heartache, here I go again. Because this is not just what I want, but what I need. This is true in the personal/social arena, with men, as well as in the career area, with my writing and other creative pursuits. Fear, resistance, near-panic ... that's the surface. Digging my heels in, saying, "no no no, let's not go HERE again ..." and yet at the very same moment, hands on my back, pushing me towards the future. Because if you know what you need (not what you want, but what you need) - then the choices become clear. "If that is what you NEED, then how are you behaving now helping you towards that goal?" You can strip out the ballast that way. But God, so much of my life has been about ballast. It is hard to distinguish what is necessary and what is not. That is what is happening now. In much of it, it's totally obvious. To quote Steve Martin in The Jerk, "Oh, I need THIS ... I definitely need THIS ..." And yet, if you think about that scene, many of the objects he chooses are pretty damn random. Really, hon? You need that? Need? Okay, fine, you know best.

Yeah. That's me right now.

There is no other place for me to be than where I am. And that place changes from moment to moment to moment. I have family members and good friends, old and new, to help me through and be there for me. Oh yeah, and writers like Lynn Darling and F. Scott Fitzgerald ... I pick these people up for deep (and unknown to me) reasons - it's like they call to me. Okay, fine, I answer the call.

So last night, sitting on my bench, I found myself submerged, totally, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's language, and a part of me started to feel that telltale itch of my attention scattering - there was something there I did not want to face. This is why I say I am not really looking for mirrors. If I am face to face with a mirror, my instinct is to look away. But I stuck with it. I had to go slow. Sentence by sentence. I took breaks. It was exhausting. I'd put the book down, and look around, enjoying the cool air on my skin. Then go back in again.

First there was "Show Mr. and Mrs F --"

This is one of those pieces where I think to myself, "Damn, could I ever write something like that?" When you get right down to it, it is just a list of activities, hotel rooms, and changes of scenery throughout the marriage of the Fitzgeralds. Very little introspection or personal revelation. Just a litany, through the years, of the waiter who was nice here, the chess game they played at this hotel room, the smell of the bougainvillea at this joint ... but the overall cumulative effect is shattering. It ends up not just being about marriage, and how certain ideals crumble over time, but it ends up being about the world, teetering on the edge of the abyss before plunging into another world war. The world Fitzgerald describes is now gone forever. And the piece was written in 1934, so there isn't much retrospect here - but Fitzgerald, from the first second he started writing as a young man, was able to inject nostalgia into his prose for the very time he was actually living in - no small feat. Nearly impossible. Other writers try to do what Fitzgerald did, try to express the zeitgeist, or the general universal mood, but it usually comes off as coy, pretentious, or self-conscious. A writer trying to be the "voice of a generation". Fitzgerald, who knows why, let's just call it his genius, had a sadness about him, a loneliness and melancholy, which made him acutely aware of the passing of time (think of that last line of Gatsby). This made him way older than his years, and nostalgic not just for his own past, but the time he was actually inhabiting. And not only that (many of us are aware of the amazing-ness or awful-ness of the time in which we live) - but he could write it like nobody's business.

How do you describe "the Jazz Age" with any perspective during the Jazz Age? How do you do so without getting a ton of stuff wrong, because you just haven't lived past it yet? Fitzgerald did. And he did so without a self-congratulatory, "Whoo-hoo, look how fun and fabulous I am" - which would have gotten really old really soon. He did so with a somber and almost worried awareness that this too shall pass. While he was in his own time, he could get up high enough to see it. I've tried to do writing like that before. It is extremely challenging. It's hard not to sound righteous, it's hard not to brag, "I see it all!!" Yes, you may feel you see it all ... but what else is there for you? Are you able to see what you don't want to see in the time that you are living? Many in the Jazz Age lived in a whirl of denial: the stock market would continue to climb, everyone was going to be rich, and youth was paramount - the most important thing was to live it up while you were young. You can feel it in much of the literature of the time, which does not date well. They did not want to see what was so obvious to someone like F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wasn't just part of the Jazz Age - he was the embodiment of it. But still, he knew: This all was going to end. The economic boom, the world peace, the tranquility and prosperity, and youth itself ... all this would pass. And to him that was one of THE defining characteristics of the Jazz Age: the anxiety of the impending disaster was IN the mania and the music and the parties. Many people could not see this, refused to see it because they were having too much fun, making too much money. F. Scott Fitzgerald was 24 years old and he could see it. It is one of his most startling attributes.

So here, in "Show Mr. and Mrs. F --", he lists all the places where he and Zelda lived as a married couple. That's pretty much it. It's a list. He writes in other essays about his insomnia and restlessness and how, in the middle of the night, he likes to make lists. He had that kind of brain. Most writers I know are compulsive list-makers. He bordered on obsessive. But my GOD, what a list. As the years pass, as the 20s turn into the 30s, the words he uses to describe the various rooms and beaches and bars he knew in his married life shift, transform, and the effect is subtle, like a shadow passing over the land from a cloud. You're not quite sure at what point things started to go wrong. Fitzgerald doesn't give much away. There are mentions of all-day ballet classes, and if you know the story of the Fitzgeralds, and Zelda in particular, then you know that her obsession for ballet was the first horseman of the apocalypse of her madness. But Fitzgerald doesn't mention it in any portentous way. He mentions it as just another fact, like the color of the tile, and the cocktails they had. But the words ... the words he uses ... begin to insidiously work on you ... and you start to feel the bleakness, the loneliness in their peripatetic lifestyle. What are they running from? (But he never asks that question. It is all 100% implied in his descriptive language.) On an even deeper level, though, and this is my own retrospect talking - I live in the 21st century, and I know what was coming for Europe and the world in the mid-1930s. I know that there was a rot at the heart of the culture, the wound festering, poison about to burst forth and spread. Fitzgerald is in the thick of it, and yet he can sense it too. Something starts to change. America starts to feel more unbearable, and yet when they flee to Europe, they begin to find it very quiet. It is that quietness that is so ominous. The stillness before the cataclysm.

It's an absolutely terrific piece. A real lesson in how to write about something without writing directly about it.

By the end, I was devastated. I, of course, know Zelda's horrible end. And Scott's terrible early end. Scott can't know these things. But he seems to sense it. Something very very bad is approaching. A terrible beast slouching towards Bethlehem.

Some fragments from the essay:

Electric fans blew the smell of peaches and hot biscuit and the cindery aroma of travelling salesmen through the New Willard halls in Washington.

But the Richmond hotel had a marble stair and long unopened rooms and marble statues of the gods lost somewhere in its echoing cells.

And

Claridge's in London served strawberries in a gold dish, but the room was an inside room and gray all day, and the waiter didn't care whether we left or not, and he was our only contact.

In the fall we got to the Commodore in St. Paul, and while leaves blew up the streets we waited for our child to be born.

And

At the Ruhl in Nice we decided on a room not facing the sea, on all the dark men being princes, on not being able to afford it even out of season. During dinner on the terrace, stars fell in our plates, and we tried to identify ourselves with the place by recognizing faces from the boat. But nobody passed and we were alone with the deep blue grandeur and the filet de sole Ruhl and the second bottle of champagne.

And

We got to Pisa in the dark and couldn't find the leaning tower until we passed it by accident leaving the Royal Victoria on our way out. It stood stark in a field by itself. The Arno was muddy and not half as insistent as it is in the cross-word puzzles.

And

In the Hotel des Princes at Rome we lived on Bel Paese cheese and Corvo wine and made friends with a delicate spinster who intended to stop there until she finished a three-volume history of the Borgias. The sheets were damp and the nights were perforated by the snores of the people next door, but we didn't mind because we could always come home down the stairs to the Via Sistina, and there were jonquils and beggars along that way. We were too superior at that time to use the guide books and wanted to discover the ruins for ourselves, which we did when we had exhausted the night-life and the market places and the campagna. We liked the Castello Sant'Angelo because of its round mysterious unity and the river and the debris about its base. It was exciting being lost between centuries in the Roman dusk and taking your sense of direction from the Colosseum.

And

We went up to Princeton. There was a new colonial inn, but the campus offered the same worn grassy parade ground for the romantic spectres of Light-Horse Harry Lee and Aaron Burr. We loved the temperate shapes of Nassau Hall's old brick, and the way it seems still a tribunal of early American ideals, the elm walks and meadows, the college windows open to the spring - open, open to everything in life - for a minute.

I mean, come ON.

More

At the Palace in La Baule we felt raucous amidst so much chic restraint. Children bronzed on the bare blue-white beach while the tide went out so far as to leave them crabs and starfish to dig for in the sands.

(Again, it goes on in this manner for 15 pages. Taken singularly, they may be beautiful or startling images - but all together, it packs an enormous punch.)

More

The night of the stock-market crash we stayed at the Beau Rivage in St. Raphael in the room Ring Lardner had occupied another year. We got out as soon as we could because we had been there so many times before - it is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

This stunner:

Then up and up; the twilit heavens expanded in the Cevennes valley, cracking the mountains apart, and there was a fearsome loneliness brooding on the flat tops.

And

In Vienna, the Bristol was the best hotel and they were glad to have us because it, too, was empty. Our windows looked out on the mouldy baroque of the Opera over the tops of sorrowing elms. We dined at the widow Sacher's - over the oak panelling hung a print of Franz Joseph going some happier place many years ago in a coach; one of the Rothschilds dined behind a leather screen. The city was poor already, or still, and the faces about us were harassed and defensive.

And

At the biggest hotel in Biloxi we read Genesis and watched the sea pave the deserted shore with a mosaic of black twigs.

We went to Florida. The bleak marshes were punctuated by biblical admonitions to a better life; abandoned fishing boats distintegrated in the sun. The Don Ce-sar Hotel in Pass-A-Grille stretched lazily over the stubbed wilderness, surrendering its shape to the blinding brightness of the gulf. Opalescent shells cupped the twilight on the beach and a stray dog's footprints in the wet sand staked out his claim to a free path round the ocean. We walked at night and discussed the Pythagorean theory of numbers, and we fished by day. We were sorry for the deep-sea bass and the amber-jacks - they seemed such easy game and no sport at all. Reading the Seven Against Thebes, we browned on a lonely beach. The hotel was almost empty and there were so many waiters waiting to be off that we could hardly eat our meals.

He's a genius. The essay blew me away. And those are just fragments.

The world. He has the world in him.

The second essay I read sitting on my bench was "Auction -- Model 1934". This one struck such a deep chord in me. It actually made me want to start writing again. I've been percolating. But my fear of this narrative I now find myself in ... and NOT KNOWING THE END YET, DAMMIT - has stymied me. Or at least stymied the writing impulse. It's such a strange strange time. The device of "Auction" is a married couple (again, the byline of this essay is "F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald") trying to figure out which stuff of theirs to keep, and which to put up on the auction block. It is very similar to the book my cousin Mike sent to me (my post about it here - you'll see there what a potentially potent topic this is for me). As a matter of fact, it is idential, except with photos. The thing is broken down in "lots", like an auction. Lot 1, Lot 2. You can feel the couple picking through their things, getting lost in memories, and then - with each object - weighing whether or not they still need the object. Is this something we can let go of? Or is it like Steve Martin in The Jerk again: "I need THIS ... I definitely need THIS ..."

It's wrenching because we all have moments akin to these, it's just that most of us don't write them down so eloquently. Similar to the essay before this one, "Show Mr. and Mrs. F --", "Auction -- Model 34" attempts to describe a relationship, a life, a world, from the side, never going at it directly. Where in "Show Mr. and Mrs. F. --" the lists were of hotel rooms and weather and waiters, "Auction -- Model 34" are tea cups and blankets and white linen suits (falling apart). Each with a memory attached to it. Some precious memories, some not. The tone of the essay is not maudlin, or sentimental. It's actually rather jaunty and hilarious. The maid Essie stands by, waiting to dispatch the objects - and the narrator ends each "lot" description with a command to Essie - along the lines of, "To the attic, Essie!" The jaunty tone adds to the pathos. It's far more moving to have that jauntiness as you look through your possessions that make up your marriage - rather than being misty-eyed and nostalgic. That would kill it. It would personally make me want to throw all the objects into a huge bonfire in the middle of the yard, just to get it over and done with. Again, the cumulative effect of all of these "lots" is devastating. Objects are just objects, right? You can't take any of it with you. But we are here on this earth now, we are still alive, and so our objects - the things that surround us - that make up our lives - DO have tremendous meaning. Who cares if you can't take it with you? There are objects in the boxes that Scott and Zelda just can't bear to throw away ... the memories are too dear. You really feel their marriage in this piece. It's tragic. Because the longer you live, the more you realize that happiness never ever comes by itself. It is always accompanied by loss. Either the loss of the happiness itself, or the awareness that none of it will last. This seems to be the strict territory of older people, with their experience of deep compromise and grief - but Fitzgerald, as I mentioned, had that sensibility from the get-go. Perhaps that is why he drank so much, why he couldn't get to sleep, why he burned his light so damn bright. The knowledge that even in his prime things were already breaking down, disintegrating, was almost too much to bear. Joy is never pure. It is tainted by what we all know will come after.

This piece made me want to write something similar. I have this "thing with things" as I have written about before (that's only one example).

There's so much I want to write.

Next week LOOMS in my head. It's this giant unknown. But lots of fun - a total adventure. Totally out of my comfort zone. No comfort whatsoever. Not one tiny bit. What the hell am I doing?

I need to get over the feeling that the ongoing narrative somehow needs to be settled before I start to write. I've been trying. Not easy. My mind gets distracted, everything up in the air, ghosts of past and future around me, hopes, dreams, not to mention the giant world-encompassing GAP that I now have to live with and survive ... all of this seems to take up my creative space. That is not entirely true - there is a lot happening right now that I'm not talking about, but soon I will. Creative stuff. But reading all of those "lots" of Scott and Zelda made my fingers itch to take up a pen again. I have things to say.

The last piece I read was called "Sleeping and Waking" and it opens with this great sentence:

When some years ago I read a piece by Ernest Hemingway called Now I Lay Me, I thought there was nothing further to be said about insomnia. I see now that that was because I had never had much; it appears that every man's insomnia is as different from his neighbor's as are their daytime hopes and aspirations.

Well, this sent my brain spinning. How true!

It was also strange because two of my favorite bloggers had just written pieces about (sort of) their insomnia. Moira at TCMs Movie Blog and Kim Morgan in this piece on Erik Skjoldbjaerg's Insomnia. Both of those pieces had already got me thinking about my one really bad bout with insomnia - and the Fitzgerald essay clinched it. I have to write about it. But I want to write about it from the inside. As Fitzgerald did. Again, he's so brilliant, that it's hard to actually feel motivated to write when you read him (at least this is the case for me) - but these three pieces, for whatever reason, made me want to get back to work again. Fitzgerald describes how his insomnia began. A mosquito kept him up one terrible night, and he was never really the same again. He had become "sleep-conscious", a deadly state. If you've ever suffered from insomnia then you will know that horror. At first the essay starts kind of hilariously, with Fitzgerald locked in mortal combat with this mosquito. But soon, as he gets down to describe, and really describe, what insomnia is like for him, there is nothing less funny.

In his later essay "The Crack-Up" about, well, his crack-up - there is what I consider to be one of the finest sentences Fitzgerald ever wrote:

But at three o'clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn't work - and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

"In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning."

There will be those who cannot understand that. There will be those who label it all as "whining". (F. Scott Fitzgerald has some very choice words for THOSE types!) All I can say is, only if you have experienced it can you understand how true, how deeply deeply true that sentence is. And if you haven't experienced it, then hopefully you can have a little compassion for those of us who have suffered in this way.

"Sleeping and Waking" was another essay that I had a hard time getting through. I read it two or three paragraphs at a time, putting down the book for breaks. It was too intense. I could feel where it was going, once the mosquito section ended, and I was frightened. He's so good, I knew he would "name" my own experience. To be clear, I am not suffering from insomnia right now. I sleep great. But the memory of my one bout with it in 2002 is still so searing to me to this day that I shiver remembering it. I know people live this way. They struggle their whole lives with sleep. My heart goes out to them. I had it for two weeks, and my personality actually changed over the course of that time. I became psychotic. I hallucinated. I heard a cunning whispering little voice in my head from time to time, telling me to do things, or how to think about things. One afternoon, I looked up and saw a rip in the sky. This is not a metaphor. The sky had actually ripped open. All night I thrashed in my bed, tormented. That is the only word that can describe it. I was tormented. Psychic agony.

Fitzgerald writes in his essay:

Back again now to the rear porch, and conditioned by intense fatigue of mind and perverse alertness of the nervous system - like a broken-stringed bow upon a throbbing fiddle - I see the real horror develop over the roof-tops, and in the strident horns of night-owl taxis and the shrill monody of revelers' arrival over the way. Horror and waste --

-- Waste and horror - what I might have been and done that is lost, spent, gone, dissipated, unrecapturable. I could have acted thus, refrained from this, been bold where I was timid, cautious where I was rash.

I need not have hurt her like that.

Nor said this to him.

Nor broken myself trying to break what was unbreakable.

The horror has come now like a storm -- what if this night prefigured the night after death -- what if all thereafter was an eternal quivering on the edge of an abyss, with everything base and vicious in oneself urging one forward and the baseness and viciousness of the world just ahead. No choice, no road, no hope - only the endless repetition of the sordid and the semi-tragic. Or to stand forever, perhaps, on the threshold of life unable to pass it and return to it. I am a ghost now as the clock strikes four.

It hurts me to read that. No. It's not hurt. It's fear. I don't want to go back there.

But I do want to write about it.

I want to write about so much.

Nothing is wrong. Everything is going according to plan. I just can't see the end. The conundrum of the writer. Neither could Fitzgerald. But he wrote it all down anyway.

"This is the work of a man with a vision, a man who knows exactly how his film should look, sound and play."

An absolute must-read: Whatever Happened to Gilles Mimouni?

