Author: sanfranchrisko

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The Major and the Mogul: Hearst Castle

The Major and I took a little road trip down south earlier in the week, to visit San Simeon and Hearst Castle. William Randolph Hearst worked with architect Julia Morgan for 28 years, starting in 1919, designing an estate to showcase his vast collection of European decorative and fine art.

The castle is the only structure visible from the coast road, enshrouded in fog and ringed by tall palm trees that poke out conspicuously from the surrounding landscape of dried grasses and live oaks. Driving up the windy road, the castle is glimpsed every now and then, looming closer and closer into view. The landscape is beautifully untouched. A mile-long arbor runs alongside the road, once covered in grape vines and espaliered fruit trees and flowers. Inside the castle gates, the formal lushness of the gardens contrasts delightfully with the spare natural features of the encircling hills, peppered with clean white marble statues–original and reproductions–from Ancient Egypt to the early 20th century. “The statues are white because we don’t have air pollution down here,” our tour guide emphasized while looking over her sunglasses into the eyes of the scruffy Parisians standing next to me.

The grandeur of the architecture and the exquisite craftsmanship and clever integration of antique european ceilings and structural elements are overwhelming. There’s nothing modest here, except a complete absence of art or architecture of Hearst’s own time. It’s a Disneyesque museum of european architecture, decorated with artwork purchased at a time when Europe was recovering from a World War and selling off its shattered cultural heritage. A guide told me that Hearst saw himself as a protector of sorts of these objects that he feared would have been destroyed in the wars. Lord Elgin on a shopping spree.

On the drive down, the Major played the music of Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, the soundtracks of Glee and Smash, and several of those really loud screechy singers of the early 80s who paved the way for other even louder screechy singers like Whitney Houston and Jennifer Hudson. He gleefully accompanied every song. I intervened urgently at one point with some Nina Simone, but after two songs and fidgety silence from the Major, he blurted out, “Could we listen to something happy?”

The Major’s general insistence on being surrounded by happy-making stimuli is what makes him such a pleasure to be around, a walking Disneyland exhibit. After stuffing ourselves silly in Cayucos one night with fried things from the land and sea, and complaining about how uncomfortably full we were, the Major suddenly commanded “Let’s get dessert!” It wasn’t just any dessert, either, but an olallieberry (“ollieberry” as he endearingly calls it) cobbler about the size of a full pie, topped with a quart of whipped cream and a pint of ice cream. I was in awe at the gustatory prowess of my dear friend, the idea of the pleasure of dessert cutting off any signals from his stomach to cease and desist. Calories are to the Major what Renaissance Spanish ceilings were to Hearst. Our little vacation seemed guided by this dual lack of resistance. Once again, sensation reigned supreme!

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Sue’s Memorial

My sister Sue’s memorial service was held on Sunday. Here’s a little something that I wrote and read at the service, in memory of my divine sibling:

Sue dropped me once. I was still a toddler, we were jumping on the bed and I bounced right off and landed on my teeth. I don’t remember it at all, except a vague recollection of being on a table and doctors looking at me and a bright light shining on my face. One day when I was a teenager, Sue asked me, “Do you remember me dropping you when you were a baby?” and told me the story.

Shocked, I replied no, what else was she going to tell me, that I was also brain-damaged? I detected that she was carrying around a slight sense of guilt, but having no access to the memory and ostensibly suffering no consequences, I tried to allay her perceived concerns. “No, no, I have no memory whatsoever.”

What I relished was this idea that I had finally been able to jump on the bed, which mom and dad never allowed. I imagined us bouncing around and laughing, her tickling me and trying to make me bounce higher and higher, that unrestrained joy that you see in kids’ faces.

Then a few years later, she asked me, “Do you remember me driving you and Mark around in the station wagon and going over that bump in the road?”

Oh no, I thought, what now?

“Well,” she continued, “I thought it would be fun to go over the bump really fast with you guys. You weren’t wearing seat belts and you both flew out of your seats, up into the air, floating in space for a moment, nearly banging your heads on the roof of the car, crying and screaming as you landed back in your seats.”

She laughed, more amused by the memory than disturbed by the thought of seatbeltless kids flying around in a speeding car.

I loved the idea of Sue’s daredevil driving, clearly meant to amuse us, and imagined us hovering in the air, like little astronauts.

