March 29, 2006
“No one would ever do anything
if they knew what they were in for.
When Todd Short came out with the above line on the phone the other day, I knew I had the opening quote I’d been missing for this here Valentine’s Day meditation, part two, which has been stuck on my desk for well over a month. In matters of love, it’s hard to get it right. If Toddlee was not the life of the party during my 30’s, he was certainly the driving engine behind it, gathering everyone up in his VW van and spiriting us around to wherever the party was or the Rasco Brothers were playing, the rockabilly band we followed to the Last Hurrah, the White Eagle, the Rock Creek Inn, and ah, yes, the Trout Lake Country Inn, scene of the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t expect to ever have more, as a way of life, than I did back then. And that’s fine; I’m done with fun! I no longer have the energy to have it every day. When I say “those were the days,” those are the days I’m talking about, and “that old gang of mine,” that was the gang. Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day weekends, our party posse invaded Guler/Mt. Adams State Park, in the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest, and if you were there just to camp and enjoy the scenery, you’d best move on.
DON’T ASK ANYONE WHERE THE LAKE IS
Trout Lake is due north of Hood River, Oregon (windsurfing capitol of the world) just over the river on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge. Frank and Deby, take note. From Portland take the Gorge highway I84 east for around 40 miles, stop at Multnomah Falls if you haven’t yet, pass Bonneville Dam and take Cascade Locks exit 44, cross the fabled and fabulous Bridge of the Gods into Washington, turn right onto SR14 and travel past Stevenson. At the White Salmon River, watch for Alt 141 and turn left, stay on 141 for about 18 miles following the river and you’re in Trout Lake, home to the rustic, charming Trout Lake Country Inn, where I danced my 30’s away. Nestled at the base of Mt. Adams, which you can see from the meadow behind the inn, it’s a lovely day trip or romantic stayover. You can also take a Mt. St. Helens scenic small plane flight while in the neighborhood. aaaaah… aaaaaaaaaaah….. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah….. aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! That was me as the plane taxied across a field and took off. Remember, dear Bill?
I restrict myself to one and only one story from those days and that is the time we were all stoned out of our minds on ‘shrooms, God’s fresh-from-the-earth natural high (the hours we spent on our knees in wet cow paddy pastures, picking and eating and laughing!), the only drawback to which is a queasy stomach, and I came blasting out from the dance floor onto the scenic foot bridge outside the inn and quickly drank a can of beer. Right then my friend Ross held out some more ‘shrooms and I bent over his palm, took one whiff and said, “I think I’m going to puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuke,” which I did the entire beer, over the side of the bridge.
(www.troutlakecountryinn.com)
WHEN IN DOUBT, LEAVE THE HOUSE
It’s precisely because you don’t know what you’re getting into that you should go out and do everything! Can you live with not knowing what you might have missed? When I found out Kurt Masur was to lead the London Philharmonic in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 at Davies, I said I Am There and got right on the horn for my ticket. But just days before the performance, I got an email that Masur was recovering from an illness and Neeme Järvi would step in to take his place. Well, OK, fine. The he fell ill, and the last-minute replacement was one Roberto Minczuk (who?), well, he’s Music Director of the Calgary Philharmonic and Artistic Director of the Orquestra Sinfonica Brasiliera in Rio de Janeiro. I’m thinking, this is already 2 degrees of separation from the ticket I bought, do I still want to go? Because I kind of felt like having a lazy, uninterrupted Sunday of not leaving the house.
JUST GO
But I thought, woman, you’re not going to London anytime soon and you’ll still hear the Philharmonic perform Mahler’s 1st, plus on the program is a piece by Khachaturian you’ve never heard, so just go to the damn thing, bitch, maybe you’ll discover something. So I left the house. And made the discovery of this young century. Honestly, it was one of the most thrilling and memorable concerts I’ve ever attended. That’s why I live here. Roberto, bless his soul, was not subbing for anyone, thank you very much, he rode that British band like a stallion and tore the house down. Mahler provided the thunder; Roberto enlisted the Gods on Mt. Olympus to throw lightning bolts from the clouds to explode on stage. Energetic, animated, dynamic (handsome); “he’s as good as anyone,” said the retired MIT-trained chemical engineer beside me (who had strangely in his youth “assigned” himself classical music as a challenge he had to master and ended up loving it). Rock on, Roberto! Catch him if you can.
WE SHOULD ALL LOVE SOMETHING SO MUCH
But the crown jewel of the evening, an absolute revelation, musical history in the making, was 21-year-old Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan, who is poised to be the sensation of his generation, playing his countryman Aram Khatchaturian’s Violin Concerto. Looking like a mop-headed cross between Dustin Hoffman and Elvis Stojko, with a most endearing habit of puckering his lips as he plays, he is adorable, the engineer and I agreed, and will have many lithesome ladies tripping over each other to get to him. But when during a pause in his solo he lovingly leaned his cheek against the bottom of his 1708 Stradavarius like a sleeping angel, I thought, no woman can compete with that. I hope the guy likes to snowboard or something else, because to get where he is at 21, he has obviously spent much if not most of his life standing there with his violin just as I saw him, tearing his own heart out.
DEEP THOUGHTS: IF YOU’RE EVER DROWNING IN A BUCKET, DON’T WASTE
TIME LOOKING FOR THE HOLE. BUCKETS DON’T HAVE HOLES.
I’m telling Jim beside me, this guy is young, he is going to be out there making music for us for 50 years, and as soon as I said that, I realized, Jesus Christ, I’ll be dead! It was the first time I ever really absorbed the reality that sometime within a certain upcoming time span, like Khachatryan’s career, it’ll be my turn to kick that already much-abused bucket. But to hell with that—I’ve got a new violinist!
At 15 he was the youngest winner ever of the Sibelius competition, and the whole world wants him. It so happened that evening that I was in the front row, about 10 feet directly in front of him, as if it were my own command performance. The few times his eyes fluttered open as he played, I must have appeared in a blur to represent the entire audience. No one can grimace in agony like a solo violinist. If he were being tortured he’d have much the same look on his face. It’s like, you look at my flat, you know a lot about me—the flat is me; I created it and it’s an extension of me. This performance was nothing less than the naked, passionate transmogrification of Sergey’s soul into music. It was not merely music produced by him; it was him.
THE BIG O
As I was right in front of the guy, it fell to me to lead the charge for the Standing O, and we brought him out 4 times, finally to play an encore. That was my world’s record for bravo-ing anyone; I was a freakin’ broken Bravo record. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! Bra-VO! I mean it this time: BRAVO—really!—bravo! I am always strident in showering praise on performers because I have oftentimes been embarrassed by a lame or lackluster audience response, and as it was not given to me to speak the language of music, I am dependent upon others to feed my need, for which I am profoundly grateful. I can think of nothing more exciting than a great orchestra in full sway. A live symphony is not just a pleasing familiar melody you tap your foot to while leafing through the program—it’s a living, quivering entity that the will of dozens must combine to produce. I’m addicted. I can go only so long without. I figure I must lay down between 2 and 3 thou a year on what amounts to experiences, on performances that disappear into the air. And well worth it. When you live in the present, it’s all about the moment.
HOW DO I GET TO CARNEGIE HALL?
The Symphony Store was woefully unprepared and understocked on his CD, but I did get Sergey’s autograph on my program, and I thought he gave me a sweet little glimmer of recognition. It’s that Bravo-crazed bitch! I am blown away. That’s it. My mind is made up. I’m going to take a cross-county train trip to New York to attend his Carnegie Hall debut, if Amtrak still exists in 2007. And as for you out there, I say skip that Green Party party on the 29th (you can see those wonks anytime) and go hear Sergey perform at the Legion of Honor’s Florence Gould Theater. Maybe you’ll discover something. I’ll be in the front row.
Now do I really want to go see “Immortal Heart” at Project Artaud when I already saw it at the Magic Theater? You paid for the ticket, bitch, now will you please just leave the house!
FARKLEMPT!
