Real Life (3*)

People have been telling fish out of water stories forever, but I can't recall reading any recounted from the perspective of a black, gay man from Alabama trying to escape his sexually abused past on a midwestern college campus. 

When I left it behind me, when I got up the money to go to school and get away, I sealed it all behind me, because when you go to another place you don’t have to carry the past with you. You can lay it down. You can leave it for the ants. There comes a time when you have to stop being who you were, when you have to let the past stay where it is, frozen and impossible. You have to let it go if you’re going to keep moving, if you’re going to survive, because the past doesn’t need a future. It has no use for what comes next. The past is greedy always swallowing you up, always taking. If you don’t hold it back, if you don’t damn it up, it will spread and take and drown. The past is not a receding horizon. Rather, it advances one moment at a time, marching steadily forward until it has claimed everything and we become again who we were; we become ghosts when the past catches us. I can’t live as long as my past does. It’s one or the other.

What was it that another Southerner once wrote?  "The past is never dead, it's not even past."  Wallace learns this the hard way when he falls for a violent, straight white guy who can't possibly relate to him although Miller pretends to try.

Real Life is probably more than a little autobiographical and certainly enlightening when it comes to the clueless and racist behavior of highly educated white people whom you think might know better.

Wallace pauses, stills in Miller’s arms. There will always be this moment. There will always be good white people who love him and want the best for him but who are more afraid of other white people than of letting him down. It is easier for them to let it happen and to triage the wound later than to introduce an element of the unknown into the situation. No matter how good they are, no matter how loving, they will always be complicit, a danger, a wound waiting to happen. There is no amount of loving that will ever bring Miller closer to him in this respect. There is no amount of desire. There will always remain a small space between them, a space where people like Roman will take root and say ugly, hateful things to him. It’s the place in every white person’s heart where their racism lives and flourishes, not some vast open plain but a small crack, which is all it takes.

Brandon Taylor has written an eye-opening and very grim novel which turns on something I've long identified as a basic, but often overlooked human truth:  cooking for someone is an act of intimacy.  Unfortunately, his prose, likely weaned at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, occasionally overwhelms his unique voice.  While his descriptions of lab work and tennis volleys may provide metaphorical grist, they're too detailed for a generation weaned on visual imagery and slow down an otherwise heartbreaking first novel.

Big Personality

Patrick, in from Hong Kong, joined us for our second Pines weekend of the season.  

He was just the shot in the arm the Three Sisters needed.  In addition to his infectious laugh and emphatic point of view, he bought us a case of wine and brought a bouquet with extraordinarily scented roses. 

Not to mention a batch of edibles that looked like regurgitated Lucky Charms.

Ten milligrams turned out to be the perfect dose for enjoying my mostly colorful and painless walk to the Grove.

The weekend wouldn't have been complete without a couple of group photos.  Patrick and his husband Marty began sharing with us before they adopted Grayson more than a decade ago.  They just bought  a place of their own in the Pines.

On Sunday, a few revelers celebrated Gay Pride on the beach.  

We also discovered that sharing a house with three other quarters might have its advantages, including new floats

. . .  and ice-cold beer left behind in the refrigerator!

Grove Pride

 

The Mill on the Floss (5+*)

According to a recent article by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, Marcel Proust's favorite novel was The Mill on the Floss.  Now that's what I call a recommendation, especially since I've never read George Eliot, and in spite of the fact that I've never completed Remembrance of Things Past.

Quelle surprise, I couldn't put it down despite its early embrace of capitalism.  Some young actor in Hollywood looking for an Oscar should commission a screenplay quick so he can play Bob Jakin who, along with his pooch Mumps, is one of the funniest, smartest and sweetest characters I've ever encountered in fiction.

Eliot has it all going on:  plot, structure, character, acute psychological insight (her children, on whom she spends way more time than most novelists, actually think and act like them) and occasionally meandering but always right-on humanistic philosophy.  For example:

For there is nothing more widely misleading than sagacity if it happens to get on a wrong scent; and sagacity, persuaded that men usually act and speak from distinct motives, with a consciously proposed end in view, is certain to waste its energies on imaginary game.

* * * * *

 . . . moral judgments must remain false and hollow, unless they are checked and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances that make the individual lot.

Eliot more than satisfies as a proto-feminist, an important credential which she demonstrates by contrasting Maggie, her spitfire but extraordinarily conscientious protagonist, with prevailing 19th century attitudes:

an over-‘cute woman’s  no better nor a long-tailed sheep,—she’ll fetch none the bigger price for that.

* * * * *

So it has been since the days of Hecuba,  and of Hector, tamer of horses; inside the gates, the women with streaming hair and uplifted hands offering prayers, watching the world’s combat from afar, filling their long, empty days with memories and fears; outside, the men, in fierce struggle with things divine and human, quenching memory in the stronger light of purpose, losing the sense of dread and even of wounds in the hurrying ardor of action.

* * * * *

“We don’t ask what a woman does. We ask whom she belongs to.”

There's also quite possibly the most sensitive love letter ever written,  penned by a sensitive hunchback, no less, if that term is allowed.  Unrequited, of course.  It had me bawling.

And did I mention that Eliot is hilarious AND her book has a killer ending that seems contemporary in its form if not resolution?

 

Little Island

If you're in  the mood for a long, beautiful walk in Manhattan there's no better place than Hudson River Park.  Architecture and art (by NYC Salt) included.

Little Island, New York City's latest tourist bait, was my destination.  Thanks to Barry Diller, it reimagines a traditional shipping pier damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Thom, Andrew and I had a timed admission for 7:30 p.m.

Not your grandparent's pier supports, that's for sure.  Look carefully, and you can see remnants of the old ones.

The park's elevation gives visitors a whole new perspective on Hudson Yards, Chelsea and Lower Manhattan.  

Thom described it as a "serpentine High Line."  The landscaping sure looks the same.

I shot this panorama sweep from two locations, the Glade and the Southwest Overlook.

The view of the World Trade Center from the Glade.

The view of New Jersey from the Southwest Corner. Talk about commercial development in the past two decades--why can't the politicos do the same for affordable housing?

I can remember when the Empire State Building stood as an almost lone skyscraper.  

Performances are planned for the Amph.  Right now it provides one of the few places to sit.

There's also a refreshment area.  We're hoping to install similar shade sails at the Folly.

I guess you're supposed to play this?

 

I F*****' ❤️ New York (Again!)

After reading about a new flower show (a million blooms!) in the Times Sunday morning, I literally rolled off the couch and headed downtown to the Meatpacking District on my bike for something a little lighter (and certainly more colorful) than Saturday's exploration of Louise Bourgeois's subconscious.

I couldn't resist taking a peek at Little Island even though I've got timed admission tickets for Tuesday evening.  It's definitely New York's latest big deal.

No, that's not the Manhattan skyline behind the Little Island line.  It's hard to believe how much construction has occurred in Jersey City over the past decade.