This is the last photo I took of the cat, somewhere around Thanksgiving. In spite of myself, I keep thinking she will be waiting when I drive home from my mother's or will be at the kitchen door in the morning.
This is not a good portrait, but neither is Ansel Adam's photograph of the Carter's in the White House, the "only portrait of a first couple taken during their time in the White House," according to The Washington Post.
They are merely historical documents.
I can't make up my mind if this is a good picture or not.
It's weird enough. I loved her in a friendly way. She was a sweet person who was sad because her boyfriend had been dissing her for getting "fat." He was a jerk, I said. In truth, she could have been a good plus sized model, but she liked to do burlesque. She showed up to the studio one day in this outfit. She wanted to have photos taken in the costume. It was o.k. We shot together two or three times, so. . . . She was a student at the big university in town and told me that she dressed like when she went to class.
"What?!? Really???"
It was true, she said.
Nothing to see there, I guess.
She was a handy girl, liked to sew and offered to make me sets. She could do carpentry, too, she said. She was a jack of all trades.
People will surprise you if you let them. The important thing is to listen.
Here's a woman who listened. That's what she did for a living.
"It sounds like Maeve Brennan had the easiest job in the world.
From 1954 to 1981, the Irish journalist and short-story writer sat in Manhattan’s cheaper bars and restaurants, martini in hand, and wrote down what she saw for The New Yorker.
In fact, Brennan was a genius at the art of intense observation."
Her story turns out to be a sad one, but I will let you discover that for yourself if you are interested. When I sent this and the rest of the tragic story to a ne'er do well writer-ish friend, he wrote back, "That’s sad. I want that job." He'd be good at it, I'm certain.
I sent it to Q, and he sent back a picture of a hand (his?) holding a copy of her collected essays (link).
She worked with Truman Capote at The New Yorker and was, reportedly, the woman upon whom Capote based his character Holly Golightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany's." The movie is one of the favorites of almost all the women of interesting character I have known. There is something to be learned from that, I think. . . about my taste in women, probably.
The title of the book and probably more so of the film has caused people to call the store "Tiffany's" rather than by its actual name. I find that an interesting observation on my part.
I need to be careful what I say about people here on the blog. It is semi-biographical fiction, but people don't necessarily read it that way. I know some people who come to the site once in a while and skim the posts the way some people pick up biographies and only look at the index to see if they are in the book. I hurt a friend's feelings the other day with a post about Christmas gifts. I didn't even know she came to the site. But seriously, this is written for effect, not as a news report. There are reactions I want to evoke in the reader. You can't take this shit literally. C.C. says, "You're not heartless enough to be a writer." WTF!?!? He's the one who told me to start this thing in the first place!!!!
But yea. . . I could use all the friends I can get.
All I can say is YOU try posting your brain drippings every day for decades and see how many people YOU piss off. ESPECIALLY if you are doing it for free! When I was in college, everything was free. Yoga, meditation. . . and people scoffed. People laughed at the goofy hippies. Then someone started charging for sessions and the shit took off. People are serious about it now that they pay ten dollars a Carnegie Hour for it. Now they see it as profound.
I'm just saying.
But shit should be free. I'm with Bernie Saunders on the dire economic position of the USA.
!00%.
But wait. . . what was the plan? I can't remember what he said we gotta do. What's the plan? Old Bern is good with ideas, but that kid who shot the Healthcare CEO. . . . I am with Michael Moore on this one. I condemn murder both by individuals and by corporations. We are rapidly reaching a tipping point.
My former boss, a Black Woman who has a social agenda, wrote to me, "Have you heard of FAFO?"
Like my friend, Sky, she uses social shorthand shit that I have to look up. So when I Googled it, the first thing to come up was a music video (link). Holy crap. . . these are the fellows I grew up with, turd eating rednecks. I wanted to get as far away as I could, so I moved to my own hometown. Now I live with shit eating greed heads. All I wanted was a pretty, tranquil life, but it seems there is no middle anymore. I would say that people need to read more, but, you know how that turns out.
I need to get out and do some intense observation and keen listening, but. . . well, O.K. . . . I'll tell you how it worked out for Maeve.
"That genius was increasingly forgotten by the world as she fell prey to alcoholism and paranoid mental illness in later years. A brief 1954 marriage to St. Clair McKelway, The New Yorker’s drunken, philandering managing editor, lasted five years.
Broke and homeless, she took to sleeping in the bathroom at The New Yorker. In 1987, she was spotted in the magazine’s entrance hall, a crumpled, puzzled wreck, staring at the floor, banned from entering the office. What a fall from grace for the youthful, gamine beauty whom, some say, her New Yorker colleague Truman Capote used as a model for Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She spent her last years in a nursing home in Queens, where she died in 1993 of a heart attack."
I don't know how things worked out for the model, but I'm pretty sure that Scar the Cat is with Jimmy Carter and Ansel Adams now. Nature has a plan.
There was no YouTube version of this song other than some crummy live ones, so I have had to spend too long making and uploading one. I hope it will be viewable and not blocked for copyright reasons. I mean, I'm providing a service, not making a profit, so. . . .
It still has fifteen minutes of uploading. Oy!
I can't wait any longer. It may get blocked. Selavy. We shall see.
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