Weblog 203
December 27, 2009~ 12:00am
Yes, to all outward appearances, I was a bit of a Scrooge this year....
...meaning, as my dearest friend from California put it, I was a 'Christmas hermit'. I stayed home. I communed with my ghosts. I grew melancholy. I cried. (I don't think Scrooge did that, but 'bah humbugging' nevertheless it was, I suppose) -though what I was seeking was clarity and closeness to those I'd lost recently.
I missed my cat terribly. The absence of Garnet, Wayne's sister, was a huge hole for both of us. She played a large part in our holidays for almost 20 years. Christmas Eve dinner was always in her company, as well as New Year's-- for many, many years. Those rends in the fabric of the holidays seemed overwhelming to both of us, and I couldn't really surmount the sadness by globbing on the externals: they didn't fit-- no matter how I tried to throw off the depression.
Talking with Wayne this evening, we've decided that although our separate Christmas islands didn't truly work for us - either of us --we're going to start a new tradition for just the two of us on Christmas day itself. First off: Chinese food at a restaurant- (one of the few places still open on the holiday....lol) -then a movie at the theater. That's when all the big ones premier, and we never go OUT to the movies, so it'll be a treat. (And then.....I don't know....maybe it's fear. Fear I'll lose more family whose absence will be more painful with the coming years, who knows?)
Anyway, I do feel that Dicken's 'Christmas Carol' was very apropos in its theme of ghost visitations. More than Halloween, Christmas is the time for it. It's always filled with ghosts-- memories and ghosts.
They visit one by one. They harrow...they commune... and try as we might to hang onto them, they float away again. We recall our childhoods....the painful and the happy parts. We think about folks who have passed over, and how they look on (or we imagine they do)
- and it feels mournful to me. (Or it did this year, that's for sure.) I just couldn't muster the cheer necessary for communal celebration. Thanksgiving was wonderful, but Christmas felt solemn to me. So it goes. Years pass, and the chairs empty, one by one....
I think of my mother, nearly 90, and how awful it will be when she's gone. Somehow the thought of her in the midst of family- in it, but also outside of it the way old folks seem to be, was an ache I couldn't endure. Not now. Not this year. I was reminded of an episode of an old, favorite TV show, 'Millenium'- that featured a Christmas Eve service where, at midnight, you could see the ghosts of those who would die in the coming year....Frank Black saw his father coming out of church. It was a weird and terrifying moment- and although the two of them were estranged, very poignant.
I'm raw this holiday season. Defenseless. I holed up and I sat with the dead. I let my heartache out, and oh, my gentle readers, I am glad that it's done for this year. This was a hard one.
December 27, 2009~ 4:15pm
Last night we watched a documentary on the life of Dominick Dunne, "After The Party". I'd become fascinated with Dunne since picking up his photo essay book "The Way We Lived Then" -at the thrift store a couple of months ago. It was a trip down memory lane for me, and brought back the 50's and 60's with such vivid recall, I was enchanted. This fella knew everyone. Born star struck, Dunne, an admitted namedropper and celebrity collector, was also a very sad person, very divided in himself. He always wore the look of someone scared to death you're gonna find him out.
You can certainly see that in the dark and frightened eyes in this shot taken in 1962 on a London Train. He appears severely uncomfortable in his own skin-- (as he would have been the first to admit, the camera doesn't lie.)
Normally I'd dismiss such a personality as being just part of pop culture and move on, but there is something so compellingly wounded about Dunne- a vulnerability so apparent, it was impossible for me not to want to know more.
He was born the 'sissy son' of six children to a wealthy Irish heart surgeon. His father picked on him mercilessly. His Irish Catholic family never quite fit in with high society because being Catholic was the death knell in those circles.
He married an heiress whom he adored. They had three beautiful children.
(He forced them to sit for 'serious portraits' for the annual Christmas cards. "Like Lord Snowden"- his son, Griffin joked. "We hated it.") He got his foot in the door in the early years of television working as a producer and from there, he rubbed elbows with movie stars, and began to court celebrities of every stripe. He threw lavish parties...lived in just the right neighborhoods. Dunne was a hanger-on and a courtier and he loved it-- so much so, he eventually lost his marriage when his far more level-headed wife grew tired of the constant round of parties and the inevitable hijinks that went with it. Then he began to lose it all.
