A Long Walk

Day Trip to Strasbourg

Colette Yolande had worn her hair cropped short, above her neck, for years.
It was graying into white.
She wore bright colors, turquoise and fuchsias whenever an occasion allowed it, and even when it didn’t.
She looked intensely through her piercing hazel eyes, as if she were about to reveal a great secret from the depths of time, or ask you for one.

Looking at a tattered copy of Hermann Hess’s Steppenwolf I saw on Nathalie’s bookshelf in Salt Spring, my mind raced back to how much Colette had loved to speak and read German; she’d mastered it.
She kept telling me that I must read the Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

The last journey I took with my mother was to Strasbourg,
on the far eastern edge of France.
She could barely walk anymore, but I brought along a
fold up wheelchair so she wouldn't have to.
We ate pasta in a Restaurant, outdoors.
She laughed that day, reminiscing about the many
trips we took to exotic countries when I was a child.

There was a vibrancy to the air around us...A timeless link between the "now" and the travels of early childhood, the Ocean liners docked in Venice, Athens, Mythylene, Bergen, Oslo...The Midnight Sun.

Dusty streets of Beirut in Wartime, smoke and tear gas.

Dry rocks of the parched Mediterranean in the Technicolor Sixties.

We held a toast, to all the flights and crossings of my childhood,
the broken wine glass in Piraeus, the lopsided family that we had been.

She sipped spaghetti noodles with all the strength left in her.

Going back to the train station, we argued. It erupted like a sudden tropical storm.
My watchfulness dropped for all but a second, but the Devil was out of the bag, running loose on the square, skidding on the pavement, wet from a sudden and passing shower.
I was exhausted. My own strength diminished from months of preparing for what was about to come.

It was Seven years ago.

La miscela del Sant'Eustachio

This is where subjectivity comes to an abrupt end.

There may be debate across the World over what makes a good cup of Coffee, but if you've ever been to Rome, truly the finest city on Earth, you will know that this very blend is Yardstick material.
You find these guys a few steps from Piazza di Navona, and once you've had a cup, or two, or three, you find yourself devising plots to export several kilos of the stuff.
Rightfully.

Drinking Coffee anywhere else becomes torture.
This Coffee is like " A great lay for the palate "...
An impossible act to follow.
Truly !

The Real Thing

Anyone going to Rome?
Bring 2 Empty Suitcases with you...I will pay top
Dollar!...Make that Euros...

The Love That Binds Us All

I thought someone should do a TV documentary on Human Beings.
Very much like a National Geographic Special:

“The Human in his Habitat”

It would be narrated by an elderly distinguished actor, with a voice like James Mason’s.
You’d see the human “hive”, with adults grabbing at food, fighting for a parking spot, you’d see pretty young things dabbing their skins with delicate perfumes, going out clubbing, then you’d have a night vision film of mating sessions.
You’d see people turning to Priests after a Tsunami engulfs an island full of sunbathers from Scotland.
You’d have War, with armies decimating populations.

The “voice” would theorize and pose profound questions…Mysteries would remain forever unsolved.

You’d close with an office worker picking his nose.

As it is, when I see a film on the life of Birds, or Felines, or Gnats, I feel as if there is nothing more to learn about any and all aspects of human behavior…

Love is without a doubt the unifying force in the universe, so long as “love” is large enough to include any definition you can stick on the acts of Feeding, Needing, Fucking, Shoving in your Pocket and running for the door…

What’s there NOT to understand, really?

A fly lands on a Venus Fly Trap.
A magpie weaves a nest out of rags to protect its young.
A Monkey Learns Sign Language.
A Woman throws a wedding ring down a toilet.
A Trained White Bengali Tiger tries to eat his trainer on a Vegas Stage.
An old man dies.
A bark Beetle shoots his dart through a layer of wood to fertilize the womb of an unsuspecting insect from another species.
A down and out actor has his pregnant wife shot through the head.
A caged Fox has an electrical rod shoved up its rectum so a fur coat can be fashioned from his distress.

All seen on TV.

When I spoke to my Judy on the phone, she said the choices of our youth are not mistakes, they are merely things that seemed right, at the time…Would I argue with that, if I didn’t love her?