Sue never revealed any more near-death encounters that she contributed to my childhood. I mentioned these incidents to Carol last night, and she remembers driving the car. Mark and I do that sometimes, occasionally appropriating the memories of each other as our own. “Hey, that happened to me, not you!” It never seems to matter much who had the actual experience, as siblings our memories have become part of a collective mythic childhood narrative where nothing much went wrong, where the joy of just being together overrode concerns for personal safety or even potential brain damage.

Sue, or maybe Carol, gave me the closest thing to being an astronaut, which surely every boy my age at some point desired to be. Missing Sue is like what I imagine astronauts feel when they return to earth, the heaviness of gravity suddenly apparent after months of weightlessness. If Sue didn’t kill me by dropping me or driving like a crazy woman, she made me feel, every day that we were together, that we were little kids jumping on a bed, higher and higher, laughing hysterically. “Just one more time, please,” I want to yell, a little kid again, “Come on, Susie, one more time…”

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Pretty Pictures

Remember, “pretty” is my guiding mantra. Beautify, beautify, beautify. Here’s some of my new work, Cecille Brunner roses from my backyard. The images are big, 40″ x 60″, so strap on your imaginary thinking caps and imagine these hanging in some white cube somewhere while a pretty woman in stiletto heels, a tight dress and oversized glasses click clicks her way across the gallery floor and pleasantly says “Hello, these are the works of Chris Komater, he’s really hot in Europe. Unfortunately everything is sold, but I can put your name on a waiting list. He works really slowly, not because it actually takes him a long time to make anything, it’s just that the men in Europe are so distracting. Take special note of his metaphorical use of blurriness. The images look simple, elegantly simple, almost seductively so, but they’re about what we’re all afraid of. Death. Impermanence. These are not flowers, they’re pictures of flowers. Enjoy. Please let me know if I can answer any of your questions.”

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Coco Auf Naxos: Tears und Joy in Koronos

On the island of Naxos, in the Greek Cyclades, after visiting the giant kouros at Apollonas and on the road to Moutsouna, Stavros and I chanced upon a woman carrying a bag of very nice looking bread. Stavros, interested in procuring as many local products as possible, asked where she purchased her loaves and then we headed to find the bakery in Koronos, a town in the north central mountainous region of the island that we hadn’t really considered visiting, and even on entering, didn’t seem very interesting. Everything seemed closed, the village quiet and still. Stavros asked a man working on a construction project if he knew where the bakery was and if it were open. He said no, it was closed, but that he’d call Matina, the owner of the bakery, and have her open it for us. She quickly appeared and led us up and down the wiggly stairways of the hillside village to her bakery. The cavernous, ancient oven was still warm. For 2€ we purchased one of the last tire-sized loaves of her delicious bread.

Trying to find our way back up the hill on the white steps, past blue-trimmed white house after blue-trimmed white house, we tumbled into a square that seemed like a film set: colorful vine-covered arbors, blooming flowers everywhere, chirping birds, live music… and a taverna called Matina Stavros–a different Matina from the baker, and not my particular Stavros. We settled down at a table on a platform under a tweeting parakeet and near a large group of ebullient middle-aged women from Athens who were visiting a friend in the village. They danced the entire time they ate, taking only a few breaks to fill their plates with Matina’s delicious food. At one point Matina joined in the dancing, and then their bus driver. They even danced over to our table at one point and screamed “Welcome! Enjoy your time in Greece! And this magnificent day! And this magnificent food!” Indeed the food was scrumptious: a selection of homemade cheeses and wine, tender roasted lamb just falling off the bone, dolmadaki flavored with local spices, spanakopita with thick leaves of filo, a salata horiatiki with soft cheese, also homemade… I looked at Stavros and burst into tears.

I still don’t know why I started crying, why so swiftly overwhelmed with emotion. Since my sister’s death, I’ve been walking around with a cloud of sadness hanging over me, but I usually cry in response to things specifically related to her. I had no clue. I tend to get weepy again thinking of the pleasure that I saw on the faces of these women, their easy unrestrained passionate love of life and food and music and each other. The food was simple, homemade, but each plate was perfect, each ingredient lovingly chosen, grown, or hand-crafted. There was the man of my dreams sitting across from me. We were sitting on a stage set in the mountains of an island in the Cyclades. Everything was cinematically pitched towards perfection, but somehow an idea of impermanence, the ephemeral nature of pleasure, maybe, crept over me. I’ve found someone that I want to spend the rest of my life with, but we spend a few weeks together and then months apart. I want to be in this movie always. These ladies were in the moment, and living it as fully as they could. Perhaps I let my such moments get interrupted by a need for something more, something out of reach. Perhaps I was melancholy that I couldn’t share this moment with my sister. Thinking about that day, tears still come to my eyes, but with a new-found appreciation of what’s actually on my plate, while it’s still there anyway.

