It's All About the Cilantro Pesto.

J. is doing a cleansing fast and only consuming a concoction of lemon juice, maple syrup, sea salt, cayenne pepper, and water for three days. So I'm cooking for myself. I'm completely enamored with the cilantro pesto I made last week. I already went through the first half pint and took another one out of the freezer.

Last night for dinner, I lightly sauteed asparagus and spring onions (from our CSA box this week), added some cooked rice, cilantro pesto, and crumbled feta cheese and tossed it till everything was warmed through. Delicious. The feta is especially good. It's Armenian or Bulgarian or something, I can't remember, but it's creamy and rich and tasty, and it was not expensive.

Today for lunch I made a sandwich with a Quorn pattie (those meatless things that vaguely resemble chicken but they're made with some sort of cultured fungus or something -- they're very tasty) on toasted Italian bread with salad greens (from the CSA), roasted poblanos, feta, and .... cilantro pesto.

I harvested the cilantro just in time. I noticed today that it's beginning to bolt. In other garden news: we lost one of our tomato plants to a virus. It was the really big one, a yellow pear. But the other two look healthy, the watermelon vines are creeping quickly here and there, the cucumber plants have several pretty yellow blossoms on them, and I saw a few tiny, tiny green beans on the vines this morning.

Spooky Weird.

J. and I are watching the first season of Six Feet Under on DVD. I haven't had a TV for many years, so I missed it the first time around. When I was house-sitting for a rich friend in West Hollywood a few years ago, he had a couple episodes TiVoed, so I watched them, and I was seriously underwhelmed. This was around the fifth season, and it reminded me of thirtysomething, which I thought was the most boring show ever: a lot of middle class people sitting around complaining about their pseudo-problems.

But, because so many people said to me you can't come in on the middle of it and I should give it another chance, etc., I did. Well, of course it's amazing. It's a thrill. Real art on TV.

Clare is a dead ringer for a good friend of ours in Nashville who was around Clare's age when we were spending time with her and her family. Our friend even did one of those wilderness trek things, though she didn't get busted for pot as far as I know. Now she (our friend) is a student activist at a college near Seattle.

Here's what's weird. You know the scene in the art gallery, the opening of Brenda's brother's show of photographs? The exhibition is called Private/Public. The artist character in my screenplay is a photographer, and I have a scene which takes place at the opening of a show of his photographs, and the show is called Public/Private. No kidding. And, just like in Six Feet Under, the photographs are of people who are doing private things and have no idea they're being photographed. How fucked up is that?

I should say it was called Public/Private. It's not called that anymore.

WWF.

As I was waking up this morning, I dreamed I was at a convention in a huge hotel conference center. During some downtime in the activities, all the conventioneers were socializing and relaxing in the hotel lobby. Most of them were in the large main lobby where there were lots of big sofas and chairs, but there was also a smaller smoking lounge. I was in the smoking lounge talking with some friends, but the smoke was bothering me, so I went to the main lobby, where I saw my parents. I sat with them and chatted for a while.

I noticed that a couple people were smoking here too. My mom and dad grumbled a bit, but they didn't want to confront the smokers. I stood up -- by this time several people were smoking and the room was starting to fill with smoke -- and, trying to be very nice guy, smiling, non-confrontational, I don't want to judge you but just FYI, announced, "There's a smoking lounge right around the corner where you guys can smoke, because this is a no smoking area."

One of the smokers, a woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties wearing a denim pants suit and lots of make-up -- what they used to call a bottle blond -- stood up, and I don't remember exactly what she said but it meant, "We're not going anywhere, mister." I said, "If you and all the smokers will either put out your cigarettes or go to the smoking room, I'll wrestle you."

Suddenly three guys surrounded her and yanked her pants suit off in one sweeping gesture (it was attached with Velcro) to reveal a bright spandex superhero outfit. Her hair got bigger and across her chest was a sash that read "WWF World Champion." Everyone moved to the edge of the room, the three guys pushed all the furniture against the walls, and one of them started marking a big square on the carpet with masking tape. The lady wrestler was bouncing on the balls of her feet and punching the air. She looked serious.

I went up to the guy with the masking tape and said, with my hand at the side of my mouth so nobody else would hear, "Just for like 2 minutes, okay? "Cause she'll beat the hell out of me."

That was it. I woke up.

Statistics.

Wow, I think this is the most math I've done in one sitting since high school.