Life is a Web, and if we’re lucky, we’re still running from that large moving furball with legs that's coming for us, way back there.

The Universe

The Universe ( Artist's Rendition )
Current theories depict the universe as something
not unlike this.
A similar picture was recently discovered in the lap of
a Famed Astrophysicist now confined to a wheelchair.
The veiled and blacked out areas of the image are meant to represent yet unknown regions of what scientists now believe is our home.

Barbi Benton

Barbi Benton, pictured here in her Cosmic Form, as a self-contained Vortex of Space Time, as she truly is -- not as she appears...

World Destruction ( For Philosophical Purposes )

I recently heard someone flunk a radio puzzle because she didn’t know who Barbi Benton was.
How can anyone hope to figure their way out of this mess, if they can’t even remember Barbi Benton?
My head is full of tidbits of knowledge, which, seemingly amount to nothing, and yet, if you string them up, seem to create a pretty complete picture of universal principles that could someday be reduced to a small book.

I’d call it: “The Universe, and how to destroy it”.

The book would contain several watered down references to Quantum Mechanics, Hindu Philosophy, Documentaries on the life of Insects and Carnivorous Mammals and Plants, Darwinian Gene Pool Selection, and finally, some musings on Nihilism, Solipsism, Gods and Angels.

All attempts at waxing metaphysical, if carried out successfully, are tantamount to taking an axe to the physical universe, but also, and ultimately, to the metaphysical universe as well, and ultimately, the Self.

All light Off.

The Hindus have a saying: “If you see Buddha coming at you, kill him”.
( It is recommended that you substitute your divinity of choice to get the full effect )

Funny enough, the more you understand about reality and how it appears, the more you realize that it is all inclusive. You can fit religious devotion, complete agnosticism, scientific confusion, Bing Bang, Creationism, Evolution, God at the top, or, Nothingness one notch above…it doesn’t matter…There’s room for as much as your little heart cares to understand; for therein lies the trick: Information is not what’s lacking…Most of what we don’t know is unknown because we do not want to know it…Adam and Eve run from the Garden, unwilling to face how naked reality truly is…with every passing moment, they turn away…If they were to look, at any point…Everything would vanish, beginning with themselves.

People familiar with spiritual dogma will know that it is often said that everything in the material realm is empty and eventually leads to disillusion. Would this not make sense, if the very object of reality, which we stare at through the self, is woven on “nothing” – the very same nakedness Adam and his home girl are running from…?
Quantum Physics seem to think so. Quantum Physicists tell us that at the core of the smallest particle of matter, the Atom, is a powerful concentration of rapidly ondulating movement in motion: nothing.
Matter is, in the absolute, made of nothing...The Observed, caught in a hopeless mindfuck with the Observer, mirrors back the void.

I haven’t seen Barbi Benton in a couple of decades, but I’m sure she would agree with the bit about disillusion – Poor thing.
She dumped her Mack-Daddy, Hugh Heffner, long before Viagra hit the scene.

This Journey, of course, can only be done alone; asking anyone along the way, no matter how smart or angelic they seem, to take us to the “Ground Zero” of our slumber would be like asking characters in a dream to agree with us that they do not exist, and that they may as well help us wake up and forego the Snooze Button, this time around, so we can go brush our teeth and move on…

Possible, but not likely; and not really in their best interest.

'See?

Put a grip of destruction in that world, Lil’Dawg.

In Memoriam

“…Family Man, his patience tried, put a torch to his home and warmed his hands by the fire; no greed, no desire…”
- David Sylvian -

Avatar Etiquette

In the East, the far East, they speak of AVATARS; disincarnate spirits
who have reached enlightenment only to return to Earthly Life,
to joyfully participate in the sorrows of the world – as they put it.

What they don’t say, in the Far East, is that Earth’s gravity greatly varies from one region to another, down here.
In fact, returning to France, after a lengthy stay in an Anglo-Saxon country, takes a bit of readjusting of its own – or, as 11 year old SASKIA would put it, walking through London’s Heathrow Terminal, earlier this week: “It’s so much cleaner and better organized over here”.

“Yes, Child”…

I now spent the better part of a week dealing with hare-brained store clerks telling me that for whatever reason, they couldn’t sell me the whatever it was that I was pointing to in the window, and I suffered the travel agents arguing that for whatever reason, I couldn’t request seating assignment wherever, and so on…

The French do know their Cheeses, though.