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The Mani

Stavros and I spent the weekend in the Mani, a small peninsula protruding from the southwest corner of the Peloponnesus. It’s a rugged area, rocky and mountainous. Once densely populated, now there are only about 5,000 year-round inhabitants. The architecture is all stone, mostly towers and castle-like structures, most long abandoned. There used to be “blood feuds” here, with one family attacking another until the defeated family gave up and accepted the conditions of the winning family. Hence a lot of bombed out towers. The Mani people were very independent, and embraced Christianity late, in the 9th century or so, and were even given autonomy during Ottoman rule. After the revolution against the Turks (which actually began in the Mani) the Mani-ites were unable to adjust to the new restrictions of the regime that they helped usher in and dispersed from the area, hence the dwindling population. Actually, the guy who started the revolution here ended up being imprisoned by the first president of Greece, and then his brothers took revenge and assassinated the president!

We drove directly to Kalamata from Athens, and then slowly down the west coast road through Kardamyli to Neo Oitylo, on Limeni Bay. We stayed in the Afrodite (the goddess of love, beauty and pleasure!) Suite at the Selena Studios, a charming hotel with outstanding views overlooking the bay and the soft brown stone towers of the town of Limeni on the other side of the bay.

The next day we wandered around the southern tip of the peninsula, starting in Areopolis, down the west coast road to Vathia. Vathia is a scenic hilltop village of crumbling stone towers overlooking the Messenian Gulf. Many of the towers were restored and a few seem to be inhabited, but a plan to restore the town as a tourist destination was abandoned in the 90s, and it now feels like a sort of stone ghost town, but with wildflowers blooming everywhere. After Vathia, we continued on to Porto Kagio for a delicious lunch on the pristine bay, then Point Tenero, and up the east Mani road to Lagia and Flomochori.

We took a different route back to Athens, via Gythio, tucked into the northeast corner of the Mani. There’s an ancient Roman theater there, which unfortunately I didn’t read about in my crappy guidebook and missed. Gythio was once the seaport of Sparta, but was destroyed in the 4th century A.D. It’s now the largest city in the Mani, with a charm quite different from the rest of the region: no stone towers and lots of people. We had a fantastic lunch of fried fish, marinated octopus, Greek salads and ouzo.

For our next trip, Stavros and I are off to Naxos, where Theseus abandoned Ariadne. Her fate wasn’t that bad: Dionysos swung by and married her. But then Perseus killed her. Or she hanged herself. Dionysos then descended into the underworld and brought her back, along with his mother (this is a Greek story) and they all settled down on Olympus. What adventure awaits us on Naxos??

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Mount Pelion, Metéora and the Pindus Mountains

Last week Stavros and I took a little road trip to Mount Pelion, Metéora and the Pindus Mountains of central Greece. We started our trip in the most unbelievably picturesque little village of Portaria, on Mount Pelion, the home of the Centaurs. Each little square, overlooking the Pagasetic Gulf, is shaded by 8′ diameter plane trees, mountain spring water spurting out of fountains and burbling down the hillsides everywhere… There’s not just an occasional whiff of wild flowers, there is a constant intoxicating aroma of honeysuckle, jasmine, roses and, of course, the ubiquitous bouquet of souvlaki. Like characters in a Disney film, we hopped from town to town, nibbling on and imbibing various local products, past wild horses and mooing cows, hiked along meandering streams, singing our happy tune.

An old steam engine train runs from Ano Lehonia to Milies, through the lush mountainous Pelion region. The track is only 2 feet wide, almost a toy train. Evaristo de Chirico, Giorgio’s dad, was chief engineer on the construction of the railroad. Little Giorgio grew up here, and images of the trains and arched stone bridges of the area figured into Giorgio’s paintings later on.

Metéora, which translates to something like “suspended in the air” is a complex of Eastern Orthodox monasteries built on natural sandstone pillars. A group of hermit monks took up residence in the ancient pinnacles in the 9th century, living in hollows and fissures in the rock towers, some of which reach 1,800 feet high. By the late 11th and early 12th centuries, a rudimentary monastic state had formed. More than 20 monasteries were built over the years. Only 6 remain today. Remnants of Byzantine frescoes can be seen in the various churches, as well as newer frescoes painted in the Byzantine style.