The melancholic haze of memory

A terrific and emotional review of The Virgin Suicides by the always-fantastic Kim Morgan.

These girls are characters one writes books about, but one never truly knows. And the not knowing is part of the tragedy (does anyone really want to know them? Or do they want to keep them? Or stare at them? Or, after a night of passion, leave them waking up alone and cold in a football field?). And then these are girls, who committed, really, in the plain light of day, an ugly act that turned their young, lilting beauty and promise of a full life into rotting corpses. Death. The urn your stepsister opens up after a game of Scrabble.

More thoughts on 'The Insider'

There's a look to The Insider that I love. It's all deep greens and blues and blacks with no bright colors whatsoever in the palette. No yellows or oranges or fiery reds. But blacks with blues bleeding into it, white skin (Russell Crowe has never looked so pasty), and a sort of sickly green color - the kind of green you see under glaring flourescent lights. When there is a shot of warmth, it is noticeable. There's a scene where Al Pacino and his wife (played by the wonderful Lindsay Crouse in what could have been a thankless role, but she injects the entire thing with reality) are on vacation on the beach. It is dusk. The waves are a deep green, and the sky a heavy thunderous grey. Pacino is out on the beach trying to get a signal on his cell phone. He stands in the water. He is in black, the dark green waves come in around him, the sky is enormous and heavy and dark. It is a bleak scene. He comes back inside, and his wife is in the kitchen, and you can see out the front windows right onto the beach - the greens and greys and darkness right there - but the inside of that house glows with a golden warmth. It is startling. I realize, watching, "Wow. This is the first warm moment I've seen." That soft buttery yellow of the light has been absent from the entire film, and only when it shows up, briefly, do I get a sense of how much I have missed it.

That is smart art direction, cinematography. This is a movie whose every shot, every frame, dovetails into the larger themes of risk, personal responsibility, fear, ambition, and loss. If you know the story you want to tell, and you know the look you need to tell that story, then you cannot afford to even have an extra, seen briefly in a crowd scene, to be wearing a bright red dress, or a yellow raincoat. Everyone is in black, or dark blue. Michael Mann, with his background in Miami Vice, an entire television series that (in a groundbreaking manner) created a look and feel and vibe - hugely influential - so that each episode was like a mini-movie, is an artist. The colors chosen carefully, the atmosphere, the set direction ... Obviously Michael Mann has not invented these things, but it is his sensibility that I am appreciating right now. Never has his artistry been more apparent than in The Insider.

The actors bring their own thing to the picture. But each one (down to Debi Mazar, Philip Baker Hall, Gina Gershon, Colm Feore) bring their specific sensibility to bear, not pulling focus, but doing their job - completely unselfconscious, no actor-y flourishes ... these are people and we are getting to know these people, and the camera just happens to be there to capture it. Of course this is all an illusion. Every shot is planned, every actor is carefully chosen, every scene is mapped out - but the illusion is that we are watching something spontaneous. We are in that newsroom. We are on the bus with Debi Mazar, or in the courtroom in Mississippi. Nobody pulls focus. Michael Mann was smart to cast real character actors in every single part in that film except for the three leads - so we've got some serious heavy-hitters like Rip Torn - doing what is basically a walk-on, and Oscar-nominated Lindsay Crouse in "the wife" part, and Bruce McGill as the Mississippi lawyer, in what I consider to be a movie-stealing scene.

"We enrolled ourselves in college and we got our Ph.Ds - we found another cure for another rare disease!"

Lyrics here.

Performed at Lounge Ax. Ah, Lounge Ax!! I miss that place. It can be seen, however, in the scene in High Fidelity when they all go to the club to see Lisa Bonet perform. That's Lounge Ax. I like to watch that scene, from time to time, to visit my own past ... in a place that no longer exists - but there it is: captured on screen!

If you're sleepy ...

... it is very important to just succumb to the urge ...

... even if you're in the middle of a party.

Sloozy Butt redux.

Don't blink!

If I focus in on what he is saying, everything will be all right.

Forever.

If you are easily offended ...

Oh well. Hope you can work that stuff out for yourself. Good luck!

During one of our family vacations, my brother randomly became Helen Keller one night, sitting at the kitchen table. I don't remember how it happened. At first he was Helen Keller on a camping trip. Helen Keller setting up her tent. Helen Keller unrolling her sleeping bag. Helen Keller building a campfire. Helen Keller toasting marshmallows. Siobhan and I were absolutely out of control. We honestly thought we were going to die, we were laughing so hard. There were times when SILENCE reigned in that kitchen - because, well, because of two things:

1. My brother was being Helen Keller, so naturally he was silent.
2. My sister Siobhan and I were silently laughing so hard we thought we would die because we couldn't catch our breath

At one point, we sort of took a break, to regroup - Bren got up and left the room, we thought to go to the bathroom, or go get a drink, whatever ... but then suddenly, he appeared at the huge kitchen window - he was outside - AS Helen Keller, thrashing around in the darkness on her camping trip, staggering by the window, trying to cut down branches for her campfire.

Hilarity exploded once again.

One of the funniest things about this memory is that for whatever reason my sister Jean was NOT amused. It's not that she was offended - she just didn't LOSE IT the way Siobhan and I did. We now laugh just as much at Jean's crankiness as the memory of Brendan staggering around in the yard in the darkness, as Siobhan and I erupted into gales of laughter. Jean says now, "What was my problem? Why was I in such a bad mood?"

Later, Brendan became Helen Keller giving a piano recital.

Once again, Siobhan and I were falling around the kitchen, hunched over our stomachs, howling silently with laughter, begging for mercy. I was grasping for my camera, to try to capture the event, but I couldn't even manage to pick up my camera I was so out of control.

Jean who, for some reason, sat there the whole time ... watching the shenanigans take place ... never once breaking a smile, as her siblings basically LOST IT for 45 minutes, said, in a flat voice, "Do you want me to take the picture? Because I'm not laughing?"

Jean's comment is almost as funny to us in looking back on it as Brendan's performance-art tone-poem of Helen Keller playing a Mozart sonata. We still say it from time to time.

"Do you want me to take the picture? Because I'm not laughing?"

So Jean took the picture. Because Siobhan and I were totally out of commission by that point.

Michael and me

I love this picture of us.

Although we do have that vaguely frightening and immediately-recognizable mixture of expressions on our faces:

1. We dig each other
2. We just rolled out of bed
3. We are about to go on a murderous killing spree

You know I love major league baseball

... but there's nothing like watching a Cape Cod League baseball game.

I wish I lived closer. I'd go all the time.

Here is Jean and me, watching a game.

Speaking of sloozy butts

Sit down, Sheila.

You're wasted. You're also underage. You're a virgin. Stop pretending you're a sloozy butt. Also: what on earth are you wearing?

Mitchell said, in regards to this picture, (and he's the one I am basically assaulting in the photo), "You look like Jessica Savitch, inappropriately trashed at some big-wig event."

Mitchell has a way of expressing the truth.

A more innocent time

Ah, the excitement of getting your first cell phone.

Aren't cell phones hilarious??

Isn't it so funny to PRETEND you're talking on your cell phone?

This new-fangled technology cracks me up!

Speaking of Block Island

My sister Jean taught out there for a year, and there's nothing like taking a boat through a wintry ocean to go visit your sister. Block Island in the winter is a beautiful and bleak sight to behold.

Sloozy butts

This is from a New Year's Eve party many years ago. I'm 23 and in the midst of a nervous breakdown. I'm standing with a dear friend, Liz (still a dear friend), and we are chatting up a storm. I am manic. I haven't slept in about four days. But mania was preferable to the OTHER at that point.

Liz's boyfriend at the time saw this picture and said, "You two look like a couple of cheaply perfumed sloozy butts."

Of course he MEANT to say "boozy sluts" - but he messed up and said "sloozy butts", which has now passed into legend in my group of friends. We still say it all the time.

"I feel like a sloozy butt right now."
"Wow, look at those two sloozy butts."

Etc. Ad nauseum.

Exeunt.

On the Block Island ferry

... with Cashel.

Thoughts swirl through my head.

1. Wow. I miss my pimp coat.

2. Cashel was so little!!!

3. But in Lucy terms, he looks so big. Will she ever be that big?

How will my heart stand it??

Living in my van

A familiar scene

"And what’s the upside? It works and you have to have a bunch of sex?"

This makes me laugh. I so relate.

Golf has never seemed so ominous

A spectacular sequence.

A Book of Days for 1931: May 25

Christopher Morley was a journalist and essayist who is probably mainly known for his passion for Sherlock Holmes, but it was a long and fruitful career, he wrote the novel Kitty Foyle, the film version of which gave Ginger Rogers an Academy Award). In 1931, he published "A Book of Days: Being a Briefcase packed for his own Pleasure", and I find in him a kindred spirit. He is a collector of quotes as I am, and he kept a commonplace book, as I do. He became fascinated by the calendar itself, and how certain quotes could speak to certain special dates and so he would obsessively arrange his quotes to match up with the calendar. Eventually, a friend of his in publishing got wind of this tendency of Morley's and was so enraptured by it that he brought (as Morley called it) the "private almanac" into print.

I have a copy of it, swiped from an old bookcase upstairs in my parents' house and I love it. It was published in 1931, and there is a quote a day. Now these are not quotes along the lines of "If you love something set it free" (because if they were, I would have to plunge the book into the fire and laugh maniacally as I watched it burn). These are quotes from a diverse group - from DH Lawrence to Emily Dickinson to William Hazlitt to fragments from etiquette books. Some are funny, some are touching. It's a glimpse into an intellectual world far more rigorous than our own, and I find the whole thing quite bracing. I'm also pleased when we overlap (on the rare occasion that we do) - and Morley has chosen I quote that I love. Makes me feel like a smarty-pants, I'll tell you that.

I have posted some of his daily entries before, but I stopped doing it late last fall, as I stopped doing so much else.

I happened to pick up the book today and glanced at today's entry, and the associations it brought up for me came fast and furious. It's about Sable Island, in the Atlantic Ocean - technically it's part of Nova Scotia, but it's far from pretty much anything. It's also known as "The Graveyard of the Atlantic" due to the shoals surrounding it. It has a truly ominous reputation among fishermen, and rightly so. During "the perfect storm" of 1991, which I remember quite well, it is thought that the doomed Andrea Gail (the lobster boat never found) went down around Sable Island. If you look up pictures of that place, it is truly remarkable - a long thin curved strip of sand, like a fingernail ... and there are all kinds of cool facts about it here, if you feel so inclined. I've always been interested in Sable Island, for many reasons - one of them being that a bunch of feral horses live on the island, and I've seen photos of these beasts and maybe it's just me - but when I see stuff like that: feral gorgeous horses running across the sand of Sable Island- it makes me feel like the world is a pretty amazing place, full of wonders and weirdness, and there is just not time enough on the planet for me to learn it all. I come from a state where fishing is one of the most important industries, so Sable Island sort of emanates its power and fear-inducing radius downwards ...

Anyway, so that's what today's "entry" made me think about.

Now that's a "book of days" I can get behind.

MAY 25, 1931, MONDAY

The amount and variety of vegetation on this gigantic sand bar is extraordinary. Besides two kinds of grass, there are wild peas and other plants, affording subsistence to wild ponies and rabbits. There are no other animals o the island, excepting rats that have come ashore from wrecks.

Should vessels run ashore on Sable Island and be in danger, the crews are urged to remain by the ship until assistance can be rendered by the life-saving staff on shore. All attempts to leave in the ship's own boats have resulted in loss of life, but in every case where assistance from the shore has been awaited, the crew has been saved.

-- British Admiralty Sailing Directions, Sable Island

Two hockey greats meet

Wayne Gretzky travels to Russia and meets Vladislav Tretiak and his family.

Marvelous video. Thank you, Emily, thank you! I love Tretiak's little girl doing a dance in the living room.

Great stuff.

Happy birthday to Margaret Wise Brown

Born in 1910, Margaret Wise Brown always wanted to be a writer - but her journey towards the phenomenal, almost unprecedented success she eventually achieved - was a bit sideways. (There was a very interesting biography of her that came out a couple of years ago. What a life!) She went into education, she was always interested in children's books, and was disheartened by what she saw out there in the published world for kids. She had other ideas. Maybe there doesn't need to be an overt Sunday School lesson in children's books. Maybe what a small child who is learning to read really wants is a quiet book of sweet observations that is somehow connected to what the child looks around and sees in his or her own life. After getting her degree in education, she worked as a teacher, and eventually became connected to Harper & Brothers, as an editor of children's books. From there, she started to write.

"Good night mush"??? I mean, come on. It's one of my favorite lines ever. "Good night mush."

Margaret Wise Brown died very young, at the age of 42.

I have written before about Good Night Moon, perhaps not an entire post - but it comes up from time to time in my posts about writing (examples here, here and here). Good Night Moon is that rarest of books: it is perfect.

When I am struggling with my own propensity to over-write, or over-explain, using too many damn words, I'll turn to Margaret Atwood at her best, for inspiration, guidance. Or Jeanette Winterson (at her best). Or John McGahern (who was always at his best). But I also turn to Margaret Wise Brown.

Goodnight light
And the red balloon
Goodnight bears
Goodnight chairs
Goodnight kittens
And goodnight mittens
Goodnight clocks
And goodnight socks
Goodnight little house
And goodnight mouse

That is basically just a LIST of objects. But a whole world comes into view - not just of the objects itself, but of the love infused in such objects (the book becomes like a child's prayer - "And God bless my mummy and daddy, and God bless Jasper the dog, and God bless my flowers and my fishbowl ..." Etc. A compulsive list, but so full of love your heart might burst.)

And I am not overstating the situation when I say that the final three lines give me goosebumps every time I read them.

Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Goodnight noises everywhere

Happy birthday, Margaret Wise Brown.

Good Night Moon is one of the most successful children's books of all time.

My hero. My guiding star. Even now.

Especially now.

Things are about to get freakin' nuts. It is so important to keep in mind who I really am. Even in the whirling vortex.

Katharine Hepburn presents:

How to make a paper rose.

For obvious reasons,

I love every single word of this post, and I've read it, oh, five times, just because it pleases me.

A performance I love ...

... by an actress I love ...

... in a movie I love even more.

The best conversation I had yesterday

Standing in line at the grocery store at Chelsea Market. There was a little boy in a stroller in front of me, and it looked like he was with his grandmother. He and I made eye contact. I smiled and waved.

He barked up at me, "How are you?"

I said, "I'm good! How are you?"

He then waved at me insistently, in that way little kids do - holding up his hand and then repeatedly scrunching his fingers in and out.

I waved.

He barked up at me, "How are you?"

He was very concerned for my welfare, apparently.

I said, "So good, so good! And you?"

He scrunched his fingers at me.

He had on black Hi-top sneakers. So did I.

I said, "Hey, look - we have on the same shoes!"

He glanced at his feet, stuck his legs straight out, and then squirmed his whole body around in some sort of pleased response at the sheer coincidence of our shoes.

I said, "Some people think those shoes are just for kids."

He barked up at me, "How are you?"

I said, "So good! And how are you?"

He lapsed into quiet contemplation at the sheer depth of my question.

Then he stuck his legs out again, showing me his shoes, and wiggled his body around.

I said, "Awesome. I love those shoes."

He barked up at me, "How are you?"

(By this point, everyone in line was starting to laugh.)

I said, "Good! Again, like I said before, I'm really good! How are you?"

His grandmother murmured a word of encouragement, "You can tell her how YOU are doing!"

He took her words in, thought about them, and then barked up at me, "How are you?"

"Oh, honey, I'm so good today. How are you?"

It was their turn in line. His stroller was then moved away from me so he wasn't facing me, so I obviously ceased to exist to the little boy. For that time anyway.

Then they were done, and it was my turn. His grandmother turned the stroller around, and he caught sight of me again, his long-lost friend of 3 minutes ago. He held up his hand and scrunched his fingers in and out.

I said, "Hi again!"

He shouted, "BYE!"

I waved at him. "Bye-bye!"

His grandmother started to wheel him away and right before he was out of sight, I heard him call out, "How are you?"

It was totally profound.

So far, in her 5 days of life, it has become clear that Lucy likes:

-- Pat and Jean's leather couch
-- the glider
-- her buzzing chair
-- 3/4 time (my sister Siobhan has already been commissioned by my mother to write a Lucy Anne Waltz)

How can I be missing all of this??

Then Providence moves too

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it, boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now.

-- Goethe

(thanks David, for the quote. It is indeed a propos)

As I have said repeatedly, someday I will tell this story.

But for now:

The metaphor continues to aid me in, if not understanding the current events, going WITH them without needing to understand.

And speaking of that, I saw this adorable item today, and immediately thought of Alice and the fawn in the wood where things have no name.

A blessing

This was Lucy's "going-home" outfit. The love and care put into every "stitch", the time we have spent oohing and ahhing over the outfit and my mother's artistry, how excited and impatient we have been - waiting for "her" (even though we didn't know she was a her!) to arrive ... It seems a miracle that a body has now WORN those itsy-bitsy clothes ... but I know it's true, I saw the pictures!

It's hard to concentrate on anything else in life now that Lucy is here.

She is four days old today.

Abigail Adams, as we all know:

-- kept the farm running for decades on end while John was away
-- broke with Thomas Jefferson after a series of unfortunate events
-- couldn't spell worth a lick
-- was a strict mother, especially to John Quincy
-- missed her husband desperately during his years away
-- believed in the idea of America, and supported her husband totally in his revolutionary activities

But I am not sure it is AS well known that Abigail Adams was also a rabid Celtics fan, who listened to the game on her ear-buds AS the shots were fired on Bunker Hill.