I'm writing this screenplay which is about sex and men, and, in particular, how men go about trying to get it and how that affects the way they see themselves and each other. I've had this opinion for a while that most men are very focused on body parts to the detriment of their ability to function sexually as whole people. I believe a common ailment for men is that we're unable to bring our whole selves into sex. Evidence of this is the way men will fetishize a body part to the extent that they fashion an identity around it ("ass man," "leg man," "cocksucker," etc.)

And I came to think that this phenomenon really stands out in online profiles on dating and sex hookup web sites, where men give limited, directed information about themselves and choose pictures of themselves with the object of attracting somebody for sex. So I decided to check my theory with a little scientific study. Well, maybe pseudo-scientific.

I looked at 150 profiles on Manhunt.net, one of the big gay hookup sites, and I compiled some information about the photos. I only looked at the main photo, the one that appears first to anyone browsing the site. There are often additional photos in a profile, including "private" photos that are only available when people "unlock" them for men they might be interested in. It seems to me that this main photo is where men put what they consider their best foot forward.

I've had the impression in browsing these types of sites over the years that a big percentage of the photos are of isolated body parts: an erect penis, a spread butt, leading to an I-am-my-cock syndrome (or my ass, or whatever.). So I wanted to see if the numbers match my impression.

I took the first 150 profiles of Austin men and divided the photos into 8 categories. Some were a little ambiguous, but most of them fell pretty neatly into one column or another. Here's what I found:

Face: 26%
Penis, naked: 10%
Penis, clothed: 3% (This might seem like a strange distinction, but there are quite a few photos of erect penises "hidden" by a wet shirt, or something else that clearly shows the attributes.)
Ass: 6% (I could break this down further, and I might if I decide to do a more detailed study. Some are just shots of a naked butt, but many of them could more accurately fall into a category of "asshole.")
Body, no face, clothed: 1%
Body, no face, naked: 26%
Body and face, naked: 12%
Body and face, clothed: 17%

I had expected much bigger numbers in the penis and ass categories. (Sometimes when I'm looking at profiles on these sites, it starts to feel like an endless parade of assholes and hard dicks, which just feels kind of heartbreaking sometimes, that that's what we're reduced to.) These numbers are probably lower in Austin than they would be in New York or San Francisco. People are more modest or conservative here.

It's heartwarming that over half of the men posted pictures of their faces, in one form or another. And I actually find it encouraging that 12% posted photos of their naked bodies with their faces showing. However, in probably half of these, their penises were hidden, and a large portion of the shots seemed clearly intended to show off a nice chest. Still more distinctions for further study.

Bachelor Dinner.

J. is out of town tonight, and I just made myself the most yummy dinner. One of those dinners that's so good you want to eat it again as soon as you finish even though you're stuffed.

Last night, late, I got a wild hair to make cilantro pesto. The cilantro in the garden is about ready to bolt, so I've been telling the neighbors to help themselves and I've been trying to think of ways to use it. J. suggested cilantro pesto last week.

I tossed a couple big handfuls of cilantro, a couple big handfuls of roasted peanuts -- I was going to use walnuts, but I burned them in the toaster oven; we got a new one, and the controls on it are still a bit of a mystery to me -- a few cloves of garlic, two big pinches of salt, a pinch of red pepper flakes, a splash of lime juice, and probably about 1/2 cup of olive oil in the blender. I had to add a little water to make the thing go, but no more liquid than you need, because you don't want it to be runny. You have to stop and start and poke at it every once in a while until it finally gets ground up smooth. You could do it in the food processor, and it would be less work, but it'll never grind it as fine as the blender.

I froze some of it in small containers and put the rest in the fridge.

So, tonight, I made pasta with a cilantro pesto smoked gouda cream sauce! The sauce is so easy. At the restaurant in Utah where I worked the last two summers, we made a quick mac and cheese for kids that is so quick and delicious, I have to be stern with myself not to make it more often. It's probably the main reason I weigh about 15 pounds more now than I did before I worked there. The sauce is just butter, cream, cheese (use some kind of melty cheese, like Monterey Jack or a young cheddar), and a pinch of salt and pepper.

After I cooked the pasta -- about 1/4 to 1/3 pound for one serving -- I rinsed it in the colander under hot water. Then I melted a tablespoon of butter in the pan and added about 1/3 cup of half and half (at the restaurant we used heavy cream!), and a pinch of salt and swirled it over medium heat until it was bubbling and steaming. I stirred in a big handful of grated smoked gouda. Stir it quickly over the heat, or whisk it; you don't want it to scorch. Lower the heat and stir in a big heaping tablespoon of cilantro pesto, and then the pasta. More salt if it needs it.

