To Get Frankie Back

JM, Snapshot: Frankie, 1.31.08

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She left the Roost at 9:00 p.m. "I had actually pushed my tip forward and the bartender took my empty glass away," she would later relate to the storyteller. She wondered if she had enough money to call a cab like she told the abscess in her life but decided not to bother counting. She had bought the first round of drinks because she wanted to "equalize" things more in the relationship.

The lights were on at the public pool, but the pool was drained. She walked up Los Feliz, across the river and the roaring freeway. The water was not running heavily enough to jump into without hitting its concrete bottom. Then she walked east on Riverside and up the Hyperion Bridge stairs.

"I was thinking how I was going to write something vicious about the abscess," she added. "And I forgot the part about where I neared the dog hospital where Daisy died, here comes the abscess in his Corvette. He called my name a few times. I let him yell it a few times and then I flipped him off, just like any mature forty-four-year-old woman would do."

"Do you think it's fair to call him 'the abscess?'"

"Oh, like a festering abscess? Yeah...I went Rowena. Sunset---are you kidding? Although I guess I could have caught a bus there because there was not one bus that passed me...I also didn't have my phone on me."

When her feet really started hurting her, up past the Red Lion, one pain supplanted another. She forgot about the abscess and got all the way over the hill to the mariscos place and then took the butch-solid Fry boots off.

"Are there any lesbians in your life?"

"No! Jesus! That's your hang-up."

Her white booty socks the turn up her street. "There's like four more blocks to walk and then the big hill and I'm wondering if I'm going to see Frankie," her cat who's been missing for six weeks.

"If I saw Frankie then I would set the boots down and pick Frankie up."

"Is that like bargaining? Like magical thinking?"

"To get Frankie back? Yeah...and the whole walk was penance, for being in some goddamn stupid relationship. Did I mention I was wearing my long monk-like black coat? And that black hat you see right there."
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Note to people who haven't been here much

Thanks for clicking whatever link you clicked. If you're looking for my Times op-ed from Monday, "S is for Sham," click here.

Thinking before Movement

Your humble scribe interviewed one of the world's most intriguing choreographers, Ea Sola, yesterday afternoon at UCLA. Then Ann Bennion and I watched her troupe perform her new piece Drought and Rain II at Royce Hall.

[The review is here at Explore Dance].

At one point in the interview, she said, "There is thinking before there is movement." Also, unsual for a choreographer, she said she first came to dance by observing the body, rather than by dance itself.

The performance of Drought and Rain II repeats tonight and moves to Santa Barbara and other west coast cities soon.

Wilshire Silhouette

JM, Self Portrait, Korean Consulat, 1.23.08 - click to enlarge

More pics of Koreatown excursion, with comment, here.
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In the Garden of Allah

JM, Brand Library Rose Bushes, 1.18.07 - click image to enlarge

I'm telling you---now's the time to cut them back.

Noted: Brand Library is Moorish. Glendale is not.

Bare and Solitaire

JM, Rose Spiral, Winter, 1.14.08

click image to enlarge

The rose spiral is ten years old this month.

Hatfield's

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To celebrate the birthday, we went to Hatfield's last night, on Beverly. "On Beverly"---that's a cultural marker, right there.

I had a good duck dish and Lynn orderd pre-fixe. They made me a sturdy old fashioned with Knob Creek.

We caught some whiffs of Chez Panisse in the spirit of the place; the food was simple but very creative and all delicious in a way that emphasized freshness. There was an over-abundant wait-staff, stark clean white walls, and both of the Hatfields, a couple, were much involved with the operations; Ms. Hatfield brought our dessert, in fact. Little touches like a celery root consomme served in a tall jigger and deviled quail eggs on a dessert spoon made for a little extra drama. A crusted parmesan roll was outstanding enough to request a second.

The restaurant certainly a great alternative for those who have noticed how much some other restaurants in that neighborhood, such as Lucques, have declined in recent years.

