cafe selavy

Whatever Works

2009-07-15T07:50:00.003-04:00

I wonder occasionally why I want to spend my efforts messing up perfectly good photographs. It takes a lot of time. But an old hotel seems to call for a certain mood. I don't know. There are many roads to nowhere and we can take only so many. Some more than others, sure. Perhaps it is wrong-headed to subscribe to the "journey, not the destination" philosophy. Perhaps the destination is what matters. We will remember Obama, but what about Ron Paul?

Speaking of Paul, I saw "Bruno" the other night. It is not a good movie, but Paul is certainly the loser in it. I don't know that he can overcome the image he portrays there.

Last night, I went to see the new Woody Allen film "Whatever Works." I went expecting to be disappointed. The reviews I read said the movie was flawed and mediocre. Maybe having low expectations helped, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The critics don't like it when Allen pairs an older man and a younger woman. But it is truly funny. The old guy is no hero, just a pathetic schlemiel who deals with fate, fatalism, and self-delusion. Think Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale." The movie resounds with one of Allen's favorite themes--Luck. There is no big plan, he suggests, so take the small morsels of happiness wherever you can find them. He is talking to himself, obviously, but it is fun to listen in.

The movie is made for a small audience, so I won't recommend it. We walked into the theater at then end of the previews and were the only two there. Just before the movie began, a woman walked in alone. And that was it, just the three of us. Most people wouldn't like the movie, I know, but I don't like the films that most people like either, so there's that. As Allen says, whatever works.

Sooner or Later

2009-07-14T06:27:00.003-04:00

Nobody I knew when I started college was there any more. Everyone from the Blue Devils was gone. Joe the Muscle Man was gone. Terry the Health Professor was gone. Some had transferred to other places, some had joined the service, and some had simply disappeared. I'd had a date--a single date--that had been just short of bad. But my life had changed, and I could feel the difference.

Tommy and Dee had had their baby, a girl, and had gotten married in a ridiculous affair at a small town courthouse. Now they were ensconced in a new public housing apartment complex where I would occasionally stop by, but not very often, for Tommy was either working or sleeping and Dee was hanging out with other new mom's in the complex. Even with housing assistance and food stamps, life was a struggle and the burden of it hung heavy everywhere. When I did see them, there was little to say, so we would look at the baby for awhile and then I would leave. And it would seem to me that Tommy would look relieved.

The Presidential election had me excited, and for the first time in my life, I could vote. I argued politics at school with some older guys who were William F. Buckley-style conservatives, fellows who knew more about politics than I, fellows to whom I had gloated during the primaries. But in November, McGovern lost in a landslide, and it seemed tragic and wrong to me who had longed for an overthrow of the smug piety of the old regime. I learned during the campaigns that some of the icons I had grown up watching--Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, and a host of others--were Nixon supporters, and suddenly, they were lost to me, too.

After the Europe trip, Leonard had decided to take some time off from school. I didn't see him much after that, but one day I was talking with a mutual friend and heard a thing that sent me spinning. Leonard had been living with his girlfriend and her brother since he had returned from Europe in a funky apartment in a house downtown. His father, who had left his mother a year before, had a young new girlfriend who Leonard openly despised. His father, a mildly macho man who had not gone to college and who had a complex, I think, since his brother was the Commissioner of Agriculture in our state, had confronted Leonard several times about his lifestyle telling him he had to move back to his mother's house, but one of Leonard's friends, one of the hoodlums I had known, a really rough kid, had threatened Leonard's father with a beating and that was the end of that. The shifting hierarchies with which I was being confronted were dizzying, but there seemed to be no end.

Leonard's girlfriend's brother was gay and had started an organization at the new, local university he attended. The university was a bastion of conservatism and "gay" was a new word to me who had grown up in a world that considered homosexuals as queer, so I was quite impressed, if stunned, that this boy would be so public about his sexuality. I thought of Leonard and his girlfriend and the bohemian lifestyle that they were leading, and I compared it to my life which I'd thought was moving along nicely, but the changes now seemed merely superficial. Internally, things were happening, but to an external viewer it was all invisible. I still lived with my father and spent my nights at home. In the course of a few months, Leonard had gone to Europe, moved in with his girlfriend, and. . . the real shocker. . . Leonard had announced that he was gay!

When my friend told me this, I could feel the world tilt. What?! And with a big grin, he told it to me again. Was it true? I began to think about Leonard. In high school, he was a conservative boy, was a member of all the right clubs. He was tallish and had a big, winning smile that he showed easily. I had spent the night at his house, had slept in the same bed. Was he gay then, I wondered? Then I thought of him walking around the house wearing little shorts and a pair of clogs he had gotten in Europe while he fixed us French toast. I thought of that and a hundred other little things with wonder.

"Leonard has taken up with his girlfriend's brother," said my friend, " but they are all still living together."

Jesus Christ, I thought. What would I say to Leonard if I saw him again? I pictured him with the thin young brother of the pretty blonde, wondered if they all slept together, wondered if that was incest, tried to picture Leonard and the boy holding hands. Then I thought about how attractive his girlfriend was, how sophisticated and strange, and I wanted to see her. I felt my desire rise. Then I thought of Leonard. Jesus Christ. Crazy, erotic Leonard. I'd always felt a little superior to him, I realized, had felt myself above him somehow as being more worldly, more daring, more experienced. I had thought of Leonard as a bit of a nerd. Jesus Christ.

And, as always, I had to think again. My feet were planted in gravel as the river flowed rapidly about me. Sooner or later, I would have to start swimming.

Gewgaws of the Imagination

2009-07-13T07:04:00.006-04:00

I travel to find things I can't find at home. I'm not very much like Dorothy thinking that after an adventure everything I need is in my own backyard. No, I'm probably wrong about that. Everything I need is probably in my own backyard. Not everything I want.