Gestures make the man

In Barfly, Mickey Rourke, as Henry, gives one of his best performances. It stands alone. It is a symphony of movement and gesture, of humor and pathos ... and I remember at the time his performance being criticized as "over-the-top". (Insert Sheila's - and Michael's - eyeroll here). I have a problem, in general, with people thinking "over-the-top" is a valid criticism, in the first place. It's kind of like the stupidest criticism of all: "He just plays himself!" Oh, is that all? And you think that's easy? Really? Have you ever actually tried it? While the cameras are rolling? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Judy Davis is 100% "over-the-top" in Husbands and Wives, and I think that's one of the best performances I've ever seen. Most of my favorite performances are, to some degree, "over-the-top" - if by "over-the-top" you mean: fully realized, balls to the wall, unafraid, committed. Gena Rowlands in Opening Night, wearing giant sunglasses, smashing her face against the door jamb, and then saying in a cold cold voice in the diner the next day, with cuts all over her face, "I'm in trouble." Over-the-top. Jeff Bridges as "The Dude", with drops of White Russian be-dew-ing his messy mustache, galumphing across a parking lot, jellies slapping on the pavement. What? Over-the-top. This is fearless stuff. This is not an actor only waiting for his closeup to do his best and most personal work, these are not actors waiting for THEIR moment to "act". They have created a character from the DNA up, and so the walk, the talk, the gestures, the emotional complexity - all come from someplace deep and real (as Humphrey Bogart said, "Good acting should be six feet back in the eyes.") . The quietest performance in the world could be "over-the-top". It doesn't mean loud and bold. It means (to me) committed, free, unafraid, unselfconscious.

So. Going in, I am already annoyed by that criticism of Mickey Rourke's performance.

Second of all, if you've ever seen live footage of Charles Bukowski, or if you've ever heard his voice, then you know that Mickey Rourke was actually doing some astonishingly subtle and accurate mimicry ... He NAILS the cadences of Bukowski, how things sort of go up at the end of the sentence, left hanging there in the air ... a sort of acceptance of the uncertainty of life that is IN the man's speech patterns - and completely unlike anything Mickey Rourke had ever done before. Mickey Rourke always has a gentleness to him, it is what makes him such a disarming performer, along the lines of Sylvester Stallone's best work, or Jimmy Cagney ... such a tough guy, such a barrel-chested guy, being so gentle ... but here in Barfly he can bring that to the forefront. It is not hidden behind a tough-guy exterior of cool and reserve.

Henry is a mess. Henry has no coping skills for life. He is a raw and open wound. That's obviously why he drinks so much. His drinking, though, is not so much a coping mechanism, although we could psychoanalyze him to death, if we wanted to waste our time. His drinking is an active choice. He is opting OUT of the world of competition and ambition, consciously. He does not understand the American obsession with career, and why the first thing you ever ask of a new person is "what do you DO?" Not "what do you care about" or "what poets do you like" but "what do you DO?" Henry is baffled by this. He chooses to not participate. Yes, he is killing himself, yes, the audience wants to detox after seeing the film - even if they haven't ever had a drink in their lives - but in the topsy-turvy underworld that Barfly shows, his anti-choice is seen as almost heroic. It is truth, in a way, a much stronger truth than those of us who blindly accept the values of the society at large, who take on handed-down assumptions without questioning them.

"What do you do?" we ask each other upon meeting, never wondering if there might be a more important (and definitely more interesting) question to ask.

The film centers around the boozy chaotic relationship Henry gets into with another professional drunk named Wanda (played with gorgeous insane aplomb by Faye Dunaway - I love her here - she is having so much fun). Wanda is even more pathetic than Henry is, because she doesn't have art to keep her going. At least Henry, in his moments of clarity in his horrendous room in the SRO Hotel, has a pencil and paper, and the drive to write. She has nothing. She is way worse off, even though she still has her looks (kind of), slammin' legs, and can still get by on fucking men for booze money (although that time will soon be over for her). But for a brief period (very brief), they connect. They are not a good match. Of course. Who would be a good match with either of these wackjobs? Henry spends his evenings at the same bar every night, fighting one of the bartenders intermittently out in the alley, taking beatings that would kill someone else. There's an odd masochistic pleasure in it for him. He is "that guy" in the bar. They're all losers, but he's MORE of a loser. There's a hierarchy at work.

But let me get down to brass tacks.

Unfortunately, Barfly is not available on DVD at the moment (it's out of print), which is a shame. Michael sent me his copy. I think it's due for a re-issue, with some great special features, and a commentary track, the whole shebang. These are two major performances by two major stars. Let's get this thing back into circulation.

Mickey Rourke walks down the street in the blinding light of day, and his head is hunched forward, jutting away from his body, which is obviously in a lot of pain. Not just from the beating he took the night before, but from the crushing hangover. His arms hang down, but they're arched out a little, in gentle curves. He holds them this way. He appears unaware of this, and why he would hold his arms that way, because, of course, when we are hurting, physically, our body just does what it needs to do to survive. Rourke is in charge of this physicality. It is his genius. Whether or not he worked in front of a mirror, like other actors do, to get the right "look", I don't know, but I imagine (just speculating here) that his process is more organic, and less intellectual. His smarts about the human condition, his knowledge of what it is that people go through, is impeccable. That is his talent. It seems to me that his imagination is so potent, so real, and his own experiences are so at his fingertips (he's a highly emotional person, highly available) that all he needs to do (mentally) is just send out a "suggestion" to his body (ie: I'm totally hungover. Or: I'm wasted. Or: I'm insecure) - and his body kicks into gear, morphing itself into the shape he needs. When you're hungover, your head hurts. So it makes sense that it would jut itself away from the neck, trying to separate itself. When you've been punched in the stomach repeatedly the night before, your whole midsection hurts, so of course your body would hunch over the hurt area, protectively, and your arms would gently circle out to the sides, creating a small clear space for you to maneuver. Mickey Rourke creates the shape of this man, and it is unlike any other shape he has ever created as an actor, before or since. I have not yet mentioned the underbite.

Mickey Rourke's mouth is naturally very sensitive and soft. It's one of his defining characteristics. (Or, it was.) It's very kissable, and it makes the mouth look like it was meant to whisper sweet hot nothings, or to whisper a gentle yet deadly serious threat of violence. But here, in Barfly, the lower lip juts out, making him look defiant, kind of stupid, almost like he's asking to be punched. He's belligerent, like a little kid sulking in the corner. "No. I don't WANNA go home. I am going to stay RIGHT HERE." It's a kid's mouth in Barfly, pre-sexual. Now Mickey Rourke was one of the most sexual of male movie stars - he had no shyness in that regard, no hesitation to "go there" - so to see him here subvert that totally obvious masculine sexual energy, drown it in alcohol and physical aches and pains - is quite startling, because it is not what we are used to from him. In that physical process of transformation, out comes that lower lip, letting the canny women audience members know, just by that lower lip, "No. I'm not going to be doing THAT in this performance ... I'm doing something ELSE here ..."

Mickey Rourke's sex drive is a force to be reckoned with. It's WHERE he operated from for the most part as an actor (which, I think, is why, even with all the macho stuff, he can come off as quite feminine - there's an openness there), so it's really something to see him not utilize that part of himself at ALL as Henry. It shows that he was not a one-trick pony, not by a long shot. This is a character. From his emotional expression to the way his voice sounds to the underbite - this is a character. Any sexual impulses Henry may have are so submerged beneath his primary need: alcohol ... that they can never come in first. They will always be secondary. If you think about Mickey Rourke's other roles around this time, and what he brought to the table - this jujitsu move with something that is so essential to who he is - his sexuality - is startling. That's acting. A lesser actor would not have known how to get rid of the thing - THE thing - that set him apart from other actors. "But ... if I don't use THIS ... then how will I play this part?" Rourke never asks himself these questions. And when his star fell, in the 90s, and you saw him start to repeat himself, in a hollow manner, trying to re-capture the "Rourke thing" - with the whispering and the touching-of-the-face and the smouldering look - it was painful for those of us who love him. Because he was manufacturing something that had once been completely organic - his entire ESSENCE.

But again: to go back to the time of Barfly, and to place it in the context of the other roles Rourke had been playing ... no wonder the performance was either misunderstood or disliked. It did (of course) have its champions, and its stature has just grown in time, which is good. A movie like Barfly would never be a giant hit, and neither should it try to be. There are places for summer blockbusters - but God, there's a big wide world of artists out there who have no interest in that stuff, and who want to do good work in smaller movies ... In the atmosphere now, it is the mid-level movies that suffer the most. Not the low-budget indies, those will always be fine. And of course there will always be giant special-effects driven summer movies. But the middle ground - the ground that used to be occupied by films like Ordinary People, Barfly, Bull Durham - is shrinking. It's harder to get THOSE films made now than anything else. That's a shame.

There are so many great scenes in Barfly (Dunaway and Rourke in the mini cornfield, Dunaway shoving green ears of corn into her jacket), and the script is beyond awesome. Almost every line is memorable. You just want to chew on that language. Scenes don't feel a huge need to "go" anywhere, because the characters themselves aren't going anywhere. None of them have anywhere to be, there are no deadlines, or clocks ... so scenes can play out, behavior can be captured without feeling the need to explain it or make a point of it (the old guy chewing the sandwich in the bar, the grumpy drunk woman at the end of the bar scowling at Rourke, the huge-titted whore coming out of the bathroom wiping her mouth, all of the spectators in the alley fights - who are those people? Pruitt Taylor Vince is one of them, but the rest of them just don't look like actors.) There are small moments of kindness and clarity (the grizzled bartender who seems to have a protective feeling towards Henry, but at the same time isn't afraid to get firm with him) ... and even tenderness.

The section with the long-haired British chick who shows up looking for Henry - she wants to publish his stories - is the only part of the film that rings false for me, and I blame her. I just didn't like her acting. She was way out of her league. When she finally gets wasted with him, like she wants to live on the wild side, and then is devastated when he doesn't want to stay with her, I rolled my eyes. Who on this good green earth is that naive? Rourke is great with her. He's great with anyone. He is great with non-actors and actors alike, and he is terrific in his scenes with her. I just didn't like her acting. It needed to be underplayed, because suddenly - in those scenes - we get a very literal and almost plot-driven film: The Snooty Literary Chick Who Is Turned On Sexually By the Bad Boy - (yawn) ... and she plays everything directly on the nose. But that's a minor flaw. It is not the main driving force of the film. Thank goodness. She is an interruption in the flow that is the Dunaway-Rourke pas de deux. She is an important character if only because it shows that Henry is not just some anonymous loser wanna-be scribbler. He has actually gotten his shit together enough to submit things to magazines, and it has generated some attention. The times he spends huddled over a paper after a long bender is starting to pay off.

There are a couple of other evocative gestures I want to mention, and they're a bit hard to talk about, for many reasons. I think with someone like Rourke you obviously are in the realm of instinct. To discuss these choices as though they are fully conscious, in the same way that you make "choices" like "Do I want tuna or chicken salad for lunch" - would not be right. We're on the level of something subconscious. By gesture, I don't quite mean Michael Chekohv's psychological gesture, although there is some overlap. If you have a good eye for human behavior, then almost everything another person does becomes a "psychological gesture". The way they smoke, the way they listen, the body posture, the hand motions ... all of these things reveal a person's psychology and personality - far better than a minute-long monologue in words about "where I am coming from" could ever do. Psychological gesture is more about tapping into the emotional depth of the character, something you can draw upon later if you ever feel lost about "who you are" - it's almost like the THEME of a play and how every scene must somehow illuminate SOME aspect of the theme. If it doesn't, then it needs to be cut. I have been dealing with that a lot in putting together my book and it has not been easy. Precious things have had to be cut (perhaps to be used later - yes - but not in THIS book), and I have had to do some rigorous soul-searching about all of it. But the theme of the book is clear as day to me, and always has been - it is WHY I wrote the book, which led to HOW I wrote the book. A "psychological gesture" can help an actor stay on track with the deepest wishes, desires, hopes (ie: objective) of the character his portraying. When I speak of gesture here, I am speaking on a more prosaic level - how someone stands, sits, walks, smokes - but as I mentioned, these things can be extremely revealing. It is NOT just in closeup that an actor really "acts", although I have worked with such people before. They don't know how to work with the whole body. Without the camera 2 inches away from their nose, they are not sure how to "show" the character. None of this stuff is easy, by the way, if you don't have talent, and much of this cannot be taught. But when you start looking for those defining characteristics in the performances you love (or, more accurately, the performances you find unusually effective), it is amazing how much detail you can find. It is a mysterious process: how much was the actor aware of what he was doing?

In a way, picking such moments apart ruins them, but that's what I'm all about.

Ruining the things I love by overanalysis.

There are two moments in particular which I think say, in no uncertain terms, THIS IS WHO THIS CHARACTER IS.

And both of them have, as their main strength, the fact that they seem unconscious, unselfconscious, spontaneous.

The first one is after one of the bloody brawl Henry finds himself in (or, uhm, no, that he chooses actively) in the alley of the dive bar. In this one, he does NOT get beaten so badly that he lies on the ground in the trash bags. In this one, he gets the better of his opponent (played, speak of the devil, by Frank Stallone, Sly's brother). The crowd, who always roots for the bartender, placing bets on him, can't believe it. They're almost pissed. What happened to their entertainment? Henry is supposed to get beaten and battered, they're all supposed to win ten bucks, and then they get to go back inside, full of a sense of superiority that they had been right yet again, and also with a couple more drinks they now can buy with the bet money. But this time, Henry goes crazy. Frank Stallone doesn't know what hit him. All hell breaks loose.

Everyone's night is now effed up. No one knows how to react. The world of drunks is surprisingly conservative. They like routine. They abhor surprise.

Henry almost doesn't know what to do with himself. He was victorious? Who IS he now?

All the spectators (save one) shuffle back into the bar, grumpy, disgruntled, leaving Henry alone in the alley, as always, only this time he is still standing. Rourke starts to stagger back towards the bar, and there's an old grinning toothless drunk standing there (this guy can't be an actor, can he??). This old guy seems to be the only one delighted by the unexpected turn of events. He stands there, beaming meaninglessly at Rourke. Who knows why ... perhaps it's his advanced stage of alcoholism that just makes him unnaturally happy and positive ... or maybe somewhere, in his drowned soul, he recognizes that some important ground was just claimed by the GOOD in this world. As Rourke walks by him, he is struck by the gentleman. They have a moment of looking at each other. Again, Rourke is kind of hunched over his midsection protectively. (I just want to interject one thing: Rourke is also a boxer, as we all know. He knows how to take a punch. He knows how to "save face" when he is hurt. But Henry doesn't. Henry isn't a professional, he doesn't "spar", he doesn't dance around, dodging punches. Rourke beautifully embodies something that is essentially unfamiliar to him: a man who doesn't know how to fight. Again, many other actors - some of them quite good - would protect himself in this role by somehow suggesting to the audience, "If I really tried, I could KNOCK THIS GUY OUT. I am CHOOSING not to knock this guy out." Rourke does not protect himself.)

He glances uncertainly at the grinning drunk. He can barely stand himself. His arms are hunched out at his sides, again in a little curve. It may not be the classic definition of a "psychological gesture", but it tells me all I need to know. About this man's protectiveness of himself, and also his halting openness.

The drunk smiles at him. It is unclear why he is smiling - to us, and to Henry. But Henry, unlike many other drunks, is not a cynic at heart. He is actually a poet. He gives people the benefit of the doubt. He assumes the best of everyone, which is why he gets hurt, every day, all day.

In response, to the drunk's unending smile, Rourke suddenly shrugs and holds his arms out at him. It is a big gesture. Fearless. It is, essentially, unexplainable.

I could talk about that big shrug for hours. What I love so much about it is how childlike it is. It's embarrassing to see in a grown man, but it's embarrassing in a heartrending way. You are not embarrassed FOR him, you are more embarrassed for yourself, that you do not allow yourself such openness. He offers himself up to the smiling drunk, like: "See what I just did? Wasn't that great?" and he's like a shame-faced little kid, after doing a somersault through the adult's cocktail hour. "I know I'm only a kid ... but did you see what I just did? I need your approval, and I don't know why ... but will you please give it to me?"

The entirety of Henry's whole life is in that shrug.

The other moment I love is from the first time Henry takes Wanda into "his" bar. Everyone is in a hubbub about Henry actually having a woman. Henry walks like a strutting peacock ("Look at who I got!") and Wanda glimmers and glows at his side, getting a kick out of it, as though she is at a red carpet event on the arm of a movie star. The two settle in at the bar. It's morning, by the way. Henry decides he wants to go try to get a job at some construction joint that's hiring. Wanda panics about him leaving her. She told him what would happen ... she loses her "direction" when booze is offered to her. They go back and forth about this. They just met the night before, but already they are talking about boundaries and commitment. Everything in their world is messed up. Intimacy must happen immediately or it cannot happen at all. Nobody has any TIME to court, or "vet" each other. It's now or never.

Henry is busy talking at her, in his strange cadences, his voice going up at the end of every sentence, reassuring her - but he's not really connected to her. How could he be? In the middle of one of his monologues, she reaches out and touches his face tenderly.

And all I want to say is, watch how Rourke responds. It can't be captured in a screengrab. It's an infinitesimal moment, nearly invisible to the naked eye. But his face relaxes when she touches him like that. How long has it been since he has been touched tenderly? How long has it been since he - HE - has been touched? Sure, he got sucked off by the old whore in the bathroom, but to her he's a dime a dozen, just another man. In that moment with Wanda, SHE is touching HIM. His face relaxes, and while it's wonderful to see him relax (I can relax, too), it's tragic, too, because already in the film the world has been set up, and we know that such tenderness is just a tiny moment, here and now gone. Nothing is meant to last.

Mickey Rourke, in his wonderfully malleable sensitive face, using all of his powers of imagination and talent to step into the shoes of another man, allows himself to

1. enjoy her tender touch ... his whole face goes slack with the pleasure of her touch.
2. experience the loss and grief at the same time that this moment will not last.

And that is fine fine acting. All without a word being said.

Collage below:

"He refuses to join the rat race. He drinks and he waits."

"Some guys know how to get all the women."
"You don't know how?"
"I can get one for ten minutes. That's my limit."