Dunne got involved in drugs. His big movie 'Ash Wednesday' with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, was a flop. More drugs...more unsavory people. At bottom, Dunne went off to a cabin in Montana and started to write.
His novels enjoyed popular success, and were thinly veiled stories of celebrities caught in one scandal or another, but Dunne became a successful writer.
After the murder of his daughter -Poltergeist star, Dominique Dunne- he found his calling. From that point, seeking justice became the passion of his life.
He attended the O.J. trial, the Menendez brothers' trial for the double homcide of their parents, the Phil Spector trials-- and always, always wanting justice for the dead- something that had not happened with the murderer of his daughter- a man who ended up serving only two and a half years for her strangulation. Dunne was snatched up by Vanity Fair as their leading columnist and up until his death in August 2009, Dunne remained thrilled by his own fame. I find that charming. Can't help it. There was an innocence about his pure joy-- and it was the joy of a little boy whose dad beat him, who never fit in, who was 'skating by on a pass' for so much of his life and who probably (or very definitely)- was bisexual. Another onus to have to hide an entire lifetime.
Here he his two years before his death of bladder cancer, and ON THE RED CARPET- with Sharon Stone....
the place he'd wanted to be his entire life, right next to the stars like a child bedazzled (and yes, I loved the unabashed joy he had in being near them.) Dunne to the end was an innocent. I truly believe it. After the death of his daughter he finally had a purpose, and despite what his many detractors may have thought of the man, I admire his strengths.
I believe they were formidable in the last three decades of his life.
December 31, 2009~ 7:15pm
Here I sit, on the ass-end of the year... enjoying my solitude this time. I've come out of my funk and last night Wayne and I celebrated his birthday by going out for a nice dinner at our our favorite restaurant, and today I VERY NEARLY got caught up with work!
After slipping and sliding into the office today on roads that were untouched by the usual road crews (because schools are still out for the Christmas holiday)- I was just glad to get there in one piece through the squalls and the slush, and I settled down to some serious work. I typed like a Gatling gun, and shot my way almost through the mountain...lol.
What helped was an astonishing video I watched after I opened my email yesterday and found what was probably the best thing to uplift me- a new baby elephant!
I don't have FLASH here at home as you know, but I was able to watch this at work yesterday, and I was glad I'd gotten in early before the others arrived because it made me very emotional. Click on the little cutie below to watch one of the most amazing things you'll ever witness.
Warning: It's messy, as birth always is....so if you're squeamish about such things (and on a LARGE SCALE... an animal weighing on average 8 1/2 tons is a LOT messier than a mere human female) you may not get past the messiness to the joy waiting for you --as well as some pretty nail-biting moments.
I've been smitten by mother elephants and their babies since I first watched 'Dumbo' as a little kid when it was shown on the 'Walt Disney Show' back in the 50's. This film brought a host of these memories to the fore for me-- the tenderest and most innocent parts of me.
And what better way to start off New Year-- than with new life? And elephants are lucky (wrinkly old cuties that they are)... HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY! Hope it's a safe and better one for all of us.
December 31, 2009~ 9:55pm
OMG!!! After dropping my cable several years ago and seeing NO TV since then, I did get a digital converter box by utilizing the government-subsidized voucher about a year ago, but was unable to hook it up properly. (You don't know how frustrated I was. It was so bad I couldn't face attempting it again) - but tonight I FINALLY SUCCEEDED! I JUST WATCHED '30 ROCK' FOR THE FIRST TIME! lol!!! Clear as a bell, by using a ten dollar from Walmart. I feel like Einstein! I'm gonna watch the BALL DROP IN TIMES SQUARE. I am a genius! LOL!!! I have tomorrow to myself.....I have mindless entertainment-- and for now it feels glorious. Except for commercials. I don't know how much of that I can stand... but it's nice to have the option to indulge in brain-dead behavior again if I choose. Whoopie!
