Requiem

Finally! Here's some news: I can't post from my work computer.
Everyone knows the best blogs are the ones frequently updated, which puts this one closer to the "crappy" end of the spectrum, I'm sorry to say.
I'm not ready to quit yet though. I WILL find a way!
Too many blogs are dying lately. Why the mortality rate, I wonder? I can see that there is a certain attrition rate to be expected. People's lives change, they get busy. But you'd think they would come back to it. Doesn't seem to be the case.
The first blog I ever read was Hunkabutta.com, a picture blog by an expatriate living in Japan. The photos he took were absolutely beautiful, and included short commentaries. The best part, though, was the comment section. Funny, witty, and many, with new additions every time I turned on my computer. Eventually Hunkabutta returned to the States and the blog ended. It wasn't just that he was busier, although he was, having bought a fixer-upper somewhere on the Oregon coast. He said that he lost the inspiration of wanting to document the strange, exotic world of the Orient. By then he had started a family, and his attention was attuned to his personal life, which he didn't care to display so publicly.
Another blog I really enjoyed was Kindofcrap.com, another American-in-Japan journal. The updates were frequent, and the writing was hilarious. The guy really had a gift. Eventually, he came home, though and sank into silence. He did make a half-hearted attempt at another blog from the US, but couldn't sustain the interest, or something.
The archives for both of these sites are still up, if you have some time to kill, and want to pass it with a visit into a creative mind with a unique perspective on the world around it.

St. Sebastian's Day

Today was an orgy of sugar and red dye #2 at work. Mounds of sugar, piles of pink and white whipped fat, death by chocolate. My omentum hurt just looking at all of it, so I stayed out of the lounge.
They brought it to me anyway, and of course I ate it all. Before 10:00am. So weak, so very, very weak.
It's so strange that this minor, fake Hallmark holiday is more celebrated than Christmas, or New Years, or anything else in these parts. It must have something to do with bright and sweet and cheap.
Anyway, I find myself responding to physical beauty again. It's been so long! When I was a teenager, I could be absolutely hypnotised by the faces of the girls at the convent, or light moving on banana trees, or mist along the koolau mountains. The face of the coxman on the boat launch I used to take to school. -- He always looked so warm, with his cold weather gear and his dark skin.
Anyway, I was sitting in Barnes and Noble book store last weekend with my little boy, drinking tea, and looking at the beautiful artwork on the covers of the books around me, and it somehow the lighting, the space, the rich, muted colours all settled into a feeling of tranquil joy and well-being.
It feels good to be back.

La Vie Interieure

I am thinking about Maya Deren tonight, for some reason. I guess I saw her name somewhere and it reminded me of when I read her book "Horsemen of the Gods," in Graduate School. It was a good book, all about her research into Haitian voodoo (or Voudoun, as she calls it) culture and dance. She starts off studying the native dances, anyway, with some kind of grant from the Guggenheim, but eventually she plunges fully into the ceremonies and rituals of induced trance and spirit possesion. In fact, the last paragraph of the book describes her feelings of losing consciousness and sensing the approach of the Goddess of water, youth and beauty. It's a great ending, because one can't help but wonder what happened next. Did she have sex with everyone there, did she just dance around naked? What did she say? It's like you almost get to meet a Goddess, but then you wake up.
According to google she went on to become a Voudoun priestess, returned to live in Greenwich village, produced, directed, and acted in movies, had a job doing PR for a dance company, wrote more books, had three husbands and was generally a major influence on American 20th century art. Then, of course, like almost everyone I find interesting, she had a major drug habit, amphetamines and sleeping pills, this time.
What I wonder is this: was she lonely? Did it ever depress her she was poor? Maybe living in Greenwich village and being so busy with projects kept her from dragging. It says she hung out with Anais Nin, what did those two talk about, I wonder? I see them both meeting, air-kiss, air-kiss, sitting at some fashionable place like the Russian Tea Room, wrapped up in enormous wool/fur coats with some weird-but-chic hat/turban headwear framing their wan little faces, while they puff away at cigarettes and stare into the distance. No chit-chat for those two.
I wonder if Maya was as beautiful in real life as she is in pictures. I love the famous picture from her first movie, of her standing behind a window, looking dreamy and introspective.
Jean Cocteau, Leni Rufenstiehl, that woman who discovered x-rays, I am so fascinated by these people.

Heathcliff!

When I come to this blank page, an image arises in my mind. I recognise it from the book "Siddhartha," by Hermann Hesse. In the back of my mind I see an old man and a young man (me), standing across from each other, with a river between them. The old man is explaining to the youth that life is like the river, blah, blah, something about watching it go by. Then I put my hands on the keyboard, ready to set down something original, wise and insightful, -- yet subtly entertaining.
Then I usually take my hands off the keyboard and let the dog out.
This is my blogging experience so far.
Today, however, I have a message worthy of putting into print.
Alec Baldwin is looking for ME!!!! http://www.glamour.com/news/feature/articles/2007/01/lunchdatealecbaldwin
OK, one part of my brain knows how stupid it is for me to have this crush on a mythological character, but I'm tellin' yah...
Every once in a while, I find myself in a car full of women, and as a conversations starter (or finisher, in my case), someone will ask the age-old question "What Movie Star do you like?" I can never think of any. Even the guys who's acting I admire are not the kind of guys I would ever want to hang out with. Even the allegedly sexy ones seem like they would be sort of girly in real life. Anyway, I usually draw a blank. Sometimes a name will pop into my head as a candidate until I remember they have a major heroin addiction or some other fatal flaw (see Robert Downey Jr.).
Be that as it may, for the last 6 months A.B. has been on my mind. I was never attracted to him when he was a young, chisel-jawed leading man, but something about the overweight, middle-aged Alec speaks to my libido. -- And as for his tough-guy explosive anger problem, and obnoxious political demagoguery, uh...I'm thinking I can take him.
OK, I'm not going to write in to Glamour Magazine about how Alec needs ME to be happy. First of all, I wouldn't make the cut appearance-wise. Based on his red carpet dates, he likes tall ectomorphs in their late 20's. Anyway, where do you go from Kim Basinger? Of course, he's wrong about those women, but he'll have to find that out himself. Furthermore, I couldn't bring myself to behave like a fan/stalker (outside of my own head, I mean). Especially a public figure like Mr. Baldwin. I'd have to be introduced.
Oh yeah, then there's that whole husband and kids thing.
Clearly, the best I can hope for is that Alec will get together with someone like Janeane Garofalo. Someone short, dark, messy, irritable, probably bi-polar --yet somehow fun, true-blue and steady as she goes. Only then would I be able to lay down this wild romantic yearning and say, "I yield, I can't compete with that."