"I can't stand people. I hate them. Do you hate them?"
"No. But I seem to feel better when they're not around."

"I'm gonna ask you the same damn thing people are always asking me."
"Like?"
"Like, what do you do?"

"Just one thing. I don't want to fall in love. I can't go through that again."
"Hey. Don't worry. Noone's ever loved me yet."

"You're the damndest barfly I've ever seen. You act like some weird blueblood, like royalty."

"Do you trust me?"
"Why not? It's easier that way."

"What are you doing with a woman, Henry?"
"Lily, sometimes ... I think you could use one, too."

"Excuse me. Who are you?"
"Oh, the eternal question. The eternal answer ... I don't know."

"This is a world where everybody's gotta do something. Somebody laid down this rule that everybody's gotta do something. They gotta be something. A dentist, a glider pilot, a Narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that. Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things I don't want to do, all the things I don't want to be, all the places I don't want to go, like India, get my teeth cleaned, save the whale, I don't understand that."

"Why'd it have to be Eddie? He symbolizes everything that disgusts me."
"What?"
"Obviousness. Unoriginal macho energy. Ladies man."

"Nothing but a dripping sink and an empty bottle. Euphoria. Youth fenced in. Stabbed and shaven."

"I know something about you. You've been jailed 12 times. You like Mahler and Mozart. You can't dance. You hate movies. You like avocados and Schopenhauer."

"What do you want me to do, write a book about the suffering of the upper classes?"
"This may come as a surprise to you, but they suffer too."
"Heyyy, baby ... nobody suffers like the poor."

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
"Hey, I'm not pretending to be anything. What's your point?"

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."

"Now look. Twenty bucks for that kind of head is outrageous."
"I did ya good, old fart. I did ya good. I oughta bit your champagne cork off."
"I'm givin' ya fifteen bucks."
"Twenty bucks. Nobody in this neighborhood can swallow paste like I can."

"Why don't you stop drinking? Anybody can be a drunk."
"Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth."

"So you hired a dick to find an asshole?"

"I take it you don't care for my world."
"Well, baby, look around. It's a, it's a cage with golden bars."

"You know, in the guest house, you could write in peace."
"Hey, Tully baby, nobody who could write worth a damn could ever write in peace, Jesus."

"Baby, what we had was just green corn."

"Don't be sorry, just put on some new underwear."

"I hate the police, don't you?"
"I don't know, but I seem to feel better when they're not around."

"Drinks for all my friends!"

"And as my hands drop the last desperate pen, in some cheap room, they will find me there and never know my name, my meaning, nor the treasure of my escape."

Manmade

... yet it looks almost prehistoric and organic. Like the Giants Causeway in Ireland.

Giants Causeway:

Magic.

It's everywhere, if you're looking for it.

Things I love

-- my Final Draft screenwriting program, bought for me as a surprise gift. It's the best thing ever.

-- the new Green Day album. Goosebumps.

-- the way Hope stops to clean herself in the middle of madly attacking a Netflix envelope

-- my mother and how good she is, how kind and deep

-- all of Jean and Pat's friends - top-notch people

-- my weight loss

-- my cousins

-- my Velcro curlers

-- $200 round-trip-tickets to Los Angeles - score!

-- the weather now - I love the spring chill in the air

-- all my pen pals

-- the kick-ass query letter my agent wrote to send out to publishers and editors. If that doesn't sell my book nothing will.

-- television movies from the 1980s and the crazy freakin' events they can wrought decades later

-- Lucy's multiple chins and her beautiful hands and puffy cheeks

-- email. Facebook. Twitter. All the ways we all can keep in touch ... especially with my family ... and the events of the last year. I have never felt alone.

We love Lucy

On September 20, 2008, my sister Jean married Pat, a wonderful man. It was the most intense day for anyone who was present. I was telling a new friend that it was the kind of day where Love comes at you undiluted, in its purest form. Almost deadly. Most of the time, the Love we receive is a little bit watered down, makes it easier to bear. September 20 was about a Love that was like staring directly at the sun.

On May 15, 2009, two days ago, Jean and Pat welcomed into the world a gorgeous puffy-cheeked little girl whose name is Lucy Anne. My mother, my sister, me, Pat's parents and sister ... all sat out in the waiting room, pacing, texting, or (like me, my mother and my sister on occasion) sleeping standing up. It had been a long long day. Finally, from down the hall, we heard the wail. The wail of life. Lucy's life beginning.

Jean and Pat didn't find out ahead of time if it was a boy or a girl. When Pat finally came out, tears in his eyes, to tell us the news, we all started hugging, and crying, and I glanced over at Pat's mother at one point, and she was literally jumping up and down and clapping.

And so again. Undiluted Love, like staring into the sun.

We love Lucy so much. We are so present to the gifts of life, the gifts of God. We feel our angels watching over us. We missed having Brendan and Cashel and Melody with us.

I texted my cousin Kerry after the baby was born - saying, "Lucy Anne!"

30 seconds later, my mother's cell phone rang and it was my uncle Tony, Kerry's father, saying, "Congratulations on the arrival of Lucy Anne!" It's curious that some people find modern technology to be cold, or alienating, or that it somehow keeps people from being connected. I'm not sure what technologies THOSE people are talking about, but the ones I am aware of KEEP us connected. I got 40 messages alone on Facebook from cousins, friends ... people who live far away ... sending love, prayers, best wishes, and then - when Lucy arrived - begging for photos. We are not alone. We are connected to one another.

My cousin Kathleen emailed me after I sent her a picture. "Tears of joy are streaming down my face," she wrote.

There are angels everywhere. In heaven and on earth. The last year has been harrowing for my family. But all along ... Lucy has been growing, developing, getting ready to come out and join the family.

Jean is doing great. Pat is doing great. I am so proud of both of them. It has not been easy. Today, Jean gets to go home. Lucy is beyond awesome. We spent the last 24 hours just hovering over her, staring at her. All she was doing was sleeping. But it was the most riveting sight we've ever seen.

O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!

Welcome to the world, Lucy Anne.

"In the pas de deux I realize with horror that tears are on my cheeks."

My friend Cara, with another stunning essay, about the ballet. Her writing gives me goose bumps.

Red seats at the New York City Ballet

Photo by Kyle Froman.

Gorgeous.

Hey, what's up.

It's really unfortunate that I am so stressed out.

I wish I could just RELAX.

Funny exchanges from the last couple of days

Patrick: You said she left.

Me: No, what I actually said was 'she fled into the night'.

____________________

Me: Lauren - look at what has happened to my computer. (we both stare at the screen where everything has suddenly magically turned microscopic for no apparent reason)

Lauren: Sheila, maybe you have temporarily become a giant.

____________________

Me: But what is it like having a dead conjoined twin attached to your back?

Patrick: I guess you get used to it.

___________________

Brooke: (said in a happy excited voice) "So ... you BOTH have body image issues and self-esteem issues!!"

Me: (happy, excited) "Yup!"

Brooke: "That is so great!"

Me: "As you and I both know, shared self-hatred is the basis for any healthy relationship."

Brooke: "AbsoLUTEly!"

This conversation was had over a giant barrel of pickels in a grocery store.

____________________

Patrick: Do we need a grownup?

Me: Yes. Call a grownup. Immediately.

_____________________

Text from my now-past-her-due-date pregnant sister Jean:

"This f-in blows!"

____________________

Siobhan: Sheila, can you please scan your costume sketches and send them on to Jean and me so we can see them?

_____________________

Me: It's mortifying to have a hickey as an adult.

Michael: The most embarrassing hickey I ever got was one that was on my CHIN.

_____________________

David: So was that whole kids thing the dealbreaker you mentioned?

Me: Actually, no. It was more about his misuse of apostrophes.

_____________________

Me: Look, she just needs to know that I am all about nuclear jihad.

Patrick: And crossbows.

_____________________

Patrick: She hasn't yet learned to go emotionally dead inside.

Me: And that is the most important skill one needs in life.

Patrick: She'll get it in time.

Good God.

The story of Orwell writing 1984. It brought me to tears.

It was a desperate race against time. Orwell's health was deteriorating, the "unbelievably bad" manuscript needed retyping, and the December deadline was looming. Warburg promised to help, and so did Orwell's agent. At cross-purposes over possible typists, they somehow contrived to make a bad situation infinitely worse. Orwell, feeling beyond help, followed his ex-public schoolboy's instincts: he would go it alone.

By mid-November, too weak to walk, he retired to bed to tackle "the grisly job" of typing the book on his "decrepit typewriter" by himself. Sustained by endless roll-ups, pots of coffee, strong tea and the warmth of his paraffin heater, with gales buffeting Barnhill, night and day, he struggled on. By 30 November 1948 it was virtually done.

Here's my post on 1984.

I am incredibly moved by that article, it contained information I hadn't known, what a struggle it was to finish that book.

A really well-written scene

It speaks for itself. A perfectly cadenced scene - and perfectly balanced - both sides equal and reactive - the tension perfect and taut - not to mention how well it is played by Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer. But the material itself is fantastic. They rise to the occasion. Mmmmm, I love a well-written scene. There are so many layers here. For example, when he says "Careful, you're gonna have me thinking you're going soft on me" - he is throwing back her own words from earlier in the movie back in her face. He's such a cool character, this Jack Baker, but in that moment - where he lobs her words back at her - he lets us know how much that hurt him back then. But you'll never ever catch Jeff Bridges playing something so on the nose. No, no, he's better than that. He's better than anyone. It's a knife. His hurt comes out as cold anger, a blank wall. The scene is wordy, yes, they are hurting one another - so that later, when they come to apologize - they both have much to apologize for. But it's well-written, I think. It's one of those moments when you find yourself in a really ugly fight, without planning on it, and you can't back your way out of it.

So much for an actor to chew on.

It reminds me of Odets' great love/confrontation scenes. Only with swears.

Susie: I told Frank I'm quitting.

Jack: Congratulations.

Susie: As of now.

Jack: Well, if you need a recommendation you let me know.

Susie: Jesus, you're cold you know that? God, you're like a fucking razor blade.

Jack: Careful, you're gonna have me thinking you're going soft on me.

Susie: You don't give a fuck, do you? About anything?

Jack: What do you want from me? You want me to tell you to stay? Is that what you're looking for? You want me to get down on my knees and beg you to save the Baker Boys from doom? Forget it, sweetheart. We survived for 15 years before you strutted onto the scene. 15 years. Two seconds, and you're bawling like a baby. You shouldn't be wearing a dress, you should be wearing a diaper.

Susie: Jesus, you and Egghead are brothers, aren't you.

Jack: Let me tell you something. Over the years, they've dropped like flies in every fucking hotel in this city. We're still here. We've never held a day job in our lives. He's an easy target, but Frank's done fine.

Susie: Yeah, Frank's done great. He's got the wife, the kids, the little house in the suburbs. Meanwhile, his brother is sitting in a shitty apartment with a sick dog, Little Orphan Annie upstairs, and a chip on his shoulder as big as a Cadillac.

Jack: Listen to me, princess. We fucked twice. That's it. Once the sweat dries, you still don't know shit about me, got it?

Susie: I know one thing. While Frank Baker was home putting his kids to sleep last night, little brother Jack was out dusting off his dreams for a few minutes. I was there. I saw it in your face. You're full of shit. You're a fake. Every time you walk into some shitty daiquiri hut you're selling yourself on the cheap. Hey, I know all about that. I'd find myself at the end of the night with some creep and tell myself it didn't matter. And you kid yourself that you got this empty place inside where you can put it all. But you do it long enough and all you are is empty.

Jack: I didn't know whores were so philosophical.

Susie: At least my brother's not my pimp. You know I had you pegged as a loser the first time I saw you but you're worse. You're a coward.

"Tyson" (dir. James Toback)

I was in an elevator once with Mike Tyson. He stood directly in front of me. He was huge. He was in a suit and shoes that exuded millions of dollars. He smelled fantastic. But what struck me, standing as I was behind him, was the size of his neck. It was wider than my own shoulders. It was like staring at Mount Rushmore.

This weekend, I saw James Toback's documentary Tyson, which has been generating a lot of controversy, due to the totally biased nature of the project. There is no outside narration, no objective eye. Tyson sits on a couch and talks directly to the camera for the duration of the film. There's a lot of great footage, of Tyson as a young fighter, with his mentor and savior, Cus D'Amato, and all of Tyson's major fights - the triumphs and the disasters. But we are not meant to see the film as a clear-eyed objective look at the man. It is clearly a defense of Tyson. Human beings are, of course, notoriously unreliable when it comes to telling their own stories - but that's part of the strength of the film. Tyson does not wallow in self-pity so much. He takes responsibility for his actions, and while he may have blind spots, and deep character flaws, my main response watching the thing was compassion, and also identification. This is the last thing I thought I would experience, going in. I identified with Mike Tyson? His neck is bigger than my torso. How can I see myself in him?

He tells a story early on of his family moving to the Brownsville neighborhood in Brooklyn. Not just a rough area, it's a completely decimated area, and you see photographs of it at that time and it looks like you're looking at Beirut, circa 1983. Tyson talks about being picked on because he was fat, and he tells a story of another kid stealing his glasses. It blew his mind. It hurt him obviously. He still seems hurt. Things seem very simple in the Mike Tyson psychology we see in the film: he was messed with as a kid, and he vowed to never, ever, "lose" in any physical altercation with another person, ever. He says that repeatedly. He will never be humiliated again.

Could it be that simple?

Maybe it can.

One of the things that is so disarming about this film is how open he is. You don't get a lot of bluster and defensiveness. As a matter of fact, you get almost none - so when it does come out (he refers to Don King as a "reptilian motherfucker", and Desiree Washington as a "wretched swine") it is almost refreshing. He comes off as pretty passive, in many ways, and in touch with the pain and poverty that got him to where he is today. The lack of self-esteem, all those psychological catch-words ... He does not come off as unaware, or blind to the fact that he might have some deep-seated issues. He actually seems aware of all of it. He does not defend much of his actions - "I was out of control then ..." or "I was not taking care of myself, I had forgotten about discipline" ... but we do get his side of things in controversial moments such as the Holyfield fight and the rape conviction. Whatever you may think of Tyson and his behavior, it certainly cannot be argued that his "side" has been fully heard. To be angry that he now has a chance to talk about his version of events seems rather ridiculous to me, when so much print has been devoted to rehashing the case against him. He was buried in the press, he was crucified a hundred times over. Even at the time of the rape conviction, I remember thinking, "I don't know, man, there's something not right about this." I read the reports of what happened in that hotel room, and felt like this was a man being railroaded by a woman who regretted her decision to go up to his room. But "regret" does not equal "rape". Most of us have made choices in that arena that we regret. I never believed a rape happened, is what I'm trying to say. Not that it matters. He was convicted in a court of law. I still think it stinks. I wasn't in that hotel room, none of us were, so nobody can say for sure. Tyson is no angel, and he admits that repeatedly in the interviews. He has slept around, has never been faithful to one woman, and the lure of what fame gave him was too much for him to resist. But there was something rotten in the state of Denmark with that rape conviction.

Watching, again, the footage of the infamous interview Robin Givens (his wife at the time) and Tyson had with Barbara Walters, I was struck by how much was stacked against this man. The assumption being: he is a huge scary-looking black man with a gold tooth, and so we are prepared to believe the worst of him. Givens goes on and on about how "manic" Tyson is, and "abusive - but not physically abusive ...", all as he is sitting right there. I remember watching that interview when it first came out, and again alarm bells went off. Something didn't seem quite right. There are many things on this planet where I am completely comfortable saying, "You know what? I don't know enough about that topic to comment on it." But human behavior, and the nonverbal clues people give off, is NOT one of those topics. Robin Givens came off as false in that interview. It felt scripted and act-ed to me. She was making up a story. She knew public sympathy would automatically be on her side (I mean, look at her brute husband! Yeah, but hon, you picked him. You married him. Take some responsibility for that choice!) so she goes off, riffing, using psychological terms like "manic" and "abusive", all with Baba Wawa as a captive audience. Tyson says, in regards to this event, that all of it was a lie, and while, yes, he had problems, and would try to get away with things with women, he never abused her, it was all lies. But what could he do? If he went crazy, and defended himself, then that was only what was expected of him. It would prove Robin Givens' point. Nobody would defend him. He was completely alone.

But the most moving part of the entire Robin Givens section of the documentary, was Tyson saying, "Look, we were 21 years old, we were in love, everyone was in our business, and we didn't know what we were doing. But we were just kids, just kids, just kids ..." He says "just kids" three times, shaking his head each time, forgiving himself and her for the craziness they involved themselves in.

One of the things I found charming (in a disorienting way - the movie really worked on me) was Tyson's oddly formal cadences. He speaks in an old-school way, using words like "skulduggery" (two or three times), and referring to Robin Givens as "a nice young lady". He mentions that before one major fight he learned he had contracted gonorrhea. He says, "I either got it from a prostitute or ... a very filthy young lady." The audience I saw it with, myself included, burst into laughter.

I lost track of how many times Tyson said the word "fear". What I see in his eyes, what I feel from him, is not anger or rage or some kind of animalistic power. I see fear. The fear of the little boy who got his glasses stolen, and is afraid of a physical confrontation. It is a strange dichotomy, and one that I imagine most audience members will find supremely unbalancing. If you go into it despising Tyson and what he represents, you may find your mind changed. Or you may be furious at Toback, for presenting Tyson in a sympathetic light. That's all part of what is interesting about the film. It leaves the audience huge realms of space to make up their own minds. It is confronting because on some level the lack of omniscient narration puts you (the audience) up against yourself. You are forced to deal with your own issues, your own responses.

Now I may be more predisposed towards sympathy with Tyson than someone else, even though I'm not a big boxing fan, or anything like that. I felt the rape conviction was bogus and I thought Robin Givens came off really badly and falsely in the interview with Walters, I didn't believe a word she said.

