Angels at the window
“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” — Jack Kerouac I just love this
Just finished listening to a radio doc on the making of Easy Rider for sure the film that changed my life in 1969 and seared a music soundtrack into my soul. If you can go to BBC4 and see if you can do the “listen again” thing.
I need to see this again
I know that feeling
coming home
opening the door and dropping the bags,
fumbling off shoes
feeling the warmth and familiarity and the air
the scent of things
from lost loves, missed
dust
caught suspended in the sunlight leaking through the curtain
i know the feeling
being alone and still
in a space brings
the sleep in mid afternoon
the pillows remember my head
the duvet buries dreams
keeping secrets in the creases
coming home again
this is a photo of Marilyn Monroe’s typewriter
I just passed the news stand with the latest issue of Vanity Fair
Marilyn Monroe is on the cover, luminous,
I was 11 when she died and remember being so sad
even as a child I could see her truth
her insecurity
her innocence
her kindness
I wanted her to come to our house with her smile
and her wink
(via rach)
more than anything i dream of having a bedroom EXACTLY like this, with a view of the stars and a fireplace, and a painting of the three bears over my bed. OH Bliss!!!!
This internet blogging stuff scares me a bit.
I am too shy so the anon of it all is attractive. I was once long ago very vibrant but something changed and over time one teaches himself/herself to do things alone in order to survive. Friends have partners, kids, previous engagements, cancel, are ill, whatever and soon you stop calling and start planning your life by yourself.
a double edge sword that…
because as soon as you find the wherewithall to go to a play, film, gallery, concert on your own the ball is in your court. If you miss a movie you have only yourself to blame. and the guilt oh the guilt
every book i ever wanted to read. and didn’t or haven’t yet…it becomes your fault or responsibility…an addition to the “list of things to do before you die” Who the fuck invented that list? I can’t get my brain around it as there are more than the decimal places of pi….That list encompasses the impossible, improbable, unlikly and obvious. Ticking off a few Pyramids - check, Angkor Wat - check, swim the channel - oops no check and put into the “highly unlikely” column with the caveat that should I ever get swept overboard on the cross channel ferry that would count……
Hug all my lost friends - put in the impossible to way too late column
time travel - (on my list!!!) I need to be able to do this in all directions. forward, backward, right left up down I need a scribble of time travel
So today there is just a small to-do list. Awake since 4 am, lovely coffee, geese making a clatter.
new glasses - Brompton Optician - wonderful place just to go speak with Olivier to have him tell me I am not too old for the trendy-wendy specs…. probably the highlight of my day
return shoes - yesterday’s purchase of ‘comfy’ sandal-like footwear seriously needs a rethink.
bank - needs must - i may pretend that I am minor brit-art-celebrity if my glasses trip is successful!
Med appt - my arthritis is debilitating. with a hip re-surfacing at age 54 helping somewhat. I want to stop taking the medication though. There must be a better way
swimming…in the heat of the early spring, slipping quietly into the water is a private glorious pleasure. years disappear, I want to do a handstand on the bottom of the pool. wishing secretly and selfishly that I was the only person in the water and that no one was watching
Buy a new mop. - is there no glamour anymore? Little known fact - it is not possible to replace a mop-head no matter how environmentally conscious one wants to be
anyway I am off on my journeys today alone on my adventures
and a shout out to my friend James in New York - I miss you and was thinking about that snowy night in 1978 and our night at the Cookery seeing Alberta Hunter with Becky and Michael Lane. God Alberta could melt the snow on the top of mt Everest. so HOT!
Maybe I can find her records here in London. I fancy a listen to “You Gotta Reap what You Sow”
Sometimes it is easier, but not always.
- Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?
- Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain....we can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.
- Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.
- Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.
- Harper: That's how people change.
- -Tony K. (whose work has saved my life on no small number of occasions).
- **********************************************
- This is exactly why I follow Rach's blog. and I guess why I shamelessly re-blog thing even though I think it is a strange thing to do. Todays trip to the bookstore will send me chasing after Tony Kushner...
- Angels in America made me think about everything I had ever taken for granted
this reblog…….
I just really wanted to reblog this
Even though I think all the reblogging stuff is a bit weird. I want to have this somewhere.
I want to paint these words on my walls and give my beautiful nieces copies of them in tiny jewelry boxes.
Wrapped like the treasures they are. So if the dark days come for them they can open these tiny tiny boxes and unfolded that piece of paper and read these words written by this young man.
To remind thems that love and hope are everything.
With Love to Miriam, Inez, Teresa, Meghan, Caitlan, Little Laura, Eileen, Sarah, Kaylie and Jenna
from Aunt Laura
That Is The Punkest Shit You Can Do. To Never NEVER Give Up. ” -
I know that sounds so serious and crazy and weird but I just wanted to say that to you tonight Foggy.
It is a scary weird world, and it get’s so dark sometimes that it seems like it’s safer being unhappy, but you know, when you are happy, when shit is working, sometimes that just means exactly that. Don’t be afraid.
