Category: Travel

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Furry visitor from the Lone Star State

Peter from Dallas is coming to town. You better watch out, kids. I’ll be picking him up in a bit at the airport. I’m going to photograph some part of him this weekend, not sure which, for the new series of disjunct portraits that I mentioned a few days ago. He’s so into all things related to bottomness that I feel compelled to explore that territory. I haven’t decided yet on a structural framework for the project, just that I want to work with about six guys, and make one composite portrait of each–then perhaps a Frankenstein portrait made of two images from each of the six portraits.  Tim’s back hair swirl is next, and I’m toying with the idea of refering to Van Gogh’s Starry Night in some way, those whorls tumbling across the night sky, serene and tumultuous.

I’m continuing to study French and train for the major caloric input that my body will suffer through in Paris. I can’t say no to a pastry. Or a crepe or a cheese or a wine or a goose liver… I want to die like the guys in La Grande Bouffe, of gastronomic excess.

My French tapes, alas, are preparing me and my wife, and our two children, one large boy and one small girl, evidently, for renting a car and filling the tank with 30 litres of gas. L’essence, (lay-sawnce) in French. Did you ever hear such a beautiful word for gasoline? I’m getting a little nervous. Thus far I’ve learned nothing of practical use. How do you say “Those are nice furry shoulders, Monsieur–perhaps you’d like to join me for a coffee and a tooth flossing?”

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Ce Soir

Bonsoir, mes amis! I’m well on the way to making shopping in France. I can now order an Orangina for my femme, some wine for me, four of those, and a booklet of tickets for le Metro. I still can’t get with the rolling r’s. My poor little uvula. Wrapping it and my tongue around trente trois is, sadly, the only challenging flex of those muscles of late. One would think that my oral dexterity would lend itself to trilling and trenting, and the Italian r isn’t all that different, but instead I spit and choke, gurgle, honk, and aspirate. Italian is the language for me. There’s a delight in every sound, every letter given clarity and purpose, delivered with gesticulation and emotion, tasted as leaving the mouth. French seems to challenge my gag reflex too much. It’s actually a beautiful language–I only wish it would sound beautiful passing my lips. And I love the idea of all those silent consonants, existing only in the mind, or wed briefly to passing vowels.

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Pastry Dreams and the Sweat House

Bob and I got our tickets to Paris today. I am so ready for the apple pastry and croisssant aux amandes at my favorite patisserie on the Rue de Rivoli. That croissant is one of my favorite things. The almond filling infuses the pastry like a custard. And the apple pastry is impossible to describe because it is unlike anything else. It just is, apples and flour and butter transformed into oral pleasure. I need to escape into sensation. And raw-milk cheeses.

Bob’s mom leaves on Saturday morning. I look forward to having my chilly house back. Tonight at dinner sweat dripped off my nose, my shirt was soaked–even my knuckels were sweating. I can deal with an 80 degree house only if there’s a beach outside.

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Bonjour, Paris!

I’m going to learn French in 60 days, uh 54. This time really. Bob’s cousins have offered him the use of their apartment in the Marais for the month of June, so I’m hitching a ride, escaping into fabulous pastries, long chats in cafes with burly French intellectuals, once-a-week-showers, perhaps a trip to the south, at least one Michelin 3-star restaurant, revisiting my favorite gardens, the Arab baths, and those incredible museums. I’ve been there several times over the years, but would love to hear of your favorite sites and experiences.

My French tutor, Chris (pronounced “KHLEEES”) is adorable, straight out of French Vogue with that just-got-out-of-bed-hairdo and five-day stubble. The most important phrase thus far, “I’ll have two of those, please.”

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Beach, Grouper Sandwiches, and Hot Wet Teens

Saint Pete Beach and grouper sandwiches at Philthy Phil’s today with Bruce. I have a red square burned into the center of my back, where my hands couldn’t reach to apply sunscreen. Not feeling at all proud to be American these days, a red square seems to fit. Tonight I went out with my nieces, Megan and Aimee, with sister Sue, and Brucey, to see the senior projects of the local Arts Center High School students. The high school is a magnet school with an emphasis on the performing arts. Tonight’s productions included excerpts from Seussical, featuring a humpy little Horton, a Thai version of Margaret Cho (Megan’s friend), a real female Hedwig and her Angry Inch, an utterly astounding version of The Producers, which I still can’t believe was put on by teenagers, and a sad, if not heartfelt version of Cabaret (the actress portraying Sally Bowles channeled aloofness and joie de vivre into weariness).

On the way to the theater in Clearwater, we listened to Megan’s compilation of Disney tunes. When a base-thumping low-rider pulled up next to us at the stop light, and with Bippity Boppity Boo cranked up and all of us singing along, Sue remarked to Bruce, “This is what you get when you don’t have problem children.”