I love stumbling into oddly eclectic shops or specialty stores where the juxtaposition of things sets them off. Books, for instance. I buy books everywhere. Once, so many years ago, when 4th Street in Berkley was just beginning to become a merchant's haven, I found so many weird and crazy stores it no longer seems real. Indeed, it may not be. There was a shop that sold merchandise that should never be seen together, miniature circuses and photo books and expensive pens and oddly erotic things that I can barely describe. I could scarcely breathe. .

There was a shop that sold hardware goods from around the world. I bought big brass shears there from India. Some of you may have them, but they are difficult to find any more.

In Key West, there was for a long time a store that sold strange nautical gear and other things, as well. What was it's name? It is closed now, but it was a treasure trove. Perkins and Sons. That's it! After it closed, I found a fascinating little fishing store and bought "The Book of the Tarpon," a lovely hardback copy in limited edition. The book still gives me great pleasure, but that shop is gone as well.

My shelves are filled with books I've bought in fabric stores and clothing stores and decorator's shops.

This trip, I picked up a clothing guide at Brooks Brothers on Worth Avenue. It was free. I don't what there is about the thing, but I like it and will keep it. Go. Get one. You will see.

Loathe as I am to admit it, I look at books in the Anthropologie stores, too. I find things I've never seen anywhere else. And the selection is not the same in every city.

It is not just books, of course. I have a whale's tooth I bought in a flea market in London, along with an old, brass compass and a spy glass. I have old photos purchased in a market in Mexico City and more from Hong Kong.

I think it began when I was young and my father spent a month driving the family across the country with a giant old canvas army tent and a one-wheeled trailer. Twice. Before interstate highways. We would stop at roadside stores full of oddities and occasionally, I would get some gewgaw like a authentic cowboy marionette or an arrowhead. The images were profoundly and permanently imprinted. I am scarred.

I run my eyes and hands across these things as I sit this morning in the hours before work. Talismans and Totems. Ju-Ju for the imagination.

Somebody Else's Money

2009-07-12T08:13:00.004-04:00

Vacations are good for something, of course. We all know that. But they are not good for creativity. At least not while they happen. They are good fodder later, no doubt, when in misery and depression you can recall the images and contemplate them and figure out what they mean. But there is little interesting about somebody else's vacation. I don't know what I was thinking. Well. . . I wasn't. I just kept posting rather than putting up a "Gone Fishing" sign. I should have waited. As a result, I've gotten some nasty emails--not quite hate mail, but akin to it. And I've halved the number of people coming to the site. However, vacation will be over soon and I will go back to the reflective posts rather than the "Here We Are in Paradise" routine.

I'll tell you this; Paradise is a two sided coin. Just drive off the island, and you will find it. Much is interesting there. I will come back sometime this summer just to photograph it. You cannot do that while staying in a luxury suite. But I will go back alone and get a room at the Melody Motel or some equivalent and get up at dawn each morning and go about town documenting "real life." Much is left over from the 1960s, things that will disappear as soon as the economy comes back, for that part of Florida is booming faster than any other. I will go back.

Even Palm Beach as it was is dying. Worth Avenue is "Available." Many stores have closed. Much is "For Rent." The mother's son coined it "Worthless Avenue." It doesn't seem to have the magnitude that I remember. Maybe it was just too hot. Who knows? It is a giant throwback to something that not so many people are nostalgic for, opulence and arrogance.

But I needed the other and found a way to do it and have filled my head with images. I will be back to work soon enough, will toil and contend with ennui and routine. But for now I dream of correcting my life, of having more elegance and charm, of being tall and imperially slim, of drinking Americanos and Negronis and wearing clothing so well made that it is like wearing nothing at all. And how will that come about? Oh, I will work harder and have more drive to succeed, I will make something of myself. . . .

And therein lies the tale. The only money worth having, I guess, is somebody else's.

And so it goes.

Upgrade

2009-07-11T07:56:00.003-04:00

Too much fun to leave. We decided to stay but the hotel was "fully committed," said Maria at the desk, a girl who, like the valets, knows my name immediately. "We would like to offer you an upgrade to the Flagler Suites," she offered. "You will have an ocean view and access to the spa and the terrace. The suites are provided with a private valet. I think you will like the room."

We like the room.

And so we frolicked in the ocean and lay about the pool and had food and drinks on the terrace. And now, I write at a desk overlooking the ocean as the sun rises.

I enjoy watching the woman's son here, already a little Kennedy, learning quickly as children do. He has no trouble using the valet. Children are always ready to rule without hesitation. They are born to it, natural aristocrats.

So for now there are only snapshots and lazy vacation writings. I will try to hold onto some of these carefree days. There are still mountains and beaches and picnics and girls in their summer dresses. There are European vacations. Something. Anything. We'll play in the sprinklers if nothing else.

Living Large

2009-07-10T08:43:00.004-04:00

Mother and child wish never to leave. Snorkeled on a shallow reef with fish both large and small retreating to a sugary sand beach to lie under umbrellas on beach chairs drinking Pina Coladas, then to the decadently heated pool (in summer you would think this wrong, but it is not) to fall apart, then into lush towels and teak chairs. Three pools plus a separate lap pool, kids pools, saunas, cabanas, etc. The lobbies alone are worth a novel or at least the place to write one. I want to sit there for a month and see what I could write.

Now, however, we must wander down to breakfast. Someone wants to dive on the reef again. There are acres yet to explore.

Ensconced

2009-07-09T08:19:00.008-04:00

I am ensconced in a room at The Breakers for a couple of days. I needed something grand. I don't plan to leave the grounds, just to frolic in the sea and to lie by the pool and to wander through the gardens and to sit in the lobbies. I will eat and drink and let the wind blow through my noggin. The money will run out before I'm satiated or even fixed. But that is the way of it.

I am in the company of a young fellow and his mother. I want to show him some things. He was not certain that he wanted to come, but as soon as he saw the grounds, he was impressed. I want him to feel these ocean waters, to swim in these decadent pools and dry off with these enormous, soft towels. I've told him of the labor that went into building the hotel in the early 20th century, of shipping the marble by boat from Italy, of importing artists and artisans to decorate the lobbies. I've taken him to the fishing docks where we've eaten fresh dolphin and watched giant fifty pound jacks swim through the clear water over sponge-covered rocks and pilings where parrot fish and sergeant majors and clown fish flit through crevices. It is the same marina my father took me to when I was young, though much changed now. But there are still many stories about that marina to come.