Yes, I did go, and I said to Amy Tan afterwards, “Please let me shake your hand; that was truly—and then I fell apart!—(gasp) heart (gasp) break (gasp) ing (gasp)! She actually looked a little alarmed, but I pulled myself together and left, resuming my breakdown at the 22 bus stop. From the dawn of cave drawings to campfires to oral histories to the present day, she is one of humanity’s greatest storytellers. I was farklempt! Word for Word outdid itself. That’s why I live here.
So in sum, when in doubt, leave the house.
WHAT’S YOUR GENITALITY QUOTIENT?
Ladies, take this simple test. When you see a banana, do you want to:
1) Eat it. 2) Shove it up your ass. 3) Use it as a dildo.
If so, you are: 1) Oral. 2) Anal. 3) Genital.
A fellow named John Painter, coincidentally a housepainter, was described by a friend as the only person he’d known to have achieved the “genital” stage of Freudian psycho-sexual development. I don’t know that I can lay claim to reaching, for lack of a better word, “genitality,” but neither do I feel particularly stuck in either the anal or oral mode. I’m not obsessively neat, and I don’t like to talk to people. I would say perhaps 10% of the human race is “genital.” That may be generous—just as Jerry Seinfeld thinks the majority of humanity is “undateable! Have you been to the Motor Vehicle Department lately? It’s a leper colony down there.”
GLASSOLALIA
It has also been said we use only 10% of our brains. Well I think Philip Glass uses 90% of his brain and leaves the other 10% on autopilot to regulate his bodily functions. I know I’m using only 10% of my brain, because he blew the other 90% away with the screening and live performance of his scores for the Qatsi Trilogy at Davies Hall over the President’s Day weekend. Friday, Saturday and Sunday night I trudged religiously up Van Ness Avenue to partake of his radiating musical intelligence. There was a historic moment with Glass, Reggio, Martin Reisman, the Music Director, and who must have been the cinematographer, Ron Fricke, of “Koyaanisqatsi,” bowing together on stage. Glass has been touring around with “Koyaanisqatsi” but SF was the only stop to get the whole schmear. That’s why I live here. There was also an afternoon conversation at Herbst between Glass, director Godfrey Reggio and Dr. Robert Osserman of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.
Reggio sat in silence for the first 45 minutes of the event, while Osserman and Glass discussed the relationship of mathematics to music, such stuff as Pythagorean interval ratios, a “unified field” integration of rhythm and harmony, why certain intervals register as consonant. “It’s not that we know what we like,” said Osserman, “but that we like what we know.” Glass said we grow up with conventions of hearing that are learned and that can be unlearned. What we don’t today “hear as music” evolves over time. Would Mozart have heard Schoenberg as music, I wonder? It took me about 5 years to penetrate the Bach Organ Preludes and Fugues—my ear just wasn’t sophisticated enough to hear what was going on. But Glass said his music has less to do with math than simple arithmetic. He only developed “highly sophisticated ways of counting to eight.” Whatever that means.
When the discussion turned to the Qatsi films, Reggio launched into a shamanistic mission statement so passionately delivered the audience spontaneously erupted into applause, twice. “It is pure hubris to think we are in the driver’s seat. We no longer use technology, we live it.”
RED LIGHT DISTRICT
In the course of going to Davies three times in a row I was forced to partake of the ghoulish Valentine transformation of City Hall into the Whorehouse of Representatives. Was that bordello-red bloody glow someone’s idea of romance? I’ll stick with the casbah.
ROCK STAR OF MATH
I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t gone to the Glass event, so I’ll pass on to anyone who may be interested, that Benoît Mandelbrot, one of my Heroes of Stuff I’ll Never Understand, is speaking at SFSU on April 29th. I keep (the surprisingly readable) The Fractal Geometry of Nature on the shelf so I can look at the purdy pictures.
(www.ams.org/meetings/mandelbrot-poster-ltr.pdf)
Investigating this event opened up a veritable new universe of things I’ll never understand, nor had even known existed to not understand. To give you an idea, here’s the sort of seminars going on at MSRI:
- Equivariant operads and string homology
- Hilbert’s Tenth Problem for function fields over $p$-adic fields
- String and Topology: Instanton counting and Donaldson invariants
- Chow quotients and moduli spaces of stable maps
- Rational points on K3 surfaces
- Torsion points on subvarieties of Jacobians of rational images of Fermat curves
- The three most important things about elliptic curves
- Twisted sheaves and the period-index problem
- Some finiteness results and local-global principles for the Chow group of zero-cycles
- Measures on Banach Manifolds and Supersymmetric Quantum Field Theory
- Exponential sums, peak sections and Homological mirror symmetry for weighted projective spaces
Here’s a teaser for this last one:
We will give an alternative proof of Donaldson’s almost-holomorphic section theorem and symplectic Lefschetz pencil theorem, through constructions of certain special kinds of Donaldson-type sections of the line bundle based on properties of exponential sums. In 1994, Kontsevich proposed the homological mirror symmetry conjecture for Fano varieties and Calabi-Yau manifolds that predicts the equivalence of the derived category of coherent sheaves on the manifold and the Fukaya category for the mirror. In this talk, we will consider the case of weighted projective space for all dimensiosn. We will prove the homological mirror symmetry in this case through the category of constructible sheaves on the complex side and the Fukaya-Oh Morse category on the symplectic side.
Ladies and gentlemen, if that doesn’t whet your appetite, you’re lizards, not human beings!
ROCKIN’ ROBBINS
If, like me, you think Jerome Robbins’ “West Side Story” is the hottest, toughest choreography ever, you probably, like me, went to see the all-Robbins program at the Ballet lately (featuring kick-ass renderings of three pieces by Glass). Glorious! What a treat! Artistic Director Helgi Tomassan was a protégé of Robbins’, who engineered some key developments in his career, including his current post at the SF Ballet, hence this luscious tribute. That’s why I live here. I remember how disappointed I was, though, when I heard Robbins had testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, like I’d been betrayed by a family member. Say it isn’t so! But it was so, and it apparently tortured him throughout his life.
The first Chair of HUAC, Martin Dies, Jr., was a Klan supporter who received this telegram from the KKK upon the formation of the Committee in 1937: “Every true American, and that includes every Klansman, is behind you and your committee in its effort to turn the country back to the honest, freedom-loving, God-fearing American to whom it belongs.” Has an eerily contemporary ring to it. I think we need a new HUAC to interrogate the Bush Administration.
BRUCE KOVNER
That’s the dude’s name, though he doesn’t “particularly like the cult of names”. That’s why his awesome gift of 137 musical artifacts, including the recent acquisition of the Beethoven Grosse Fugue manuscript, and others by Brahms, Schubert, Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, Chopin, the list goes on, will be called simply “The Juilliard Manuscript Collection.” “I realized it was better to make them available to the world rather than keep them under the mattress.” Way to go, dude. After dropping out of the Political Science Ph.D. program at Harvard, Kovner took some evening classes at Juilliard and is now its chairman, and vice chairman of Lincoln Center. He is also head of the American Enterprise Institute, known for its hawkish foreign policy, founder of Caxton Associates, the world’s 7th largest hedge fund family, and a billionaire. He made $550 million last year alone. Down here on the planet earth, it would be like having $550 in your wallet, and picking up the Beethoven’s Ninth manuscript for 3 bucks 50. Such a deal!
MARCH 21st: DAY OF ETERNAL REGRETS
I have an annoying habit of being obscure and poetic in my journals and not talking directly about things that happened. So next to November 3rd one year I had written: Day of Eternal Regrets. What the hell was that about? Eternity didn’t last too long because I have no idea. I wish I’d occasionally just tell myself what I’m talking about. But this year on March 21st, the 321st birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, I wrote to Jon Beck that it had been 21 years since we went to Leipzig, East Germany, on the 300th birthday of Bach, and could not get in to the sold-out performance of the Bm Mass at St. Thomaskirche because we were “new to this country” and too ignorant to simply hold up a fistful of American money for which someone would gladly have traded their tickets. And in reviewing my life, I realized I’ve been pretty damn lucky, because, truly, I regard our missing that concert at that place on that day, as the biggest regret of my life. Any other disappointment or heartbreak is just part of human life on earth. This one, however, was cosmically incorrect. Should not have happened that way.
