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September 30 - November 11, 2025
more importantly it was a primer for an outlaw way of life, in which every crisis or devastation was merely an opportunity to demonstrate unflappable worldliness and grace.
Experience is a badge of pride. It matters to stay afloat, live on your nerves, keep smiling.
“Their war,” she writes, “was against ignorance, the bankruptcy of beauty, and the truancy of culture. These were people who hated and scorned pettiness, intolerance, bigotry, mediocrity, ugliness, and spiritual myopia; the blindness that makes life hollow and insipid was unacceptable.”
fortunately for us they've left a lot of themselves behind in forms more durable than bodies.
“It is important that you recognize that there is no experience that comes into your life that is below your dignity.” — Dr. Peebles, a nineteenth century Scottish doctor
The skin of his face was so taut over protruding bones that I feared for his head, the same sympathetic fear one has for the safety of an egg.
when he told me that he was premature and only weighed a pound at birth, I envisioned him as an infant, compact like a pound cake, lying in a clear plastic preemie life support box, while nurse's aides were off loafing, already rococo and bursting his bunting wrapper with his dreams and plans of film scenarios. I'm sure he was entertaining the other babies, making them laugh about the inept hospital staff, their moms and dads, and the oddness of being born.
There comes a time when even the most optimistic people, like myself, realize that life among certain humans cannot be easy, that sometimes it is unmanageable and low-down, that all people are quixotic, and haunted, and burdened, and there's just no way to lift their load for them.
It's called the Witch's Knoll because supposedly it's where the old broom riders met to toil and trouble over their bubbling brew on full moon coven nights. It's the windiest part of the Cape and the wildest.
Dressed in curtains and blankets, we took her to the Tauton Mental Hospital in Rhode Island, and she was admitted and dressed in a clean white hospital gown and ushered into warmth and medication. Seeing this, we were all pretty jealous.
It's a fact that guilt rarely affects a man's sleep.
After this first tattoo, I was hooked. Through the years, I couldn't stop tattooing myself. I thought of it as body decoration. I never wanted to be too nude, even without clothes. Now, I'd always be a little dressed.
Cape Cod winters can be brutal and boring or lonely, but not this one. We got to know each other. Tattooing stirred conversation. It was better than hanging in a bar, more sociable than Canasta, more exciting than Monopoly, as challenging as Scrabble, and cheaper than gambling at poker. In the old traditional New England way, it was an arty masochist's version of a sewing bee.
there are some very boring years in every immortal person's life.
I planned what I was going to do with the money. The first thing would be to move into a better home. Then I'd buy an airplane ticket to some beach. I would rest. If a vacation didn't work to relax me, I'd use the credit cards to have a lobotomy. Then I would be stupid and blissful instead of stupid and stressed-out.
If they could eat glass and fire, then they might know something about how I could stop eating my heart out.
This is what future women will look like, I thought. Ethereal, long, lean, able to see the scope of things from a higher altitude, ready to lope away when danger threatens.
Could a human being hold this kind of beauty in their eyes without going blind?
You would have been a star without John. He just made you a FAMOUS star,”
Many years and brain cells ago, I had this belief that everyone would be happy someday.
Being a human being isn't easy, what with all these insatiable physical, emotional, and intellectual desires.
I used to hate the fact that there weren't any fish in the fountains and lakes in Central Park, but then I found that they've all been fried up and eaten by hungry people and that's good because it's really proletarian. I've been hungry and I have a fishing rod, so I get this.
Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live. You might as well. You're going to die soon enough anyway and I guarantee when it happens you won't be ready.
This really was just the beginning and she was finally, after all these years, being included into life's mysterious order where tranquility's sweet bloodless arms would envelop her and rock her until the end.
I know it's absurd and ridiculous, but now whenever I take a bath I see Julie pouring out of the faucet, and I begin to wonder just how many other odd people and complete strangers are in the bathtub floating around with me.
Looking at the lights of Newark New Jersey through world weary eyes, Alex and Joanna were incredibly depressed.