***
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Yes, to all outward appearances, I was a bit of a Scrooge this year....
...meaning, as my dearest friend from California put it, I was a 'Christmas hermit'. I stayed home. I communed with my ghosts. I grew melancholy. I cried. (I don't think Scrooge did that, but 'bah humbugging' nevertheless it was, I suppose) -though what I was seeking was clarity and closeness to those I'd lost recently.
I missed my cat terribly. The absence of Garnet, Wayne's sister, was a huge hole for both of us. She played a large part in our holidays for almost 20 years. Christmas Eve dinner was always in her company, as well as New Year's-- for many, many years. Those rends in the fabric of the holidays seemed overwhelming to both of us, and I couldn't really surmount the sadness by globbing on the externals: they didn't fit-- no matter how I tried to throw off the depression.
Talking with Wayne this evening, we've decided that although our separate Christmas islands didn't truly work for us - either of us --we're going to start a new tradition for just the two of us on Christmas day itself. First off: Chinese food at a restaurant- (one of the few places still open on the holiday....lol) -then a movie at the theater. That's when all the big ones premier, and we never go OUT to the movies, so it'll be a treat. (And then.....I don't know....maybe it's fear. Fear I'll lose more family whose absence will be more painful with the coming years, who knows?)
Anyway, I do feel that Dicken's 'Christmas Carol' was very apropos in its theme of ghost visitations. More than Halloween, Christmas is the time for it. It's always filled with ghosts-- memories and ghosts.
They visit one by one. They harrow...they commune... and try as we might to hang onto them, they float away again. We recall our childhoods....the painful and the happy parts. We think about folks who have passed over, and how they look on (or we imagine they do)
- and it feels mournful to me. (Or it did this year, that's for sure.) I just couldn't muster the cheer necessary for communal celebration. Thanksgiving was wonderful, but Christmas felt solemn to me. So it goes. Years pass, and the chairs empty, one by one....
I think of my mother, nearly 90, and how awful it will be when she's gone. Somehow the thought of her in the midst of family- in it, but also outside of it the way old folks seem to be, was an ache I couldn't endure. Not now. Not this year. I was reminded of an episode of an old, favorite TV show, 'Millenium'- that featured a Christmas Eve service where, at midnight, you could see the ghosts of those who would die in the coming year....Frank Black saw his father coming out of church. It was a weird and terrifying moment- and although the two of them were estranged, very poignant.
I'm raw this holiday season. Defenseless. I holed up and I sat with the dead. I let my heartache out, and oh, my gentle readers, I am glad that it's done for this year. This was a hard one.
December 27, 2009~ 4:15pm
Last night we watched a documentary on the life of Dominick Dunne, "After The Party". I'd become fascinated with Dunne since picking up his photo essay book "The Way We Lived Then" -at the thrift store a couple of months ago. It was a trip down memory lane for me, and brought back the 50's and 60's with such vivid recall, I was enchanted. This fella knew everyone. Born star struck, Dunne, an admitted namedropper and celebrity collector, was also a very sad person, very divided in himself. He always wore the look of someone scared to death you're gonna find him out.
You can certainly see that in the dark and frightened eyes in this shot taken in 1962 on a London Train. He appears severely uncomfortable in his own skin-- (as he would have been the first to admit, the camera doesn't lie.)
Normally I'd dismiss such a personality as being just part of pop culture and move on, but there is something so compellingly wounded about Dunne- a vulnerability so apparent, it was impossible for me not to want to know more.
He was born the 'sissy son' of six children to a wealthy Irish heart surgeon. His father picked on him mercilessly. His Irish Catholic family never quite fit in with high society because being Catholic was the death knell in those circles.
He married an heiress whom he adored. They had three beautiful children.
(He forced them to sit for 'serious portraits' for the annual Christmas cards. "Like Lord Snowden"- his son, Griffin joked. "We hated it.") He got his foot in the door in the early years of television working as a producer and from there, he rubbed elbows with movie stars, and began to court celebrities of every stripe. He threw lavish parties...lived in just the right neighborhoods. Dunne was a hanger-on and a courtier and he loved it-- so much so, he eventually lost his marriage when his far more level-headed wife grew tired of the constant round of parties and the inevitable hijinks that went with it. Then he began to lose it all.