Can't beat it. I put it in a big bowl and ate it with a spoon on the porch with a beer and watched the thunderstorm.

Eighties Night.

J. and I did a dollar double-feature last night. U.T. does a free movie night (weekly? monthly? I can't remember) at the student union. Last night was Spike Lee's first film, She's Gotta Have It, which somehow I missed the first time around. From there we went to the Alamo for Music Monday, which is $2, but half price for Austin Film Society members (J.) and students (me, maybe, for now).

The professor who introduced She's Gotta Have It, with a personal anecdote about his friendship with Spike Lee, talked about the film like it was a recently unearthed prehistoric artifact, which felt appropriate since most of the audience were probably born after it was made. And it did look a little prehistoric, all grainy and streaked and out of focus. (I don't know if it was a bad print, or if the original film looked distressed.)

If I had chanced upon this film without knowing its history and cultural importance, I'm sure I would have thought it was just, well, bad. When J. and I were discussing it on the way out, I said that maybe, with our theater background, our expectations of acting and dialog in a film are different from those of the average film buff, or film student or academic. Acting and writing (as in the words that are spoken) are a starting point for me. If they're bad -- and I know these judgments are subjective, but I also think it would be hard to argue that the actors are not extremely self-conscious and awkward in this film, partly because of their lack of skill but also because the dialog is so stilted -- I have a hard time seeing much else.

I can intellectually know that this film was revolutionary at the time -- because it dealt with black people's lives and women's sexuality in a way that was new in American films, etc. -- but boy it doesn't seem to me that it has held up very well after only twenty years.

One thing about it that kept my interest was the Brooklyn setting. I lived with my first long-term boyfriend in a run-down, ramshackle floor-through apartment in Fort Greene at that time (from 1984 - 1989), so the scenes that were shot in Fort Greene Park and on the Fulton Mall made me flush with nostalgia. It looked in the film exactly like it looks in my memories.

Back then, Fort Greene was a very mixed bag: majestic, tree-lined blocks of single-family brownstones in which middle-class black families had lived for generations, next to some of the most severe urban blight I've ever seen. That neighborhood is now one of the most expensive and desirable urban neighborhoods in the country. (I'm one of those homosexual artists who move into neighborhoods before they're safe and can't afford to stay once they become safe.)

Next, a documentary about the Smiths. Sometimes the crowd is sparse for Music Monday, but this one was sold out. I guess the Smiths are pretty hot with the kids.

When I worked as a waiter at Bandito, a Mexican restaurant on Second Avenue in the early eighties (this was when Tex-Mex and Margaritas were just starting to become sort of trendy in New York), the bartenders played great music, and that was often where I first heard new stuff. I remember once the bartender asking if I had heard REM (I hadn't) and he described them as "like the Smiths, but American." They seem so different now, but at the time I think there was a similarity in the sound, and certainly in the feyness of their lead singers.

The doc was good. It was made for the BBC, traditional talking head format (with some bizarre animation for the clips of Morrisey, I assume because he wouldn't allow his face to be included in the show). The doc itself was just an hour long, so they augmented it with some of the original music videos, which I think was unnecessary. The videos were cut into the film, interrupting the pace of the story in a way that made it seem overly long.

It was great to hear the songs again. I had their records, and my friends and I listened to them a lot back then, but I didn't replace them when I got rid of all my LPs. My favorite thing -- and I'm not sure it was a part of the original doc -- was a short film (a music video, really) by Derek Jarman of "The Queen is Dead."

I'm amazed by how much obviously gay pop music made it into the clueless mainstream back then. This stuff was not exactly coded. I guess it was a subject people at the time were still more or less terrified of, so they didn't even see it when it was right in front of their noses.

I saw Morrisey live once, at a big outdoor venue in New York, probably not long after the Smiths broke up. His opening act was Phranc, the lesbian folk comedy singer-songwriter. My friends and I all sort of liked Phranc, even though she was pretty hokey, because she looked like a Beach Boy and sang songs about crushes on girls in gym class. But Morrisey's audience didn't like her at all. She played her entire set, just her and her guitar, to boos and shouts of "get off the stage." I was horrified.

I expected Morrisey to say something about it when he came out for his set. I guess I wanted him to reprimand the audience or something, but he didn't acknowledge what had happened. After that, I lost interest in him.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

I guess this is what they mean by dire consequences.

I called the Selective Service, and of course they don't have any record of me. The woman I spoke with directed me to the form on the web I would need to fill out and send to them. They would then decide whether or not to issue some kind of letter regarding my status. In this form, I would have to tell them that I actually did register, and tell them where and when.