RIP SARAH CALDWELL
“Opera is everything rolled into one — music, theater, the dance, color and voices and theatrical illusions. Once in a while, when everything is just right, there is a moment of magic. People can live on moments of magic.”
I know I do. That’s what music’s all about for me. For a while, critic Andrew Porter wrote in The New Yorker, Caldwell was “the single best thing about opera in America.”
She couldn’t have asked fora better epitaph.
PAUSE, TRAVELER
When I moved to Berkeley from Portland in 1996, I spent about 7 months taking the F bus to Transbay Terminal to my job in SOMA. When I told my boss, Mr. Prima Donna of Architecture, I was quitting because I was a just a glorified waitress keeping him and his clients in coffee, he said, “That’s a cheap shot! And if you were a waitress you’d be making a lot more money!” So I got a new job, bought a house and a little fourplex apartment building in Berkeley and spent about three years taking the H bus to Transbay Terminal to my job on the Embarcadero. Then, when due to a Port renovation my firm got evicted after 30+ years from our cush spot on the waterfront with our own private deck on the Bay (I watched the new year’s eve 2000 fireworks from there), we couldn’t afford the dot.com rents in the City and moved to the East Bay, where I spent three miserable years (six words: small property owner under rent control) both living and working in Berkeley (deadly!) and walking to work. Then when in 2003 I heard the Rent Stabilization Board was granting 0% rent increase to landlords that year, I evicted myself out of Berkeley and bought my flat in the City. Since then I have spent 3 years taking the Z bus from Transbay Terminal to my job in Berkeley. And now,
THANK GOD
my firm is moving back to the City, and my hour-long commute will be reduced to 15 minutes on the 22 Fillmore bus. Five more hours of sleep a week and I WILL NEVER HAVE TO LEAVE SAN FRANCISCO AGAIN. Anyway, in all those years of taking the Transbay bus, it was only recently that I noticed the plaque on the front of the Terminal reading
PAUSE, TRAVELER
AND BE GRATEFUL TO NORTON,
EMPORER OF THE UNITED STATES
and
PROTECTOR OF MEXICO, 1859-’80,
WHOSE PROPHETIC WISDOM
CONCEIVED AND DECREED THE
BRIDGING OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY
August 18, 1869
Dedicated by E. Clampus Vitus, 2/25/1939
His dogs Bummer and Lazarus are also paid tribute to. I’m glad the bridge got built, but perhaps the following proclamation is the one that should have come to fruition:
Norton I., Dei Gratia, Emporer of the United States and Protector of Mexico, being desirous of allaying the dissensions of party strife now existing within our relam, do hereby dissolve and abolish the Democratic and Republican parties, and also do hereby degree disenfranchisement and imprisonment, for not more than ten nor less than five years, to all persons leading to any violation of this imperial decree.
Norton I. Given at San Francisco, Cal., this 12th day of August, A.D. 1869.
I will actually miss my Transbay commute, because I love crossing the Bay 10 times a week, hunkered down in the plush cozy dark of the Greyhound-style AC Transit bus—I bet some San Franciscans never see the water at all. I love charting the changing weather and colors and my own moods, and the approach to the City, muffled in the blue fog of dusk, with the wide expanse of shimmering water, the iconic sweep of the Golden Gate, the winking eye of Alcatraz against the smoky hills of Marin and the golden necklace of the Embarcadero circling the skyline rising behind it, is one of the most spectacular sights in the country. That’s why I live here. Drivers, take note: you can actually see the Bay from a bus, can you imagine, all the while paying no heed whatsoever to the traffic. I guess I’ll have to make do with the occasional ferry ride or beach jaunt. It’s so cool to live in a city where one can take a bus to the Pacific Ocean. That’s why I do. Live here.
So hat’s off to you, Norton, for the blessed half hour I have to myself morning and evening while crossing your bridge—and even if they don’t name the new one after you, it will be forever yours.
CHRIS DALY FACIAL HAIR UPDATE
I can’t keep up. I was gone for a couple of days, and the goat was back. Then my mind wandered and it was gone again. Last time I looked, I think he simply hadn’t shaved that morning. But I must abandon this hobby as I am too scattered to keep my log current with reliable information. Pat Murphy will have to take over; he spends half his life in the same room with the guy, the other half baiting him. Now I’ll have more time to watch grass grow. Oh, and lose the beads, Chris, Mardi Gras’s over.
CUTIE PATOOTIE GETS IT WRONG
I didn’t know Commissioner Joe Veronese was of la famiglia Alioto. All I knew was that he is a cutie patootie with the sexiest best/worst circles under his eyes I’ve ever laid my circle-laden eyes on. He looks like he’s on the mend from two squarely placed shiners. Love it! But I didn’t love his comments to Cardinal Levada, as lead of the California delegation witnessing his elevation in Rome:
“I think today was an amazing day for Cardinal Levada. On a personal level, as a San Franciscan, today was an historic day for San Francisco. We now have a friend in the Vatican who understands San Francisco’s values that could help to break down the walls of disagreement and divisiveness by getting to know each other’s points of view, and respecting those points of view based on mutual respect.”
What San Francisco do you live in, buddy? And what dream world? Sorry, cutie, but you’ve lost your patootie.
And Reverend Amos Brown? “This is a historical day for me as a protestant, to be here to celebrate a high point for Cardinal Levada whom I’ve worked with in San Francisco on issues for the betterment of the community. My wife and I have the honor and privilege to have another opportunity to reach out to faith-based communities, united by a common bond in an eternal quest for the betterment of humanity. Cardinal Levada embodies great compassion, love, optimism and hope. I think it’s a great statement for him to be elevated to Cardinal and a great statement for San Francisco.”
What a crock! How can someone reach a low point and a high point at one and the same time? It’s one thing to say, these are the teachings of my church and it is my sworn duty to promulgate them and enforce them. But claiming that placing needy children with same-sex couples does violence to them–that is way out of line, irresponsible and inhumane. Somehow Pat Murphy, a gay man, thinks the delegation did San Francisco proud.
Admiration for Cardinal Levada despite his recent statement declaring same-sex couples unfit to adopt, is a case, I think, of nothing succeeds like success. Anyone (preferably rich and) powerful who achieves a milestone in his already recognized career is going to attract praise for his continued rise in the ranks of the already established, especially by those climbing their own ladders. His manipulation and abuse of his power will be ignored and even transmuted into glory by those who can’t admit that the wrong person was chosen to occupy that position, or whose own positions are threatened by speaking against him, same as those still embarrassed by electing Bush try to save face by continuing to support him on his reckless swath of destruction. The latest lie: “No president wants a war.”
Kudos to Gavin Newsom for refusing to join the delegation, and Tom Ammiano and the Board of Supervisors for denouncing this step backwards in the quest for basic civil rights for all humanity, from someone whom much of the world looks to for guidance. Shame on you, Cardinal Levada.
CONGRATULATIONS, BILL AND DAVE
on the arrival in your warm, loving home of Gabrielle Marie, upon whom fate surely smiled when her mother chose to put her daughter in your care. She could not have asked for better parents. Good luck with your brand new lives in Seattle—Portland will miss you! See ya at the Red Dress Party!
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
Since when is the U.S. big on cozying up to Communist countries and human rights abusers? When was the last time Gavin Newsom and Michael Tilson Thomas flew to Cuba for a lot of glad-handing photo ops and cultural exchange? China has for more than half a century been systematically wiping out Tibetans and their culture like the Romans disposed of the Etruscans. Considering our own penchant for occupation I guess we can let that one ride. Now they are apparently bringing concentration camps back into vogue for torture, murder and organ trafficking. Didn’t someone stage a World War over something like that?
www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61605.htm
THE CHINA BUG
This one’s easy. Did you see Sean Penn in “The Assassination of Richard Nixon”? It’s about the money, honey….the mooooooooonnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeey!