This is only a brief interlude. One day, it will come back as a dream.

Don't worry. We will not get soft. Next time I will take them to the Bed Bug Inn with its smallish pool and its continental breakfast of Folgers coffee and danishes wrapped in cellophane containers. There is fun in that, too.

Heroes de San Fermin or "The Full Bull Moon"

2009-07-08T07:41:00.007-04:00

(Pamplona, Spain, 1987, Festival de San Fermin, The Running of the Bulls)

The full moon coincided with the Running of the Bulls at Pamplona's Festival de San Fermin. I arrived there on July 6, 1987 for the opening festivities. The first day was disorienting with giant figures and Riau-Riau dancers making their way through large crowds of drunken revelers crowding the squares. What I remember of it is blurred by time and the adrenaline that kept me going through those mad days.

My friends and I stayed in the college dorms on the outside of town and each day made our way through thousands of people sleeping anywhere they could, most of them passed out rather than truly sleeping as the festival went non-stop twenty-four hours a day.

On the seventh hour of the seventh day of July, as tradition would have it, we made our way to a bar where it was reported that Hemingway drank each day before the running of the bulls. That morning's newspaper in hand, we had a drink to "calm our nerves" before the flare announcing the opening of the gates to the enclosure where that day's bulls were being held. Stationed at the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, we were about a third of the way into the course's half mile run. From there, we could see the swelling crowd and the bulls as they ran up the cobbled road's slight rise.

The night before, we'd gone to the holding pen to look at the bulls with which we would be running. Passive as they were in the pen, they looked powerful, and we looked at one another searching for some clue of reservation upon which we might build an argument, but each merely nodded his head and said, "Tomorrow."

The streets were crowded with people, but when the flare went up and the gates were opened, many tried jumping the barricades to get into the big crowds of observers lining the streets. We watched as the crowd thinned then parted and saw the horns of the bulls bouncing up and down, up and down as they made their stumbling run. And suddenly it occurred to me that i couldn't outrun a bull, certainly not for most of half a mile. What madness had led me to think so?

Then they were upon us and we did our best to stay in front and tap one on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. As we ran, people were falling to the street. You will read that they have slipped because the old streets are worn and slick with years of wear and with beer, but I will tell you that is not the case. More often legs would buckle from simple fear, knees just collapsing and wills departing, and you had to watch not only the bulls but those people in front of you who had become faint of heart.

We made it to the famous Curva de Mercaderes hacia Estafeta, that steep turning of the road where bulls most often lose their feet and then down the long straight stretch of the Calle to the Curva de Telefonica, that eighty or so degree turning into the Plaza de Toros. As we ran, though, the bulls made up ground and I found myself pinned against a wall as some of the bulls went by. Just as they were passing, I ran behind the pack and tapped a steer on the rump, as close as I would get to the heroic deed that day. Behind us was a second group of bulls, and so we ran up the street ahead of them, watching as they too made ground.

Just before we made the final turn, the last group of bulls passed us, but we kept running to get through the gates to the arena before the guards closed them. And barely, we did, squeezing between just before they were shut.

On the floor of the arena, we stood with where bullfighters stood and looked up into the crowd that the bullfighters would see that afternoon. Suddenly, though, everyone was forming up in front of the gates from which some undersized cows with taped horns would emerge to run among us for the amusement of the audience.

And then it was over and we were sitting in Plaza drinking champagne feeling ourselves heroes rather than silly bastards among the throng. We sat at the table where Hemingway sat in front of Montoya's hotel. It was early morning. We had tickets to the fights that afternoon. We would eat and drink and fill our botas at one of the local shops. At home, as fate would have it, our friends would see us run as we would show up in the the first videos ever shown of this event on ESPN.

Full Buck Moon

2009-07-07T10:01:00.003-04:00

"Tonight is the Full Buck Moon. They don't make names like that any more. It would be impossible, I think. But the antlers have grown and the jousting begun. There is a chthonic power to it."

"What? I thought we'd done away with all of that?"

"You think?"

"Probably."

Unreal Time

2009-07-07T07:59:00.005-04:00

The hotel was one we had been staying in since I was a kid, a two-story U-shaped hotel built around a central pool. Every room had a partial ocean view. One year during a storm, a ship grounded on the beach in front of the hotel. The hull of the ship stayed for years while they dismantled it for scrap iron, piece by piece. The remnant teamed with ocean life making an artificial reef of colorful sponges and sea anemones and fish. In the golden Sargasso weeds that floated after a storm, you would find sea-horses and crabs and fish with tatters of skin that camouflaged them in the vegetation. It was a wonderland.

One day my father and I were driving around in the afternoon looking for a new place to eat. A few years before, a developer had built a large, upscale shopping plaza, but the businesses had not done well and now it was mostly empty but for some odd, local operations; however, we drove through the parking lot looking at things, and when we came to the back of the complex on the side away from the highway, we found that a university had rented a large part of the building to house their research facilities, part of which was open to the public. My father parked the car, and tentatively, we approached an entrance. No one seemed to be around. We walked into a dimly lit room filled with huge aquariums. There was nothing but that and the sound of air conditioning and filters bubbling and the cool, blue light. We walked from tank to tank looking in. There were rooms and rooms of them, some tanks big enough to hold sharks. As we wandered, a few people walked through the area, but they paid no attention to us. It was like being under water, really, my father and I moving slowly, almost floating.

Having wandered from tank to tank in the indigo light for an unmeasured time, we found ourselves where we began. We stepped back into the heavy heat of the parking lot and returned to the car.

"You want to eat Chinese?" my father asked.

We weren't far from a Chinese restaurant where we had eaten a few times before when my parents were still married, a sort of family joke since it was the only Chinese restaurant at which we had ever eaten and the only thing we knew to order was Chop Suey. We all sipped at the hot green tea we had never tasted before and said that the Egg Drop Soup was pretty good, ravaging the hard dried noodles. And in the car we'd laugh that we'd be hungry in an hour.