The Holyfield fight was horrifying (amazing footage in the documentary, with Tyson breaking it down for us - the play by play of what was going on between those two men) - and Holyfield was fighting dirty, headbutting Tyson, and Tyson finally had it and bit the man's ear. Indefensible. And Tyson does not waste time defending himself. He is more upset that he lost his discipline. He has disappointed not only himself, but Cus D'Amato, the trainer who took Tyson as a teenager under his wing (moving him into his house with his family), who taught him everything he knew about boxing. Cus D'Amato, a kind of Mickey-from-Rocky character, drilled it into Tyson's head that there needed to be a spiritual aspect of boxing, that so much of it had to do with mental preparation, and mental toughness. In the Holyfield fight, Tyson snapped.

Toback uses a split screen a bit too much, with multiple shots of Tyson talking, and I wasn't wacky about that technique. I wanted more just full-frontal Tyson, no tricks or bells and whistles. Of course this is Toback we're talking about, and he can't help himself. Toback and Tyson have been good friends for over 20 years. Toback makes no pretense at making anything fair and balanced. I believe that that is one of the main strengths of the film.

Tyson makes a riveting subject. He is articulate, funny at times, honest, and so open you almost want to tell him to protect himself a little bit more. I could have listened to him talk for an hour or so more. He has the Maori tattoo across his face, and the camera gets so close you are almost up his nose, and any preconceived notions you might have about Tyson the man are right there in his face: he is so huge, so intimidating. He looks so frightening. But spending time in his company for the duration of the documentary, all I could see, over and over again, in a newsreel of repetition, was that little boy in Brownsville, who got his glasses stolen, and - to this day - seems baffled and confused as to why someone would ever do that to another person.

Highly recommended.

It will get you talking, that's for sure.

Here is Roger Ebert's review.

Don't miss Kim's review, which has a video clip of her interview with James Toback.

Fort Lee, New Jersey: the birthplace of American movies

It's right up the road from where I live, a beautiful spot - historic for many reasons, mainly Revolutionary War reasons - you can't walk two steps without seeing George Washington this, George Washington that - but the movie business started in Fort Lee, the first movie studio was built in Fort Lee in 1910, something many people don't know. Here's a really interesting article about it.

But then in 1918, a series of calamities, like something out of a disaster movie, struck Fort Lee: a wartime coal shortage and the coldest winter in memory hit, as did the influenza epidemic, closing the studios for what producers thought would be just a few weeks, Mr. Meyers said.

With the Hudson River frozen, and ferry service suspended, studio crews were moved to California that winter, and never returned. Though the Selznicks controlled much of the studio space in Fort Lee through 1925, and independent filmmakers continued to shoot through the 1930s, the industry never recovered. Because of highly flammable nitrate film, several of the old studios went up in flames.

Sunday morning iPod shuffle

I am busy:

1. actually being okay with being a bit of a headcase ... it's so relaxing ... God ... because why? because I am also
2. feeling taken care of ... someone is taking care ... wow.
3. cooking
4. making lists
5. listening to ye olde Shuffle
6. working on something that is my own version of Thomas Jefferson's famous "head vs. heart" letter to Maria Cosway (speaking of being a head case) ... having a hard time getting in there (with myself I mean), but I'm working on it.

"Sk8r Boi" - Avril Lavigne

"Johnson's Motorcar" - The Clancy Brothers (at Carnegie Hall)

"Dreamboat Annie" - Heart

"My Love Is True" - Hellogoodbye

"Beautiful Child" - Rufus Wainwright

"Canary" - Liz Phair

"Something Beautiful" - Sinead O'Connor

"Friel's Kitchen" - The Chieftains

"Elevation" - U2 (sexy)

(but enough with the Irish. Oh well. That's what my iPod shuffle always does. It can't help itself.)

"Finale" - Les Miserables

"Drink With Me" - "Grantaire", Les Miserables (you have got to be kidding me)

"Where Do the Children Play" - Dolly Parton with Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) - looooove it. Love the whole album.

"Two Ladies" - Emcee (Alan Cumming) Cabaret - you know you really have to be in the mood to hear this.

"It's My Life" - Bon Jovi (now that's more like it.)

"Mr. Pinstripe Suit" - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

"Finale" - 1776 - I mean, seriously, it's just the clock bonging, and a list of names and states - but I get goosebumps every time I hear it. Eeeeekkkk!!!

"In My Other Life" - Tracy Bonham

"Only Our Rivers Run Free" - The Irish Tenors. Shut up.

"Thank God It's Christmas" - Queen

"Welcome To the Black Parade" - My Chemical Romance. Tone it down a notch, boys. Everything is going to be okay. Relax.

"Gonna See Her Again Today" - Pat McCurdy - rock on with that electric guitar, McCurdy!

"Nothing else Matters" - Metallica

"Drum Boogie" - Gene Krupa and his Orchestra

"Rocky Raccoon" - The Beatles

"Southern Song" - Pat McCurdy

"Real Man" - Bonnie Raitt (speak it, sister)

"Pump It Up" - Elvis Costello & The Attractions

"Walking After You" - Foo Fighters

"For Good" - Idina Menzel & Kristin Chenoweth, Wicked

"The Bard of Armagh" - Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem (see what I mean?)

"Crater Lake" - Liz Phair

"I Sing the Body Electric" - the cast of Fame - YEAH! Go Leroy with your cornrows and your illiteracy!!

"Day and Night" - Nina Simone

"Modern Day Miracle" - Pat McCurdy

"Crying For You" - Pat McCurdy. Stop bothering me, McCurdy. Man I love this song though.

"Where the Streets Have No Name" - U2 (goosebumps)

"Sign 'O the Times" - Prince

"She's Got A Way" - Billy Joel (I'm sure she does, Billy)

"Arrival in Benares" - Ustad Vilayat Khun

"Don'a Wan'a" - Wanda Jackson

"Free Fallin'" - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. (I can never hear this song enough.)

"Wizards in Winter" - Trans-Siberian Orchestra

"White America" - Eminem (holy shit. That's how you lead off your album? Freakin' brilliant.)

"Porte En Arraire" - Emmylou Harris, Kate & Anna McGarrigle

"Nhimutimu" - Kumusha

"Heartburn" - Rufus Wainwright

"Thumbelina" - Tracy Bonham

"Rock & Roll" - Eric Hutchinson

"Miracle" - Foo Fighters

"It's Sweet" - Liz Phair

"Sinful Heart" - Wanda Jackson

"Future Sex / Love Sound" - Justin Timberlake. Hitachi break!

"Around the World" - Christine Ebersole, Grey Gardens - heartwrenching

"On Horseback" - Eileen Ivers.

(sigh. Overkill Irish. That's what I get for having the music collection I do!)

"Don't Miss That Train" - Wynona Carr (looooove her - so so glad I made the discovery. Check her OUT if you're not familiar!)

"Lose Yourself" - Eminem (definitely a high water mark in music in the last decade or so ... maybe more. This is one of "those" songs.)

"One" - Metallica

"We Two Are One" - Eurhythmics

Speaking of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:

I am not prepared to say this in any way approaching 100%, but I will say that the trailer for that film - the first one - is one of the best trailers I have ever seen in my life. I was in the theatre, seeing something else, and I saw the trailer (see it below the jump) - and had one of those voracious greedy responses that I get all too rarely when it comes to current-day movies. I MUST SEE THIS. NOW. I wanted to whip out my calendar and put the release date in bold letters into my personal notes so I would be SURE not to miss it. I felt I couldn't wait. But why? What was it that got me - so completely?

That's the art of a really good trailer. The trailer for Eternal Sunshine doesn't tell you too much. That in and of itself means it should be given an honorary Oscar, just for how it bucks the annoying trend.

It starts with a faux promotional film for Lacuna Incorporated, the fictional company in the movie that erases painful memories. We see Tom Wilkinson telling us how it works, and how wonderful it will be when your pain has been erased. But the way it is filmed - with multiple images of him, the screen splitting off and multiplying, gives a more comedic and also surreal feeling to it. Almost immediately, just through the style of the trailer, not through any dialogue, we the audience are told: Don't be too literal here. What you are about to see is going to be different. Not just the movie, but the trailer itself.

And that is really the only TALKING that goes on in the trailer. The rest of it is more like a music video (with, yes, one of my favorite songs of all time - "Mr. Blue Sky" by ELO - a perfect choice!) with strange surreal images - a bed in the snow, elephants walking down 42nd Street, people disappearing from the main floor of Grand Central ... Jim Carrey in an oversized kitchen ... what am I looking at? What is this movie??

I MUST SEE IT.

The only clue we have to what we are seeing is Tom Wilkinson's words at the opening - and the image of throwing a plastic brain into the trash can.

That's all we get.

The trailer doesn't lead us through the plot, as though we all in the audience need to know beforehand EXACTLY what we will see ... it just shows us images, some from a nightmare (the world crumbling), some just from a funny dream (rain falling inside the house) ... all to the accompaniment of the insistent positive catchy ELO tune.

One of the best trailers I've ever seen.

It set up my expectations for the film, and what a joy, what a surprise ... to have the movie FAR exceed my expectations. It wasn't just a good movie. It was a profound film, one that I often reference in my head, as I maneuver through my life, with my own painful memories that come up from time to time. I think things like: Would I get rid of this memory if I could? What would change if I no longer had THIS to think about?

In the video essay below, Matt talks about how he knows when a film has really gotten to him when it shows up in his dreams.

The same is true for me.

And it's all there in the trailer. Without anything being given away.

Bravo.

"I think it speaks to the way that we try to keep people alive by remembering them."

A wonderful video essay by Kevin Lee, in which Matt Zoller Seitz re-watches Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (one of my personal favorite films of the last ten years), and shares his thoughts.

Makes me want to see it ... yet again.

"And then I might ...."

It may be dumb to post these really simple lyrics, but along with the music - they just make me happy happy. I've always loved this song. And I love it even more now. Perfect Saturday night music. A couple clips below. One dumb montage, with the original song playing over it ... and another of Evan Rachel Wood singing it (wonderfully) during the opening of Across the Universe. Love love it.

Hold Me Tight

It feels so right now, now hold me tight,
Tell me I'm the only one,
And then I might,
Never be the lonely one.
So hold me tight to-night, to-night [to-night],
It's you,
You you you

Hold me tight,
Let me go on loving you,
To-night to-night,
Making love to only you,
So hold me tight, to-night, to-night
It's you,
You you you

Don't know what it means to hold you tight,
Being here alone tonight with you,

It feels so right now.
Hold me tight,
Tell me I'm the only one,
And then I might,
Never be the lonely one,
So hold me tight, to-night, to-night
It's you,
You you you

Don't know what it means to hold you tight,
Being here alone tonight with you,
It feels so right now.
Hold me tight,
Let me go on loving you,
To-night, to-night,
Making love to only you,
So hold me tight, to-night, to-night
It's you,
You you you

"I'll do anything you want."

RIP Dom DiMaggio, 1917 - 2009

Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky, going to throw out the first pitch, Game Two, World Series, 2004

Dominic DiMaggio, beloved by Red Sox fans, younger brother of Joe DiMaggio, passed away yesterday at the age of 92. A little pipsqueak in glasses, good friend of Ted Williams (the pictures of the two of them together look like a vaudeville comedy team, with the tall beanpole Williams towering over his teeny friend), it was maybe hard for DiMaggio to carve out a spot for himself ... with such an older brother and such a best friend! But once you start listening to what his contemporaries had to say about him, and once you look at his stats, you see: Uhm, no. Boy did well all on his own thankyouverymuch. A 34 consecutive-game hitting streak - the longest in the history of the ballclub. That was in 1949, the record remains unbroken today. In 1997, Nomar went on a 30-game hitting streak, but so far - 30 does not = 34. DiMaggio still holds it. Kind of awesome that his older brother Joe holds the all-time record in this particular stat, with a 56-game streak in 1941. Nice dovetail there.

In tribute to DiMaggio, here's a bit from David Halberstam's Teammates, The: A Portrait of a Friendship, a book about Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Dom DiMaggio and Bobby Doerr.

Rest in peace.

Dominic had always succeeded by overcoming adversity. Nothing ever came easily for him. If Bobby Doerr had been the natural, playing with instinctive grace and fluidity, then Dom was the one of the four teammates who had struggled against the greatest odds. The scouts, the men who judged these things with their cold, analytical eyes, and who spent their daytime hours tracking high school and American Legion ball, spotting the talents of boys and trying to project them into the men they would one day become, loved a Bobby Doerr, and more often than not they barely saw a Dom DiMaggio in the beginning, or, perhaps more accurately, they stopped for a moment because of the name, saw the size, and then kept looking. He just did not look like a ballplayer. Somehow he always looked much younger than he was ...

But he had talent, passion, and purpose, and these qualities would more than make up for those things that most scouts did not see at first. He would become in time what John Pesky called "the almost perfect ballplayer: so smart and so talented. McCarthy loved him because he never made a mistake. He always did everything right. I will never understand why he is not in Cooperstown."

More from Teammates, The: A Portrait of a Friendship, about DiMaggio's start:

He also got lucky in that Lefty O'Doul was, Dominic later decided, the best hitting coach he had ever seen. Lefty had already worked with Joe, getting him to pull the ball more, because he knew that in any number of big league parks, including Yankee Stadium, the left-centerfield fences fell away sharply. In Yankee Stadium it was known as Death Valley, and you coul dlose home runs there all too easily.

It did not take long for O'Doul, a man with a lifetime .349 batting average in the majors, to turn Dominic around as a hitter. Because he was so small Dominic had thought he needed to put all his weight into the ball when he swung. Thus, without realizing it, he tended to lunge at the ball. O'Doul quickly taught him that that was the wrong way to go, and probably saved his major league career in the process. By lunging, O'Doul explained, he was actually subtracting his weight from his swing, and thereby reducing its power. Many other managers would have looked at Dominic and settled for what he could do for them on defense in the outfield; they would not have cared whether or not he could hit and what that meant to his career. But O'Doul saw the passion and the hunger and was willing to invest his time in him.

What O'Doul taught him was that a hitter's power came from his legs, his hips, and his butt. What Dom was to do was wait on the pitch, keeping his body still, and then at the last split second start his swing, taking a very small step into it. O'Doul was very patient with him, and he would later tell others that Dominic was the ideal pupil, perhaps the easiest player to coach he had ever dealt with. "I'll do anything you want," the rookie told him, and whatever O'Doul suggested, Dominic worked on. What also helped was some early film of brother Joe, who by then was with the Yankees, his career soaring. He had come to a Seals workout and took batting practice with them, and a friend used an early movie camera to take some footage of him. And there it was on film, just as Lefty had said it should be: Joe poised at bat, head and body not moving at all until the final split second, when he began his swing; then every part of his body, in perfect coordination, seemed to lever the bat into the ball. Gradually Dominic began to adjust, to hold back and wait. It took about three weeks for him to get it. One of the hard parts was to keep his butt still, but Lefty was very good - he would stand near Dominic in the batting cage, and when Dominic moved his butt early, Lefty would jab at it with a fungo bat.

Dominic got it down one day early in the season in Coalinga, a small town in central California where the Seals were playing an exhibition game. It was a little town with a little ballfield, short fences, and everyone on the Seals was hitting the ball over the fence in practice. Lefty had asked Dominic to take batting practice with the regulars that day because he wanted to work with him a bit more. And suddenly Dominic too started hitting the ball over the fence. That of itself was not that impressive - everyone else was. But Dominic knew that he was hitting the ball much harder, that for the first time he was fusing all his strength into his swing, just as Lefty had ordered. He went over to O'Doul after practice and told him, "Lefty, I've got it now. I've finally got it."

Yup, Dom. You've got it.

You will be missed.

Some gems from (and about) Oscar Wilde

Mankind has been continually entering the prisons of Puritanism, Philistinism, Sensualism, Fanaticism, and turning the key on his own spirit: But after a time there is an enormous desire for higher freedom - for self-preservation.

_____________

I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.

_____________

The mind of a thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

_____________

To win back my youth ... there is nothing I wouldn't do - except take exercise, get up early, or be a useful member of the community.

_____________

Miss Morris is the greatest actress I ever saw, if it be fair to form an opinion of her from her rendition of this one role. We have no such powerfully intense actress in England. She is a great artist, in my sense of the word, because all she does, all she says, in the manner of the doing and the saying, constantly evoke the imagination to supplement it. That is what I mean by art.

_____________

To disagree with three-fourths of the British public on all points is one of the first elements of sanity.

_____________

from a letter Wilde wrote to Walt Whitman:

Tennyson's rank is too well fixed and we love him too much. But he has not allowed himself to be a part of the living world and of the great currents of interest and action. He is of priceless value and yet he lives apart from his time. He lives in a dream of the unreal. We, on the other hand, move in the very heart of today.

_____________

Wilde on Walt Whitman:

He is the grandest man I have ever seen, the simplest, most natural, and strongest character I have ever met in my life. I regard him as one of those wonderful, large, entire men who might have lived in any age and is not peculiar to any people. Strong, true, and perfectly sane: the closest approach to the Greek we have yet had in modern times.

_____________

To be either a Puritan, a prig or a preacher is a bad thing. To be all three at once reminds me of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.

_____________

The most graceful thing I ever beheld was a miner in a Colorado silver mine driving a new shaft with a hammer; at any moment he might have been transformed into marble or bronze and become noble in art forever.

_____________

Praise makes me humble. But when I am abused I know I have touched the stars.

_____________

1883, letter of Oscar Wilde to Marie Prescott:

All the great men of France were cuckolds. Haven't you observed this? All! In every period. By their wives or their mistresses. Villon, Moliere, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Victor Hugo, Musset, Balzac, kings, generals, poets! Those I mention, a thousand more that I could name, were all cuckolds. Do you know what that means? I will tell you. Great men, in France, have loved women too much. Women don't like that. They take advantage of this weakness. In England, great men love nothing, neither art, nor wealth, nor glory ... nor women. It's an advantage, you can be sure.