Investors are getting the China bug.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/08/funds/chinabubble/
BLAME CANADA
www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/protect_seals/about_the_canadian_seal_hunt/
This is the twenty-first century, people. Haven’t we evolved past hitting defenseless animals with clubs, like cavemen? Haven’t we evolved past wearing their fur and skins, like cavemen who had no other way to protect themselves from exposure, but for the sake of style and status? Haven’t we evolved past cruelty for greed and profit? OK, I can’t fault the cavemen for that. They had it over us there. They were just fighting to survive; we just like hitting animals with clubs.
BOYCOTT CANADIAN SEAFOOD
(www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/protect_seals/protect_seals_what_you_can_do
We have seafood here. Boycott Canadian maple syrup. We have maples trees here. Boycott Canada. We have Rockies here.
I DON’T SHIT WHERE I EAT
What a charming thing to say to a woman! Tony Soprano said it to Sofia Milos, playing a Mafiosa who thought they’d inevitably be having sex. Tony, does not, however, mix business with pleasure. Or anyway, shitting with eating.
What does Sofia find sexy? According to her website: “Humor and charm most of all. I also love a man’s voice, his eyes and strong hands. I like a man who is charismatic, wise, intelligent, passionate, very caring and supportive and flows me power and love in abundance. Mmmmh…sweet.”
Mmmmh…sound like anyone you know?
I am astonished that Gavin would be attracted to a famous, rich, beautiful, tall, exotic, powerful brunette. I would never have expected that of him. I would have thought Janeane Garafolo to be more his type. Gavin, Gavin, must you be so…obvious? Oh, well, you can’t help who you are, you fast-lane fast-track pretty boy.
JACK WINS
Triage, San Francisco style. Saturday, March 18th, there took place in this City simultaneously, the 3rd anniversary of the Iraq war protest march, two “Kerouac walks” though North Beach and Chinatown with author Bill Morgan, a rare film with an appearance by James Shigeta, a Pocket Opera performance of “The Bartered Bride,” and the Anarchist Book Fair at Strybing Arboretum. That was only the stuff I knew about. And I really wanted to go to all of them. Every week I am faced with choices between the arts, political events, neighborhood activities, social occasions and exhaustion. I really hated to skip the march, but in the end, I chose Jack as having the most impact on my life as I live it—it was also the closing weekend of the On the Road scroll at the Library, and he was calling to me. And anyway, the freakin’ news helicopters droned above us the whole way, so I still felt a part of the action. Have you ever noticed—I hadn’t—that outside Vesuvio are scratched into the concrete the names of Beat writers who’d been 86’d out of the bar? Among them, rather cruelly, is Paddy O’Sullivan, whose poem “How You Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Peninsula After They’ve Seen North Beach” was used in the do-it-yourself “Beatnik Kits�? (“Don’t Envy Beatniks—Be One!) the café sold to tourists back in the day.
YOU’RE WHAT?!
I ended up having lunch with Bill Morgan and his wife Judy—he spent 20 years as Allen Ginsberg’s archivist—at a nearby Chinese joint where Allen had enjoyed the bass fish. It wasn’t as cheap as Bill recalled. But the unexpected bonus of the day was the presence at the morning tour of Jim Canary, Head Conservator at Indiana University’s Lilly Library and the luckiest man in the world with the best job in it: he is the Bearer of the Holy Grail and Keeper of the Scroll, spending the next several years traveling the world as the exhibit escort for the manuscript of On the Road. He spent Christmas in Rome with Jack. But I can’t get into that right now; it is a story for another time and place.
OUT OF A JOB?
I was having a Guinness at Toronado one evening, and struck up a conversation with a guy, don’t remember his name, who was here on vacation from the Netherlands, and had come to the pub because Lonely Planet recommended it. What was he on vacation from? The weirdest job I have ever heard of. He was the jailer of Slobodon Milosevic at the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague. He brought him his coffee. And for all I know, he was the one who found him dead in his cell earlier this month (no, it was “a guard” according to The Washington Post and “guards” according to The NY Times). I wonder if he had any mixed feelings about that outcome, as NPR referred to Milosevic as “a figure of beguiling charm and cunning ruthlessness.” Did he beguile and charm his jailer, the cunning ruthless bastard? And did that jailer shed a tear, despite himself, or did he merely shrug and drink the coffee himself? We’ll never know. May you never rest in peace, fucker.
REPORT FROM THE LOCKER ROOM
An uncircumcised reader (who offered that info) wrote to contribute a couple more slang renderings of foreskin: “turtleneck” and (gawd!) “peel-a-meal” (attributed to gay culture). He reports that from what he has seen in the locker room that he is the exception and most guys around here have been cut. But because he retains his turtleneck, which he likens to the female hymen, he has not lost his virtue.
BUT IF YOU EVER WANT TO…
Go forth and circumcise thyself!
(www.landoverbaptist.org/news0601/circumcise.html)
CREATE YOURSELF CIRCUMCISED
Even Pat Murphy weighs in on the subject: “Make sure you can run if you get anywhere near that Love of Allah execution trial of a Muslim who converted to Christianity. Or anywhere near the Rebe in Israel who wants to high slice circumcision of unrighteous Jews who affirm LGBT marriage…”
Help me out here. I’m not familiar with the verb “to high slice.” Exactly what action is one performing when one “high slices?” Or is “high slice” a type of circumcision? But then the “to” makes no sense; it would have to be “the Rebe who wants the high slice circumcision of Jews” or “the Rebe who wants to high slice circumcise the Jews” or “the Rebe who wants the Jews high slice circumcised.” If “high slice”—I’m reaching now—were to mean expedite or prioritize, then forgive me, the sentence makes perfect sense. Of one thing I’m certain, though; high-slice should have a hyphen in it, unless there’s such a thing as a “slice circumcision” (aren’t they all?) and the Rebe wants it performed high on the penis. But then the “to” makes no sense. Let me just clear this whole thing up…damn! They left “high slice” out of the dictionary! I don’t have time to wonder who the Rebe is.
IS IT A NANOSECOND YET?
Here’s another Murphism: “For the briefest of a split second Mirkarimi locked with Daly as if they were alone, chortling his own smirk.”
Study Questions:
1. How many levels of brevity are there in a split second? How brief was the split second Mirkarimi locked with Daly?
a) Not so brief 2) Fairly brief 3) Briefest of all 4) We aren’t told.
2. What did Mirkarimi lock with Daly?
a) Horns b) Antlers c) Eyes d) We aren’t told.
3. Or did they interrupt their chortling and smirking to—briefly—lock something together? Perhaps one held the lock steady, the other turned the key? What was it?
a) A door b) A treasure chest c) Handcuffs d) We aren’t told.
4. “Chortle” is a portmanteau word coined by Lewis Carroll to combine “chuckle” and “snort.” To “chortle” is to produce a “chortle,” a snorting, cheerful laugh. A “smirk” is an affected, smug smile. In what year did chortling begin producing smirks?
a) The beginning of time, we just didn’t know it. b) Just now. Murphy, ever first on the scene, was the first ever to record a smirk-producing chortle. c) The same year writers starting throwing words up in the air and leaving them wherever they landed. d) We aren’t told.
Bonus Credits:
Diagram the sentence “Create yourself timeless,” or “Create yourself historic.”
I wonder why Murphy neglected to note that shortly after he chortled his own smirk, Mirkarimi smirked his own giggle, giggled his own snigger, sniggered his own laugh, laughed his own sneer, sneered his own smile, smiled his own snort, snorted his own chuckle, and chuckled his own snort. Perhaps because it all happened in the briefest of split seconds. Then the Board turned to the next agenda item.