"Sure," I said.

Sometimes, I think it all had been a dream, for the next year, there was no sign that a research center had ever been there. It was simply gone.

Interlude

2009-07-06T08:33:00.003-04:00

1972 election. Ed Muskie, hounded by rumors of Ibogain use, breaks down on the election trail. A man from South Dakota, of all places, wins primaries based on his anti-war stand. It is unlikely, but true. Where I live, George Wallace is the major Democratic candidate and wins all counties in the primary. How do I survive?

My father and I go to the beach where we've always gone less than a hundred miles north of Miami Beach where Nixon is being coronated. There are protesters in the streets. I want to go but would rather be with my father here by the blue water, eating liverwurst sandwiches and drinking beer, putting on the small green by the pool, and snorkeling on the nearby reef. My father's accident has left him self-conscious. Once a great, barrel chested man, he has become mortal. But we laugh and eat peanut M&Ms and watch The Galloping Gourmet twice a day before going to the Red Lobster. We talk, as always, and I learn the ways of rugged romanticism, of longing for other places while loving this one, of looking far across the water and then in at our feet to see the sharks and barracudas that swim all about us. Life is full of adventure.

The sun goes low and the evening breeze begins. My father and me as summer comes to an end.

Forcing Fun

2009-07-05T08:06:00.004-04:00

I tried, of course, to capture Independence Day with my camera. And, of course, I failed. Wedding, birthday parties. . . I can't do it. I don't have a photo of a flag or a flaring fireworks.

The day was miserably hot. We went to our picturesque small downtown in the morning to revel. People stood dripping sweat and looking for the promised lemonade that had run out. So they stood with limp hot dogs and small bags of chips waiting in long lines for the kids to get a turn at the blow up play thing. We bailed and went home and turned on an old fashioned sprinkler connected to a hose to play in. Went to my mother's for hamburgers and hot dogs and corn and watermelon, then to the BIG downtown to watch the fireworks. The crowds were large enough to scare a boy, so we turned around and headed home. I like that boy. We are much alike.

And so, as my man says, there was that to do and then it was done.

4th

2009-07-04T07:53:00.003-04:00

Whenever the 4th of July rolls around, I think of the phrase "Patriotic Gore," and I associate it with Gore Vidal thinking he wrote a book of that title. But he did not. It was the title of a book review in the New York Times of his book "The Last Empire" in which he writes an essay on Edmund Wilson who wrote a book entitled "Patriotic Gore." Vidal Sassoon comes to mind, and then Seigried Sassoon. Etc.

The days of summer wither away, all the dreams and high expectations with it. But today people will gather in large numbers all over the country to eat hot dogs and snow cones, wave miniature flags and watch the wonders of gunpowder and laser lights. Even as I write this, a group of runners passes my house on the annual Fourth of July 10K race to start the eventful day.

Some businesses are closed and others have tremendous sales. And, as usual at such unavoidable times, I am anxious and depressed. It is chronic. I've never done well with national holidays. I do not wish to be part of the hoi polloi, and yet my resistance seems always to cost me something.

Perhaps today I'll watch "The Razor's Edge," the 1984 version with Bill Murray. The opening scene is a great midwestern 4th of July celebration. I've spent time in Lake Forest where it takes place. Oh my. I've tried to be Larry Darrell, but here I am.

And so a photo of repose. No dancing girls. No artful techniques. Nothing to complain about. A simple snapshot of better days.

Still

2009-07-03T08:22:00.003-04:00

Holiday weekend. Hard to write. Sushi on the veranda then a movie last night. Loud woman at dinner that everyone could hear never shut up. I don't know how she ate. Then a crowded theater. Just before the movie started, a couple smelling of moth balls sat next to me. Among the throng.

Still, it is good.

I'll try to post later today.

The Ex-Midget and The Maker of Antique Mirrors

2009-07-02T08:10:00.004-04:00

("Postcards")

I go to this site every morning. It always makes me feel good. I just like old things, maybe. You can't make them. My friend was telling me about a Japanese movie he was watching in which a fellow makes antique mirrors. "You can't make antique mirrors," I said (this was the same fellow who told me about an ex-midget).

Painters are different sorts of people from the rest of us. They practice an old, slow art, especially if they work in oil. Not so many people do any more. Acrylics. I hate the word. They are convenient like online classes and distance learning. Nothing wrong with that, I guess. I wrote a response to the criticisms of Woody Allen's new movie appearing in the New York Times that hoped his next movie would be about an old man who gets an online degree using only an iPhone. It's possible, right? I don't know if there is anything intrinsically wrong with it. I just don't prefer it.

In retrospect, though, I guess there is an irony about Allen's preference for old buildings and music and his love of young women. Feel free to comment.

The End of Summer

2009-07-01T07:19:00.003-04:00

My second fall term would begin soon, and it would be my last at the junior college. Under the influence of Vladi, I had taken big loads and gone through the summer and was going to graduate in December. Most of the people I knew had not bee as diligent and would take a lot longer. Graduating from high school a year early had driven Vladi. He was in a hurry now. He wanted to be a doctor like his father, but he didn't seem to want to wait. He wanted to be a doctor now. And since I was fortunate enough not to have to work, I took an extra class or two each semester.

My buddies had returned from backpacking around Europe. It did not seem that they had been gone so long, but they were there a month. When I saw them, I was surprised by how thin they had become. They told tales of meeting girls and staying in hostels, of eating leftover food off plates in restaurants, of staying up and smoking dope. There had been rifts on the trip and they had paired off and gone their separate ways at times. In truth, none of it inspired me to envy. But they were back and I was glad about that. They were my friends. We were the Blue Devils for god's sake.