Another Thing I Can't Share With The French...

Three Different Homes In As Many Months

Is it beautiful schizophrenia to drift form Paris, through London, to Los Angeles, to New York, and back – in a short time?

All former homes, with former loves.

All merging into one large lane of plenty.

Going Up River Sideways

Making Paris Look Good

Funny being back here; nothing ever happens in France.
…

I read the news diagonally Sunday, to mourn the Snow Storms, and Mudslides I left Westward.
Johnny Carson died, so did Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s secretary; I trust it’ll make for a great bus ride to the Pearly Gates. Stale Jokes, Denials…
I would like to date a girl who’s got no idea who Johnny Carson was – or Nixon.

Younger women are full of qualities; not the least of which their relative lack of concern
with impending motherhood.

A few days ago, I engaged in a long conversation with a friend about his love for his Children, and his emotional bond with them. For a minute, he had me almost swayed.
He talked about the joy of reliving all the sensations of his own childhood, vicariously.
The late night Slumbers, Piggy Back riding on Adult shoulders after falling asleep in some faraway house…Staring at the Neon Lights swooshing past the car, in an endless tunnel.
The warm scent of a father’s arms; the safety of home.

As he talked, I drifted…

“Sounds to me like a quest for emotional orgasm”, I offered.
“what else is there”? he asked.
I was troubled by this exchange. I wondered if that’s all Love ever was: A four Letter Word, pointing to pleasure signals; masturbation.

The following day, though, I mulled it over.

I didn’t quite “buy” his whole shtick…Something was off.

So many people all around me are enjoying nesting, or dreading the fall from the tree. It’s all about kids these days…Women going nuts wanting them, estranged husbands regretting everything but having them…

Once and for all, I have to say that no one I have met makes me crave family life…

Family life, so far as I can tell, in fact, is a disaster wrapped in apology. The best that I have seen, in the recesses of the eyes of my silently suffering buddies, is quiet desperation…

Pandas in the Zoo.

…Land of the Blind…One Eyed Men…

No Resistance

The Best Ex-Girlfriend New York Can Buy

More Diner Breakfast Facts

Vital Morning Fluids

The Future Is Here

Mark

Back in the Saddle

Finally emerging from a three week hiatus from the land of Public Journalism,
I feel it is time to post a few photos from my ongoing journey through this here American Land.
Truth be told, these intense, and albeit gratifying screenwriting sessions with my friend and producer Raúl have sapped me of any residual energy for writing on a regular basis.
But all good things come to an end.

A chance meeting in a downtown computer shop led me to a man whose experience turns out to be of great interest, in the context of the story I am writing; he was a smuggler who lived in Key West for 20 years and ended up in jail for being caught smuggling Rock Cocaine in the Keys. I settled on paying him two hundred dollars to sit with me for an afternoon and tell me everything there is to know about crime in that part of the world. ‘Best way to spend two hundred dollars, it turns out… He was invaluable.

This trip has been a formidable rebooting of my system.

Back in New York City

Jesus Loves You

That's "You"...

Merry Christmas from New York

Out of Time

Final drive to Santa Monica.
Soon, we fly back to New York.
I don't feel that I'll be away very long, however.
L.A. will be home again, soon.

Syl & Nancy

Nancy called.
I haven’t seen her in 15 years, or so.
Judy’s little sister.
She’s passing through L.A.
We hugged, we laughed.
She’s bright and fearless – pretty!

What an evening – what a life !

She glances over to me every few minutes, and we laugh every time.

“See you … in Paris, next time”, she offers.

What a difference a few years can make.

My Ring

How did the Ring disappear?

And more importantly: "How did it return"?

Some Noteworthy L.A. Addresses

Some Noteworthy L.A. Addresses:

Kate Mantellini's in Beverley Hills, on Wilshire at Doheny
Cora's Coffee Shoppe, in Santa Monica -- Ocean avenue just North of Pico
Pace, 2100 Laurel Canyon, North of Hollywood Boulevard
Sushi Roku -- Wherever they are, now...