While apparently I was somewhat willing to prevaricate and mislead ("I don't understand how I could not be registered -- otherwise how could I have applied for and got federal aid 25 years ago?"), I'm not willing to fabricate such an elaborate written lie.

So...

I have the summer to investigate other means of funding, but I'm not optimistic. I would have to come up with about $8,000 a semester to cover tuition and fees and some portion of my living expenses. I could work full-time while I'm in school, but I don't know that I'm willing to do that. Part-time I could handle. There are private loans, but the interest rate on them is much higher than on federal student loans. And I don't think I want to borrow the whole amount. I was counting on at least a portion of the expense to be covered by grants. I already have $15,000 in credit card debt from Life in a Box.

My head's spinning. Once again, the future looks cloudy.

This afternoon I'm finishing up my application to the Sundance screenwriters lab program, which has to be postmarked tomorrow. If my script is chosen, I will need to spend a week in Utah in January. I'd been a little concerned about how that would work with me being in school. Now I guess that won't be an issue. What a relief.

Screenplays.

I mailed my screenplay to the Slamdance Festival screenplay contest on Friday, a couple weeks ahead of the deadline. (Slamdance is the "alternative" festival that runs concurrently with the Sundance Festival in Park City, Utah. I think it was founded by a group of filmmakers who felt left out of Sundance as it became more establishment.) The top prize for the contest is $7000, I think. This is the script called Room for Jerry, which I wrote over the last 2 years. It's good. I was going to write, "I think it's good," but I changed my mind. I know it's good, especially good for a first effort.

Now, back to work on my second script, working title Anonymous Sex. I'm waiting for a better title to suggest itself. The story is about, among many things, anonymous sex, but it makes a bland title. Either that or needlessly provocative, I'm not sure which. I'm more than halfway finished with a first draft. It's turning into kind of a sprawling story, which is exciting. I'll have a lot to work with when it comes time to rewrite.

I'm submitting this one to the Sundance screenwriters lab program. The deadline is Tuesday, but I only have to submit the first five pages, a 2-page synopsis, and a cover letter, so I think I can get it together. The first five pages are all pretty much sex, so maybe it'll grab their attention.

They choose a very small number of writers to come to Utah for a week or so in January to shape and workshop their scripts with a group of industry folks. It's the first phase, and the only one with open submissions, in the Sundance process. Projects in the screenplay lab program that they think have potential are shepherded through the Sundance Institute's various programs and sometimes go on to become full productions supported by the Institute. (I submitted Room for Jerry last year and it was turned down.)

Now What?

It looks unlikely that I'll be going to school in the fall now. Because I didn't register for the draft when I was 18, I'm not eligible for financial aid, and I can't pay for it without help.

There were several questions about selective service registration on the financial aid form, which I paused over when I was filling it out, but I understood, from the way I read it, that I was safe because of my age. I must have misunderstood.

Strange that this is an issue now, when I'm way past the age that I could be drafted. I went to college for 3-1/2 years when I was college-age, to three different schools, and got plenty of financial aid. I think this requirement must have been instituted later. The man I spoke with at the financial aid office today, who gave me the bad news, told me that it's always been a requirement, but I know that's not true. If my not registering would have jeopardized my college plans, I would have swallowed my moral stance in a minute. At eighteen, I felt strongly about the military, but I'm sure I felt more strongly about going to college.

Garden Update.

We just about lost the cucumbers. That's the loss I feel most acutely. Before the freeze there were 4 clusters of three plants each, with fuzzy green leaves getting bigger every day. Now there are about 6 plants total and the leaves are mostly gone. But they're coming back, starting over.

The soybeans are fine. Though one of them still looks a little yellow, they're not as prone to insect damage and mildew as the other plants. There are three peanut plants, and a bird or something keeps pulling them apart, so I put little chicken wire cages around them.

Apparently, the bell pepper plants are very tasty for some kind of insect. The center leaves and buds were almost entirely eaten away. But they're recovering -- lots of new growth which the bugs have not discovered yet. One of the poblano plants has two tiny fruit getting bigger every day. And the Thai chile is full of little green peppers. The jalapeños look healthy, though there are no buds or fruit on them yet.

The watermelons vines are growing fast. And the tomato plants are getting very big. They've had a lot of blossoms but no fruit yet.

