Woolf the monk and Clooney the drunk

Part of me still finds the Academy Awards a nauseating, insular clique of overly privileged mutual admirers...but I'm glad The Dude finally won his Best Actor Oscar (of all those nominated for Best Picture, I most want to see Crazy Heart), and that a female director finally won. Just one question: was George Clooney super drunk, or what?

On an unrelated note, I was recently reading about Virginia Woolf and how those who visit her former home, Monk's House in Rodmell (photo above) - now open to the public as a museum - are surprised to find how small and unadorned her bedroom was, her narrow single bed, and how equally bare-bones her writing lodge, located through the garden, was as well. Lisa Williams in Letters To Virginia Woolf writes of the "chaste and monastic life" Woolf led that allowed her to get so much transcendental writing done. It made me think one day - I've had the this fantasy-future glimmering in the back of my mind for a long time - I will have to leave the city, leave technology behind, and be like Woolf, or Thoreau, go out in the woods, live in a cabin, relinquishing all my material possessions, in order to accomplish writing the great novel or book or whatever it may be that I feel lurking brilliantly yet unobtainably in the depths of my soul and psyche. That was sort of the idea in going to work in Glacier Park a couple summers ago, but it didn't turn out that way. Work ate my summer, and sharing a tiny room with three other guys made that sort of solitude impossible.

The so-called Bloomsbury Group influenced my attitudes, values, and personality a lot at a formative age. Too bad the literary upper middle class they belonged to has all but disappeared. Still, I consider them spiritual predecessors and want to carry on their talent for enduring friendships that last a lifetime. That seems to be harder than ever in a modern urban setting especially, but I'm determined.

On another unrelated note, it just so happens that I appeared (briefly) on channel 2 KTVU news last night here in the Bay Area! They were filming a segment on the LGBT Community Center in San Francisco while i happened to be there perusing the job listings. A friend of mine found the media clip online, if you want to check it out.

Cheers!

glam

Aloha, Maui!

Here I am on the islands! Oh, Maui, how I love thy semi-tropical climate, and persistent rainbows, and continuous breeze! It was certainly worth the white-knuckled terror of the flight. But I’m just being a big ol’ drama queen now. As a matter of fact I’m in danger of becoming one of those people who doesn’t bat a lash about getting on an airplane. It’s only the takeoff and descent that suck, the entire middle part is fine, and even soothing, especially since I had earplugs in this time. Coming down on Maui was the only turbulent part – it’s windy here! Anthony met me by the baggage claim conveyor and wreathed me in a green tea leaf lai that he made along with a tuberose one, creamy white colored and fragrant of vanilla and honey. It made me want to quote aloud lines from Shakespeare. (I’m finishing “Wuthering Heights” finally and I think it’s influencing my writing style.)

Cousin Anthony (who I will henceforth refer to simply as “Cousin”) took me to his and J’s “project house” this morning (photo above) to get new smoke alarms installed for the people coming over to look at, and hopefully buy the house. It’s been on the market almost 2 years now, and the asking price is down to $1.8 million from well above $2 million. It has a steep paved driveway and exquisite decoration and a pool and three floors, the top two both with wide spacious patios sporting breathtaking panorama views of the town and lush foliage below, and beyond them the glowing azure ocean stretching to the horizon.

Afterwards Cousin took us to the only restaurant in town serving breakfast at 10:30 a.m. where he said he’d had such a bad experience last time that under TIP on the check he wrote “Find a new job,” but he gave it another chance for my sake, and he had florentine eggs benedict (florentine basically means “spinach”) and I had a stack of golden buttermilk pancakes with fresh strawberries, and everything was fine, the server was attentive, in fact almost overly servile, I thought, but Cousin is imperious and impatient in demanding compliance from people, whether it’s restaurant servers, the agent who has failed to sell their house so far, or the people in front of him on the road who purposely block him from driving as fast as he’d like in his giant F350 white pickup truck. (So big that he took up two parking spaces when we went to the restaurant.) We stopped and chatted with a couple exuberant older Hawaiian ladies who run an art gallery and are planning a Victor/Victoria themed party for a mutual friend.

Then we went to Secret Beach, which was clothing-optional, and Cousin lounged naked in the HOT sun (it's between 60 and 90 all the time here), while I body surfed and got too much sun (my head is turning bright lobster red – I put “Green Ice” aloe gel on it). He pointed to one house and said “That’s David Bowie and Iman’s house,” then pointed to another on the hill above us and said “That’s Sharon Stone’s house.” Bowie’s house has its own little point or spit of land jutting out onto the water, landscaped all the way up so people can’t climb into their yard and it’s semi-private while being also directly in view of a public beach – with naked people. Sharon Stone’s house looks like cheesecake – same color and consistency. Cousin thinks the water here is cold and was only in it for a few minutes, but I spent a solid hour or two body-surfing the waves, and the water is heaven to me - exactly what I dreamed of and longed for the whole time I kept trying to swim in those glacial 40-degree lakes in Glacier Park last summer. Cousin finally called me ashore after J warned him on the phone not to let me stay in the water too long or my scalp might burn. On the walk back from the beach to the parking lot I felt like a sensitive, pale water creature burning myself on hot coals. The soles of my feet felt soft as the underbelly of a reptile, scalded by hot rocks as I walked along barefoot.