But as it goes, things never got back to "normal." Chuck, who hadn't really taken school seriously and whose biggest influence seemed to have become drugs, suddenly, unexpectedly, and out of nowhere, decided to join the Navy. It didn't take long. He was there, and then he was gone. What had happened, I wondered? What in the world would inspire such a change? Nobody I talked to had a clue. Not even his closest friend, Leonard.

It was with Leonard and Chuck that I started running that first semester of college. Leonard's parents had recently gotten divorced and so he was the man of the family which consisted of his mother, who was an elementary school teacher, and three younger sisters, the oldest of which I was completely in heat over. I hung out at his house just to see her much of the time. Leonard, it seemed to me, had it made.

And that was why I was so surprised when he moved out of the house. But he had met a girl. She was a bit older than he and from a big city farther south, and her ideas about life were much more cosmopolitan than ours. To us who grew up in this sleepy southern hamlet, she seemed close to being a movie star. Her hair was naturally platinum and her eyes never seemed to focus anywhere but moved about the world as she looked inward to her own thoughts and feelings. She had a high, aristocratic voice that spoke to us of money, but she lived a hippie lifestyle, though of a richer order than the rest of us. The richness came not so much from money but from taste. While we just looked like poor street kids wearing flip-flops and jeans, she looked like she had shopped in the flea markets of London and Paris with great flowing skirts and ancient bangles. We all envied Leonard, though we thought it would end badly. He just seemed out of his league. Our league, perhaps.

He was the first fellow I knew to move in with a girl. It was still uncommon for us who had grown up with 1950s moral values. Our parents would never have had an unmarried couple to the house, though they may have known such people. Divorces were unsightly enough. So I was appropriately impressed when Leonard made his move out of the house where, as I said, I thought he had it made. More than anything, though, I would miss looking at his sister.

They got an apartment close to downtown, part of a big old wooden house built in the nineteen-twenties. They were living with his girl's younger brother who had recently come to town. The apartment was covered with parachute material and had low couches and cushions and pillows on the floor like some of the apartments I'd seen in movies. It always smelled of incense. I liked going over there, but I was never entirely comfortable with his girlfriend and not at all with her brother. Though they didn't try, they made me feel provincial. They'd had experiences that I hadn't yet imagined. I'd never thought of myself as conventional in any way, but they made me seem to myself a boy unwilling to leave tradition behind. And in truth, that may have been true to a degree I was not aware of yet.

In the last days of summer just before the fall term began, we had some jolting news. A fellow we all knew and liked, one we had gone to high school with, had bought a Harley Sportster and had chopped it up to look like the one in "Easy Rider." He was a big guy, fat really, but he looked good on that bike. And like a lot of kids we had gone to high school with, he had taken to the drugs and rock and roll life. He was on his way to a city on the coast some sixty miles away one night to go to a concert. The details were unclear, but it seems a semi-truck had run him over from behind. He was killed instantly. How in the hell could that happen, we all wondered? But it had and he was gone.

We were a year out of high school. My second year of college was beginning. Things had certainly changed.

Lottery

2009-06-30T07:20:00.002-04:00

The night they chose the lottery numbers for the draft, we all gathered in the student center in front of a big T.V. It was a nervous time. We all wanted high numbers, of course. The year before, they had taken men with numbers up into the one hundred and twenties. The energy in the room was weird, something that mediated between horror and ecstasy. Some of us were going to be happy. Others. . . .

But when the lottery began, everyone was silent. We waited as they drew the first number, then we waited to see if anyone one in the room had been chosen. Nobody said anything, and there was a general twitter all around. The second number was drawn, December 24, and Jon went nuts. There was no way around it. He was going to be drafted.

I had known Jon since elementary school. He was a tall kid and an athlete, and he and I used to arm wrestle for the class at recess on Fridays for our sixth grade class (this turned into a round robin eventually, with other boys participating, but all that ended when Virginia got involved and slapped all the boys' wrist to the table without effort). He and I had played football and baseball together in junior high, and he went on to play for the high school basketball team. But like most of us, he'd become enamored of lefty politics, or at least hippie life-styles, and he was determined that he would not go into the military.

After that night, he set about destroying his health. He did massive amounts of drugs and didn't eat, and the day he was to go for his physical, he rubbed Vicks Vapor Rub on his chest and drove a motorcycle sixty miles north with his shirt undone. He was so emaciated that he failed the physical.

That night, though, the lottery went on. Another of my friends got a low number, but he told us he was filing for Conscientious Objector status because of his religious beliefs. He succeeded in that and had to become a night janitor at an elementary school for his public service duty.

At the end of the night, I knew little more than when it started. My number was 136, high enough not to be taken if the war did not escalate, but not a sure thing. I wouldn't have to make up my mind what to do that night. I had some time.

But the draft had left many politicized for the first time in their lives. And, as Ken Kesey had famously declared, you were either on the bus or off the bus.

I was definitely on.

Even on our small campus among intellectuals of the lesser kind, ideology dominated. We now counted the faculty as left or right. We avoided as much as we could the Nixonians preferring professors who had more liberal leanings. We took one professor of humanities, for instance, because he studied The Who's "Tommy: A Rock Opera" in his class. He was a little guy who looked like he might have wrestled in college. He was an unlikely candidate as a liberal, for he dressed neatly and had perfect hair. But like many of our professors, you couldn't tell about him. He seemed more liberal, perhaps, because he was teaching painting and music. He loved Kandinsky who I couldn't stand, but his enthusiasm for his groundbreaking compositions marked him a revolutionary.

He had a strange quirk of rocking his head back and forth quickly to crack his neck, a twitch that I aped, I guess, for one night at dinner, my father asked me what was wrong with my neck.

One day after class, a fellow I'd talked to in groups stayed to ask the professor some questions. I hung around not wanting to miss anything that might be useful on a test. The fellow was older and had a military haircut. He was lean and muscular and looked as if he would be a Marine the rest of his life. He reminded me of a younger version of Catfish, the fellow who had grabbed me by the hair after my accident at the construction site. I should have been more cautious.