The basil didn't survive the freeze, but the cilantro and parsley are huge. They're about to bolt, so I've been telling the neighbors to please help themselves. The chives and sage are also healthy. And the lemon grass is making itself at home, sending up lots of big leaves.

All the flowers are thriving. Some of the sunflowers are 4 feet tall already, and the zinnias have lots of buds soon to bloom.

The green beans and sweet peas and growing fast. I love watching the bean vines grow -- about a foot a day it seems -- and, when they get to the top of the poles, keep reaching farther and farther out into the air for something to cling to. I'm sorry but that looks like yearning to me. It doesn't seem one bit less volitional than the snail slowly oozing across a leaf.

Storm. Pot. School.

Tonight, J. and I watched the third hour of the Spike Lee documentary, When the Levees Failed. We sobbed through the first two last week, and the third was no less affecting. See it if you haven't. It's a fairly traditional documentary about New Orleans and Katrina, but it's, I don't know, astounding? is that the word? I'm not sure how to describe it. It's devastating.

We have some dear friends who lived in the Lower Ninth Ward. They were on tour in Florida when the storm hit, so they were safe, but they lost their home. We had stayed with them several times when we were on the road. We recorded our last CD in their house, and lived in our camper in their yard for 3 weeks while we were recording. A good chunk of our documentary takes place in that neighborhood which really doesn't exist anymore.

Here in Austin, for days now a big storm has been headed our way. It's been humid and cloudy and warm. I was counting on a thunderstorm to watch from the safety of our front porch this evening, but it's almost midnight and still no storm. Maybe it'll hit just as I get in bed. I'll leave my door open just in case.

Yesterday we went to see Vacancy. I wouldn't recommend it. Tonight J. and I went to a lecture at U.T. by Bob Jensen called "Pornography and the Threat to Intimacy." I thought it would be interesting for me, since one of the big themes of the story in my screenplay is the question of how people make decisions about their sex lives against a backdrop of routine public sex. Not really about pornography, but related.

The lecture was more or less a recruiting session for a new group he and some other men on campus are forming called "A Call to Men," whose mission is to engage men in an effort to stop violence against women, using a radical feminist critique of pornography, particularly Andrea Dworkin's critique of pornography.

I had trouble with what I saw as Bob Jensen's simplistic view of pornography, and his tendency to make broad assumptions based on his own limited experience. And as always I had trouble with Andrea Dworkin's critique, which always feels authoritarian and anti-creative. On the other hand, it was hard not to sympathize with these men struggling to understand themselves, grappling with the same question -- "how do I find real intimacy in sex?" -- that I grapple with every goddamn day.

I always get a little tripped up in these academic feminist discussions of heterosexual sex and the subjugation and objectification of women. I've never really heard anyone in that camp address the fact that sex is always always at least to some extent if not essentially and inherently about objectification, about control and surrender, and about compulsion. As human beings it's what we do. If we want to create a more just society, where women are respected, do we try to work with that fact, or do we try to get around it?

And both J. and I felt a little out of place. It was not really a discussion that included queer people, and maybe that was appropriate.

I stopped smoking pot last Monday or Tuesday, because before too long I need to do one of these drug trials to get some money, and in order to sign up for a trial I need to pass a drug test. I like to wait at least a couple weeks after the last time I've smoked, since I've heard that marijuana can linger in your urine for weeks. The lengths I'll go to to make a living.

I held out for the first day of my friend M's visit -- she arrived on Friday and I told myself that I would refrain even if she and J. wanted to smoke, since it is her vacation after all -- but eventually on Saturday I broke down. Once I'd relented, I kept at it all weekend. Till today.

What else? I got accepted to U.T.! I heard yesterday.

Breakfast and Dinner.

We went to Casa de Luz for a late breakfast. I'd never been there before. It's in a big sort of complex of yoga studios and such, with palm-shaded walkways. The food is all vegan, a buffet. I was a little intimidated at first. None of the food was labeled. I think someone said later that there was a menu somewhere, but I never saw it.

The food was what you'd expect: very fresh, simply prepared. Mustard greens with a choice of two sauces (garlicky tofu "cheese," and a walnut sauce -- both were tasty), a curry-flavored stir-fry with tempeh, a big salad, various herbal hot and cold teas. Whole wheat pancakes with fruit compote.

The place, at first, felt a little Stepford hippie. Though it didn't look like it at all, it put me in mind of the place where Julianne Moore goes to be treated in the Todd Haynes film, Safe. I felt more comfortable after J. ran into a friend and we sat down to eat with her and a friend.