Lynn was layered: subtly elegant gypsy attire. It's always cold on her birthday.

Celebrate

Lynn Salle, Nude (detail), acrylic on cardboard, 1993 - click image to enlarge


Lynn's birthday! Celebrate talent, love, art, strength, beauty, women, life.

Orchid

JM, Orchid, 1.08.08 - click image to enlarge

When Lynn came home from Cedars three months ago, on October 8---when the silk floss tree bloomed for the first time in eight years---also waiting for her inside at home were several orchids, including the one featured above, from a friend and neighbor.

Today is three months later, and the orchid has yet to drop a single flower.

Just a bit

JM, Don't you dare, 1.6.08

After looking through hundreds of cds for an overdue library copy of Patti Smith's Horses, I finally found it yesterday...in Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould. I celebrated by playing Brahms' Third Symphony, the Toscanini recording.

No, reporting what you're listening to isn't any more interesting than reporting what you've eaten for lunch (lentil soup). Even so, people salivate at the prospect of both. Brahms is an especially gratifying friend in the rain, and Stephanie ushered in the latest Brahms immersion.

I made a mirepoix this morning for Lynn, for her lentil soup. Madge was supposed to come over, but there were complexities and she did not. Lynn had a strong opinion on which onion I should use for the mirepoix. There was half of one in the refrigerator but I used a fresher one from the vegetable bowl on the counter. Now we have two half-onions in the frige and Lynn thinks I'm not as careful as I should be.

But I am. I saw a packaged mirepoix at Trader Joe's yesterday. Diced, wrapped, stocked for $2.99. There weren't 50 cents worth of vegetables in there! Who are they kidding, anyway? I've been making my own mirepoix since early Lisa Exit days. And the cds I check out from Brand Library obviously save dozens of dollars weekly. And even beyond this, I would rather have two half onions on hand for making stock, rather than use a whole one for stock. Because having two halves in the frige means I've used two fresh onions at two different times for other dishes, rather than half of one fresh one and a long-refrigerated one for other dishes.

The mystery woman featured above is sitting on a pillow rather than a cushion, by the way, because it is 2008 and the Japanese chair urgently needs re-upholstering after sixty years, and the cushion is currently somewhere on the tony end Beverly Boulevard, where God knows you get the best deals on reupholstery. But, you know, I'm the one who could be more careful, for not using the refrigerated half-onion for the mirepoix.

Between chemo, rain, Brahms, the Japanese chair, and onions, we are going a bit stir-crazy, I'm afraid.

Adagio in F-Major in a B-flat Major Opus, 67

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This shameless key
which lives its musical life
fully, nonsensically has

one flat, B-flat, which is
how you sign it, and

you find sometime
you get what you
need with F-Major: in Beethoven's
Pastoral, (but the thunder
claps in F-minor); and Brahms's
Third, which is all about

middle-aged
love and its arms-length

complexities, but also is very
Frei aber Froh (a musical pun: F
a-b F!); but for

this peculiar adagio,
this second movement of
this third string quartet of
Brahms, Op. 67, it sings
well before 1969, when

I was a free but happy child and
you were a free but happy child in
a childhood kingdom
by the nonesuch sea
before dipping a foot
in a postulant grave

and your favorite flavor was
cherry red and

and yes, Hey Jude also
is in F-Major too, na na na na.

The Overnighter

JM, The Roost Nears Epiphany, 1.2.08

Christmas and New Year's Eve with people in the neighborhood. Lynn was able to go out Xmas, which was a mere three houses down, but not NYE, which was four blocks away. I left the NYE party at 11 to spend midnight with Lynn. Spending midnight with Lynn: both of us approaching sonambulence on the Tempurpedic, dozens of covers of every kind of weave, scrunched pillows, a box flickering in the corner, something happening in NYC, Dick Clark obviously propped up by formaldehyde alone.