For an old friend, would one dream any less?
He let the past go, it was too dark, he gave up thinking about the future, it was too obscure.
Floating on Confidence Lake, on a queen sized inflatable rubber pancake kind of thing, was Molly, the woman who lately had been thinking of herself as a joke.
Meanwhile Molly was dreaming that a giant woman was holding her in her palm and whispering about things under her, “All the living things down here, Molly, are much smaller than you.” This was definitely a good dream because Molly never thought anything was smaller than herself. She was the smallest thing she could imagine.
She looked at that tree and remembered that delineations didn't matter, didn't exist. Molly was right in there with the tree, she and the tree were just a bunch of swirling atoms,
She suddenly remembered that she couldn't separate herself from everything around her. “You're in the soup, Molly,” she told herself.
All at once now, she didn't hate anything because she didn't see any reason to take everything so seriously, things were okay after all. The sun would go up and down, she'd walk in it, days would go by, she'd eat and sleep in them. She was okay. Everything seemed a bit more friendly once she knew it was her everywhere she looked.
In Swear Allegiance in a hot pink dress and fluffy white hair you said, “I'm green with envy.” In the same film you said, “Honey, I'm blue.” Later you said, “According to your books, I'm in the red.” You were wearing yellow. Did you realize what a colorful role that was?
Another thing I couldn't help noticing is that everyone around seems to be downright euphoric and they do it all without drugs. In the States, to get this high one would have to snort something. Here I believe it's the tomatoes.
Could it be that it came from outer space or the State Department? What a great sci-fi novel it would make—if there are any interesting authors left to write the book. That's the thing that's most disturbing and hardest to accept … it threatens to wipe out a good deal of our creative minds.
I believe that one of the most important things for a person who lives and works in New York is to get away from it for at least two months a year. There is just such a bombardment to the senses here that it gets taxing. Even walking out on the street for a leisurely stroll can be hair-raising. Car horns blare, people scream at you, you walk in dogshit, your feet get tangled in garbage, people bump right into you and don't even say excuse me, buses will mow you down, bicyclists will play chicken with you, taxi cab doors open in your path and some people will even laugh at your shoes. Love,
Naturally, the word “art” is different for everyone. But we can all agree that art is spirit in matter, that it is the noblest of all noble things, that it is beauty, however we perceive that word.
People, like rodents, tend to gather in groups seeking their own peers.
If a group happens to band together because of art (the one word in history that has never had bad press except in fascist times), then that group must be okay, or at the very least interesting and romantic.
All of it is worthless but all of it is true, and that is something.
One of our very finest weapons is art and it is being badly mistreated. It could be used strategically to influence events.
Oh, just relax. I didn't want to get you started thinking about politics. Not with all this inspired work floating around. I could cite some more examples of other good art, but I'll wait until there's some other world catastrophe.
The thought crossed my mind as well when I got on the Pan Am flight for Rome. But I left my mind open so the thought would whistle right through like the wind.
Still, as I watched the July 4th hoopla via satellite in Italy I felt a strange warmth, like patriotism swelling in my heart—but perhaps it was merely pasta pesto indigestion.
The act of being alive certainly is an oppressive job. We haul the mass with each step.
Is there any way to lessen the anguish of gravity? All we want to do is rise above the weight. How? Here are a few possibilities: 1) Love. You've heard the expression “walking on air.” 2) Philosophy. Well-known as a medium for transcendentalism. 3) Religion. The highway for the freedom-bound. 4) Creativity. One seems to float when the piece is finished. 5) Culture. Remember when your second-grade teacher told you that books will open a new world for you? Art falls into this category, but not all art can ease the pain of gravity. Some art makes it worse. Last there is: 6) Humor. This is the
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Hidden and waiting in just about every ordinary event is potential humor.
One can hardly hold the tongue all the time. Glance around. Don't you see lots of spiritual vexations trying to drag you down? One must stand up and be a grouch.
Like the mutant fish, we just have to learn to adapt. We have to evolve to meet the modern toxic demands that tax our internal organs.