We went to Whole Foods for a few groceries for dinner. We didn't need much, since mostly I planned to cook with the produce we got in our farm box yesterday. But we wanted M. to see the Austin Whole Foods, which is sort of the Mall of America of organic food. It's Earth Day, so it was even crazier than a normal crazy Sunday there.

Dinner was pasta with chard, roasted garlic, white beans, Gaeta olives, and Parmesan cheese. A Greens recipe, modified. It was delicious, kind of soupy, salty from the olives, a little crunch from the chard stems and roasted onions. Mm. And I made focaccia again, from my mother's recipe, with rosemary and olive oil.

After the pasta, we had a salad very similar with the beet salad I made last week, with sliced apples and pecans, but with goat cheese instead of feta, red scallions in the vinaigrette, and tossed with red leaf lettuce.

Good food.

J. went to a birthday party for a good friend of his, and M. and I watched Plenty. I'd seen it when it came out 22 years ago, remembered liking it, but not much about it. It was very good, very sad.

Art.

I have an annoying habit, annoying to me anyway, of, every time I encounter a creative work that I like, or that I think is good -- a story, a painting, a song -- thinking, "I could do that. Why am I not doing that? I should be doing that."

I've never been a comic book fan, but I found some great erotic comics this week. I guess it's the sex that drew me in enough to really look at them, but the fact that they're so well drawn is what impressed me and held my interest. Well, the sex held my interest, too. Here's a link -- don't click if, for some reason, you don't want to see depictions of sex.

I've been looking at a lot of painting, research for the artist character in my screenplay. Especially Caravaggio and the many painters he influenced in that period and after. The Blanton Museum here in Austin has a great collection of European painting, and it's not crowded, even on "Free Thursdays," so I can really spend time looking at the paintings, something that is pretty much impossible to do at the bigger museums any more.

It's not so much that I think I could ever paint like Caravaggio, but I do think that I could have been a good painter. I think I am that talented, if only I had stuck with it. Maybe so.

Back then, painters learned to paint. They studied for years with experts, studied the materials, craft, techniques. They copied paintings to learn how they were made. When I studied painting at Parsons, we did no such thing. We had one class, two hours a week, on materials and techniques. We learned how to make our own stretchers, prime a canvas with lead white paint, we made paper. We made oil paint and egg tempera. Lots of little crafty projects that we laughed at and considered very passe and unnecessary.

Meanwhile, in our studio classes which were the core of the curriculum, consisting of drawing or painting and critiques, we had philosophical discussions about the meaning of art. We learned how to bullshit. Any instruction in the actual making of art was practically accidental. (An exception was my painting teacher, Regina Granne, who spent some time in the first few weeks teaching us about materials, how to work with oils, how to clean our brushes, etc. She was a figurative painter in a sea of abstractionists whose teachers were the New York School generation.)

It's not that we were discouraged from actually learning to paint. We could do it, but on our own time.

This is one of the most respected art schools in the world, and, if we wanted to take a dump in the corner and call it art, it was fine as long as we could talk about it in the correct vernacular. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. Maybe not.

We in the Fine Arts department looked down on the Illustration majors. They had copped out. We were artists. Looking back, I wonder if, had I chosen to study illustration, I would have learned more.

I've been investigating life drawing groups and classes in Austin, because I have a strong urge to start drawing again. But I worry. After two years of college, studying theater, I decided I needed to study painting because I wanted to be a director and to be a great director I needed to know how to paint. But when I was in art school, I "realized" I actually wanted to be a painter. Painting led me to start playing in a band (we all know how that is), and from there I started composing for experimental theater, which led me to folk music, and then to film. Which is where I am now and trying to stay put.

I know one thing leads to another, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I worry about one thing leading to another so quickly that I never finish anything.

Whew.

We finally broke our streak of disappointing films. We rented Permanent Midnight. I don't know why I didn't know about this film when it came out (a few years ago?), but it's so good. So good. It's based on the story of Jerry Stahl, a television writer who was also a heroin addict. It's intense, funny, heartbreaking, visually beautiful. Maria Bello, one of my favorite actors, is in it.

Another breakthrough in my culture consumption: this week I read Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion's 1970 novel. It's short and intense. I've been a Didion fan for many years, but for some reason never read her fiction till now. I'm so glad I did!

I usually read about a book a week, but I hadn't finished a book in a couple months. I got bogged down trying to read Moby Dick and a Foucault reader at the same time. I so rarely don't finish a book I've started, but I had to take both of them back to the library. I just couldn't do it. I don't know what it was about Moby Dick. I'm used to reading big, old novels. I love them. I was even enjoying the characters and the beginning of the story. But I was 200 pages into it and nothing had happened yet!