_____________

1883, letter of Oscar Wilde to Marie Prescott:

Now, one of the facts of physiology is the desire of any very intensified emotion to be relieved by some emotion that is its opposite. Nature's example of dramatic effect is the laughter of hysteria or the tears of joy. So I cannot cut my comedy lines. Besides, the essence of good dialogue is interruption.

_____________

1885, letter of Oscar Wilde to Marillier

There is an unknown land full of strange flowers and subtle perfumes, a land of which it is joy of all joys to dream, a land where all things are perfect and poisonous.

_____________

1885, letter of Oscar Wilde to James Whistler

Be warned in time, James; and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.

_____________

To be at one with the elements seems to be Mr. Swinburne's aim. He seeks to speak with the breath of wind and wave ... He is the first lyric poet who has tried to make an absolute surrender of his personality, and he has succeeded. We have the song, but we never know the singer ... Out of the thunder and splendour of words, he himself says nothing. We have often heard man's interpretation of Nature; now we know Nature's interpretation of man, and she has curiously little to say. Force and Freedom form her vague message. She deafens us with her clangours.

_____________

As for George Meredith, who could hope to reproduce him? His style is chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything, except language; as a novelist he can do everything, except tell a story.

_____________

The amount of pleasure one gets out of dialect is a matter entirely of temperament. To say "mither" instead of "mother" seems to many the acme of romance. There are others who are not quite so ready to believe in the pathos of provincialism.

_____________

We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.

_____________

letter of Oscar Wilde to W.B. Maxwell

You mustn't take a story that I told you of a man and a picture. No, absolutely, I want that for myself. I fully mean to write it, and I should be terribly upset if I were forestalled.

_____________

Anyone can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature - it requires, in fact, the nature of a true Individualist to sympathise with a friend's success.

_____________

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.

_____________

Mallarme is a poet, a true poet. But I prefer him when he writes in French, because in that language he is incomprehensible, while in English, unfortunately, he is not. Incomprehensibility is a gift, not everyone has it.

_____________

1891 letter from Stephen Mallarme to James Whistler

No O.W. ---! just like him! He pushes ingratitude to the point of indecency, then? -- And all the old chestnuts -- he dares offer them in Paris like new ones! -- the tales of the sunflower -- his walks with the lily -- his knee breeches -- his rose-colored stiff shirts -- and all that! -- And then 'Art' here -- 'Art' there -- It's really obscene -- and will come to a bad end -- As we shall see -- and you will tell me how it happens --

_____________

I detest nature where man has not intervened with his artifice.

_____________

1891 letter of Oscar Wilde to Edmond de Goncourt

One can adore a language without speaking it well, as one can love a woman without understanding her. French by sympathy, I am Irish by race, and the English have condemned me to speak the language of Shakespeare.

_____________

I have equally recognised that humility is for the hypocrite, modesty for the incompetent.

_____________

1891, letter of Andre Gide to Paul Valery

Forgive my being silent: after Wilde I only exist a little.

_____________

"Know thyself!" was written over the portal of the ancient world ... the message of Christ to man was simply, "Be thyself."

_____________

I can see they are servants by their perfect manners.

_____________

For do you know, all my life I have been looking for twelve men who didn't believe in me .... and so far I have only found eleven.

In Dean Stockwell news:

Here's a really interesting interview with Dennis Hopper about an art show he is curating at a gallery in Taos, featuring six long-time Taos artists (Dean Stockwell included). Interesting take from Hopper on the art scene, what he's working on, and why he decided to finally curate a show. I love his answer to the question referencing Easy Rider ("Are you tired yet of being the patron saint of freedom on two wheels?"):

I prefer being in a car, really. I always enjoy getting off a bike, when everything's finished. Everybody thinks I'm some sort of biker, which I never was. But that's okay.

I know, it's amazing, isn't it? To learn that Hopper was actually, you know, ACTING?

The interview is great and I felt really smart reading it - only because I had seen the documentary The Cool School (my review here), about a particular group of alpha-male macho artists who pretty much created the modern art scene in LA in the 1950s. Dennis Hopper was part of that - as was Dean Stockwell (my original reason for seeing the film) - but because of that documentary, reading Hopper's interview I felt like an insider. Oh yes! Ferus Gallery! Oh yes - the aesthetic they created having to do with surfboards and cars! Yes, yes, I know all of that. I am totally an expert.

In 2007, I flew to Taos to see a retrospective of Dean Stockwell's work - and met the man himself. I wrote about that trip, and all things Stockwell, in the piece I wrote for House Next Door. I would love to get out there again to see Hopper's show. Stockwell, of course, is represented in the work on exhibit - and just look at the picture of those guys in the article! What a bunch of hot old coots. Awesome.

Speaking of Stockwell:

Over a year ago ago, at the height of my Dean Stockwell obsession, I went to a yoga/writing workshop with a group of artists. It was an amazing day. Afterwards, I rode the subway downtown with one of the guys who had been at the workshop. We had a nice conversation. First, we were just talking about the workshop, and the work we had done, and writing and acting. And somewhere along in there, because I can't help myself when I'm obsessed with something, I casually mentioned Quantum Leap. I know it was along the lines of, "You know, sometimes it's hard to get down to work. All I want to do is sit around and watch episodes of Quantum Leap." This struck him almost completely still for a second - and then he said, "Did you just say Quantum Leap?" I started laughing, "Yes - I'm obsessed ..." and he said, "God, I LOVED that show - I can't believe you just referenced Quantum Leap!!" We were guffawing on the subway and we spent the rest of the ride (it was a long subway ride, the workshop had been way up town) reminiscing about Quantum Leap. It was one of those perfect moments of hilarity mixed with sincerity that you sometimes get with a total stranger. You know, you don't want to walk around being a giant GEEK, but when some girl you've never met casually mentions Quantum Leap, it means you are in a free enough environment that you can become the biggest geek on the planet because OBVIOUSLY she will not judge you. It was such a fun conversation. We parted with a hug, still laughing about the Quantum Leap conversation.

Last night I went to a show and he was there. I haven't seen him since that subway ride in 2007. After the show, I went up to him and said, "Hi - we've met before." He looked confused, trying to place me. I said, "We were both at that yoga workshop - " More confusion. "You know - the one that mixes yoga with writing ..." The light dawned on him, and he said, all excited, "Quantum Leap!!!"

It always pays to just be yourself in any interaction you have with another human being.

Maybe someone won't "get it", and maybe someone will judge you. That's okay. Not everyone will understand, and you won't hit the bullseye with everyone. But you might as well just be yourself, because if you DON'T, then you won't have the opportunity to actually connect.

The fact that he remembered that conversation was so so funny to me. We both just burst out laughing AGAIN about it.

"You remember that??" I was laughing.

"Are you kidding me? It's not every day that someone brings up your favorite most geekiest show from your past - that was so awesome."

"Is Quantum Leap on Netflix??" he asked me, figuring I would probably know the answer.

I love it. I don't even know the man. In 2007 we had one conversation. But we were able to quantum-leap over the intervening time, and get right back to the point where we had left off.

I miss Easter Island

Oh Mitchell. Please come home soon.

Once, recently, we were talking about our friendship. And how cosmic it all looks if you take a second to step back and try to perceive it as a whole.

I said, "It's kind of mysterious and huge, isn't it?"

Mitchell replied, casually, from the other room, "Yes. We have the Easter Island of relationships."

Photo montage of the Easter Island of relationships below.

Too much has happened since I last saw you. Complete upheaval. I feel you with me, but it's been way too long.

Diary Friday

I found this this morning and read it, amazed. I have no memory of any of this.

When I was in college, I had a job at a pizza joint called Pit 'n Patio. It was in walking distance to the beach, and it was a MADHOUSE. There were lots of CRAZY regulars. Oh, and the place served beer - which meant you had to deal with lots of carding of underage kids, and also had to serve up beers to vaguely homeless beach people who would pay for their beer with PENNIES. Counted out on the counter.

I wrote down stories from "the Pit" in my journal. Apparently, there was one regular (and I am kind of remembering her now) - who was 85 years old if she was a day, a small wrinkled crone in a housedress, who would come in every day and have a beer or whatever. Her name was Martha. I was fascinated by Martha. Obviously (judging from this entry in my journal) I grilled her about her life when it was slow at the Pit. I have no memory of interviewing her so rigorously. But obviously I did.

The stories! Who did I think I was, at age 19, in my grimy apron behind the pizza counter? Studs Turkel?

To the people who balk at "TMI", who don't like it when people over-share, all I can say is: You really might be missing out on something pretty extraordinary!

AUGUST

Martha -

One daughter - Pat - who has 7 children - and a great-granddaughter - a baby - who, whenever she sees Martha, runs to her, arms out, crying, "Ma! Ma!"

Pat is a nurse at South County Hospital and loves it. Martha asked her if she ever had any regrets. "Not one."

At first Martha begged her not to be a nurse, but a schoolteacher - anything but a nurse because Martha had experienced so much sickness in her life.

She nursed her mother for 3 years alone - who had cancer. None of her other relatives wanted to do it so she did the best she could, not knowing anything about cancer. Her mother got to be skin and bones. They took off one breast, and lots more ... Martha had to bear up alone. She was not in a good way either.

She didn't cry for days after her mother died. A few nights before her mother died, the two planned out her funeral. Her mother said, "Don't put me in navy - or brown - or black. I want to be in pink orchid." And she was - in a pink dress with ruffled sleeves.

The undertaker was a friend of her mother's, and in spite of her being so thin "he made her look beautiful - like she was 18 years old." She had long long hair and he had it all softly waved. Her coffin was grey velvet with pink taffeta insides. She had her rosary in one hand and someone brought her a dozen roses and said, "I want her to have one in her hand" - so the undertaker slid a red rose in her hand.

Martha could not believe how many people came. "She had so many friends ... but I didn't know that many!" People streamed in - and the friend undertaker told Martha to go home for a while "or there'll be one more coffin here" and he stood in the line for her. He told her that by the end he thought his legs would fall off so many people came.

Her mother was 70 when she died.

Her mother was English - her father Scottish - her great-grandmother Irish ... her father was very stern. Her mother got all of her teeth taken out on one day and was in so much pain she couldn't function. Her father came home and there was no supper fixed and he got so angry at her. "Why did you have them all taken out at once?"

And Martha remembers saying to him, "Don't yell at her - she's in enough agony." She was only around 7 at the time. But he still didn't let up.

Her and her husband - both from Pawtucket - were going to take a trip overseas and move to Florida, but he had a heart attack and they were too afraid to be away. He had 3 heart attacks - the last one killed him.

Listen to this story: He died on the toilet seat at night. Martha was asleep. She woke - he wasn't there - and she found him on the toilet seat - slumped over with his glasses all crooked. She described it so vividly. I felt tears in my eyes. I think she absolutely went into hysteria. She rang the alarm and everybody came running.

A male nurse, a friend, lived nearby, and Martha said to him, "Could you please come and see if my husband is dead or alive?" So he went and felt the pulse in his neck and wrist and turned to Martha and said - I'm sure gently - "Martha, he's been dead for hours." And she had been sleeping. She was in shock - so much so that this nurse held her tight in his arms in the dining room and said firmly, "Martha - cry. Cry. Cry. You have got to cry."

And she told me that she totally soaked the front of his shirt. "I'm getting your shirt so wet." "I don't care. Just cry."

Her daughter is the joy of Martha's life. She sounds like an angel. She does Martha's laundry and every Friday takes her out shopping and out for dinner at the 108 House, and then for a long long drive all the way down to Galilee and all the seaports. On Sunday she always has Martha over for supper and another drive.

When Martha has teeth out and is in great pain, Pat stays overnight with her to help her and make her mashed potatoes and ground-up hamburger.

When Martha and her husband were gonna move to Florida, Pat begged them to stay. "You're my only mother and father ... I need you to be nearby so I can help you if you need it."

I just wanted to get her story down. I think it deserves telling. And Martha deserves to be remembered. So brave and so alone.

"It's terrible living alone. It's so lonely."

"What a life I've led. So full of sickness and death. I didn't want Pat to have to face it too. But she has no regrets. She loves it."

I told her I had just had an extremely scary dream that I had cancer and I had to face death at midnight and I was suddenly so so so afraid of dying I couldn't even think about it (a fear I never really knew I had) and she said, "Well, I broke your dream, honey - cause I talked about cancer. If you have a dream about something and the next day someone talks about it, that means the dream won't happen. So I broke the dream."

Let's see: her mother was so full of cancer at death they had to drain all her blood but she turned black - but it was an open casket so they had to put it back in.

She and her husband (Eddie) used to really raise hell when they were younger and go out drinking and dancing.

One day Martha came into the bathroom and saw Eddie standing there with two things hanging down from his nose and Martha said, "Eddie - for Pete's sake - blow your nose!" And they wouldn't come out - so Eddie took pliers and tried to yank them out. Turns out they were polyps, and he began to bleed profusely. The polyps went all the way back into his head.

Martha miscarried into her hand.

Actually, as the more pathetic it gets, the funnier it gets.

Poor woman!

Beth and Meredith:

Here is my guiding image for you all this week.

Only don't drive off a cliff together, mkay? Or at least call me before you do!

Speaking of essence:

I just love this photograph, and its caught-moment feel of it.

Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell.

Essence

Pretty faces.

Kay Francis as a platinum blonde!

Some of my faves there. Sylvia Sidney, too. They're all so individual, aren't they? You would never mistake Clara Bow for Barbara Stanwyck. It would be impossible.

There can be a sameness to the up-and-coming starlets today - because creating a specific persona is not what is in vogue now. What is in vogue now is versatility: I'm a gorgeous young starlet, yet watch me play a limping Inuit from the 15th century! Now watch me play a rumpled itinerant fruit-picker from 1935! Now watch me play a jacked-up crack addict in Seattle!

Awesome! Great! But WHO exactly ARE you?

No reason to be angry at the trend of today (more on this theme here) ... it's just a trend. Like any other trend, it will pass. I find it more interesting that that is what is in vogue now, as annoying as I sometimes find it. The thought seems to be: If you are an actress, then you should be able to play everything. A silly-putty nose and CGI can fill in the gaps in your work. But you can see in the results of this kind of work (phone call for Cate Blanchett) - not everyone can play everything, nor SHOULD everyone. There is something to be said for knowing what your essence is - and playing THAT. Those actors still exist. Mickey Rourke. Gene Hackman. Ewan McGregor (when he's used well). Gena Rowlands. Susan Sarandon. Jeff Bridges. Actually, I'd put Angelina Jolie on that list. Kurt Russell. I wrote a bit about this "essence" thing in my review of Ben Marley in The Cold Reader. Anyone can learn a dialect. There are tutors for that. But there are no tutors to help you understand and bring out your own essence. You either have it or you don't.

So looking at compilation of pretty faces from the past, what I am most struck by is each woman's individual essence. You would never mistake one for the other. It's like a fingerprint. Wholly itself, a snowflake unlike any of its sisters. A mark made by one particular hand in indelible ink.

Wonderful performance

I've been looking for a quote from the actor in question - where he talks about the breakthrough he experienced in playing this part - but I have yet to find it. It's in a book I have - one of thousands, which I can't locate.

When I find it, I will post.

In the meantime: wonderful performance. Seen in the context of the rest of his career, it is nothing short of remarkable.

"Happy reading, dear one!"

There are a few sites out there that consistently make me cry.

Book Inscriptions is one of them

Today's entry in particular.

It's kind of nice when you realize ...

... that something you thought would be a dealbreaker turns out not to matter at all.

It's not that you don't have a moment, like: "OMG, two weeks ago I thought that was a dealbreaker ... but ... hmmm ... let me look at my feelings about this to see where I am really coming from" ... but once you examine your conscience you come to the conclusion that, " ... uhm ... Nope. Doesn't matter at all."

I still maintain that if someone is a dick to a waiter, I would still walk out on the date - like I did that one time in Chicago. It took me about 15 minutes to make the decision - because the second he was a douchebag to the waiter, I was done. In my mind I was thinking, "I never want to see you again. All is lost. I will never respect you now, you have lost me entirely. This is our first date and I already find you reprehensible from your one small action in this regard - because actions speak louder than words - and anyone who just behaved in the way you did doesn't merit one more second of my time." But ... but ... how do you handle that on a date? I suffered in silence for 15 minutes, until finally I just stood up, put money on the table and said, "Sorry. I can't do this. You were just rude to that waiter, and I just can't go any further with this date. My apologies." And I walked out on him. It was glorious, one of my finest hours. I felt like I could eat nails for breakfast!!!

So I still feel that behavioral stuff like that really matters ...

... but then there are other things that come up and you realize: what on earth were you holding onto THAT for? Does that really matter?

Of course it might also mean that I have no solid principles whatsoever, but at this point in my life I think that would be okay too.

Hope's cuteness

is sometimes more than I can actually bear. I see her at certain moments and I really MUST begin to torment her, and pick her up, and squeeze her, and kiss her face, and she lies there, slack and annoyed, enduring my attention ... but I seriously can't help myself.

When I see her in a pose like this ...

... what ELSE am I supposed to do?

I can't just SEE something like that and do NOTHING!!

Rainy melancholy morning

Restless night where I had terrible dreams and kicked all of the covers off, and must have been thrashing about so much for HOURS that I woke up with my hair looking exactly like this.

Granted, I was in plaid pajamas and wearing glasses, but THAT was my 'do at 5:30 this morning when I went to brush my teeth.

I think I need to have restless nights more often. It acts as the perfect hairdresser.

So after such a night, and on our fourth straight day of rain (not that I'm complaining, I love rain, I prefer it) it was wonderful to come across this post which made me laugh out loud.

One of the most frightening shots

... in the history of cinema.

A note from the mysterious "Nancy D"

Got home yesterday. Got the mail. Started going through it.

