just in case you haven’t seen it yet…
…the photo of the year:
this is pulitzer material.
……………………
i’m stabbing away at rushing time, spending about 6-8 hours a day in lock-down rehearsals for cabaret.
but now that the radiohead record is out, i feel incredibly calm under the pile of DO-ME DO-ME NO-ME tasks on my desk.
nothing’s pressing to the point of excruciating, and i drove down to cape cod last night – where my parents are living for the summer – to celebrate my stepfather john’s 70th and see family.
they’re close to the water, the beach, on the inner arm of the cape.
i’ve always felt strange on cape cod. it’s a kind of un-real place to me….a bushy desert of sorts with little trees and plants and houses that never seem quite friendly.
we used to come here as kids in the summer, and stay in other people’s houses. i always remember being a little scared of things here. it’s a good place for murder and stuff.
it’s dark here, outside.
i never see the dark in boston – not even a little. i forget the dark exists.
my entire apartment (and the whole house i live in) is lit up like a christmas tree (quite literally) 365 days a year, and the streetlights blast through the windows, diffused a little by the ivy in the summer. i love it.
i forget what it’s like to be scared of the dark, because i never see the dark anymore.
what was that edie brickell song? i loved it when i was 14.
when i come out to the middle of nowhere, which i rarely do anymore, i remember that feeling of dread and terror.
i just took a walk down the street and couldn’t say for sure if i’d be able to find my way back.
this just does not happen in the city. the darkness is banished, permanently, from all corners.
i took a walk on the beach and ate up the feeling of the wind slapping my hair against my face, caught in a wonderful black photograph in my own mind that i’d never share.
that was it.
i’m glad no one’s here.
just me by the sea.
someone left a log burning. i sat and watched it fizz and put my feet in the warm….couldn’t tell the difference between the ash and the sand in the darkness.
i looked at the stars. i never see them either.
i walked a long ways out, dodging the waves as they reached up the high tide beach flatness.
i hit a rock with my foot in the dark and it made me smile.
then i walked back.
if i’m ever old and confronted, i’ll stir my tea slowly and – grinning old-ladyishly – say “because, my darling, i simply could not fathom” deep breath, and don’t ask me why i speak with an english accent when i’m old “simply could not FATHOM relinquishing the luxury of being gloriously and passionately alone.”
XXX
AFP
p.s. here’s a link to the song.
damn, i really loved her. both those albums – “shooting rubber bands at the stars” and “ghost of a dog“….
i revisited them both recently. some of the stuff really stands up to the test of time.