He asked the professor a few questions which he answered, but The Marine kept asking more and more questions, and I could see that the professor was a bit flummoxed by it, so I decided to try to help and offered up something of my own. But The Marine was already in a mood. Perhaps he didn't like the prof. I don't know. What I do know is that he turned to me with a look of hate and loathing and said in a threatening voice, "I wasn't talking to you." My face went red immediately out of embarrassment. What was there to say? He was right. I had butted in uninvited. But the viscousness of his response was awful and inappropriate. I said something weak like, "Fine, I wont' try to help you any longer," to which he barked some terrible agreement. The professor stood there nervously gathering up his things and said, "Come by my office if you want to talk about this any further," and then he was gone. Fortunately, The Marine followed him out the door, and I was left in the classroom with an embarrassed impotence wadded in my throat.

I studiously avoided The Marine after that. And I kept a weather eye upon the draft.

Not Ready

2009-06-29T06:45:00.002-04:00

The days flew by. I was not a good student because I had not been a good student for years, but school was not difficult, either. Eventually, though, I began to go to study groups because they seemed to be fun, and there was a reciprocal effect. My grades began to improve. The most difficult classes were in my major--biology, zoology, physics, inorganic and organic chemistry, trigonometry, statistics. The other classes were cupcakes by comparison.

I met two girls in my chemistry class who were nursing students. They were from a town on the coast and lived in one of the new apartment complexes that were springing up all over town in the most unlikely places. They lived on a new highway that ran through cow pastures and orange groves on the way to the new airport. One Friday, they asked me if I'd like to come over that night. I don't know why I said yes. Probably because to say no would have been an insult or would have required an excuse.

I won't go into details. I'll just say it did not go well. I got there too early, perhaps, and they were both busy doing something. It was as if I had dropped by unexpectedly. They asked me if I'd like a beer, turned on some music, and went about doing whatever it was they were in the middle of. Awkwardly, I sat on the new couch in a new apartment, everything from the shag carpet to the vertical blinds a shade of beige. Eventually, they noticed me. One of them got out a water pipe and filled it. They smoked it up and began to laugh. One of them showed me their collection of dildos. They made me nervous. I had to leave.

There was another girl in my chemistry class with long, dark hair and big, round eyes who was sweet. I felt good when she sat beside me. But that was all of it. I was too afraid to ask her out.

Tommy and his girlfriend decided to get married. They went to a small town courthouse with a parent permission slip and Tommy's sister as witness. They lived in the trailer with her parents and had the baby the day that Nixon resigned from office over the Watergate scandal. I was there (for the birth, not the resignation). Tommy had been fired from the union job for missing too many days and was back working at the tire shop. They were looking for their own place.

One day, I went over to see them at the trailer after class. My hair was quite long now, and I guess I thought I knew something about politics. I was telling Tommy what a slimeball Nixon was and telling all the dirt I'd learned about that creepy little bastard J. Edgar Hoover. Suddenly, like a sucker punch, Tommy's mother-in-law jumped up and told me to get out of her house. Her face was screwed up in a rage. She didn't want me to come over any more, she said. No one was going to talk like that in her house.

I learned an important political lesson that day.

Some of my friends from school had decided to go to Europe for the summer. They asked me to go. They would take trains and stay in hostels. All spring, they planned and arranged it. I thought about going, but in the end, I wasn't ready. I decided to take summer classes and finish school early. When it was time to leave, I saw them off and felt the difference. They were all smiles, all excitement. I should have gone, I thought. Why didn't I go?

The summer was hot and all I did was go to school and study. Not many people were on campus, hardly anyone I knew. The little cracker box house was an oven once again.

Idyl

2009-06-28T07:07:00.005-04:00

(from "Postcards from Nowhere" series)

There are things worth mentioning but not worth telling.

Vladi and I kept diving, but we had another bad experience in an underwater cave. At 180 feet, I experienced nitrogen narcosis and didn't know up from down. We calculated our decompression times wrong and only caught our mistake just before we dove. We decided to try reef diving instead.

We would drive hours south to clear blue sub-tropical waters where you could swim to underwater reefs from the beach. The reefs were in shallow water, never more than thirty feet, so a tank of compressed air would last us forever. One windy day, we swam out to a second reef beyond the first. We stayed down a long time, and when we came up, the surface of the water was covered by Portuguese Man of Wars. We were wearing full wet suits, so we hadn't been stung, but it was spooky swimming back through the dark purple floats and their long, dangerous tentacles.

We took a trip to the Keys and rented a room in an old hotel on the Atlantic Ocean built around a little cove surrounded by palm trees and coral sand. It was like something out of a romantic movie.

One night, my father told me that "Jack Lestow" was on television at nine.

"Jacques Cousteau, dad. I know."

"That's what I said," he laughed. "Jack Lestow."

That night, Cousteau and his crew dove just hours away form my house with the giant manatees. The next weekend, Vladi and I would go.

The river ran into the Gulf of Mexico and was crystal clear as indicated by its name. We rented a little fishing boat at an old, cracker fishing camp close to where where the river entered the salt water, and there were hundreds of thousands of fish. Millions. We rode slowly past the occasional homes and river shacks until we were far from things and found a hole of deeper water and dropped the anchor. Herons and egrets and ibises of every kind wades along the shoreline. It was winter and the air was cooler than the water. Fish gathered at every rocky outcrop. We found a deep hole filled with larger fish and tiny blind caverns a few feet deep. Vladi and I were both biology majors and when we surfaced, we'd talk about the lack of color in the fish, about thermoclines and haloclines pointing to the places where the fish would gather. And then, while we were floating on the surface gabbing, something bit swam slowly by. It was like a VW bug. There it was--a MANATEE!. And though it was why we had come, each of us hesitated, waiting on the other.

"They can't hurt you, right?"

"I guess not."

Slowly, together, we dropped below the surface and followed the giant sea cow along its herbivorous way, keeping our distance and watching it eat. Closer, we saw the deep scars that ran across its back, victim of an outboard motor. Closer still, we saw the barnacles that clung to its skin. We could see the little hairs that stuck out oddly all over its body. Then Vladi reached out and touched it. The manatee did nothing. I touched it, too, felt the warm blooded softness of its skin in the cold water. Then, like pilot fish, we kept it company as it drifted in the current.