Christmas Wish List ( Part Five )

Zoe

I meet Zoe at PACE on Laurel Canyon.
We picked my last night in Los Angeles this year to
share a few hours, eat, enjoy a glass of Valpolicella…and talk about life, love,
food, staph infections and Black Widow bites.

The Restaurant is warm – "twee" – as they say in London.

Very French-Countryside, actually.

I feel as if I am outside of the realm of time, for a bit, at least.

Zoe tells me that she broke up with her boyfriend two days ago, but that he took it very well, and that he will be her friend forever.

Then, she volunteers that he checked himself into the hospital.
His hernia finally ruptured yesterday.

Any connection, I ask?
...When I get the boot, I prefer balling my eyes out, personally.

Zoe is bright, funny.

Zoe has directed three movies, already, at the age of thirty, and she says that she turned down DUDE WHERE’S MY CAR - Part II.

I think about that.

“turning down a job directing”.

Zoe is preparing a documentary on Autistic Kids, and I have been thinking of a way to get Judy to meet her.

Judy might like to meet some of my high achieving women friends -- either that or she might well not.
At any rate, Judy might enjoy being involved in making a film about a subject that she knows something about.
Would Judy ever consider coming to LA?

Zoe seems to think it’s a good idea.

I’m trying to picture Zoe’s life in Laurel Canyon; I’m trying to imagine growing up with Paul…John Lilly…

I’m trying to imagine Los Angeles as the Ground Zero of my life.

Zoe talks very freely of her intimate battles with Great White Sharks, Arachnoids, Boys and Men.

When she broaches sex, she is raw. Imagine Dr. Ruth as a beautiful athletic blonde banned by the F.C.C. -- and without an accent...

In her eyes, I see her mother, Barbara, then I see Paul, her dad…
Zoe tells our pretty waitress: "You have made our dining experience very enjoyable"!

Zoe is rich.

Upon Reflection...

Sand in the Hourglass.

In a day or two, I will leave California for the Cold North – New York City, New Haven…

Today, though, I’m on a sailboat, off the shore of Santa Monica and Marina Del Rey.

It’s warm. The wind is slight.

5 knots.

I want to make this moment spread out, like the water all around.

Ultimately, I know why it is that I feel so grounded here.

"Why L.A."...

Charlize's Cigars

Paul is very generous with his Cigar -- usually.
Paul got me to start smoking Cigars, in fact, in London,
in the Summer of 1995, at Brown's Hotel.
It was HE, and not Ridley, who helped me down the path of this
expensive habit -- albeit better for your health than cocaine -- if not cheaper.
Today, he brought 2 Cigars given to him courtesy of Charlize Theron.

I unwrap my Cigar, and take a whiff.

Paul laughs: "They haven't been Bill Clintoned" !

My Kinda Day

L.A. Nymphs ( Part One )

Pheromone Festival in Brentwood.


Zoe places her arm around my shoulders.

“You wanna hump my Twenty Four Year Old Half-Sister, don’t you?”, she whispers.
“You Bet.”, I answer.
“But she’s only Twenty Four!”, she continues.

Claudia, Zoe’s half sister, is adorable, indeed, but the one I’ve really got my eye on is Jen – with the cotton skirt and the Cowboy Boots – it’s a genuine L.A. look, presumably made popular some years back by Sheryl Crow. Jen is pure SEX and Giggles…
She seems soaked in liquor, fuzzy...Sensual.
Claudia is clearly the most beautiful girl in this colorful gathering, but what Jen lacks in shear beauty, she makes up for in raw flesh. She is dousing the place with pheromones. I can feel the trail of chemicals in the air…I can smell them…

A lovely sight all around, and a sure sign that I am aging.

“Jen is only TWENTY”, Zoe tells me…“Twenty!”… “She’s a Baby”!!!

It’s Zoe’s Thirtieth Birthday in this Posh Brentwood apartment, and Zoe, like any woman out of her Twenties, wants to torture a man by pretending she doesn’t understand the appeal of feminine youth in bloom.

“Why would someone like you want a girl of Twenty”?

I mull the question over.

I weigh my words.

I am trying to be truthful, because I know Zoe, of all people, wants me to be precise in my answer.

“What exactly”, I ask, “would make Jen more desirable if I were to wait – say – fifteen years, to start ogling”?