DELETED FROM THIS SPACE: A LAME-ASS APOLOGY WHICH I RETRACT, WHICH WAS WRITTEN AND PROFERRED UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF STUPIDITY. I’LL KNOW BETTER NEXT TIME.
www.SanFranciscoSentinel.com provides a great service, beating ‘em all out for providing up-to-the-minute coverage of current City events, full texts of speeches, tons of great Luke Thomas photos—certainly the best photojournalism I know of—and I rely on it to stay abreast of the day’s happenings, even if Murphy is in love with Gavin Newsom. DELETED FROM THIS SPACE: AN UNFOUNDED PIECE OF MISINFORMATION I WAS FOOLISH ENOUGH TO THINK MIGHT BE TRUE BECAUSE IT DIDN’T OCCUR TO ME SOMEONE WOULD LIE TO ME. I wonder who financed Luke’s trips to China and Rome? This inquiring mind wants to know. Murphy likes that fast-track pretty boy, and we know that; nevertheless I don’t see Rachel Gordon sitting in the front row of every meeting that goes down in City Hall and posting it right to the web. But I will not back down. Pat Murphy is a bizarre writer with no grasp of English usage or parts of speech and their relationship to each other. This is not stylish writing, it’s broken English and he’s lucky I will never be his editor (dream on, Jones!), though I did like this bit: “Now Luther’s schismatics come to save your Fallen kiesters (surgery can’t hold it up forever).” (Should be “kiester” or hold “them” up, of course). His refusal to smooth out his syntax with the use of articles continues to bug me (“It was a good thing from Tom, who can match sharpest tongue…”). Why not “the” sharpest tongue? Why, Pat, why?
Looks like I’m not quite done with fun after all.
NOR AM I DONE WITH VALENTINE’S DAY
On Valentine’s Day I was home sick with a relapse of my lingering cold; my boss had ordered me home the day before. Perfect day for movies. I chose the cynical yet ultimately hopeful “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Charlie Kaufman’s mind-bending exploration of memory, regret and the power of love to endure.
“[Valentine’s Day] is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap.”
Everyone wishes they could erase or expunge someone or something painful from their memory like it never happened. Well in Kaufman’s world Lacuna Inc. can make it happen. “Why remember a destructive love affair” asks the film’s companion website, www.Lacunainc.com “Here at Lacuna we have perfected a safe, effective technique for the focused erasure of troubling memories.”
www.lacuna.uniting.com.au says, “The word Lacuna means gap or lake and is used to describe the space in a manuscript where the writing is missing. Prayer has been described as a creative Lacuna. It’s the empty moment waiting to be filled with the breath of the Holy Spirit. Lacuna is a space in which we can listen attentively for the call of God.”
IF I HAD IT TO DO ALL OVER AGAIN, I WOULD DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN
Or it’s the gap in your brain where those pesky memories once lived. Jim Carrey does his best ever as Joel Barrish, who discovers he has been erased from the memory of his ex, Clementine Kruczynski, and hurries to do the same to her. But along the way to having this minor brain damage performed he discovers that he doesn’t want to forget her, that he wants to cling to his memories of love, and finds a way to send his lacunized brain a message that causes the two to re-meet and start over. So here we have someone who did know what he was in for and decided to go through it again. Why? For love. For what is worth the risk and heartache if not love? Does it come along so easily?
IF I HAD IT TO DO ALL OVER AGAIN, I’D BE SOMEBODY ELSE
If it’s not enough to have your brain selectively zapped, you can always go to The Company. You have to be sponsored, but once processed, you keep your mind and lose everything else. First you have to die. Then CPS—Cadaver Procurement Section—has to come up with a suitable corpse, someone who fits your bill, to take your place in the coffin. Then you get your face rearranged, then you become someone else. Voila! This makes you a “reborn,” one of those who’ve been given a second chance.
FIDELIS ETERNIS
I’m talking about John Frankenheimer’s freaky 1966 film “Seconds,” wherein banker Arthur Hamilton receives a call one night from his dead friend Charlie. Only Charlie is not dead–he’s alive, more alive than he’s been in the past 25 years. He has assumed another identity and suggests you do the same. He’s Charlie all right, because he leads you to the trophy on the mantle piece, on which in his presence you had scratched under the felt with your belt buckle, “Fidelis Eternis.”
“Think, for Pete’s sake,” he asks Arthur, “what have you got now? What?”
“I don’t know.”
YES?
Well, he has the usual things. A wife and suburban home, a grown daughter who married a doctor, a decent white collar job. The next day, a stranger approaches him—“Mr. Hamilton?”—as he is boarding his train to Scarsdale—“Yes?”—and hands him a slip of paper with an address and disappears into the crowd. Charlie calls again that night and tells him to go there and use the name “Wilson.” He does, and winds up at “Honest Arnie’s” (the used cow dealer) Hi-Pro meatpacking plant and is led through hanging sides of beef to an office where a Sales Rep explains the process to him.
IT ALL STARTED WITH A BIG, RED BALL
Arthur Hamilton dies in a hotel room fire, is appropriately buried, and is reborn as Rock Hudson, quite good as Antiochus “Tony” Wilson. Rebirth is painful. First, extensive facial reconstruction by plastic surgery, removal of his fingerprints, replacement of his teeth. Physical reconditioning. Then, creating a new persona. On tapes made under sodium pentothal, Tony regresses and expresses his desire to paint “pictures and things.” A new life as an established artist awaits him. Amusingly, his “Guidance Adviser” is the brainwasher from “The Manchurian Candidate.” He is told, “You will be in your own new dimension. You’re a bachelor…the only son of deceased parents…in short, you are alone in the world, absolved of all responsibility, except to your own interest. Isn’t that marvelous?”
A KEY UNTURNED
On the beach by his Malibu studio, Tony meets Nora, who has her own back story: “Two boys, ages 10 and 12, a successful and indulgent husband, a beautiful house, complete with microwave oven, intercom, station wagon, etc., etc. ad infinitum….I made myself a cup of coffee, dressed, and left. That was four years ago.” Her take on him is that “somewhere in the man, there is still a key, unturned…when you come to think of it, it sort of fits everybody, doesn’t it?”
STRANGER IN A FAMILIAR LAND
But the new life is not as freeing as Charlie had led him to believe—he’s still being told what to want—and he goes back to visit his widow, Mrs. Hamilton, as someone who had known her husband. What his wife remembered most were “his silences, as if he were always listening to something inside, some voice…he lived as if he were a stranger here…he never let anything touch him, he became more absorbed in things, his job mostly. He worked hard and he became more detached. There was a look around his eyes as if they were trying to say something. I don’t know what…a protest against what he’d surrendered his life to. I never knew what it was, and I don’t think he ever knew. He worked so hard for what he’d been taught to want and when he got it he grew more and more confused, the silences grew longer…Arthur had been dead a long, long time before they found him in that hotel room.”
IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME
That right there is the American dream gone sour. People find out the things they’re supposed to want don’t satisfy them and they’re too entrenched to remove themselves from the quicksand. Those prescribed formulas of college, career, marriage, children and acquiring wealth and the signs of it, which are structured to perpetuate the economy and produce more consumers, create lives of quiet desperation. A life gets built up around you it is hard to extricate yourself from without major upheaval and repercussions. No wonder people would like to get dressed and leave. And then there is the terrible freedom problem—just think what chaos and anarchy there would be if people just ran around as independent agents doing whatever they want. After the Rachel Green character of “Friends” has the nerve to leave her great-catch orthodontist fiancé at the altar, she is lost at sea, because “at least it was a plan, it was clear, everything was figured out.”
Yes, it is more beneficial to an orderly society to have a life path charted out for you. It will occur to only a percentage of people that they don’t need to follow it. Marriage and family are an effective means of crowd control because little units of people bound to each other by vows or by blood or marriage contract, are more predictable than free individuals gadding about absolved of everything except their own interest. Not that I recommend this!
Tony Wilson later tells the “new” Charlie, “I had to find out where I went wrong. The years I’ve spent trying to get all the things I was told were important, that I was supposed to want. Things, not people or meaning, just things.”
YOU CAN(’T) HAVE IT ALL
So much has changed in the 40 years since that film was made, I don’t think anyone, at least in metropolitan areas, still expects a woman to get married or would ever dare ask her, why isn’t a girl like you married, so when are you getting married? But now there are different expectations. A 37-year-old former business development exec in Silicon Valley was quoted in the 3/2/06 New York Times as saying, “Most of us thought we would work and have kids, at least that was what we were brought up thinking we would do—no problem. But really we were kind of duped. None of us realized how hard it is.” The You Can Have It All lie is apparently no less oppressive than the You Can’t Have It All lie.
