Life Munches On

Life munches on.

I spent last weekend at Dean & Doug’s Inverness pad. We picked huckleberries, which turned into a delicious ice cream topping, donned our netting and fed the bees. Dean did the best Queen Bee imitation. I brought up an apple pie that I made from apples that they had brought to my house the previous weekend. Apples, apples, apples–everywhere apples! I made about 3 pies with them and still have more! We spent the bulk of the weekend picking fruit and cooking and eating and drinking, like what people used to do before TV. They recently put up a deer fence, so they toss spent apples over the fence for the deer to nibble on. And nibble they do. It’s like putting out used furniture on 20th street in front of my house–gone in 15 minutes. Where are the deer when there are no apples for them to eat? How do they just suddenly appear? They are so adorable, I don’t see how people can shoot them, their swirling pink tongues and quivering little white tails and (real!) doe eyes.

We took a walk after dinner on Saturday night–an incredible vegetarian dinner involving artichokes, barley, cauliflower, corn, and love–a walk “around the block.” It was so dark from the dense canopy of trees that I could only make out a slightly less-dark trapezoid under my feet that was the road. Everything was blurry, like walking in a cartoon. I could hear the crunch of my feet on pavement, but couldn’t see my feet. I’d stick my hands out in front of me and they’d melt into the less-dark-ness of the road. Then I’d turn to the side and see trees disorientingly silhouetted against the night sky in remarkably sharp focus, and then look straight ahead again into the blurry abstraction of the road. It was thrilling. Sleeping was like that, too, pitch black and hallucinatory. I could hear every sound of the many creatures visiting the improvised feed lot outside my window–munching sounds and cracking twigs. Were I not surrounded by my dear hosts and dear deer, I would have thought I was in a horror film.

Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton had a show at Paule Anglim that was pretty dynamite last month–very large caricatured portraits of her contemporaries on scrolls of linen, big bold blobs of color. She’s my kind of painter–expressive and gestural. If Fat Albert had a painter friend in the ‘hood, it would be Caitlin, master portraitist of the new Cosby kids.

Nick Dong finally returned my Inter-Personal Masculinity Evaluator, so line up to be evaluated.

A crisp new version of Lang’s Scarlet Street came out a while back and I finally watched it, having seen it many times over the years as a fuzzy scratchy worn out print. It’s the story of my life, rich with gender ambiguities and frustrated attempts to love the person that you eventually have to kill. Chris Cross, played by Edward G. Robinson, is a meek clerk who, in his spare time and in the bathroom, paints naive portraits of “what he feels.” The film opens with Chris being feted for decades of service to the firm, with no hopes for advancement. He glances out the window to notice the boss’ beautiful mistress waiting in a limo outside. He says to his colleague, “I wonder what it’s like to be loved by a woman like that.” Not “I wonder what it’s like to LOVE a woman like that,” but “I wonder what it’s like to BE loved by a woman like that,” establishing his passivity. He finds out alright, and ends up homeless, unable to claim his identity as the painter of his own masterworks that were improperly (but with his blessing) attributed to the woman he desires most but kills; Kitty, who led him to his downfall, the love that he can never attain, but whose voice calling out to her lover–who gets blamed for her death and is fried in the electric chair–will haunt him for eternity. It’s a sublime masterpiece.

I’m getting into Top Chef. I developed a big crush on Joey, the chunky italian, who was asked to pack up his knives and hit the road last week. He breaks down and cries, it’s so heartbreaking. I’ve watched the last 10 minutes about 5 times already in reruns, and I cry each time, hoping that this time he’ll be spared, that it won’t be the last time I’ll see him. He even says, “This isn’t the last you’ll see of me,” but come on. The other hot chunky guy, Howie, is a thug, and while cute, he’s a thug, really, with no inter-personal relating skills. The other chef-testants cower in fear when they have to break up into groups, fearful that they’ll end up in his group and have to deal with his misanthropic dictatorial take on group dynamics. Still, I’d boink him. And eat his food, of course.

What else? Reese turned 14–Bob made a volcano cake that spewed lava. Many contestants on The Dating Game, but none worth mentioning. I drove D to Reno to visit his mom and discovered that everybody there is overweight and limps. No dates, though. I’m having dinner with Thomas Hardy tonight. I didn’t get ANY of the grants that I applied for. But you haven’t seen the last of me…

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