|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
February 1, 2008Be ruthless.Be brutal, if necessary.JUST BE HONEST.In bringing down the ax, that is. Those are my guidelines in cleaning out my books and my clothes, my furniture and my tchotchkes. My library consists of books I have read, books I intend to read, books I refer to, and a random assortment of books that ‘look interesting,’ so I can browse among my own library and always find something to read. But at 13 bookcases and more than 50 shelves of books, it’s time for a literary colonoscopy, a purge of epic proportions. I’m on my third go-round now. FIRST TO GOare the coffee table architectural texts my erstwhile bosses gave out at Christmas, and picture books I rarely leaf through, like Andy Goldsworthy’s Stone. They draw a pretty penny at Green Apple Books on Clement St. Next out are English-major texts untouched in 35 years. Do I want to spend any of my remaining hours on earth revisiting Fanny Burney’s Evelina, Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphey Clinker, or Samuel Richardson’s Pamela? Not bloody likely. Restoration and Eighteenth Century Comedies, howe’er, gets a pass when I chuckle over an underlined text in Congreve’s The Way of the World: “I wonder at the impudence of any illiterate man to offer to make love.” (Especially he who spells “you’re” as “your.”) ANOTHER CRITERIONof general policy is “Would I pick it up out of the ‘free’ box?” Does it earn the space it takes up in my home and my mind? Why am I conducting these emetic sessions with all the belongings accumulated since my first apartment in 1977? The attempt to cut my life in half, if not more, so I can downsize to a 1-BR apartment, in the perhaps futile search for decent housing at less than $2,000/month. Whatever I save in rent I will no doubt spend in storage fees for stuff I can’t bring myself to part with. Not brutal enough, I guess. WHERE DO I BELONG?Damned if I know, ever knew, or ever will know. Thanks again to Robert Solis http://robertsolis.wordpress.com/2008/01/26/where-do-we-belong/ for identifying me as one of [his] “favorite writer-poet-philosopher-bloggers.” Must add that to my calling card along with “Wordsmith non pareil.” In his post “Where Do We Belong?” Robert discusses the impulse to make changes in our lives. Even though the “decision” (I have no choice) to sell my flat is economic, I do want a change, a new set of containers (walls) for the thing contained (me). But I am not ready to leave this city by the bay. As for your suggestion of my moving to El Sobrante, Robert, thanks for giving it some thought, but I can live only in cities that house one of the Big Ten Orchestras. Cyclopic, Arizona, though, does have its appeal. PUSH/PULLThe Neighbors Project referred to my axfile “The Thrill is Gone” as an “epic breakdown” of why I might leave SF and a “good illustration of push and pull factors.” I feel the push/pull every day. The push, every time I check Craig’s List for the latest in rental impossibilities. And as a woman at public comment lamented, “I am watching our institutions and the funky things that make San Francisco what it is disappear one by one.” Now on the block is The Flower Mart. BUT THERE’S PLENTY OF PULLthis week. Maybe it’s just Noir Festival fever, but as a group of us noirheads gather around Noir City Host Eddie Muller, known affectionately as “the Czar of Noir,” as he holds forth in a long black overcoat and Noir fedora against a backdrop of the streetscape set of Gus Van Sant’s “Milk,” I am feeling that San FranSASSY! magic once again. Parked along the curbs are Dodge Darts and your father’s Oldsmobiles, along with shops risen from the dead to recreate the Castro of Harvey Milk’s day, displaying awful crocheted items and tacky “mensware,” and a realty office offering mansions in the $40,000-$60,000’s. The neon glow of the restored Castro marquee featuring “Irwin Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure” brightens the dark and stormy Noir night. A great Milk quote from his “political will,” to be read “in the event of [his] assassination,” is featured on the mock-up of a Milk Supervisorial election campaign poster (Sean Penn in scraggly beard) in the window of his original camera shop at 573-575 Castro: “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” One of the major pulls of SF is the storied history I mostly missed out on, and how it all combined to create this magnificent painted lady by the bay. The Gold Rush, the 1906 ‘quake, the rebuilding of the city, the Sutro fire, Playland-at-the-Beach, the Noir years, the Beats, the Howl trial, the wicked jazz, the San Francisco Renaissance, the heyday of Broadway, the 60’s, the Summer of Love, gay liberation, the Milk/Moscone and Jim Jones/Guyana dramas, the Loma Prieta ‘quake. I got here just in time for what might have been the beginning of the end for “the old San Francisco”—the dot com boom. But there are still pockets of funk here and there, enough characters to keep it interesting, enough mystique to keep it Noir City, and David Hegarty still on the Castro organ. As close as I will ever get to having been here in the old days, is participating in a couple of Harvey Milk marches that will be staged for the film on the 4th and the 8th. Wanna be in the movie? Come on down! Wednesday night’s Noir tribute to Charles McGraw is introduced by Alan Rode, Director of the Film Noir Foundation, author of Charles McGraw, Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy, and “Writer, Film Polymath, Spokesperson,” according to his business card. He tells a story about producer Walter Wanger rhymes-with-danger, who after 11 years of marriage to actress Joan Bennett, walked in on her with her agent Jennings Lang, later confronted Lang in a parking lot, and shot him in the balls with a .22. Wanger spent three months in prison for attempted murder, after which he produced the film “Riot on Cell Block 11” to draw attention to the appalling prison conditions he experienced. NOIR AND MEI recall trying in one axfile to come up with a good closing remark for my headstone, and all I could think of was “She could turn a fuckin’ phrase.” I’m not the only one who thinks so. Brittney Gilbert in her CBS5.com “Eye on Blogs” concurs: http://forums.prospero.com/n/blogs/blog.aspx?webtag=kpix_eyeonblogs&entry=25 Thanks, gal. You’re one swell dame. But this buxom broad had better retire, because night has 1000 eyes, and they’re all looking at me.
------------------------------------------------------------ Night has a thousand eyes
Betrayal tastes more bitter in black and white copyright Alexandra Jones 2008 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