All this bullshit forced down people’s throats by their parents, their peers, the media, the examples of society we see around us, is why Valentine’s Day makes people feel like crap. We compare ourselves to some arbitrary standard we have or haven’t achieved by a certain age when others have. Without these prefabricated templates to aspire to, people would have to face the terrifying fact of their freedom, that their lives are theirs and theirs alone to design. But today people are embracing that freedom and insisting upon their right to live what used to be called “alternative lifestyles.” Nothing’s a given anymore.
HAPPILY EVER BLAH BLAH BLAH
But in the romantic sitcom “Sex and the City,” which explores the nature of romantic relationships for the modern skinny beautiful successful woman in the big city and the conflict inherent in being an economically independent woman but still in need of the love and emotional support of men (and not quite knowing what to do with that), the series concludes with the same-old, same-old tied-up ribbons of pat happy endings for 30- and 40-somethings, all to do with men. Carrie Bradshaw, the sex columnist who has had an unbelievable string of involvements with funny, smart, intriguing, handsome New York men, still questions her inability to “make a go of it?” with any of them. Why do women (and men) wonder what’s wrong with them when none of their relationships are “successful?” The failure is that they have ended. They weren’t happily ever after. Alone again, naturally. So what?
SHIT HAPPENS
That’s the lie that screws everyone up—that love lasts, or should last, forever, and that we are somehow lacking if it doesn’t. If you’re just living your life doing your thing, people tell you, just wait till you meet the right man; you’ll change your tune. See, you don’t even know you’re deluding yourself, that marriage is where your greatest happiness lies, because it hasn’t happened to you yet. Here’s a secret: don’t dwell in the past, where other relationships “failed,” or await the future, where that ultimate soulmate marriage is slated to succeed, but enjoy who you’re with right now for as long as it lasts. If it ends in heartbreak, honey, shit happens. You’ll get over it. If you enjoy who you are right now, you will not compare yourself unfavorably with someone else’s life. These TV gals, however, all the while alternately congratulating themselves on how fabulous they, their lives and their shoes are, and griping about why they can’t find true love or hang on to it when they do, cannot talk about anything but men! Should I, did I, will I, how do I get this man, forget this man, get rid of this man, get laid by this man, get this man to ask me out, ask me in, ask me to marry him, blah blah blah! If I wrote the show, I would in every episode, when you least expect it, have the celebrity of the week enter the frame and bitch-slap one of them.
CARRIE
In the last episode of the series, Carrie has the choice of two men (she’s the star, after all—kind of like Dagney Taggart having not just Hank Reardon but John Galt to eeny meeny miney mo), one of them “Big,” her boomerang man who keeps showing up, breaking her heart, leaving, and turning up again to break her heart again and leave again. He moves to Napa, but that’s not the end. He even marries at one point, but that’s not the end. He’s back courting her and she didn’t mean to! but breaks up the marriage—and her own loving (but more boring) relationship—by having an affair with him. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. Finally, she finds a man she can be with, a famous artist, and that’s the end of Big—not! Guess who shows up and—no! He is not doing this to her again! It’s just a game to him to sidle up to her when she has found happiness with someone else and destroy it just so he can leave again instead of stepping up to the plate and marrying her already! Goddammit. So she moves to Paris with the artist, Aleksandr Petrovsky—Mikhail Baryshnikov, no less—but exactly at the moment she realizes she has made a mistake, guess who walks into the lobby of her hotel to spirit her off to the inevitable resolution that has been developing since they met on the first show, but Big? “It took me a really long time to get here,” he tells her, “but I’m here.” Finally, the man has come to his senses, admitted Carrie is “the one.” Everything’s all figured out. The gal has got her man. And…happily ever after. Surprise, surprise.
CHARLOTTE
Then there’s Charlotte York, the New York prep school thoroughbred who unabashedly wants, wants, wants marriage and children. She falls in love with the perfect prep school rich doctor and they seem like the perfect Park Avenue couple…except that he can’t get it up, some kind of whore/Madonna complex, and when he does, she can’t conceive. They end up kaput (I guess that million dollar pre-nup wasn’t such an unreasonable requirement after all), and soon after she surprises herself by falling in love with her bald, sweaty Jewish divorce lawyer with the hairy back. (I love this line, the first time she sees his bachelor pad with all the bells and whistles and Charlotte exclaims, “I can’t believe men think its takes all this to get a woman into bed!” and Harry asks her, intensely, “What does it take?”) And they do indeed happily marry…but uh oh, she still can’t conceive, until she goes to the miracle acupuncturist du jour, and does…but miscarries. Last episode: they adopt a Chinese daughter. Husband, home, child; finally, the complete package. And…happily ever after.
MIRANDA
Miranda Hobbes, partner in a law firm, has an on-again, off-again involvement with barman Steve, who started out as a one-night thing—they live in different worlds and she resists him—even after she accidentally conceives his baby (no protection because she has a lazy ovary and he only one testicle—who knew?) but really, they are meant to be together. Though they both had become involved with other people—she with the sexy-as-sin team doctor for the NY Knicks (yeah right) and he with the hottest babe since Miss August (yeah right)—they finally admit their continued and undeniable love for each other, she casually proposes over a beer, and after they marry Steve wants her to at least look at a house in Brooklyn (Brooklyn!? She doesn’t do Brooklyn!). When she does take a look but continues to sneer, smirk and snigger, with a chortle thrown in for good measure, he tells her, “It’s not just about you anymore. We’re a family now.” And she, looking stricken, replies, “Oh my God, I’m married!” Of course they move, finally falling into the whole marriage, family, house thing. And…happily ever after.
SAMANTHA
I love Samantha Jones, high-power Public Relations sex pot, not hung up on “forever”—in fact, scared to death of it—whose m.o. is, sex is fun, have it as often as possible with as little attachment as possible. She falls in love a few times, which is as big as a deal gets for her. She’ll try anything before she admits it to herself and gives in, but always gets out of it in the end. She’s been sexing it up with an actor/waiter hunk half her age, and falls down an open supply basement hatch trying to avoid being seen holding his hand in public (what was he thinking?), like that’ll destroy her street cred. She takes his hand, then, only because she needs help walking. But she can’t deny it, the guy has gotten under her skin, and when she discovers she has breast cancer and he shaves his head to show his solidarity, she knows what she’s got and it’s fine with her. Last episode: “You mean more to me than any man ever has.” And…happily ever after?? Looks like it, finally, even for Samantha. Of course, she met the right man! We knew she would.
FABULOUS!
The last word in “Sex and the City” is “Fabulous!” And don’t get me wrong, the show is witty, watchable and fun, and I certainly wouldn’t expect a sitcom of all things not to tie up all its loose ends and provide the feel-good finale of the season. But wouldn’t it have been ballsy to leave things as they were—Carrie obsessed with a man who toys with her, Miranda embarrassed by her continuing love for a regular, decent guy, Samantha denying herself the depth of real intimacy for the sake of a roll in the hay, and Charlotte a barren, millionaire divorcée. After all, that’s life!
WE LOVE WHO WE LOVE AND WE CAN’T HELP OURSELVES— Jim Carrey
I have never, to my credit, been guilty of saying to a man, “Where is this relationship going?” “Where are we headed?” I prefer to live in the present. It never enters my head that any given relationship might or should “end” in marriage (curious turn of phrase, eh? Like Joyce’s “married and dead”). That is something to be discovered in the fullness of time. Not—listen, Mister, if you don’t fit into my scheme of my future, I do not wish to invest any more time in you! If you don’t want the same things I do, I will cease to love you! Why even bother? Because “love has no rules. It happens when we least expect it, often when we don’t want it, many times when we can’t handle it. It oftentimes scares you, surprises you, shakes you down to your very core.” So says an Amazon.com movie reviewer, of “Brokeback Mountain.”
SIMMER. DOWN. NOW.
What is this “time” that is supposed to ultimately arrive for people? “It’s time you settled down.” “Isn’t it time you settled down” “Shouldn’t you have settled down by now?” “Just when are you going to settle down?” Christ! It’s all about “the plan” again. Having a plan for your life. Having things clear and figured out. Nothing in dispute. Settled. We are scared of freedom, or have given up our freedom, and don’t want to see other people engaging their freedom. You’ve been free for years now, it’s time to hang up your dancing shoes and your freedom. One can endure only so much freedom. I don’t miss mine so much—why don’t you settle down too and keep me company?
