Island snapshots

— “He had a way of making a simple walk down a country lane into a Grand Adventure.” — Patricia Flynn, on her husband Errol’s acting ability

— Thomas Hardy bums me out, man. But I love him. Also, when reading the poems he wrote about the death of his first wife, if all you knew were the poems then you would think this was one of the most romantic successful marriages of all time, when by all accounts it was a disaster. After her death, Hardy found a notebook where she had written a screed called something like, “Everything I Cannot Stand About My Husband”, obviously meant to be found by him after her death. They were miserable. But something about her death rocked him to his core, and his poems to her following her passing ache with feeling and loss. They are amazing. His anger at God is palpable, although it’s more than that. He found God to be a silly thing, a useless entity really. He was not a believer in any way, shape or form, and he wrote about it quite a lot. His poems to and about God are also incredible. But still: very somber reading. I enjoy it a lot. Always have liked his poetry quite a bit.

— It is nearly impossible to say about a day out here, “What a nice sunny day”, or “What a rainy day”. It always changes. Yesterday I woke up to rain after a crazy night of howling wind. It rained the whole morning in a way that made you think it would never stop. It is my favorite kind of weather. Then it cleared up mid-morning, and I cavorted about around the Island, walking up and down random beaches, watching the long long breakers rolling in from the open ocean, the foam being whipped off the tops of the waves by the strong wind and blown backwards. Huge white clouds piled up to the north, seemingly benign, but suddenly, they were upon us. It was as though the light was snuffed from the sky. It began to rain, and there were also some hailstones falling as I raced to my car. The light and shadow that afternoon were phenomenal, as rain and sun struggled for dominance, with big lines of clouds in the sky, showing clear blue sky beneath. Gorgeous. I love how the weather changes. Storm, sun, storm, sun. It is the most like my own natural rhythm. I find it comforting.

— Anthony Hopkins asked Katharine Hepburn while they were filming Lion in Winter, “What is star quality?” She replied, “I don’t know if it’s a kind of energy or a kind of electricity – I don’t know what it is, but I do know I’ve got it.”

— Watched Fifth Ave. Girl early this morning and realized, yet again, what a good actress Ginger Rogers is. She is completely understated here, almost sad, yet nobody’s fool. Not your typical wise-cracking dame, either – this is a girl who understands reality, understands she needs to do what she has to do, but there’s a sadness beneath all of it. As though if only it were given the chance, a soft romanticism could blossom. I loved the crazy family, the ditzy heiress falling in love with the mechanic who spouts his anger at capitalists and his love for the proletariat and then turns around and opens his own garage (hahaha) – the snotty suspicious brother – the loony mother … but in the center of it all sits Ginger Rogers, in a plain black suit, sitting on a park bench, eating an apple, and staring at the world around her with low expectations of it … and that makes her sad. Not bitter, but sad. She’s fantastic.

— I wonder what the seals are doing right now. Sunning on the rocks on the west side, maybe? It’s a nice day. So far.