Dunne got involved in drugs. His big movie 'Ash Wednesday' with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, was a flop. More drugs...more unsavory people. At bottom, Dunne went off to a cabin in Montana and started to write.
His novels enjoyed popular success, and were thinly veiled stories of celebrities caught in one scandal or another, but Dunne became a successful writer.
After the murder of his daughter -Poltergeist star, Dominique Dunne- he found his calling. From that point, seeking justice became the passion of his life.
He attended the O.J. trial, the Menendez brothers' trial for the double homcide of their parents, the Phil Spector trials-- and always, always wanting justice for the dead- something that had not happened with the murderer of his daughter- a man who ended up serving only two and a half years for her strangulation. Dunne was snatched up by Vanity Fair as their leading columnist and up until his death in August 2009, Dunne remained thrilled by his own fame. I find that charming. Can't help it. There was an innocence about his pure joy-- and it was the joy of a little boy whose dad beat him, who never fit in, who was 'skating by on a pass' for so much of his life and who probably (or very definitely)- was bisexual. Another onus to have to hide an entire lifetime.
Here he his two years before his death of bladder cancer, and ON THE RED CARPET- with Sharon Stone....
the place he'd wanted to be his entire life, right next to the stars like a child bedazzled (and yes, I loved the unabashed joy he had in being near them.) Dunne to the end was an innocent. I truly believe it. After the death of his daughter he finally had a purpose, and despite what his many detractors may have thought of the man, I admire his strengths.
I believe they were formidable in the last three decades of his life.
December 31, 2009~ 7:15pm
Here I sit, on the ass-end of the year... enjoying my solitude this time. I've come out of my funk and last night Wayne and I celebrated his birthday by going out for a nice dinner at our our favorite restaurant, and today I VERY NEARLY got caught up with work!
After slipping and sliding into the office today on roads that were untouched by the usual road crews (because schools are still out for the Christmas holiday)- I was just glad to get there in one piece through the squalls and the slush, and I settled down to some serious work. I typed like a Gatling gun, and shot my way almost through the mountain...lol.
What helped was an astonishing video I watched after I opened my email yesterday and found what was probably the best thing to uplift me- a new baby elephant!
I don't have FLASH here at home as you know, but I was able to watch this at work yesterday, and I was glad I'd gotten in early before the others arrived because it made me very emotional. Click on the little cutie below to watch one of the most amazing things you'll ever witness.
Warning: It's messy, as birth always is....so if you're squeamish about such things (and on a LARGE SCALE... an animal weighing on average 8 1/2 tons is a LOT messier than a mere human female) you may not get past the messiness to the joy waiting for you --as well as some pretty nail-biting moments.
I've been smitten by mother elephants and their babies since I first watched 'Dumbo' as a little kid when it was shown on the 'Walt Disney Show' back in the 50's. This film brought a host of these memories to the fore for me-- the tenderest and most innocent parts of me.
And what better way to start off New Year-- than with new life? And elephants are lucky (wrinkly old cuties that they are)... HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY! Hope it's a safe and better one for all of us.
December 31, 2009~ 9:55pm
OMG!!! After dropping my cable several years ago and seeing NO TV since then, I did get a digital converter box by utilizing the government-subsidized voucher about a year ago, but was unable to hook it up properly. (You don't know how frustrated I was. It was so bad I couldn't face attempting it again) - but tonight I FINALLY SUCCEEDED! I JUST WATCHED '30 ROCK' FOR THE FIRST TIME! lol!!! Clear as a bell, by using a ten dollar from Walmart. I feel like Einstein! I'm gonna watch the BALL DROP IN TIMES SQUARE. I am a genius! LOL!!! I have tomorrow to myself.....I have mindless entertainment-- and for now it feels glorious. Except for commercials. I don't know how much of that I can stand... but it's nice to have the option to indulge in brain-dead behavior again if I choose. Whoopie!
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