(Part of the difficulty may be that I'm preoccupied with my screenplay right now. I'm also having a hard time sitting still for 20 minutes to meditate.)

And the Foucault. I've tried a few times over the years to read Foucault, because his writing has been so influential in so many areas. But every time, I give up, feeling stupid. I'll read paragraphs three or four times and still have no idea what he's talking about. It's like code. The words are familiar. The sentence structure is familiar. But the meaning is hidden.

So Joan Didion was a relief. Clear, direct, beautiful.

Rain.

It's been raining softly for hours. Almost all day. It was dark when I woke up. I thought it was about 7 or so, judging by the light, but it was almost 9.

I'm reading a book about Jusepe de Ribera, a Baroque painter, who I think is going to be a favorite of my artist character. He paints in a style made famous by Caravaggio called tenebrism, where the emotion of the scene is heightened by the use of dramatic illumination and deep contrast. He's famous for paintings of the martyrdom of various saints, so there are lots of pictures of figures twisting in agony, faces contorted, etc. Beautiful stuff.

Looking at these pictures makes me want to find a life drawing class or group in Austin.

Spoiling Movies.

Don't read this post if you're going to see The Namesake and you don't want your experience to be affected by my opinion of it. Don't worry, I won't give away any of the plot.

J. and I had been looking forward to this movie since we saw a trailer for it weeks ago. I loved the film of Vanity Fair, made by the same director. I didn't see Mississippi Masala. But The Namesake is another film where the trailer is much more coherent and affecting than the actual film. The folks who make trailers these days are very talented people!

It wasn't a downright awful film, but it suffered from the problem of so many film adaptations of novels: a structure that starts to feel like "and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened," etc. That said, there were plenty of really beautiful and moving images and sequences.

The actor who played the central character -- well, it's hard to say for sure if he's the central character, which is kind of a problem, plot-wise -- is great. Every moment that he's on screen feels true in a way that the film as a whole does not.

Eyes and teeth.

For Christmas last year, my mom and dad gave me $500 for new glasses. I told them I thought I would spend it on a trip to the dentist instead. My eyes and my teeth need attention, but I decided my teeth should come first.

I used to get my teeth cleaned every 8 months or so. I loved my hygienist and dentist in New York. And in Nashville, I went to the clinic at the Vanderbilt dental school. But I got out of the habit when I was living on the road, and since then I just haven't had the money. So it's been a few years. I take good care of my teeth, brush and floss religiously, but still...

So I took my $500 to the dentist down the street. He found a few cavities, nothing too big, and he decided he wanted to replace the enamel in some spots where my gums are receding. Fine. But the whole thing was going to cost about $1500. So I had him do $500 worth.

The price of the first visit, the exam, included a cleaning, but he said they do that after they fill the cavities. But since I can't afford to have the rest of the cavities filled, I don't get the cleaning that I paid for. I guess I could go down there and tell them I won't have the money for the cavities any time soon, so I'd like to cash in on my cleaning.

I'm embarrassed to do that. Embarrassed, I guess, that I'm so poor I can't afford to take care of my teeth. Worried that the people in the dentist's office will think I'm pathetic. As if it matters what they think of me. It seems every little stress in my life can be traced back to my feelings of failure.

Now, every day when I have to take my glasses off to see anything closer than 2 feet away, I am reminded that my teeth still need attention and I still need new glasses.

A Good Reason to Go See Bad Movies Anyway.

In the screenplay I'm writing, one of the characters, a photographer, is obsessed with something called the golden ratio, which is also called phi, or sometimes the golden mean and other names. Though it is endlessly fascinating, I won't even explain what it is, because, well, I discovered this afternoon, when I was doing some research, that the golden ratio is what The Da Vinci Code is based on!

Damn.

Okay, I will explain a little of it, only because it's so interesting. The golden ratio is the ratio where the relationship of the smaller portion to the bigger portion is the same as the relationship of the bigger portion to the whole. It is an irrational number (1.618 and on and on forever). But not only is it an irrational number, it is the most irrational number possible. It is the irrational number that is farthest away from a rational number.

And it appears over and over in nature; in the way seeds arrange themselves in a flower, the pattern of leaves on a stem, the way stalks of celery grow, the spiral of a snail shell, the chronology of rabbit offspring. Because of this, people in many cultures and religions have regarded it as a sacred and powerful number, close to the source of life. All kinds of religious symbols are based on it, from Vesica Pisces (the Christian fish) to the Flower of Life (a pattern made of interlocking circles which contains all the Platonic solids, and the Tree of Life, which is used in Kabbalah.