That was the last time Vladi and I dove together. He was going away to another school. That idyl had ended.

Mood Indigo

2009-06-27T08:30:00.003-04:00

You ain't never been blue,

'Til you've had that mood indigo.

Write, delete, write, delete. Something's wrong. Something's broke. I tried to tell a story, but it is all mangled. There are some things I am not able to write well. There are pictures I'm no longer willing to show. My mouth is filled with dirt.

Lost

2009-06-26T07:51:00.003-04:00

Some days, we lose our way, or it gets lost for us. Either way, we look around and everything is gone. How did it happen, we wonder? Everything seemed to be going well. There was a promise and a hope. But all that's left is the big, black hollow and there is nothing to do but wait it out if we can.

* * * * * * *

We bumped against the narrowing limestone walls looking up, searching for a way out, seeing only the small area lit by the narrow beams of our underwater lights. We were lost. I could feel the swelling in my chest, the rapid thumping. Everywhere we looked, there were new chimneys. We'd try one, then another, but they were all dead ends.

Vladi and I were diving on our own now and had decided to try a spring cave that was not too far from our houses. We had driven down the little dirt road, branches from saplings scratching the sides of the car. Bumping and dipping and tilting along, we were already feeling dubious about the dive. When we reached the end, we parked the car and looked down to the spring boil forty feet below. It was clear and beautiful. The water was emerald where the spring emerged from the river bottom perfectly clear. We saw hundreds of fish suspended below us as if embedded in glass. There was no sound but that which we made as we unpacked our diving gear from the car and the slow hissing of the water below.

Thirty feet below the water's surface, there was a small opening that led to a tunnel that stretched back at an angle under the river bottom. At ninety feet, tunnel opened up into a large underwater cave. With anticipation, we descended into the blackness shining our lights here and there but there was nothing to see but the limestone walls, the greasy stalagmites and stalactites that had formed over the years.

Then suddenly some invisible hand took hold of me setting me twirling and spinning. My mask was ripped from my face. In a few seconds, it was over. I hung there in the dark for a quick minute before I pulled my mask back on and cleared the water from it. I still had my light firmly clenched in my hand. At 150 feet, we had come to the mouth of the spring where the water silently rushed out from it's underground origin, tens of thousands of gallons per minute. Looking around, I saw Vladi's light. He was swimming toward me. With his thumb, he motioned upward. No doubt.

We had come to a roof, though, with hundreds of chimney openings. Which one had we come down? It was the only one that led to the surface. We tried one opening, then another, then another, each of them narrowing until we could go no further or abruptly stopping at a solid rock roof. I could see the panic in Vladi's eyes that I knew mirrored my own.

The days had become so beautiful. I thought about how they had changed. I thought about school and my mother and my father, but mostly I thought about how beautiful the days had become, bright and blue and so full.

I checked my gauge. I had about half a tank of compressed air left. We were at ninety feet. It wouldn't last all that long. Vladi looked at me and held his hands out at his sides. I responded by shaking my head.

We had drifted away from the roof of the cave and landed on a rock and sand bottom. For no reason, we swam along its contour, following it as it sloped up to where it entered another chimney. A little way into it, the water seemed to glow. A bit further, definitely, there was light. Up and up, brighter and brighter, until we emerged into the river's open water.

On the river bank, we dumped our equipment and just lay still. We weren't ready to talk about it yet. I leaned back and looked at the sky and listened to the water.

Yes, yes, these were big, beautiful days.

Tightrope

2009-06-25T07:15:00.008-04:00

(from "Postcards" series)

"Lonesome got me bad," he moaned.

"Why are you lonesome?" I asked.

"I don't know. Man, I was doing fine, then summer came and I walked by a Williams and Sonoma window displaying all that summer picnic stuff, wicker baskets and blue umbrellas and ice cream makers, you know?"

"Yea, I've seen it."

"Shit, you can't picnic alone."

"Sure you can."

"No, its not the same," he said, and he was right of course, but I was trying to cheer him up.

"I just keep listening to Bob Dylan singing 'Blue Moon' over and over. I broke down crying when Sinatra came on the radio station singing 'Fly Me to the Moon.'"

"What station are you listening to that plays 'Fly Me to the Moon?'"

"It was one of my Pandora stations."

"Oh. Listen, though, I've felt like that even when I've been in a relationship."

But when lonesome gets hold of you, its a hard one to shake.

* * * * *

She leaned her body up against me pinning me to the side of the car. I could feel the warmth of her coming through her clothing. She was from Venezuela and dated the most popular guy in our group. He had long hair and looked like the singer Leon Russell. This was his party. We were at his house. He was inside. She had followed me out as I was leaving. I hadn't been romantic with a girl for a long time, so when she kissed me, my head began to twirl. I could smell the beer on her breath sweet and sour, but I couldn't taste it. Her tongue was big, I thought, and soft. She had a big, soft tongue that she pushed farther into the back of my mouth than seemed right and my head was spinning. When she slowly withdrew her big tongue, she left her lips against mine and smiled. Jesus Christ, I thought, she was like a movie star. She pressed her forehead into my neck and softly giggled. Suddenly, I was aware that I was breathing deeply, a little too rapidly and maybe audibly as well. I wondered with embarrassment if she had heard. Of course she had, I thought. That is why she giggled.

Some people form the party walked by, and I remembered Leon inside. Everybody knew she was his girl. I tried to get suspiciously small.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Nothing. There were just some people walking by."

She pulled back and stood up straight and looked at me.

"You're not very tall, are you," she said. It was not a question.

"I'm five-ten," I said matter-of-factly. She had to be at least six feet tall.

"OK," she said. I didn't know if that was an agreement with my statement or a change of direction. I wanted her to kiss me again.

She was scrummaging around in her purse and pulled out a piece of paper. She looked at it for a moment and then scrummaged some more. Cursing, she pulled out a mascara pencil.

