"The Party," by William F. Nolan (1967)

"The Party," by William F. Nolan (1967)

This story originally appeared in Playboy magazine, but i read it in an anthology titled, Great Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. 

I will adapt this for the screen as a short film script. It has stuck with me since I read it two years ago.

Now that I'm returning the long overdue book to its rightful owner, I don't want to forget the story, and how it made me feel. I want to share that feeling with others.

most of the time

"I’ve been to California plenty, even stayed 10 whole days one time. But this is California music by California kids. This is the sound of lives lived on the Pacific coast. It’s steeped in sunshine, surf and palm trees. But it also has the howling coyotes, the spooky winds, the traffic and the sprawl. It’s got a positivity and promise, but also wistfulness and loneliness. It’s the end of the line, the last stop before the endless Pacific. And it’s a pretty good place to be, most of the time."

http://music.thetalkhouse.com/talks/craig-finn-the-hold-steady-talks-the-donkeys-ride-the-black-wave-2/

Symphony No. 4 In A Major ("Italian"), Op. 90: II.

Symphony No. 4 In A Major ("Italian"), Op. 90: II. Andante Con Moto

by Felix Mendelssohn

on Mendelssohn: Symphonies 3 & 4

Features of This Track

a well-known composer
a Romantic-Era style
a symphony orchestra
tonal harmony

The four universal healing salves

The four universal healing salves

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions.

When did you stop dancing? 

When did you stop singing? 

When did you stop being enchanted by stories?

When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

Where we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence is where we have experienced the loss of soul.

Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.

~ The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Path of the Warrior, Healer, Teacher and Visionary, by Angeles Arrien, Ph.D.

the late may/early june ache

This is the time of year that I ache for heading West to California.
It's been a decade of this feeling. It's always this time of year.
The golden-green hills, the deep blue sky, and the sunshine.
I feel magnetically PULLED there, in heart, soul, and mind.
I don't know why I've always felt this way, but it's so strong and real.

august

just go

summer

happy tuesday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzlZEJrZ_TQ
~ "Om Hare Om," George Harrison

things had better work here

"California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things had better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent."

~Joan Didion

present-moment

wings

hope is a girl selling fruit

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/04/18/hope-is-a-girl-selling-fruit/

rare and precious

In the past few decades, the United States and the Soviet Union have accomplished something that — unless we destroy ourselves first — will be remembered a thousand years from now: the first close-up exploration of dozens of other worlds. Together we have found much out there that is magnificent, instructive and of practical value. But we have found no trace, no hint of life. The Earth is an anomaly. In all the solar system, it is, so far as we know, the only inhabited planet.

We humans are one among millions of separate species who live in a world burgeoning, overflowing with life. And yet, most species that ever were are no more. After flourishing for one hundred fifty million years, the dinosaurs became extinct. Every last one. No species is guaranteed its tenure on this planet. And humans, the first beings to devise the means for their own destruction, have been here for only several million years.

We are rare and precious because we are alive, because we can think. We are privileged to influence and perhaps control our future. We have an obligation to fight for life on Earth — not just for ourselves but for all those, humans and others, who came before us and to whom we are beholden, and for all those who, if we are wise enough, will come after. There is no cause more urgent than to survive to eliminate on a global basis the growing threats of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, economic collapse and mass starvation. These problems were created by humans and can only be solved by humans. No social convention, no political system, no economic hypothesis, no religious dogma is more important.

The hard truth seems to be this: We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We would prefer it to be otherwise, of course, but there is no compelling evidence for a cosmic Parent who will care for us and save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

~ Carl Sagan

mommies

A Public Service Announcement to all Mothers with Kids in College (or who plan to send their kids to college, present company included): It is unwise to scream at the team of unseen people who genuinely try to help your kids. This is especially unwise when you do so while you're on vacation, bellowing in digital typeface from your kid's student email account. Not only is that email account not yours, but it is embarrassingly obvious to everyone that you are not taking your hormone pills. Maybe you want to enjoy your Skinny Girl daiquiris, and let loose on someone who doesn't have to meet you in person. Regardless, you are setting a negative example for your kid, who (by the way) should also have a role in this exchange, since they are, after all, the student. On a housekeeping note, sending rude and obnoxiously defensive messages makes the process of someone replying to your email that much more tedious and requiring of multiple revisions to remain professional and polite. Newsflash: digital citizenship is the new black.

querencia

summer

                             

looking forward to those sun-warmed days in california this june

to retire in colorado

well, that settles it

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/08/23/20-medical-studies-that-prove-cannabis-can-cure-cancer/

the other

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. 