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Caladisi Island

A few pics of the sunset last night, obligatory, and from my trip today to Caladisi island. Caladisi is a small undeveloped island about 15 minutes by ferry from Dunedin. My sister Carol, her husband Bruce, their friends Howard and Nancy, very sweet people, and I hiked around the island, through mangroves, a pine hammock, beautiful groves of palm trees, which rustled musically in the breeze, and past many wild flowers and blooming cacti. I love the heat, and sweating, and not wearing a shirt, and all the new smells wafting up to my nose from below somewhere on my body. My skin is all moist and glowing. Everyone here is scantily clad and brown, with little beer bellies, pink faces, and happy dispositions. I haven’t seen a queen in days, or a real bear, only of the hairless variety. Sigh.
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Leaving on a Jet Plane

I’m on the redeye to Saint Petersburg. Florida. San Francisco to Saint Petersburg. It’s the equivalent of Springfield to Paris–a nonstop oddity for $175 round trip that I couldn’t pass up, perhaps only slightly more costly than shipping myself FedEx to my sisters on Tampa Bay. Everyone’s asleep. Leaving San Francisco was spectacular. The promised showers never materialized and the rain from last night cleared the sky. The city looked like a giant sparkling Lite-Brite with Tinkertoy bridges.

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Day Tripping

Elin has flown away, back to winter in Texas. Friday we drove over to the Sacramento River delta area, stopping first at her friend Frank’s ranch near Davis. Frank (pictured above) is this very broad character, with a ruddy face and a white beard, who lapses into and out of an affected Scottish accent. Elin, Bob, and I packed a picnic and lunched with him in a pine grove near one of his ponds. He frequently stopped the conversation with “Hear that? That’s a downy woodpecker” or “See that? That’s a yellow-billed magpie” and on and on and on. After a while I found it hard to believe that his property could support such biological diversity, but was charmed by his knowledge and interest. He warmed to us quickly, and we to him, and even stayed on after lunch to help pick daffodils and prune his pussywillows, which he was going to sell at the market the following day.

Elin as Pinup Queen of the Pussywillows:

We drove from little town to little town, and were especially taken by Locke, which was constructed by local Chinese around 1920, and hasn’t changed since, except for a fun-house type of bulging and tilting due to the settling and sinking of the various buildings. We ended up checking into a real fleabag of a motel in Rio Vista (Bob and Elin masqueraded as “Mom” and “Dad,” and I was “Junior”), and then took off the next morning for apple pandowdy (sp?) at Sonny’s in Isleton, and antiques in Rancho Cordova. I was convinced that I would find the mother lode of California Faience and Jalan pottery there, but found only junk, mounds of it, and nothing of interest except some new juice glasses from the 40’s which look fantastic in my kitchen. At one point while driving along the river, supposedly heading north, we ended up in the same spot twice, and heading south. We can’t figure out how we did it, since the river was always on our left, although I do remember remarking at one point how strange it was that the sun appeared to be rising in the west. Spooky.

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A Bum Knee, Solaris, and Manny 18 Years Ago

I fell down my stairs, again, on Sunday, a few hours after banging into my “health chair” while grappling for the light in my studio downstairs. It didn’t bug me until tonight, my knee, after doing a little Christmas shopping, well, actually buying myself the new Criterion release of Contempt while shopping for my loved ones, and then after climbing my hill and the flight of stairs to my flat and, whammo, instant inflammation. I made a long entry last night in my blog about Manny–I spent an hour or so on it–but then inadvertently deleted it. So I’ll try to recap, although the throbbing in my knee and the half bottle of wine I drank at BC’s will surely temper the sentiment of last night into something perhaps less sappy and hopefully less lengthy.

So I went to see Solaris with Bob last night, a fairly decent stylish and moody remake of the Tarkovsky film, directed by Steven Soderbergh. George Clooney plays a psychologist, “Chris,” who is called to investigate the strange goings-on in the space station orbiting the planet Solaris. Upon his arrival, he discovers that two of the inhabitants of the station have killed themselves, and after a night of restless sleep filled with unsettling dreams of his recently deceased wife, who had also killed herself, he wakes to find her, his wife, actually there with him.

Last night was the anniversary of the night that I met Manny, 18 years earlier, while working at Marcello’s Pizza on Castro, when he picked me up (saying he was 40), despite my protestation that he should be picking on someone his own age (I had just turned 19). The movie made me think of a dream that I had of Manny in 1993, about a year and a half after his death, while renting a freezing cold apartment in Florence with Bob from the Marchsesa Frescobaldi. In my dream, while driving down Market Street, the sun setting, the city bathed in that late summer golden haze, I noticed a man on the side of the road who looked like Manny, seated in a wheelchair with a blanket over his lap, soaking up the last of the rays of sunlight. As I got closer I realized it WAS him, slammed on the brakes and ran to him, ranting hysterically, unbelievable. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing there, why he was alive, but I was so happy to see him again and to hold him. He held me for the longest time without saying anything, and then said, “Ya know, Christian (he always called me that, but it’s not my name), I’m really happy here, very cumftable (he grew up in the Bronx), and I’m going to be okay. And you’re going to be okay, too…” I got back in the car, drove away, and woke up, feeling that sadness that’s like a boulder on your diaphragm. Something was over.

For months after his death, I had thought that I had seen him here and there, and even once leapt from my car and chased a guy down, thinking it was Manny. I had so deeply and intensely loved him, a love bound to his physicality, the smell of his breath and the taste of his skin, that I couldn’t convince my senses that they were to be deprived of his molecules. Waking from my dream, I understood that he was completely gone, and more importantly, that I was letting go of him, too.