“Let’s face it, her sexual power is overwhelming at this point…She’ll never be stronger, in that sense”, I explain…

“And one more thing”, I add, “I see the way she rolls those thighs – She’s no baby, Zoe – In fact she can probably teach me how to walk and tie my shoelaces – This girl lives in LA, for god’s sake, she’s probably been a live-wire since the age of Thirteen”…

Indigenous Jen brushes past us on the way to the Liquor Table.
"Girl, you've got the ass and you know it"!, Zoe yells out.
Jen looks back at us grinning. Boots , Flesh, Skirt; deadly combinations.
I shrug.

"Can I rest my case"?, I ask.
“Fair enough”, Zoe fires back.

Zoe is, in fact, disingenuous, it turns out:

She volunteers: “Guys Ten Years Younger than me, always seem intimidated – when all I can feel is their heart pounding against me – I’m usually afraid they’re gonna keel over and die”.

“Oh, so you date 20 year old guys”? , I ask.

-“Sure, but they don’t know what they’re doing – it’s just a physical thing – they’re cute at that age”…

I shake my head. I’ve been had – again.

Zoe knows all about the "appeal"; she was playing with me.

She warned me that Dominique Swain would be there, knowing that the mere possibility of gawking at Lolita would'nt be lost on my Humbert-Humbert within.
It's a good thing that we're not back in '62, and that Sue Lyon wasn't the one riding up with me in the Elevator, earlier. As it is, I curb my enthusiasm, and act graciously as ever -- on the surface -- inside, I'm a mess. I will take days to recover.

Zoe is like a young Queen, beautiful and radiant, gliding across the room greeting her guests with ease – A peck on the Cheek, here – a bold chuckle there – She reminds me of Lana Turner.

Later, on the patio, she tells me that she regrets that she’ll never know what it’s like to have a Cock, as an appendage. Dominique-Lolita is intrigued, she joins the conversation.
I am the guy from DREAM ON -- travelling back 40 years in time --
Delores Haze!
I decide that the Now has more to offer.
I confess that I have never wondered about having a vagina of my own – I’m usually happy enough with the “rental” option.

Still, they lament that they will never experience the indignities of erectile dysfunction, so I tell them not to place such emphasis on the organ itself, and rather, suggest they rent FIGHT CLUB, and buy a copy of THE RAG & BONE SHOP OF THE HEART. That, I say, should be enough to help them understand what it is that we feel, as men…

Then, I think to myself: “If only they could see what I see, right now”…

If only they could see

Being a Man, at Zoe's 30th Birthday.

On Being a Man

Privileges

The Real Lolita and Me

Lo' 1962..................and Lo' 2004

Breakfast in America

The 70’s Pop Group SUPERTRAMP named an album Breakfast in America.

I always wondered if, as Englishmen, they shared my European fascination for the Art of serving Eggs in these United States.

The Diner Culture is a specialty unmatched anywhere on the Planet.

David Mamet says the most beautiful words in the whole English Language appear on a Menu: BREAKFAST SERVED ALL DAY

Someday, I might do a book, or a website, on the Best American Diners in business, and the Best Hash-Browns on a plate of Eggs.

A day cannot go wrong that begins with Eggs cooked The American Way.

One day, I went to breakfast with a Frenchman, fresh off the plane.

He sat down and told the waitress: “I want the Eggs-Any-Style”.

The Art of The "Dip"

Corned Beef Hash and Eggs, at Mel's Diner on Sunset.

A Plea to the British, and the occasional Other Europeans who profess to know
How to cook Eggs for public consumption:

-The reason “sunny side up” just doesn’t cut it, is that the “fun” of it all comes with busting up the yoke with your toast.

The best way, by far, to serve eggs on a plate, to me, is "Over Easy", which is to say:
"Fried on one side, then flipped with a Spatula and fried lightly on the other, without of course puncturing the yoke". This requires a fair amount of skill and the right utensils.

A Slice of Toast, made from a square loaf, creates two perfect crispy triangles that can be used to stab the thin layer of egg-white, thus creating an eruption of Yellow Lava.

Best enjoyed with Hash Browns, instead of just-potatoes, and, Crispy Bacon – another thing Europeans cannot cook – and a dab of Tabasco Sauce...