There was one small envelope, and it was addressed to me in familiar handwriting. It's funny: I have friends that I have met in the last 10 years - and I would not know their handwriting by sight, due to the lack of snail mail. But the friends from before that? I know it all. Kate. I would know her handwriting in a dark alley. Pat. His handwriting is as known to me as the freckles on my face.

So there was an envelope with my friend Betsy's handwriting on it. Obviously.

Yet. The name in the return address on the envelope was "Nancy D." What the hell?

There are multiple levels of confusion here (possible). The first one is that my friend Beth's maiden name starts with "D", and her mother's name is Nancy. So I thought: "Beth's mother wrote to me?" Considering the last couple of months, it wouldn't be out of the question. I have been hearing from a lot of people. But ... second level of confusion ... the return address was in Virginia. Why would Beth's mother, who lives in Rhode Island, be writing to me from Virginia? Yes. Betsy lives in Virginia, but ... whatever ... sometimes I'm not so bright ... and i got all confused.

Maybe it's NOT Betsy's handwriting. Maybe it just LOOKS like her writing.

My confusion deepened when I opened the envelope. There was no letter. Just a small blue piece of paper and on it was written:

It's a bit gratuitous to quote passages from Shakespeare on a daily basis.
-- The Clue of the Dancing Puppet

What. The. Hell.

Now here is where I went a little bit insane for about 3.2 seconds. It had been a long day and I was very depleted at that point. It was 8 p.m. and I hadn't eaten in 5 hours. So factor that in.

Suddenly, I knew it WASN'T Betsy at all ... it was some person who reads my blog, who hates me (I know you're out there!) - and they somehow found out my address and sent me that bitchy statement about Shakespeare ... like: stop quoting Shakespeare, you snob ... and for 3.2 seconds I got very afraid. How did they get my address? What the hell? Do I quote Shakespeare all that much? Oh. Yeah. I guess I do. Someone is so angry about it that they would take the time to write up a note like this and send it to me? Should I call the police?

But then there was the strange "clue" of "The Clue of the Dancing Puppet" which, after the 3.2 second freakout, I promptly Googled.

(Ahem.)

And then the return address became clear. Nancy D. Of course.

Betsy lives in Virginia, found a quote in an old Nancy Drew book, thought of me, put it on a little blue card, and popped it in the mail - putting "Nancy D" as the sender in the return address slot ... and suddenly, as all of that finally became clear (it took long enough), I started laughing hysterically, all alone in my apartment.

After my 3.2 seconds of freakout where the small blue card suddenly seemed unbeLIEVably hostile, sent to me by an unknown "Nancy D" who, for whatever reason, had a problem with me quoting Shakespeare ... it became the best moment of the day.

Put it up on the bulletin board.

I have good good friends. I am very lucky.

And honestly I might be stupid to think love is love ... but I do

Mr. Harris - by Aimee Mann

Listen here. Have Kleenex ready.

So he's retired
lives with his sister in a furnished flat
he's got this suit that
he'll never wear outside without a hat
his hair is white but he looks half his age
he looks like Jimmy Stewart in his younger days.

and honestly, I might be
stupid to think love is love but I do
and you've waited so long and
I've waited long enough for you.

My mother's calling
from where she's living up in Troy, Vermont
she tries to tell me
a father figure must be what I want
I've always thought age made no difference
am I the only one to whom that's making sense?

And honestly, I might be
stupid to think love is love but I do
and you've waited so long and
I've waited long enough for you.

The day I met him he was raking leaves
in his tiny yard.

Of course I know that
we've only got ten years, or twenty, left
but to be honest
I'm happy with whatever time we get
depending on whichever book you read
sometimes it takes a lifetime to get what you need.

And honestly, I might be
stupid to think love is love but I do
and you've waited so long and
I've waited long enough for you.

honestly, I might be
stupid to think love is love but I do
and you've waited so long and
I've waited long enough for you

There's a story behind this song. There's always a story.

I first heard it in 2000. I love Aimee Mann but I was unfamiliar with this particular song. I went with my friend Jen to Don't Tell Mama's, a cabaret joint in New York, where a friend of Jen's was performing. It was a week or so before this. That was coming, but it hadn't arrived yet, and I was still in a state of suspended animation. Looking back, it is obvious now that the storm was coming, it was about to break, but when Jen and I went to Don't Tell Mama's, it was still just gathering. I was still holding out hope.

Jen's friend had about an hour-long set. A lovely clear voice. We sat at a little table in the club, and had a wonderful time. It was an emotional night, I remember. Jen and I were roommates (she makes an appearance in the final moments of that link above), and we were both having an intense time of it. Jen is a singer, too, and she sat there beside me having all kinds of feelings about her own career, her own voice ... she was so proud of her friend, but she couldn't help but reflect on what she wanted, for her own life.

As for me, I was just enjoying the music, yo. I wasn't sitting there, thinking of a gathering storm, or my hopes, or anything like that.

Until Jen's friend sang "Mr. Harris". A song I had never heard.

She said, "You know, I've always just loved this song, and wanted to sing it. Aimee Mann's 'Mr. Harris.'"

And from the first strains on the piano, I was GONE.

When she started singing, the club itself felt like it contracted. I suddenly was aware of the walls pressing in on me, and my own personal response to the song becoming far too large for that venue. The strain of holding back was so much that I actually felt a white-hot burning go all through me. The way I feel in kick-boxing class at about the 40-minute mark. Things actually burn. I couldn't breathe. I was afraid to. If I took a deep breath, huge stormy sobs would come out, and I wouldn't have anywhere to go. The moment was not supposed to be about ME ... but i couldn't help it. The song sliced through the artifice, ripped me open to myself, and the pain that I had been hovering over, fearfully, not going into it yet, was revealed to me. I flew in nervous circles above myself - looking down on the wreckage - that I couldn't even feel yet. It was like I had been horribly injured, and had flown up out of my body. A bird killed in the street - and its mate flutters over the dead body, flapping its wings in a panic, swooping in, back up, in, back up ... like: No, no, no, this cannot be .... I don't know if I was aware of anything like, "This is what is ahead of you ... this is the sadness you are now ignoring, that is going to come to the forefront in a week or so ..." That's not really how it was. It was more primal than that. The brain was not involved, except in the most detached way, disengaging from the white-hot burning, and looking down on it, observing. For the most part, I just listened to that song - and was filled with a hot searing liquid - and I couldn't breathe - and the club was suddenly too small for my experience. I thought the song would never end.

"Mr. Harris"'s tune was part of what sliced me open. It's slow, it lulls you into a feeling of safety, it says, "It's okay ... it's okay to have yearnings, to be sad, to have hope ..."

But the lyrics. My God, the lyrics. At that time, in love as I was with an older man, I thought I was going to die. I couldn't catch a full breath.

The sadness was so acute that calling it sadness isn't really accurate. Maybe "grief" is more like it. Or loss. I felt like I was looking at an alternate life, the life where it did work out with this man ... and that was the life I wanted to be in. Not the one I was actually in. And how could I ever ever come to peace with that?

I loved him so much.

Finally - finally - the song ended. Tears had been boiling down my face, rolling off and into my lap - but there was a strange stasis inside of me because I couldn't openly sob (or, I felt I couldn't). I was drowning. Taking teeny tentative breaths, drenched in tears. "Mr. Harris" was over, and she moved on with her set - and I recovered immediately. There was no hangover. It had been a spell. While the song was going on, I suddenly became my own bird-mate, flapping its wings frantically over the dead body of myself in the street ... looking at the guts and crushed bones and thinking, panicked, "No, no, no, no, it can't be as bad as all that, can it???" No ... my sadness isn't going to be THAT bad, will it? How will I bear it? Oh God, oh God, help me bear it .... And then the song finished, and abracadabra, I was back to myself, back to normal.

Jen and I walked to Port Authority after the show, to take the bus back to our apartment. We stood in line, talking about the night. She told me her experiences sitting there, her feelings about singing, how much she wanted to do it, and do it more (she has a beautiful voice), and how it had been a very intense night for her. I told her about what happened to me during "Mr. Harris". How I was suddenly on fire from within, and thought I might LOSE it in that very small club. We got home, and Jen actually had the Aimee Mann CD on which "Mr. Harris" appears. She gave it to me. I made a copy immediately.

I listened to it constantly that next week. I didn't have the same experience to it that I had had that first time at Don't Tell Mama's. I no longer felt myself full of molten lava with boiling tears coursing down my face. It still wove a spell, but it was more of a gentle melancholy spell. I suppose I was, somewhere, gearing up. For my trip to Chicago and all that that would entail. I'm no dummy. I knew somewhere what the outcome would be (although I could have had no clue that the trip would end in such a crazy way - see that link above) ... and maybe I knew I needed my strength for it. I needed to go into it calm, and open ... not grasping and already-sad ... and so "Mr. Harris", with its brief burning realization of the damage that had been done ... followed by the gentle melancholy of the subsequent listenings ... prepared the ground for me.

It helped me take that deep deep breath before the plunge ... the one I had been afraid to take while sitting in Don't Tell Mama's.

For years afterwards, when I listened to the song, I thought of that night, yes, at Don't Tell Mama's. I also thought of that trip to Chicago the next week, and the complete chaos of my trip home, and the "total dark sublime". I didn't have to call the images up, or concentrate ... It was a time-traveler. It took me back. Immediately. Some songs are like that.

I have found myself turning to "Mr. Harris" recently.

And it's funny. Or not so funny. But it is seeming like a different song to me now. I am hearing it in a different way.

Of course I know that
we've only got ten years, or twenty, left
but to be honest
I'm happy with whatever time we get
depending on which book you read
sometimes it takes a lifetime to get what you need.

Those lyrics sounded very very different to me when I first heard the song.

Listen to "Mr. Harris" here.

South Beach Diet-related conversation, part 2

Here is part 1. Same players for part 2.

Jen: Are your glasses bigger?

Me: No. My face is thinner.

If I keep this up, soon my regular glasses are going to look like this on my face.

You think that I'm strong. You're wrong. You're wrong.

Robbie Williams. "Strong". (Video below)

The first time I heard this song I was hooked. Forever.

It always makes me think of that homeless guy I dated that one time. I was listening to Robbie all the time then. That season passed, and while I still think Robbie Williams is a total kick, I didn't have to listen to him all the time the way I did then.

But "Strong" has kind of risen again in my consciousness ... it's like a need. I've felt it. "Hm. Let's listen to 'Strong', shall we?" It feeds something, it represents something ... not so much the lyrics (although yes, the lyrics too) - but the music.

The ground breaking up ... things emerging again ... hopes? No, not hope again, please not that!!! But yes, yes ... there it is again. Hope. Possibility. Dreams.

To me the song says "hope". And I love that line. "You think that I'm strong. You're wrong. You're wrong."

I relate to that.

But maybe that's okay, too.

Sunrise on Avon

Took this photo on the beach at Avon, freezing dawn.

This photo is not re-touched or edited in any way. This is actually what I saw.

Edits

Worked for 12 hours this weekend (six one day, six the other) on my final round of revisions on my manuscript. I had gotten 3 pages of notes from my agent. Many of them were tiny tweaks (ah, I love the tiny tweaks - mainly because they only involve me highlighting the text in question - if I agree with the edit, that is, and I am always free to say "no" - although I better have a damn good reason - and pressing DELETE) ... and then there was a major re-ordering that had to happen. Agent had suggested it - and I shuffled stuff around, until I finally saw what she was saying. She was right. Move this piece to this section, put this piece as the first piece in that section ... You know, I'm too close to the book now. To me, the way it is is THE WAY IT IS ... which is why I've been eager to have friends and others read it ... because it's not good (at this stage, anyway) to get too rigid about that stuff. I am very rigid when it comes to certain things (and rightly so). I won't be told to make certain types of edits - things that will change the tone or the feel of the book. I will not have my VOICE messed with, because I have confidence in it, and I won't change it. Thankfully, my agent loves my voice. It is the most important part of our relationship right now - and having had experiences with other publishing people who DON'T get my voice, and who read my stuff wondering, "Hmmm ... why doesn't this sound like Sex and the City, because THAT is the book I want to sell and you're a single girl of a certain age and why doesn't your book sound like THAT? Because aren't you all the same?!" ... having an agent "get" my voice to such an intuitive degree is (hopefully) money in the bank. Because she gets it, she can sell it to others.

So there's that. None of the tweaks had to do with altering the voice.

I knew it was going to be a big job - the tweaks - and I had scanned over her list, checking them off in my mind - "okay, I can do that, yup, that one's easy ... Nope, not gonna do that one, and here's why ... no problem with this one ... fine ..."

I had missed one tiny note from her though, which I came across on Sunday, during working on it.

"I think you need to somehow reflect the global economic collapse in this piece."

ARGH!!! How had I missed that? Why hadn't I seen it in my first scan of her notes?? That was a big change - and she was right - the fact that the economic collapse was not reflected in that particular piece had bothered me. As a matter of fact, when the "crash" came last fall, did I worry about my finances? No. Did I feel concern for the fate of the world? Not at all. Did I angst and moan and pore over the financial section of the newspaper? Hell no. My first thought was of that essay in my book, and I felt a bit uneasy about it. "Hmmm. I wonder if it's okay to NOT update it??" So I can't say I'm surprised that that was one of her notes to me, but I admit I had been putting it off, hoping it would be okay ... in my typical writer's-procrastination way.

This was not a tiny tweak. This would involve major re-writing.

Which I did. It involved me changing the tense of the piece (a much more difficult thing than you would think - very very detailed work), and re-writing the whole thing.

It was one of those funny moments (or, not so funny in the moment) where you realize: Okay. You need to get your shit together, Sheila. It's all well and good to feel that you are "off the hook" and can just make your tiny tweaks. That's part of work, too. But you cannot avoid the major work you need to do on THIS piece and it cannot be put off any longer. You knew it in October - you KNEW this piece would need to be rewritten - but last fall I could barely eat or sleep, let alone re-write anything.

So the day of reckoning has come.

It took me three hours, but it's done.

I had to laugh though.

Her notes to me went like this:

1. Maybe on page 83 you don't need the second paragraph. You have already said that. See page 11.

2. I think the last piece in this section actually needs to be the first.

3. The third paragraph on page 179 is redundant. I think you only need the first sentence.

4. Please boil down the economic global collapse for us in no more than one page. Mkay? Thanks.

DONE.

Kickin' it old-school with Jimmy Fallon and Neil Patrick Harris

Back in the day, guests would come on to Johnny Carson and yeah, sometimes they would "plug" their latest project, but those were always the most boring segments. The best guests were the ones who knew how to banter, to keep the conversation rolling, who made Johnny laugh. Not the careerists - but the people who knew how to tell a story. If you are familiar with this clip of Mel Brooks talking about his first meetings with Cary Grant - that's what I'm talking about. BRILLIANT. Johnny Carson doesn't say one word. And it takes a long time to get to the punch line. The story itself is funny and detailed - you know, this is how people who know how to tell stories talk ... but the punch line ("Tell him I'M NOT IN") comes way at the end, and the payoff is enormous because Mel Brooks has done his job, as an anecdotalist, leading up to that point. The laughter is a thunderclap.

Now this is old-school Borscht Belt humor - these are the guys who basically created much of what America thinks is funny - they were GODS ... so Johnny having them on (and others like them) ... was always a delight, because you weren't going to hear polite back-and-forth about a starlet's first movie that was opening that weekend. You were going to hear some tall tales. You were going to see someone who knows how to, you know, TALK.

Anyway, the clip below is of Neil Patrick Harris on the Jimmy Fallon Show, doing a magic trick.

First of all - both men couldn't be more charming to me in this clip. They are doing a bit together. It's improvised - but watch how they keep that ball in the air.

Second of all - I am sure Neil Patrick Harris has projects to "plug", and things in his career to talk about.

But he spends his time on that show doing a magic trick - and watch how it unfolds, and develops. And wait for the payoff - which is HUGE.

These are men of my generation and the generation directly behind mine.

But it's nice to see that old-school talk-show style alive and well with the two of them.

And "charming" sometimes now has the connotation of something coy, or precious, or hoity-toity. But I found this clip "charming" in the TRUE meaning of the word. I couldn't stop smiling the entire time I watched it, and I wanted it to go on forever.

The creation ...

Looking at Hope reaching for her beloved banana toy, it made me think of something else.

Dear poster that I now see everywhere:

Please don't ask such a question unless you expect an honest answer.

The answer is Hell yes.

Abigail Adams on her blackberry

Last night at around 7 p.m., Kerry and I were emailing back and forth. It was fast and furious and had to do with men and getting ahead of ourselves and various heartcracks and how we should do whatever Mike says and also our cats and how much we love boys, in general. There were almost no pauses between emails.

But then I realized what time it was. 7 pm. Kerry is now playing Abigail Adams in the Paper Mill Playhouse's production of 1776 (buy tickets here - great show!!), which I went to see last Sunday with Siobhan and Ben - and the show was at 7:30.

I emailed Kerry, "Are you in costume right now?"

"Yes."

So. Kerry was dressed like this, emailing me from stage left.

I still laugh at Kate, dressed up in some bullshit fashion from the ancien regime, all very fin de siecle, calling me from DURING her show and then hanging up hurriedly. But to picture her in a powdered wig and beauty mark and decolletage on her cell phone ... Too much.

For example, at one point last night, Kerry responded to something I said with: "OMG! Heartcrack!"

Picturing her saying something like that dressed like that just makes me happy.

Same girl but completely different

"In My Other Life" - by Tracy Bonham (listen to song here)

In my other life I'm ambidextrous
In my other life I'm tall
You can ask me 'bout technology
And I will know it all

In my other life I am much funnier
The days are sunnier and sweet
In this parallel universe
You're in love with me

In my other life I am an astronaut
Connecting dot to dot above
Drawing lines between every sky machine
To celebrate our love

And my other car is a Jaguar
And I'll pick you up at ten
Drive to City Hall
Then we'll do it all
In a bed at the Sheraton

Same girl but completely different
Same girl but completely different
'Cause you love me
Yeah, you love me
Yeah, you love me
Oh, you love me
Why is it so hard to love me?
Why is it so hard to love me?