Renaissance artists were very into phi. It's used as a compositional device in paintings, sculptures, and buildings by Leonardo, Michelangelo, and others. Which I guess is why it figures in The Da Vinci Code. I didn't read the book, didn't see the movie. Wasn't interested.

It's good I found out now, before I'm too attached to it in my story. (I was a little attached.) I spent most of the rest of afternoon researching something else for my photographer character to be obsessed with. I think I have something better than phi. Well, not better than phi, but better for the character to be obsessed with.

The thing about phi is that the photographer was going to be covered with all these great tattoos of the various geometric symbols. There's an amazing 5-pointed star criss-crossed with hundreds of lines making it look like a crystal. Damn.

Beets.

There were beets in our box from Johnson's Farm again this week. Last time, J. juiced them. From time to time, he gets out the juicer and makes carrot, ginger, beet, whatever juice. I can't drink it. I can eat almost anything, but there's something about beet juice that makes me feel like I'm going to retch.

On the other hand, I made a great beet salad for dinner tonight. We had some red beets and some Chioggias (the pretty striped ones). I boiled and peeled them, then sliced and tossed them with a sliced apple, toasted pecans, and feta cheese, in a red wine vinaigrette with sweet onions. The beets stained everything bright pink. Beautiful and delicious.

Home.

J. and I were walking somewhere the other night. Oh, yeah, to see a movie at the Alamo, but it was a special Austin Film Society screening, cash only, and we didn't have cash or enough time before the movie to get cash, except at the ATM right outside the theater, which charged $4, so we went and had fish tacos and beers instead.

The movie was Fish Kill Flea, a documentary somehow related to the upstate New York town of Fishkill, which is where the Fresh Air Fund camps for poor kids from New York City are located. I worked as a counselor there the summer before I moved to New York, when I was 20.

Anyway, it's the walk I wanted to write about, not the film. Walks in our neighborhood often spur discussion of gentrification; there are so many houses being built or restored, moved or torn down in the blocks around us. It's an exciting time to live here, while this neighborhood changes. Of course, gentrification is good and bad, usually depending on where you sit class-wise, but there's a lot of effort in city government to plan sensibly, to manage the growth of Austin so it's sustainable. We'll see. J. and I could easily be displaced. The house we live in is pretty run down, but the lot under it is probably worth a truckload of money. I don't know the economics of it, but at some point it will probably be more lucrative for our landlord to sell the house than to keep renting it.

As we walked down a block on which every house has been razed and new, much bigger houses are being built, I was telling J. that Z.'s parents have been trying to sell him on the idea of buying a house in Austin. I guess that's something a lot of parents do: try to get their kids to buy a house, so they have something secure for the future.

I like the idea of owning the home I live in, having something stable. It's an appealing thought after a lifetime of renting and being at the mercy of landlords, some benevolent, some not so. But it's hard for me to buy the security argument when I look at what's happening in our neighborhood. People who have owned their homes for decades and have paid off their mortgages suddenly can't afford to live in them anymore because the property taxes have gone up. What kind of security is that?

J. has talked on and off about his desire to buy a home. He has thought about buying a house; lately he's been thinking more along the lines of a condo. There are several big condo developments going up around us. Some of them are actually not bad: mixed-use high-density developments. J. asked me if, were he to buy something that was big enough for us to share, I would be willing to pay half his mortgage payment as rent.

I came to Austin to live with J. I love Austin, I love living here, but I don't think I'd be here if he weren't here. I want to live with him. He's my family. So, yes, I would share a home with him if he wanted to buy a home.

I worry sometimes that this attitude of mine puts pressure on J. I asked him if he saw himself, in the future, possibly meeting someone, becoming involved in a relationship, wanting to set up housekeeping with this person, and asking me to leave. The conversation took many turns as we walked, and I don't think J. ever gave a direct answer to my question. I didn't expect one. Because really, who ever knows that stuff?

There's no category where J.'s and my relationship fits. It falls somewhere in the space where long-time friends, married couples, college roommates, and spinster aunts overlap. I can't imagine a more ideal domestic situation. I have the benefits of companionship, emotional support, without the expectations and hurt feelings of a romantic relationship. I can ask for attention if I need it, but my feelings are not hurt by a shut door.

It's also a bit like an artists colony here, because we inspire and motivate each other and leave each other alone to work.