The Pindus Mountains form the backbone of Greece, running south from the Albanian border to just north of the Peloponnesus. We visited many quaint villages, winding our way up and down steep mountain roads past white water streams, a centuries-old monastery tucked at the base of a mountain, more wild horses, more lovely arched stone bridges…

If Stavros and I ever tie the knot, it’s going to be hard to figure out where to have our honeymoon, as I can’t imagine anything more honeymooney than our adventures thus far.

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Ancient Corinth

Everywhere you go, it’s like corinthian columns, corinthian columns, corinthian columns… Stavros and I drove to Corinth this week to visit the ruins of the ancient city and acropolis. Two six-foot long green snakes slithered past us on the acropolis, reminding me of so many tales from antiquity involving oracles, enchantresses, heroic deeds and tragedy. Our trip wasn’t defined by such grand dimensions, thank Zeus, just me, back in Greece, and Stavros, back at my side.

The previous week we visited the 11th century Dafní monastery in Chaidari. Extensive damage from an earthquake in 1999 is currently being restored, and because of the restoration we were able to ascend the scaffolding up into the dome to see the mosaics up close. Fabulous.

We also visited the Sanctuary of Demeter in Eleusis, on the site where Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and fertility, found her daughter Persephone after she had been kidnapped by Hades. Important initiation ceremonies were held there every year for their cult. Because Persephone had eaten a few pomegranate seeds while in the underworld, she had to return every year, one month for each seed. Her mother’s sadness during the time that Persephone was in the underworld resulted in a neglect of the earth, but when Persephone returned to the surface in the spring, Demeter would get all happy and turn her attention back to agricultural and fertilizing activities. Hence the seasons. The king at the time helped Demeter, and in gratitude, Persephone gave his son the first grains of wheat and showed him how to harvest crops. Wheat grows wild all around the sanctuary today.

Stavros is my own Persephone, rising from the abyss of Greek austerity to spend another blissful month at my side.

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Really Huge Pretty Things

Well how do you like that. I just spoke with Stavros, and I’m the villain! A manipulative raconteur! Evidently, I caused tears to flow from those beautiful Grecian eyes by making assumptions (in my previous post) that were quite far from accurate. He loves me! I think. Or am I making another assumption? Oh wait, here comes my Chorus of Therapists… “Oy, Coco, what did we tell you about this style of communication? It’s not only manipulative, it’s indirect, passive aggressive! He’s talking to you, loud and clear, through his actions, what’s this dreck about needing words? Words, words, words… Learn to understand his language! Enough already!” Stavros also took issue, humorously as always, with my presenting him in my blog as a sort of indecisive rapscallion and me as the wronged romantic dream lover. Ironically, this is exactly what annoyed me about Bob’s last book of short stories, the Bob character an amusing composite of both of our good qualities, and the Chris character representing all of our less desirable characteristics. I’d like to declare narrative immunity, but alas, I must protect my Stavros’ reputation and admit my contribution to his semi-frequent bouts of relationship anxiety.

And speaking of anxiety, I just saw Farewell, My Queen, an incredible film set in Versailles, in the few days after the storming of the Bastille in 1789. The film is about interior and exterior anxiety, featuring an implied lesbonic bond between la Reine and la duchesse de Polignac. The story is told through the eyes of the Queen’s reader, a young woman completely devoted to her mistress while the other servants and aristocrats gossip and eventually change into their grungy Citizen outfits and hit the road.

I’m photographing again. A new project, of flowers. Real ones this time, not ones made out of fuzzy blurry body parts. I’ll not say anything else, as I don’t know the what else just yet, just that the promise of new life is beckoning me, and I’m having such fun shooting again and hanging out with the bees in my plum tree. These will be large prints, 30″ x 40,” and all very close up—from the bees’ perspective. It seems like most everything there is to say about flowers has been said already, so I’m not thinking about breaking new conceptual ground, just in making really huge pretty things.

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Sue, Stavros, and a New Furry Companion

Over the past few months, Stavros came to San Francisco for a visit, my older sister Sue died, and Big Chrissy bought a dog.