Back at Hohani Place, Cousin had a nap while I organized and put away everything in my room, then took a dip in the pool. He has corned beef simmering in a pot on the stove for tomorrow night’s dinnner. They have a friendly, skinny, tan, blonde Russian girl roommate named K. who goes to a community college nearby, studying to be an IT person. She warned me not to go anywhere without suntan lotion, a rule I failed to observe today, but I didn’t know we’d be hitting the beach when we left. I did my regular exercise regimen this morning, then also did a 15-minute run on the exercise bike with the Resistance set to 7. It’s easy to sweat here with the high humidity. Cousin started to play “Brideshead Revisited” but I said “Let’s save that for another night” because I just can’t watch that movie without a commitment to fully experience it, such is the bond I’ve formed with it. I just read Benji is going to make a movie about the Beatniks next with Jesse Eisenberg from Adventureland. He’s going to play Lucien Carr, a less-well-known figure from the Beats’ early days who nonetheless played an integral role in bringing them together. So I have that and Bright Star to look forward to. Well, I’ve got to go try on some diaphanous gowns Cousin laid on my bed in preparation for our upcoming parties. Looks like I’ll be doing drag before San Francisco after all!

Cousin told me the first night that he and J both walk around the house naked from time to time. K. does, too, occasionally. That's how it goes here! Being the shy thing I am, I’ll probably keep my underwear on at least.

Temporal dissolution and gold styrofoam

Man alive, what a beautiful day. I sold my bike! Guy came over this morning, examined it, took it for a little spin up the road (he asked if I wanted to hold his wallet, but some people you just trust immediately), and said he’d take it! (One thing I’m going to miss about Portland: cute, skinny cycle boys.) He was only the second one to look at it, too. Now I’m trying to unload my computer but I don’t know if it’ll happen since the day of the desktop is over. Its selling point is that it comes with lots of expensive software (InDesign, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc.) pre-installed.

It was beautiful today in more than one way: the weather, for sure – an encouraging glimmer of spring. And also I was more active than I’ve been in awhile, fully emerged from my recent spell of winter doldrums. I spraypainted a mannequin head gold (for reasons known only to myself). It looks oddly beautiful, like a crumbled Egyptian statue. Afterwards I went out and about and had myself a productive day. Stopped by Justin & Emie’s to talk Art Police and get a new blue cloth bandage on my recent knife wound, which has healed very well. Then went to Goodwill in search of props for the film: a badge and bad art. Didn’t find either – well, there was plenty of bad art, but nothing that quite grabbed me the right way. (The perfect thing would be a painting of a cop hanging from a tree or being shot, then you’d have the art police in the film objecting to art depicting their death, it would make it kinda darkly funny.) Jean called to say she’d found the coolest vintage book on Lou Reed and the V.U. at Goodwill (which I had just left!) and asking if I wanted it but I stood firm by my policy of NO MORE STUFF. (I’m going to sell some of my books at Powell’s this week, except the precious few I just can’t live without.) Then to PSU where I took advantage of my dwindling student privileges to print out free copies of the finalized Art Police script. We are having a cast meeting I believe on Saturday then filming (at long last) next weekend.

After PSU I road the streetcar into Northwest, on a mission to find the house on the corner of 25th & Kearney where my cousin used to live. He can’t remember the house number and needs it for the book. I found it all right (photo above), a massive many-windowed dark old house with a gnarly witch tree in the hill-shaped front yard. There I felt an eerie sense of what I might call “temporal dissolution” – the sense of time being unreal, and of the lingering presence of another person who once stood right where you stand now. In other words, I tried to imagine my cousin walking out the front door as I stood on the steps. I didn’t bring a pen to write the house number down, just memorized it, then walked away and started thinking of other things and like a moron had forgotten it within ten blocks, so had to walk back and get the number again! (Memory isn’t what it used to be.) Nice day for walking, though, I didn’t much mind. Finally I picked up a few groceries at Trader Joe’s and checked to see if they had any boxes I could take for moving, and the stocker girl was very sweet to stop what she was doing and check for me, but they didn’t have any usable ones. (Where does one find cardboard boxes? Aside from buying them, which seems silly.)

Yesterday cousin Ant called from Bora Bora where he & J. are vacationing, he said there’s a place that opens into a hole in the ocean, so apparently there was a big round glass window IN THEIR HOTEL ROOM that opened directly into the sea – underwater! – and as we were talking a manta ray swam up and was playing right outside their window! Ant was yelling for J. to get the camera. The life they lead is the kind we used to watch on television shows about rich people. But I’m happy for my cousin. He and I both know what it’s like to live in evil welfare apartments in the small-town Midwest, where dreams are crushed and people cut off one another’s legs with lawn mowers for sport. He deserves his happiness. And he works hard, too. And I’m going to work while I’m there. It’ll be a vacation to be sure, and I’m sure as hell going to enjoy six months on Maui, but it’ll be an active enjoyment, not idle.

Now, let’s see, what do I have to get done before I leave? I’ve been stacking the deck heavily of late. I have three articles due to J.O. on the 23rd, including a substantial one on a gay porn star who has written a book about how to be a gay porn star (he just offered to put me in front of the camera after our interview!), plus three films I’m reviewing from PIFF; I’m volunteering at the Loveshow next Friday as an alcohol monitor (lizard?); shooting and editing a short film; publishing my book; hosting a going-away gathering on March 18th (with friends from Glacier visiting – Lisa who shares my birthday!), plus school stuff and everything I have to do to be ready to move. Hot damn, it’s a good thing I like being busy!

And on that note, I think I better go do some work. Kiss meow, glam