And if you get weirded out because someone or something is making you happy, and that doesn’t seem to you like you are working hard enough for it then, because you spent a life judging happiness by how Little something hurt, instead of How MUCH something made you happy and made you feel whole, just STOP. just stop and think about this, because someone told me this and I just have to say this Foggy.
There is a light and There is a Darkness. And there is a choice.
And every Something in the little universe of yours, of ours, every single something, that is a light. That is another day and a new exchange waiting to happen and a new laugh and a new page and a new chapter.
And even though you may have spent a lot of time very sad, very afraid, There is a Darkness, and it is quiet there and not many if any people are in that darkness, and there might be more days there Foggy, there might be more choices, little choices you can make in the dark, but that is a darkness Foggy. And a darkness can get so dark that it can take you away from the light forever. You might just be squinting sometimes, thinking you are holding on to it but you are moving towards it or away.
SO Foggy, I really really love you and I want to tell you something very important. I am going to go away from that darkness now. Because in that light, I was very afraid, because I was not used to all that growing and all those things happening where you could see, and all the things in me I could see I never saw before, that scared me and I ran from that, I needed to think. I needed to sit on the moon for a second and look at the world and think.
But we have to move Foggy. We have to go now towards where all that love and that light was coming from. Because that is another day.
And we are getting older now Foggy and it is time to start sharing some of the things we learned. Some of those things are things people do not survive or do not walk away from still being able to see what is bright and what is not.
So we have to go now and become a good example and a good friend and good teacher to other people in case they too got lost too in all the quiet darkness.
It is part of the promise we made. To never give up! So we are not going to give up on ourselves or others, and not going to be judging from the dark places, but instead, we are going to listen. and we are not going to judge but instead see. (well maybe we might judge alittle harshly sometimes when we write but that is the style of writing, that font, is call Assholevetica and we helped make that so you know, sometimes it will be a bit saucy,……but still)…..
we are going to pull up the things that kept us in the ground and go over to where that beautiful blinding light is, and not be afraid.
So just stay with me for a minute and close your eyes if it hurts some because it is very bright, but let’s go. Let’s go make another page, Let’s go make another day happen, and Let’s go find out what is in there and when and if we can, maybe we can tell other people about it, so that they can see the choice.
and we must always honor that promise to be good and to be true.
That is how we can help.
So here is to Never Giving Up, and Never Giving Up On Others When They Do Not Give Up On You.
Rest up Foggy, much is about to change and we will need our energy and our strength because letting go for real is about changing that too.
So rest up, and I will wake you when it’s time to go. It is going to bring the best things we have to the people we love and even some people we don’t even know yet.
Thank You Foggy, you are a good listener and a good spirit. I love you very much.
(via ryanadams)
i love this
it is from this blog which is in japanese
a little truth
This morning i read a poem on someones blog that made me remember what my life was like when I was 33
a little true story story
in the spring of 1983 when I was just 31 I fell in love with a painter - he was French and for months we made love to Bartok and slept together and ate together and I posed for his drawings and we walked along the coast in Pt Reyes together with backpacks full of wine and cheese and kisses. We dreamt of our future. we made plans to travel the world. kissing at all the great shrines Angkor Wat, Pagan, The Plain of Jars, the Temples of Tibet
My French painter left for his studio in Holland and I prepared for the rest of my life: quit my job, let out the apartment, drove across America in freezing winter, and on Valentines Day was in his arms under the bleak Dutch sky.
but there was a shiver and the fear that something wasn’t quite right and within a few weeks the dreams imploded leaving a heart more broken than I could ever imagine a person surviving. I traveled all the shrines of Europe alone. Crying. Florence, Pisa, Paris. Crying I finally washed up on the Riviera in Via Reggio at at small pension where the owner worried that I would die when I couldn’t get out of bed for four days of profound sadness. I lost weight and finally returned to my parents in the early summer. Plans, promises, preparations had all vanished replaced by tears
With my flat in California rented and empty months ahead I enrolled in film school at NYU and proceeded to learn to make movies and learn how to say/create something that was true. My 33rd birthday was spent in the editing rooms on east 7th street.
I KNOW the feeling. One does recover but there are scars deep inside my chest to remind me and the skin next to the scars feels numb.
mr. a. burroughs
Running with Scissors
need i say more?
a few things
i never imagined saying goodbye to so many people
those days in the 70’s had seemed so free and we were all so beautiful and young and careless with love and kisses the boys were all like Byron
Today was one of those turncoat April days - suddenly cold and damp and I was caught out walking down Sloane Street. Moving toward the railing under the lilac tree for shelter.
Lilacs are my absolute favorite flower - they are so full of vintage beauty and the heavenly fragrance . i make a note to myself to schedule some midnight gardening - a dark casual stroll past the churchyard on a moonless night with a pair of sharp kitchen sissors
snip
snip
sniff
sniff
Lilacs recall the night my friend Mark Jankowski filled my bed with blossoms gleaned from a midnight adventure in Southampton. I awoke from dreams with the tiny petals pressed into my damp skin and the soft scent mixing with the birdsong. It remains the most romantic gesture ever on the face of the planet.
I truly miss you Mark. Every spring I relive that night and wish the angels had had different plans for you.