Instead I want to say to people: “It’s time you got riled up.” “Isn’t it time you got riled up?” “Shouldn’t you have gotten riled up by now?” “Just when are you going to get riled up?”
People are afraid to live in the present, and as Jim Jarmusch says, “the highest thing I could aspire to is to just be in any given moment, at that moment, and it’s real easy to say that but really hard to do.” It is hard to do because people aren’t open to what is happening right now if it doesn’t jibe with their figured-out lives. What if you’re in a pleasant enough marriage but it’s kind of rolling along on autopilot. What if you become subject to a compelling attraction and feeling of connection to another person? Does it happen as a test of your fidelity, a challenge to your marriage vows, a reminder not to take your marriage for granted, or is there something else behind it? Who knows why the universe has placed someone in your path, or you in theirs. Maybe that person has entered your life for some cosmic reason ungraspable by you. Maybe it’s time to explore it. Maybe it will ba-low your freakin’ mind. Because it’s what’s happening now. That’s certainly doesn’t bode well for people who expect marriage to be “it.” OK, I’m married now, that’s it. All that love stuff is taken care of now, I’ve got it all figured out. “I’ll never have to be out there [in the dating world] again,” as it was put in “When Harry Met Sally.” I am no longer subject to having confusing, compelling attractions to whomever might come along, because this other person and I promised each other that’s how it would be. Phew!
YEAH? SO?
How about this one: “You’re afraid of commitment!” It’s hurled like an accusation. Is there a worse insult? Am I missing something? Then find someone’s who not! What if I simply don’t want commitment? Who said I had to want it? You? Wrong! I admit, my experience of marriage (my parents’) and family (mine) strongly discouraged me from going that route. Other people compensate by forming happy families of their own, but my strategy was to just go my own way, 3000 miles away, and take care of myself. There didn’t seem to be anyone else as reliable. A shrink once said that people tend to recreate the circumstances they were born into. For those who had happy childhoods based on happily married parents and lots of loving relatives, jolly uncles like Dom DeLuise, rock solid granddads like Grandpa Walton, aunts like Aunt Bea, etc. it is no doubt natural to want to continue on that way. I’m not talking about those blessed folk who thrive in the family lifestyle and can make it work—some just aren’t suited to be alone and why should they be—but the 50% who divorce. What’s behind that statistic? The myth of happily ever after. Happily ever after happens only when it happens—not because you will it to, because you expect it to, because you deserve it, because you made vows in front of a priest, because you worked so hard at it you refuse to give up, or because you finally met the right man. He can be right as rain, but time passes and people change.
DO I HAVE TO LEARN TO PARTNERS DANCE?
Todd Brown, my favorite painter and the force behind The Red Poppy Art House, and I had gone to a concert one night and scoped out a couple of clubs in the Mission afterward. Dear, patient Todd had taken it upon himself to teach me to salsa dance, but try as he might, I just couldn’t keep myself from wanting to break away and go off on my own. I can’t dance to someone else’s rhythm. I prefer to just flail and spin and leap around as the music moves me. In fact when I used to dance all night like a whirlwind, guys would be offended when I didn’t want to dance with them, especially as I would return by myself to the dance floor, but I’m sorry, I just don’t like following someone elses’s lead. It cramps my style. I want to be free to roam. An architect once told me I had covered 1,400 SF of dance floor. Leave it to an architect, I said, to think of dancing in terms of square feet. In those terpsichorean travels back in the glory days, I had only one perfect dance partner, “Uncle Don,” who had the knack of keeping up with me without interfering with me. We once danced through every aisle of a convenience store where’d we’d stopped for gas, snapping our fingers for music.
IT’S LIKE SEX
For a couple of minutes, Todd and I did manage to approximate dancing together, and I ccould see it would be great fun, but in exasperation I finally asked him, “Do I have to learn to partners dance?” And he replied, “Well, it’s like sex. Occasionally you want to do it with someone else, and if you do, it’s nice to have the same rhythm.” What a line! Shouldn’t I have written that?
I WAS YOUNG!
I was actually engaged once, I was 27 I think, to a sociopath who later died in Arkansas State Penitentiary. At the time though I just found him to be a larger-than-life silver-tongued, silver-haired big ol’ adventurer muscle man with a gypsy mustache. I didn’t want to hold his past (as an ex-con) against him but that’s what he was, through and through, a con and a con artist. I can’t get into all that now but I had planned to marry him because I was into him at the time and wanted to give it a try. I just deleted “good faith” try. No, I can’t really say that, because I just felt like being married at the time and never once did I imagine that this was a lifetime-guaranteed deal. I knew going in that if at some point I needed to not be married, to him or to anyone, I would just end it. Luckily he got thrown in jail and I came to my senses. I can’t get into all that right now.
SPRING CAME, I LEFT
I had also, at age 20, sitting at the kitchen table of my childhood home with him, casually asked my first boyfriend of 4½ years, “When are we getting married?” And he had casually responded, barely looking up from his paper, “In the spring.” But I dumped him after I graduated college, moved out, got a job and fell in love with Larry. Didn’t need him anymore. I can’t get into all that right now.
BULLSHIT, JERRY McGUIRE
A Berkeley-era boyfriend once informed me there was something missing from our relationship. And what might that be? “Need,” he said. Well, it’s true I didn’t need him to buy me a house, or marry me, or pay my bills, or go to the opera with me—but I did need him to love me, and to want me to love him. Shouldn’t that be enough? Aren’t two whole people a stronger unit than two needy halves looking for someone to “complete” them? If you’re not complete in yourself, no one can complete you for you. You’ll still be yearning for something without even knowing what it is you’re missing.
EVER HAD YOUR ASS HANDED TO YOU ON A PLATE?
“There are two things we have very little control over—love and death. So if you ever see one of them coming at you, get ready—to have your ass handed to you on a plate.” So warned my wise, beautiful exotic friend Rupa, who has more than her fair share of talent. Someone else goes without because of her. Singer, songwriter, painter, and God know how she does it, physician, Rupa packed the house at the Red Poppy Art House the other night, with her French chansons and lively crew of gypsies, among whom was Marcus Shelby on bass.
I wondered how, with only one ass to my name, I’ve had it handed to me so many times. That happens when you meet Mr. Right but to him you’re Ms. Wrong. That one’s clobbered me more than once. The first time (Larry) for ten years of on again / off again I can’t live without him! / I can’t live like this anymore! / I will never stop loving him! / I have got to stop loving him! We met in college, he went to Italy, I wrote to him, he wrote to me, he came home, we dated for a while, I fell, he didn’t. And he drove me all the way out to Newhope, Pennsylvania to inform me over dinner he had met someone else. I’m not making this up: the restaurant was playing: “Feelings…I wish I’d never met you, boy…” But I can’t get into all that right now. You’ll have to wait for the novel.
LOVE ALL YOU CAN
Remember “Deep Thoughts…with Jack Handey” on Saturday Night Live? Here’s one: If you’re a horse, and someone gets on you, and falls off, and then gets right back on you, I think you should buck him off right away. (I made up the one about the bucket.)
I say, get right back on him again, get bucked off again, get right back on again. I am cynical, but ultimately hopeful. I am actually here to speak in favor of love. I say, go out there and do everything even if you think you know what you’re getting into. You have to live. I say, never stop laying yourself on the line. I say, if you love someone you’re afraid to approach, approach him (just be honest about it, not needy or freaky). I say, no matter his response, you have made a stand for love. And that’s a good thing. You haven’t lost anything. You have given something. The loser is the one who turns you down, because he was the one who said no to love. Not loser as in sour-grapes capital L Loser! because the guy has a right to not love you, but as one who has lost something, something perhaps of incalculable value. Is love so easy to come by? If he doesn’t love you, well, he can’t help it either, but if he’s worth anything, he will respect and honor you as one who had the courage to speak your heart. When you find you love someone new, I say, start all over again: tell him.