"Do you have something to write with?" she asked.

I thought that from this point forward in my life, I probably would.

"No," I said.

She wrote something on the paper in mascara there in the dark and handed it to me.

"Here's my number," she said. "Call me."

And then she kissed me briefly and turned toward the house. I watched her walk away on those long, long legs. I didn't want to move.

Driving home in the night with the windows down, I put on a tape by Leon Russell, driving and singing along with "Tight Rope." Man oh man, I thought. And that was about all. Man oh man. She was from Venezuela. She was beautiful and she had the best boy in school. And she had kissed me.

Wind, moon, and sky.

About halfway home, though, something else occurred to me. I'd never thought about not being tall before.

* * *

"Tight Rope" by Leon Russell

Organizer

2009-06-24T06:32:00.003-04:00

Lana was one of those people who bloomed in college. I'd known her vaguely for years, a girl fit to "swell a crowd" as Elliot puts it. She was in school clubs, and she may have even been a cheerleader. She helped decorate the gym for dances and she sold pep ribbons. But it seemed to me that she was background, a dirty blonde without distinguishing features.

Of course, that may have been due to my own eyes, vision that was damaged by distance as I sat on the outside of things trying not to look in too deeply. Perhaps people bloom, but then again, it might be something else. Circumstances change. Whatever it was, she had become a lovely, beautiful woman.

I talked to her one day in the student center and was immediately smitten. Her hair was blonder and her teeth whiter, her outline more sharply drawn. But what stunned me was how happy she was. She was the happiest girl I'd ever met. It was a quiet happiness, not the obvious sort, but something that radiated from her hair and skin. So it seemed to me. But it was contagious and she made me want to be happy, too.

I was more than sufficiently smitten.

I'd had a date now, though it had been a misery of sorts. I'd picked up Terry's girl at the appropriate time, and thank god we had gone to a play at a college renowned for their theater. We had seen"Dracula," and afterwards, I had taken her out for a hamburger. Then I took her home. Her interest in me was obvious. She was just trying to piss Terry off. There was no thought of a goodbye kiss.

Rather than trying to ask Lana out, I had a better idea. I would organize an outing. I could invite a bunch of people to meet up at a local State Park, a natural spring that fed a beautiful river. I'd never done anything like this before, never organized big, beautiful fun. But I was changed, I thought. Opportunity lay here.

It worked. It was a good idea and everyone came. There was food and drink and girls in bathing suits. And there was Lana.

There were other boys, too, though, and maybe that was a mistake, for Lana spent most of her time surrounded by one bunch or another. As I watched her laughing and walking and talking and spreading her happiness far and wide, I became more and more morose. Perhaps it was proximity, or the lack of it, that shielded me from all that joy I felt when I was near her. But it now seemed like a fire on a cold night, sitting in the distance, seeing the beauty but feeling none of the warmth.

As the day wore on, I thought, "I have friends now, lots of them, college kids whose lives were this and not the other, the thing I am trying to leave so far behind." Of course it was not so stilted or organized a thought as this. It was a feeling, really, and a rationalization, for truly, what did I care about such things just then. I wanted Lana.

Finally, at the end of the day, as people were beginning to pack up and leave, Lana came over and smiled.

"How're you doing?"

I had not been much of a smiler since I was nine or ten, but I could feel the corners of my mouth curl up as the muscles of my cheeks pulled tight, and I nodded my head up and down, up and down.

"Fine," I said. "I'm really fine."

We walked along a path that led through the woods, a nature trail that looped back to where we started, and as we ambled, we talked about the day. "This was a great idea," she said. "I had so much fun." I could feel the heaviness in me growing in direct proportion to my desire. Unrequited, I knew, which accounted for the heaviness. She looked like a wood nymph or sprite as we walked along. She had put some flowers in her hair and wore a thin gossamer shirt. OK. Not gossamer, but I had come to the knowledge of gossamer when reading "The Hobbit", and it had all the hallmarks of gossamer, I thought. A pixie. Elfin.

When we got back to the picnic table where we began, I stood awkwardly looking at her. Expectantly, perhaps. But she was distracted. Someone called her name. And in a little while, she was gone.

At least there was nothing to clean up. I had stayed to the end because I wanted to see Lana and because, it seemed, I was always reluctant to miss something. Years later, I would realize it was something else. But now the day was done, and it had been a good day. I had done it, I thought. It had been mine.

When I got into my car and was alone, I felt the familiar longing in my arms and in my legs. I was OK, I thought. It was familiar.

A Thousand Nights and a Night

2009-06-23T08:18:00.004-04:00

"Life turns on such small things as the burning of an oil lamp."

I keep the night light burning, but the oil is running low. I must slow down now. Enough of seeing. Enough of voices. I must remember and make sense of things. I am awash in sirens, djinns and genies.

Southern Colonial

2009-06-22T06:32:00.009-04:00

(from "Postcards" series)

Not everyone who comes here visits on a regular basis. I think about that sometimes. How would you know where to begin? If you started at the current post and it was part of "The Narrative," it might not make sense. If you just looked at the photos, you would find no consistency. I try not to think about it too much, but I am reminded, sometimes. My friend, Frank Petronio, wrote this the other day:

"I don't check your blog as often as I should, you write too much, but it is always rewarding when I take the 10-15 minutes to really read it. I like your photos more and more too, you somehow have that southern colonial atmosphere down."

To the contrary, Lisa wrote yesterday that she does not "love these latest photos." But she reads the words.

I try to reconcile these things, but I can't. I think I'm just going to keep doing this and try not to let my mother find out. There is a stupid craziness to it, anyway, an exhibitionist's idiotic belief. Besides, this is a "workbook" place, a daily posting, not a finished product. I will begin to have finished product soon, I think, though I feel like a hobbyist without end. But I am determined to put my stamp on something.

What are the "take-aways" from this? For me, there is the label with which I am somehow fascinated. "Southern Colonial". What a title.

* * *

After I posted, I saw this. Zackary Canepari has troubles with his photos, too.

What. . . me worry?