And in the real world it's just plain obvious
You're oblivious to me
But what you don't know is how far you go
In my fantasy

You're like a running bull
You're unstoppable
Let the ground beneath you shake
And I'm unafraid
I am so unafraid
Of the mess we're about to make

Same girl but completely different
Same girl but completely different
'Cause you love me

I adore thematic consistency

See the second paragraph here.

Read this.

Then of course there is this.

There have been a couple of other incidents along these lines.

The most blatant was when one guy - arguably the most important guy of all (but don't tell the others, although, oops, they all read my site - doh!) - asked me, "So - will you dedicate it to me?" He knew how ridiculous he was being, but he couldn't stop himself. I could not believe the balls. We were laughing hysterically. "No, I will NOT dedicate it to you. Jesus Christ, haven't I given you enough?" "I know, I know - I can't help it." "Your ego, dude!!" "I know! I told you! I warned you about it!"

Yesterday I got together with the Trinidadian massage therapist. Haven't seen him in months. He asked me how I've been. Gave him the truncated version. "I finished a book," I said. He immediately asked why he didn't have an autographed copy yet. "Well, it's not published yet. But don't worry - I'll give you a signed copy."

He asked, "Is there a chapter about me?"

In such a topsy-turvy uncertain world, where anything can happen at any time, and you can't count on anything staying the same, there is something unbelievably comforting to me about the unanimous and consistent response I have gotten to the news of the book from the men in my life.

I would be disappointed if it were any other way.

Mistake/Wrong

I was in a cab last night and had yet another amazing conversation with my cab driver. This happens to me all the time. I have written about it before. There was the Bangladeshi man who opened up to me all of his excitement about the marriage that had been arranged for him by his mother and how excited he was to go back to Bangladesh and meet his wife. There was the Armenian man who talked to me about his homeland (and I said, from the backseat, "What are your feelings on Mount Ararat?" and he was like, "Wow. You know a lot about Armenia..." hahahaha) and how much he loved his homeland, and then, when he dropped me off - got out of the cab to give me a huge hug. There was the Iranian man who - I have no idea how (well, of course I have an idea - it was ME who started it because I can't help myself) - started talking to me about Iran's relations with America, and we talked about oil, and I, because I am crazy, brought up "1953 and Mossadegh" and he literally stopped in mid-sentence, looked at me through the rear view mirror and tears had flooded his eyes. I wonder if he thought I was a CIA operative. He said, "Nobody here knows about Mossadegh." It would be like me being in Kazakhstan and having some cab driver know all about Alexander Hamilton. I replied, "Well, I'm not nobody. I know everything." The cabbie then told me all about "old Mossy" and I was in heaven.

Last night, the cab driver, out of nowhere, began opening up his problems to me about the English courses he was taking. He is from Egypt and he has been in America for three years. He is a high school biology teacher - or was, in Egypt - but now, because of the language and other things - he drives a cab in America. He is working hard to improve his English so he can try to get a job teaching biology again. I told him I thought his English was pretty damn good, but he shook his head sadly. Then began a very interesting conversation about learning a new language - and how difficult it was to learn English, in particular. He said, "The problem is is that I still have to translate. When you are talking to me, I still have to translate what you say into Arabic and then back into English in my head - and by that point you have already spoken too much and I am way far behind." I told him it was that way when I tried to speak French to a French person. I am translating everything. It takes way too long.

He said, "The hard thing about English is that you have so many words that mean the same thing, but you don't use in same way."

I love this crap. "Like what?" I asked. "What words?"

He said, "Okay. Like 'mistake' and 'wrong'. They kind of mean the same thing - but I get them mixed up - and instead of saying 'I make mistake' I keep saying 'I make wrong'."

"Ohh, okay, I get it."

"You know what I mean?"

"Interesting, because if you said to me, 'I make wrong' - I would know what you were saying, English is flexible that way - but you're right - the correct term is 'mistake'."

"And there is so much in English that is like that. The other thing is that in Arabic, there is nothing that is silent. You speak all letters. In English, you have all these letters that are supposed to be silent - silent e, silent g ..."

"Oh man. I know. I can't even imagine trying to learn all that stuff if I spoke another language."

"Then there are also things like - 'Manhattan'" - (and he said it in a New York accent - where the double-T is silent - so it comes out like Manha-in. Very good imitation. I burst out laughing. He did too.) He said, "What is that? "Manha-in! Where did the Ts go??"

I said, "Well, that one you don't have to worry about. 'Manha-in' is an accent - a regionalism - the Ts are supposed to be there, so you're safe with that one."

I asked, "Are you enjoying the classes?"

"Yes! I just have no time to study! I have to cram it in whenever I can."

Immigrants. God bless them.

The entire cab ride ended when he pulled up on my street, and, I am not kidding, I sat there and conjugated a verb for him. He had mentioned being confused about tenses - and hell, I get confused about tenses - but along with everything else I have been doing, I have been continuing my independent study of Latin, and I'm re-learning all those old rules. So there we were, at 11:30 at night, with rain on the cab window, and I conjugated "Love" for him, and he took notes, making a little chart on a pad of paper.

When I got out of the car, I said, "Have a good rest of your shift. Hope you don't make any wrongs." and he burst into laughter.

I love people.

I have so much to pray for, so many people to keep in mind ... but I will make sure to pray for that Egyptian cab driver, that someday soon he is back in a high school classroom, teaching kids how to dissect a frog. That's obviously where he should be.

Fearless

Some screengrabs.

I treasure this movie.

Trends

There are some trends I don't mind following (or I follow them without even realizing it - or I flat out follow them happily!) and other trends I pay no attention to (either by choice, or because I can't or won't change). I read a lot of moaning from certain people about how the wider culture somehow doesn't "support" whatever it is they are into. "I don't share the values of the girls in Sex and the City. I like to sit home and knit. Why isn't THAT celebrated?" Well, first of all, who says it isn't. In this day and age of niche blogs, specific message boards, and targeted online communities - pretty much anything anyone loves is celebrated somewhere. Are you a plushie? You are no longer alone. You can find your own kind. Do you like gluing seashells onto window frames and stencilling seahorses onto the wall? There's probably a blog out there for you. Find your own kind, and stop looking to the larger forces to validate you. It's all an illusion anyway. Second of all, a television series about a woman sitting home and knitting would be the most boring non-event in the history of television. And thirdly: who cares what television execs say is "in"? Sit home and knit and be happy that you have found something you love and stop looking for validation from the wider culture. Trends are trends. Hop on in and participate if you want to, and decline if you don't want to. I was thinking about this yesterday - and I was wondering how dominated I was by trends ... and I started making a list.

Trends I Follow Happily
Current music. I love the pop kings and queens of the day. I may end up deleting that stuff from my iPod in a year's time because I think, "What the hell did I see in this music?" - but I love to have the new albums by Britney, JT, Ashlee, Mariah, whoever. I think they're fun.

Technology. I'm not a gadget-hound (I mean, obviously, I don't even have a television) ... but it's only been a couple of years and I already cannot imagine my life without my iPod. It has changed my experience of my music collection, and it has also changed things such as: working out, commuting ... those times when I am stuck, or need to get through something ... I also love things like Netflix, the Internet, online bill paying, Amazon ... I have not resisted any of them, even though it's been a huge paradigm shift for me. I still go to bookstores. I almost never go to a video store anymore. I do get overwhelmed by it sometimes, and I am not good with technology, actually - but I am fully a member of the "yay for new technology" club. Progress!

Reality TV I'm pretty much totally into it. I have my tastes and preferences - I prefer Project Runway to Survivor - but I kind of dig them all. I don't keep up with it as much as I would like (uhm, yeah, there's that no TV thing), but I find it all very entertaining. I do not see it as The End of the World As We Know It And What Is Becoming Of Us All? I think it's fun. And actually interesting as well. Oh, and America's Next Top Model is flat out great television. So is Real Housewives of Orange County (I don't care for the spinoffs). I don't so much gravitate towards the more personally-oriented ones (wife-swapping, or whatever - they don't interest me as much) ... I mainly like the ones where people have to DO something and there is some sort of contest involved. This includes The Bachelor.

Trends I Pay No Attention To (or, more accurately, feel no pressure to participate in)
What "everyone" is reading. The Celestine Prophecy came and went without making a dent in my psyche. Tuesdays with Morrie made me want to punch someone. I read the Harry Potters, and the Twilight series. But if I hadn't liked the first Harry Potter, I would have felt no pressure to go on to read the second. Same with Twilight. I loved those books. They sucked me in. I just don't care what "everyone" else is reading. I feel no pressure to participate. I'm happy reading whatever catches my fancy. Or, like now, I read nothing. To be clear: I am not saying that those who eagerly read the entire Harry Potter series are merely participating in a trend. Don't assign a snobby meaning to my words. What I am really talking about is acknowledging that there IS a trend, and seeing whether or not I feel like participating in it, of my own free will. If it's something I actually LIKE, or if I'm just following a trend. It's kind of interesting to test that, from time to time. Do I LIKE my hair this way, or is it just because everyone is doing it? I think everyone has such things - and it's an interesting topic to me.

Body Hair I just don't care what magazines or certain types of men tell me is attractive in this arena - I don't know why I have always been so impervious and do not have that anxiety or shame about it that I see around me ... I just don't. Never have. This is a big issue right now and if you don't follow it, then consider yourself lucky. I actually am very interested in this topic and could get quite militant about it if I thought too hard about it ... but what it all boils down to is I just don't care. By that I mean: I do not care about the trend. I am inconsistent in my habits, and have been since I was a teenager, and I am fine with that. I feel no pressure to explain myself or justify why I do ONE thing and not the other. It's my body. I do what I like. I shave my legs. I like smooth legs. I rarely shave my armpits. Just don't care. Occasionally I get my eyebrows waxed - I like that. I keep the pubes nice and trimmed, but I don't go nuts with Brazilians. I've had them before, but they are not a regular part of my life. I am not saying if you DO get Brazilians regularly that you are just "succumbing" to a trend ... I am talking about it from the perspective of someone who realizes that it IS a trend - it is everywhere ... and you could drive yourself nuts with trying to keep up: the ladyparts are supposed to be totally bare now, that is the trend. Anything else gets an "ew" response from the chattering class - and I don't know, I just don't care. I'm gonna listen to what the larger culture tells me my vagina is supposed to look like? Are you kidding me? I like my va-jay-jay, I keep it a neat place that someone would want to visit, but other than that, I am totally impervious to the trend. Thankfully I seem to attract guys who don't care either, kind of relaxed and natural men, and that (obviously) suits me. It's never ever been an issue in any of my relationships. I'm kind of "whatever" about it and so are the boys. Like I said, I could get militant on this topic and shout at random people on the street, "It's not GROSS that I have hair under my arms. It grows there naturally, jagoff. You may not find it aesthetically pleasing, but that is a different issue entirely. You seem to think that it's wrong that it's there in the first place, and that means I feel complete freedom to not give a shit WHAT you think because you obviously are a moron!!" But somehow, seriously, I honestly don't care. It just is not a trend that I feel pressure about at all. I know women who have been made completely neurotic by trying to keep up with this trend ... or worrying what a guy will think if she has one strand of hair on her fancy place. Nope. Not me. It's kind of freeing, I'm glad I'm impervious to this one, I really really am.

Materialism I carry zero debt. Not one cent. How is that possible? I have no idea except to say that I do not spend more than I earn. I have bounced only one check, and that was when I was 19 years old. Never again. I am not anti-"things" - I love my things ... but I just don't go wacky and I am very afraid of debt. Sometimes I have a really heavy spending month, where I buy 200 dollars worth of books. So then for the next couple of months, I cut back. Much of it is an internal mechanism - I am always aware of the amount of money I have in the bank. The overspending mania of the last ten years just never ever touched me. I felt no pressure to join the growing economic boom. Keeping Up with the Joneses just does not compute for me. Unless the Joneses have a massive book collection and a huge private gorgeous library. But feeling the need to buy, own, consume, acquire ... it just doesn't touch me, I'm too afraid of debt. I remained completely impervious. I loved Sex and the City, absolutely adored that show, but in no way did I want to emulate Carrie, and the shoe fetish and the overspending. I saw the show as entertaining and fascinating on a human level - men, women, friendship - but the lifestyle it depicted (and please, I could have been a character on that show: late 30s, single girl, New York City - I am in that identical demographic) did not put the pressure on me. I didn't wonder if I was "doing it wrong". I just kept buying my books, and then NOT buying my books when I needed to save ... and I saw the show as fun and thought-provoking ... but nothing more. It wasn't a How-To Manual, is what I'm saying.

This is another thing I want to say: for the most part, in this second list of trends I pay no attention to: it is not about being contrarian, or being ANGRY that everyone else is into something you are not into. That's what I find interesting. Those who really get hung up on why THEIR tastes are not reflected in the larger culture, or in every sitcom on television, or what the news reports, are setting themselves up for a world of heartache. Just do what you like to do. As long as it's not illegal, who the hell cares? Like people who say, "I wish men wore suits and hats these days." Uhm - who is stopping you from wearing a suit and a hat? Is it illegal for you to wear a fedora? The issue then becomes that everyone else ISN'T wearing a suit and a hat ... so the REAL problem is that the person saying "I wish men wore suits and hats" really just wants to fit in. They don't want to wear a hat and a suit if everyone ELSE isn't, and they get resentful that the trend of yesteryear has passed. To wear a suit and a hat in this day and age would make you an eccentric, and the people who tend to whine "I wish this were 'in' these days" don't want to be eccentric. They wish that the larger culture reflected THEM. Now, I have never really paid much attention to that stuff. By the very nature of my career choices, I am an eccentric. You get used to being out of step with what is expected of you very early on when you want to be a writer or an actress or a burlesque dancer or whatever. You may go through phases with it, where you are viciously PROUD that you're not like everyone else, but hopefully that passes, and you just become accepting of who you are, and who everyone else is, and vive le difference, and everything's okay. Just do your thing, let others do their thing, and don't worry too much about the "shoulds". Not always easy. Sometimes you look around and go, "What the hell? Why does everyone care about THIS when it matters not to me at all?" I think it's important, though, to keep a light humorous touch in these matters - and embrace your tastes (even if they make you eccentric). You don't have to be a douchebag about it (you know, the "I ONLY read 18th century Austrian villanelles" snots) ... but just do what you like, try to be nice to others, try to cut other people slack and not assign petty motives ... and go on your way.

Don't worry that TV shows tell you "this is what it means to be a single girl of a certain age", don't worry that the current trend of sandals just do not work with your feet ... wear the shoes you like, even if everyone else is wearing pointy-toed stilettoes. Nobody cares. Not really. Of course it's LOVELY when you find yourself, miraculously, in sync with the culture. For example: during the "grunge era", I could not have been more thrilled - that my natural inclination for dressing - was suddenly IN. I was in heaven! Doc Martens! Glory! Flannel shirts, jeans, black T-shirts, Elvis Costello glasses! I love to dress that way. I dress that way whether it's in or no. I had been dressing that way since high school! But suddenly: yay! Look at me! I'm totally IN!! That of course passed, it was a brief season, and the larger culture decided: "Okay, now THIS is in." Uhm, shit. What about my Doc Martens? I was so so happy when the "chunky sandal" trend came along - the big heels, the sort of vintage look and feel to the shoes ... This is, for me, the ultimate feminine look - and because of the shape of my feet I just can't wear certain kinds of shoes ... and I got very sad during the pointy-toed trend, because I just couldn't go there. Nope. This trend too shall pass. I will sit this one out.

There are probably others to put on the list.

I'll keep thinking about it.

Quotes from this week

"THE PIE IS BACK."

"Basically: fear."

"I do have nodes available right now, but I fear they might not be suitable."

"CLONE."

"Gahoy. Should I close that par tag or ... gahoy?"

"That piece of pie is like a drunk stepdad who makes an embarrassing speech at a wedding. Like: sit down!"

"Should I go into the nodequeue or ..."

"But how do I get the baby's number? Because, dammit, I need to call her."

"Sheila. Here's some meta data." (notebook thrown at me)

"If I never see a piece of pecan pie again ..."

"It's always an emotional drama."

"I will then input the meta data (as well as the java script) ..."

"It's extremely important to narrate our emotions."
"Fear."
"Panic."
"Tragedy."

"And then we unschedule? Yes? Denied?"

"So I then ... what ... I drag the baby up?"

"We are all about poo here."

"Sheila, you just went emotionally dead right now."
"I know. I'm so sorry you had to see that."

"FEAR!!!!"

"I hate my date so much right now for even thinking I want to do the electric slide."

I love this site: Texts From Last Night.

"the last 3 guys I've hooked up with were a CEO, a mechanical bull operator and a magic the gathering player...I need a type..."

"All I've ever wanted to do in life is right"
"Maybe you should learn how to spell write first"

"I have to look really hot tonight because my personality is going to suck."

"So why didn't Edward and the Cullens just kill Hitler?"
"You need to stop watching Twilight."

"I created a new tequila drink. it is a mix of excitement and fear instilled in innocent people."

"I pooped in a mop bucket. "
"WTF??? "
"Their employee restroom was locked what kind of customer service is that"

"How do I get over judging people who I would be exactly like if I had a boyfriend"
"Get a boyfriend"

"Fun fact: when I ripped off my wristband, I punched myself in the face. Rad"

"i dont nkow, theres a guy slesping next to me and im wearing 8 tsthirts? wtf happened last night? will you come get me."
"i think im in thre room next to you"

"Hey I found your number in my phone i dont remember how we met this is richard btw"
"strange i dont have your number must have been a drunk thing"
"could be more"
"absolutely not"

"so it turns out you can rearrange the letters in "scottsdale" to spell "milf city." who knew?"

I don't really text so I have nothing to add - but there is some damn funny stuff on that site.