My preference tends to be Sour Dough Bread – Also good: Jewish Rye Bread.

Don’t try this at home.

Just What you Want to See

Christmas Wish List ( Part Four )

Sucking the Air out of the Room

I think about the fate of artists, and art, quite a bit these days.
'Could be that I am preparing to put my pencils away.

Art just 2 or 3 Centuries ago and Art in the "today" of today mean different things. There didn't use to be Art.
"Art" as we think of it, is a very Urban, Self Conscious, high concept.
It used to be "just a living".

I love the writer James Joyce.
He has a segment in PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN where he offers the most brilliant analysis.
He talks about Proper vs. Improper art.
"Kinetic Art", or Improper Art, is how he describes Art that is meant to move, or to illicit a reaction, compel or propel; Art either containing a message, or begging to generate one.
Art as a vehicle for Instant Social Commentary, he would say, is no different from Art that sells a underarm deodorant using a pretty face.
He says that this form of art is nothing more than "Didactic Pornography". But then he says that art that stops you, and puts you in a state of psychological arrest, static art -- the beholding the beauty of a fortunate composition -- of light hitting, shadows bathing forms, horizontals touching verticals -- that which appeals to the "right" brain, and not the "thinking Mental Mind", is Proper Art. Art that stops, but doesn't move to any sort of reaction.

To me, art is subjective for the millions who love to chatter about it, but for the few who partake in it seriously, it is rarely defined, and even more rarely referred to as Art, rather: "just another day at the office".

Simple Craftsmanship.

On that level, it becomes quite objective.
This is a bit heady, as reasonnings go, but it's an important topic...

The "democratic" views of the 20th Century have forced art to become "accessible" to everyone who "wishes to dabble in it", and therefore, has required that all standards be simplified, or "be made subjective", to allow the great unwashed to joyfully participate in the Sorrows of the Arts -- and bored rich kids to attend "Les Beaux Arts"-- and let's not forget -- to allow for Art Critics to hear themselves vomit verbiage...

Craft has become fickle fashion.
Sophistication is banned – relegated to the ghettos of Illustration and Menial Labor.
Who wants to refine a skill for 30 years, anymore?
Parasites have sucked all the air out of the room.

Lowest Common denominators are gathering, as we speak, in Art Supply Shops all around the World; they're buying streched canvas and pre-mixed Egg Tempera Paints... Happy as pigs in shit.
Business is booming.

The real Craftsmen of the Arts have had to pay a steep price for this, sadly.

Of Mice and Men

Anticipated Travels:
Leave LOS ANGELES for NEW YORK on Tuesday
Spend Christmas in New York with Viveka.
Stay in New York and Connecticut through January 16th,
WRITE A SCRIPT!...
then,
return to Paris...
For a While...

Then...

Big World, very big !

Darn! She did color it RED... Looks great too. She's got a date with Harry Potter soon, I think.

Small World; very small.

A friend goes to Interview this famous Costume Designer in London, they chat, then she writes down this note for him to give to me. All this because I left a Paw Print in the Guest Book at Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella, in Rome, a month ago...
Someday, people will know how to spell my name.

Role Model for Modern Men

Mythological Leftovers

Iron John

The phone rings, in my Cave.
Is this a Mamoth that I must kill?

It’s my Canadian filmmaker friend.

The news is grim; he still has no Star, and believes that his budget has been cut some more.
He is lost.
Lost at sea.
Without a Star.
...

Halfway 'round the World, in Paris, in another realm altogether, Sebastien is on IM.
I tell him about Robert Bly.

There’s no-one in France like Robert Bly, Sebastien reads English so he will be saved.

I tell him that Bly has charted Masculine Mythology; something which, for the most part, has been delicately excised from a young’s man’s education in a Society suddenly obsessed with Female Orgasmic Rights. Men have few useful philosophical life-rafts, in a place where women raise them, and fathers disappear at sea.

Fathers – derided for their pleasure, infantilized for their passions.

I know that, once a child, I grew up seeing the World through the eyes and needs of my Mother – this wasn’t much help, and I had to spend much of my adult life unlearning and reprogramming what amounted to counter-intuitive coping mechanisms.