New Year's Day: none of the usual cleanup, but more of the usual hangover. You drink more elsewhere. A brick of blue cheese and a white burgundy through most of the agreeably sedentary day.

Today, I caught up with some things at Brand Library (Brahms String Quartets, Diana and Delilah), wished a happy new year to Megan there, and later went to Forest Lawn, to do a New Year's labyrinth. (There was a gang murder at Forest Lawn just the day before, NYD.) As it ended up, the thoughts weren't redemptive. I usually get guidance, even assurance, when contemplating a labyrinth; today, for the first time ever, my thoughts rather drifted towards schemes rather than hopes. Maybe it was the weight of the shocking crime of the previous day that polluted even the labyrinth's atmosphere.

Coming home, Lynn tells me that Karen is coming by. Karen! Karen is redemptive, a former catechumen. When she first came to catechism, she needed a week off to go to Mardi Gras. By the end of the year, she was engaged, and to a man named Jesus no less. I read St. Paul's speech on love at her wedding. She now has two children and brought them both for a handful of minutes.

I told her what the priest said to me: that judgmental people are in a lot of pain, so pray for them. "That's so magnificent," she said. "I do pray for them already." I think she was talking about her mother.

True story, speaking of pain: a student, I went to the 1984 Rose Bowl. UCLA played Illinois and devastated them. Now, Illinois doesn't get to the Rose Bowl that often. So, encountering some inconsolable fans in the parking lot after the game, I said, "Hey, don't worry, you guys will be back here in twenty years...."

It actually took twenty-four. I'm so sorry. It's stayed with me all these years. And the joke's on me: it only has reminded me how life flies by, how twenty years look so enormous in the foreground but are as almost nothing when looking back.

contact

twitter.com/jfmailander joseph.mailander@gmail.com 323.240.1016

MMVIII

JM, Welcome transparancy, 12.30.07

Welcome to 2008. Notably, an election year. An Olympic year. A Leap year. A year in which we're finally going to reupholster that damn Japanese chair.

While we mostly hated 2007 for obvious reasons, and can only call it a bad year, there were some things that recommended it. Big Sur. Midlife transitions. Lots of drama. Lots of Durrell again. Far more frankness between the two of us here on the couch, even after ten years. And we learned who our friends were and who they were not---stunning, even shocking in some cases, but it was about time.

And that's the thing with new years. It shouldn't really be, what will we accomplish, but rather, what will we learn? Accomplishments you tick off; knowledge stays put.

° ° ° ° °

Yesterday I wandered into the usual confessional and talked to a priest about the problems I was having with Lynn's family. "This will be an unconventional confession," I began, "because all my relationships are unconventional, including to God."

The priest seemed entertained. "I'll do my best," he said. "How old are you?" I asked. He said he was thirty-two and had been out of seminary for three years.

"I'm fifty," I said. "How are you going to tell me something?"

"I'll do my best," he said. Then he said, "I love confessions like this."

Bloodsport confessions---who wouldn't?

° ° ° ° °

After I mapped out some exciting things, he jumped in.

"I hear it said, and I believe it: judgmental people are in pain," he said. "Pray for their pain."

That was good for thirty-two. I won't pray for their pain, but I will look for it more. In others. I already know where it is in myself.

° ° ° ° °

Some people in recent months have observed that I'm under a lot of negative pressure and have told me that I should see a therapist. But I'm not going to. I was thinking about Dev, but I'm not going to. Not for a while, anyway.

One reason: this year, we will be obliged take enormous financial hits. We'll survive, but we'll be obliged to take them. We don't need a therapy bill pilling on top of that.

Second reason: I would only go to Dev, and Dev worries a little too much about the bourgeois side. That's good some times, but not at this particular time.

° ° ° ° °

But the main reason: writing is my therapy. I'm my therapist; you're my therapist. If I get it down right, I'm sure either I will tell myself what I need to be told, or you'll tell me what I need to be told.

You know I'd do it to you. More transparancy. Happy new year!
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