Sue was someone who loomed large over my artistic and emotional development. She was there my entire life, always a presence, always available, always loving… just always there. There’s nothing comparable to losing her, and no metaphor that I can imagine that accurately describes the feelings of total panic and despair that I feel when I see and hear her so vividly and completely in my imagination, and yet can’t pick up the phone to talk to her, can’t touch her. Ever again.

Stavros was visiting during her final week, and the day after he left I flew to Tampa with my sister Diane to join the rest of the family, who had already gathered at Sue’s home. She acknowledged us when we arrived, excitedly, but was unable to speak. I stayed with her until dawn, holding her hand and stroking her hair. Later in the day, her friend Debbie put a feather in her hand and told her that it was okay to go, to fly away. She then stopped breathing.

All of my family and her close friends quickly gathered in her home. My sisters and I changed Sue into one of the fabulous outfits that she had made, resplendent in blue. Holding her dead weight in my hands as we changed her, the life and animation draining from her, her skin growing quickly cold, her eyes not able to stay shut… I experienced her deadness completely. And yet I can say, honestly, that I can’t believe that she’s gone. It’s like something completely impossible and irrational is happening. How can someone so alive be dead?

I stayed a few weeks in Tampa to help my sister Carol with Sue’s things. At first, being in her house was comforting, like we were still surrounded by her presence. But then as we started dismantling her home, it got harder and harder. I’d be fine, then I’d be watering the plants that she so carefully chose, thinking that she would never see them mature, and then I’d just break down.

Death is something that I know. I’ve lost lovers and best friends, distant family members, but this was something more than the loss of a loved one, it was the loss of a part of me, a tangible extension of my flesh, cut off completely and incinerated. I remember the day, about 8 years ago, when it first dawned on me that being almost the youngest of 7 kids, I’d have to see most of my siblings go before me. It was an idea that totally terrified me at the time, as I love them all so dearly, and couldn’t imagine life without them. But now one of them is gone, and the job of living without her begins. I love Sue so much, and miss her with such intensity and grief. She was only 59, still at the peak of beauty and engagement with life. It’s just not fair.

In the few weeks before she died, Stavros flew out to San Francisco for a 3 week stay. Upon his arrival, we both got the flu and ended up in bed in a way that had not quite figured its way into my fantasy life. When we were both feeling better, he announced that he was leaving the next day, that it couldn’t work, that he didn’t feel anything, that it was over. This happens pretty much every time we’re together. I convinced him to stay another week, that I felt like it was unfair to leave so quickly, that he was conflating homesickness with emotional detachment, to give it a little bit of a chance. We had a wonderful week together and seemed to be back on track by the time he left for Greece.

After making plans with him a few days ago, I purchased tickets to fly to Athens for the month of May, and right on cue, he then announced, again, that he doesn’t want me to come and that it’s over. I’ve been through this so many times that I can’t as of yet take him seriously, but I’ve been through it enough to think to myself, “Maybe a nice Jewish boy??” I adore this man. When we’re together we have so much fun. But after nearly a year, he can’t tell me how he feels about me. My need for dialogue and assurance conflicts with his… something, I’m not quite sure yet, but there’s a conflict—maybe just his need for NO dialogue and assurance?? I do feel his love for me, though, he just can’t say it. When I prompt him, his response is to run away or to try to cut me off again. I always tell him no, I won’t let him break up, because he’s not running away from me, he’s responding to fear and frustration and we can address those issues together.

The idea of a relationship was perhaps a great idea to him, but he’s seeing it now in conflict with the way he’s become accustomed to being in the world—single and free. I’ve stayed because I feel something behind all of the posturing and rejection, a real connection, and I’m intent on letting that connection blossom. Maybe I’m just watering the plant too much?

We’ll end up spending a wonderful month together, I’m sure. We either figure out how to comfort and assure each other, or we don’t. I know the feelings are there, the problem seems to be in the articulation. This doesn’t seem like it would be that tough, huh?

Some unconditional love has arrived in a 12-pound bundle of love named d’Auggie Van de More. d’Auggie is a Golden Doodle, a cross between a golden retriever and a poodle. He chews on anything that isn’t 3 feet off the ground. Shirts, table legs, chair legs, people legs, shoes, plants, rugs. Big Chrissy drops him off at my house early in the morning. He licks my face and jumps into my lap as I read the paper and stares at me with those dark puppy eyes. My day revolves now around his excretory needs. Chris’ sister Margie taught him to ring a bell to go outside when he has to pee. Although peeing on the floor or carpet sometimes seems like a better idea.

He even has a Facebook page! Check him out here.