A woman’s compass is useless to a man.

In our bones, we are hunters, gatherers, warriors.

We rest on fraternity for our survival.
Loyalty is our temple.

We do not know what awaits us when we return to the Cave.
If we die fighting to feed our young, their DNA will carry our Souls into a distant future, through which Nature, the Matrix, carves out a Time Traveler, selectively – a Specimen of Perfection, chiseled through the pain of time, through the crushing of defeat. The Survival of the fittest is man’s only destiny.
A female human has successfully mated with Sebastian. Many moons ago, she captured his seed, and cocooned his young, into our DNA chain.
Her work done, she has left the Cave -- Withdrew her love -- a bee, retracting its stinger.
Sebastian has no compass. He is lost at sea. He needs his warrior soul.
Who failed to teach him War?
Who suckled him into such weakness, that the bosom of life became his only wand?
Who has lulled him into this false security?
Who has rendered our fathers tired, and weak, so they can no longer forge our Swords?
Who gains from our slumber?
Deep at the bottom of the lake, where he has sunk, Man fights for his life.
In the depths of his nightmare, Iron John gives him fire and gold, his treasure.

Men have a Story.

Men have a Star, to guide them, back to the light.

Office View

Christmas Wish List ( Part Three )

Christmas Wish List ( Part Two )

Somber Hill of Fortune

If I could afford a home, right here, in this Strip of
Beverly Hills Glitter and Tinsel, would I?
It's a bit scary, to tell the truth. Not a sound outside.
Not a car going up the Canyon.
It's almost midnight and pitch black outside.
Winston the Dog is fast asleep.

I think of what this was 30 years ago...
Or before that even.
Somehow, the 70's matter more to me, because I
was alive, by then.
I have no understanding of what I am feeling right this second.
It's like I'm never going to leave this place.

"Help"!

Sir Paul.

Turns out that Paul doesn't really like MACROBIOTIC.

Being in Hollywood, more or Less

Funny thing happened, as I flew across country.
New York seemed to bring the deeply introspective self right out of me.
Since I arrived in Los Angeles, my left brain has shut down – more or less.
My entries seem to be more photographic and concise.
I almost can’t think anymore.
Benedict Canyon is a historic setting; half a mile south of here, Bobbie Evans brought home Ali McGraw.
I stomp sacred ground.
Ish.
There’s also something both awesome and sordid about these hills.
I’m surrounded by Multi Million Dollar properties. What am I even doing here?
Something has shifted. This is the Los Angeles that has always been highly conceptual to me, but never remotely accessible.
I have changed, somehow, since I last lived here.
I am in the middle of something that I never saw before. Inside and Out.
I used to run after things – now, things seem to come to me.
A blink of the eye.
A slight shift in my vision; almost imperceptible…

I lived here for years, way back when, and it now seems like I have never been here at all.
I used to be someone who worked in Hollywood.
Even the sound of this is bizarre.
It was me, but it isn't me.
I feel something I haven’t touched in a very long time:
The perception that this journey was going to change everything in my life before it had even begun.
In a way, I have missed these lynchpin moments – back in the first American days, two decades ago, they seemed common place.
Then they faded.

Shortly after Judy left New York, I remember the days turning dry, and memories of those years now look like empty shells.

I am going to be scanning life for vital signs, in the days to come…It’s as if something major is about to happen, or pass me by.
I am hold out in a big empty house on Benedict Canyon, unable to feel where home might be, or where it is that I am supposed to return to. Strangely, none of this matters…
I am more than ever lost in the Here and Now, as if this instant could hold forever.

Weird feeling.

If Los Angeles wanted to swallow me, right this minute, it could.

Circus

Cirque du Soleil's tent pitched by the Santa Monica Peer.

Christmas Wish List ( Part One )

Seen while Window Shopping in the Valley

I miss Saskia...

She says her hair is Orange now.

Sketch

I started this drawing yesterday; I have to deal with this murky concept: A guy who has wandered aimelessly in the snow, for days on end, alone, cold, at the en of his trail. 'Sounds like me, except I am drawing by the pool, in the sun, up in he hills of Benedict Canyon, where all the movie stars live, and where you can't get a cup of STARBUCKS without driving 30 minutes.