IT’S A MISTAKE NOT TO
And here is one and one line only from my long-suffering novel, which you will have to wait for: “O, love all you can! It’s a mistake not to!” You’re just supposed to know this is an innocently passionate young writer’s play on the line from Henry James’ The Ambassadors: “Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.” You may have to wait for the annotated edition.
THE FLIP SIDE
Since I’m telling you to go out there and expose yourself, I have to deal with the other side of the coinage of love: someone, somewhere, maybe you, will receive an unwelcome or inappropriate declaration of love. Unless your ego is already so bloated it can’t absorb any more tributes, I say, acknowledge it, with kindness. All you have to be is honest, or you will never have a real relationship with that person, because you’re forcing her to accept your reality (not loving her) while denying and ignoring hers (loving you). And she knows you know it. If you care about this person, you’re only making it worse by forcing her to suppress who she is with you because you’ve given her no option to resolve her feelings and move on. Be a mensch and have an honest conversation with the real her. It’s the least you can do. Really—the least.
YOU’RE STILL YOU
So, your confession didn’t go your way and you’re still on your own. You trusted someone and got flattened. Well fine and dandy. What has changed? You still and always have yourself, and you are damn good company. You’re not “single” because “double” is something no one should reasonably be expected to be. You’re not half of anything. You stand alone. Everyone gets to choose. It may be a legal fact that you’re not married, but you are not “unmarried.” You are not un-anything. You are one hell of a woman.
Alrighty then! Enough of that! Now here’s the real Valentine’s Day love story. It’s “The Notebook,” Nick Cassavette’s tribute to love and timelessness and Alzheimer’s and loyalty.
“I AM NO ONE SPECIAL,
just a common man with common thoughts,” the movie begins. “I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me, and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I’ve succeeded as gloriously as anyone who ever lived. I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.”
Nicholas Sparks, author of the novel, provides a commentary track on the DVD. He says,
Love stories really have their roots in the Greek tragedy, and when you’re talking about tragedy in a love story you’re talking about essentially something that keeps the characters apart. It doesn’t necessarily have to be death…maybe someone is married to another person…maybe someone lives somewhere else, in a different country…maybe there’s racial or ethnic differences…all love stories have these elements which keep the characters from being together…and that’s what creates such a tragic element…in a love story, you either have a bittersweet ending, or a tragedy, or something that really serves to keep these characters apart.
Jim Jarmush says, in the “Farmhouse” segment on the DVD of his (for him) unusually boring film “Broken Flowers” (it’s actually about boredom, about “yearning for something that you’re missing and not necessarily being able to define what it is you’re missing”):
I like to make scenes where you have no idea what’s going to happen next, it’s not a formula…it’s such a valuable part of life to me…randomness, just chance and coincidence—it’s really these things that are our lives…you can plan things out as much as you want, but the most beautiful, deep things in our lives are not rational, they’re usually emotional, or they’re connections with other people, and those things are very mysterious. So those things, they add up to a whole fabric of life for me…it’s sort of like chaos theory…things don’t happen in a rational way, they happen in a more of an emotional way, or a random way or by molecules in the universe moving in a way we don’t control.
So another tragedy to my mind is when peoplefeel an undefined persistent connection to someone and let it go by the wayside, don’t explore it, because of fear (of the usual, intimacy) or being stuck in the mud, because it’s too disruptive, it’s easier not to, or whatever.
In the case of this film about first young love, it is first parental disapproval (she rich, he poor), then parental interference, then World War II, then the woman’s second love and fiancé. Finally, it is Altzheimer’s. But they find a way to surmount even that. Noah has loved Allie since the moment he set eyes on her, and that was “it” for him. Some people do love that way. If they become separated, “would he have sexual experiences with other girls, yes, maybe even have relationships, but he wouldn’t give his heart,” says Sparks.
They lose track of each other after she goes to college (her mother withholds his 365 letters to her) and she later meets a dashing wounded officer while volunteering as a nurse in the war, and becomes engaged to him. Cassavetes describes Allie’s relationship with her fiancé Lon, her second love but not a great love: “[They] get along on a great intellectual level, and a sense of humor and probably on a sexual level too—that’s not the totality of love, but it can take you a long way—you can do fine on just those three things.” Well, I think not. I think a lot of people do. I think people meet, have things in common, can laugh together, have good sex together, and think, hey, it all looks good on paper. The whole combination adds up to being in love. This guy is handsome, makes good money, challenges me intellectually, turns me on sexually, we get along great—I could marry this guy. Why wouldn’t I? Maybe he has qualities also that will make him a good father. Do I have the right to want more of life? And what guarantee do I have that if I pass on this, that anything better will come along? I’m lucky to have this. And so, hey, what more do I need?
CAN I HAVE SOME MORE PLEASE
I say, more. I say it’s all just business as usual without the heart connection. Because I have had varying levels of all those things, and however long a way they take you, they won’t take you all the way; they’re not enough to satisfy your soul and not enough, unless compatible companionship or security are your priorities, to build a marriage or a life on. For me. For me these sorts of relationships end when I burn out on the sexual element. Hopefully what you have left is a friend and not a husband you don’t want to sleep with.
NOTHING FOR ME, THANKS
I think some people stay together because it’s too much of a disruption to their lives to do otherwise. I think some people are in relationships or marriages because they have settled for less than they want because it’s better than nothing. And that’s your choice. Why live alone if you don’t want to? But I say, “nothing” is better than not enough. I would rather be alone than be with someone with whom I do not experience the totality of love. Well, that’s a dream, you can say, that’s a fairy tale. That lie screws everyone up. I’ll never happen that way and you better take what you can get. No! I will not settle for less. I’d rather be alone. Because there is a 100% certainty that I can provide a satisfying life for myself pursuing my interests and involving myself in the world; a relationship with another cannot come with such a guarantee. There will always be conflicts and compromise and risk and if you’re lucky, in balance, it’s all worth it. If it’s not, get dressed and leave.
DO THE RIGHT THING
We learn deep into the film that Allie’s mother made the sensible choice early in her own life, passing on the low-brow working man she loved to marry the well-heeled suitor who would give her the easy life—and she loved him too. Her mother insists that she does love Allie’s father and has had a good life—she’s showing her it’s OK to get along on those three things, that she can have a perfectly fine life choosing her fiancé. Then why is she crying so hard? When she tells Allie, “I hope you make the right decision,” we don’t really know which she thinks is the right one.
Sam Shepherd, who plays the boy’s father, remarked that “in this day and age, particularly now in the whole political climate and all this that’s going on, that this was a very sort of courageous act, in a way…to do something so purely and simply about love. And to risk all the jeers of sentimentality.” Well, I do find the story corny and predictable, but Cassavetes doesn’t care: He’s a sentimental guy, he says.
If you don’t have any sentiment all you have left is your thoughts, and this, our society values logic and thoughts and intelligence and those are all good, good things, but man, we’re all going to die and we’re all going to have to face the fact of whether we’re going to be alone or we’re going to be with somebody, and how much we’re going to be loved and how much we love…to me the notion of two people falling in love and winding up growing old and dying in the same bed together holding hands, is something that I believe in, as a man, as a director I believe it, as a filmmaker, I support the notion, I think it’s an important thing to say and if people don’t like it, I think they’re lizards, they’re not human beings. Anybody can criticize a movie like this….oh, it’s a weepy, it’s a love story, they love each other so much, give me a break, I want to puke…but…it’s important, man…it’s important to talk about the limits, and the depths of love, and how you feel and what feels correct for you and …what is the essence of love?
People are afraid to die alone. People are afraid to live alone. But I think that’s a crappy cop-out reason to be with someone and they deserve better than that. They deserve the biggest kind of love. As Cassavetes concludes, “I believe in love, I believe in the biggest kind of love, and I believe that it can all work out. Even though it hasn’t happened for me like that in my life, I still believe in it.”
I gotta tell you, Nick, so do I.
Now shut up and post this goddamn thing!
Greetings from Market St.
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Short Attention Span Poetry Corner
Black eyes roost on me
Black eyes washing over me
Painting my heart blue
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Love all you can
3/29/06
axfiles@sbcglobal.net
copyright Alexandra Jones 2006