It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. 

It is an existential truth:  

only those people who are capable of  being alone are capable of love, 

of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person –

without possessing the other, 

without becoming dependent on the other, 

without reducing the other to a thing, 

and without becoming addicted to the other. 

They allow the other absolute freedom, 

because they know that if the other leaves, 

they will be as happy as they are now.

Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, 

because it is not given by the other.

~ Osho

sunshine naps

sunshine naps

my angel from montgomery

I miss Whitney.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOW-Eoms07c

secure yourself

terrific spring morning music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1IWN3wjEEg

present

We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. 

We have no present. 

Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. 

We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. 

We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is.

~ Alan Watts

golden crystalfilm for a grey tuesday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpleeVILFJA

    ~ "Crystalfilm,"  by Little Dragon

mickey

Mickey Rooney has died at the age of 93. 

While I've never been a huge fan of his by any means -- always found him too over the top, and don't get me started on his relationship with Ava Gardner -- his death marks an end of an era in cinema history. 

It was always a treat to see him in the audience at the Oscars, though I wish they had given him a better seat, not so far in the back. Dude was short and old! 

From what interviews have shown, I believe that he genuinely regretted taking Ava Gardner for granted (shamelessly and repeatedly cheating on her, etc.) 

They remained friendly throughout her life. 

Strangely, these photos beside one another make me sad.

clover nights

the clover close their leaves at night 

and darlin 

so must I

trees

“A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe. What a terrible future!” 

~  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Enchanted April

April 1st

To celebrate my 34th birthday last night, I dined with friends al fresco at Leoci's Trattoria. I enjoyed the lukewarm evening without invasive bugs and tourists or any oppressive heat and humidity. 

God Bless April. 

Below subtle twinkle lights and opera wafting in from the dining room, I began my feast with an oval platter of delicately carved prosciutto di parma topped with fresh plump mozzarella wedges and sprinkled with sea salt and dusted with cracked black pepper. 

Devouring it in its entirety was effortless. 

I enjoyed a hearty glass of buttery golden wine from Argentina. 

I followed this pleasure with a saucer of hand crafted ravioli sachets filled with a mushroom, cheese, and pear puree, all bathed in a light but creamy truffle sauce. 

Split a mini-cappuccino cake from Whole Foods with friends back at the house. We sipped Iranian tea brewed from herbs grown in a neighbor's goddess garden. Cleansed the palate with single serve organic dark chocolate peanut butter cups, each nicely refrigerated.

April 2nd

Today at the NACADA conference luncheon (a word that I can't help but associate with feigned finery and Little Edie Beale's precise pronunciation of the term), I ate nuked green beans wilting in shades of army and day glo green, bagged salad but with killer ranch dressing (this I credit to me not having had it in years), rubbery chicken soaked in a muddy mushroom sauce, lumped up next to a mulch pile of wild rice. Tasteless chocolate cake decorated with desiccated icing flowers for dessert. Generic, electrically-heated metal urn coffee was not offered to our table, though I saw it being sipped elsewhere across the psychedelic carpeted banquet hall.  

As I surveyed the room while awaiting they keynote speaker and prepared for strangers from other colleges to accept awards that I didn't know existed, I thought I recognized some of the miserable banquet staff from the three weeks I worked for a local catering staffing firm during the summer of 2009. I recalled those dreadful, sweltering nights spent stuffed into a scratchy tuxedo, shaky legs on loading docks and rushing down service hallways while following barked orders by the pill headed banquet manager who over-shared through leathery cracked lips about her adventures dating a bipolar sailor. 

Despite my poverty and the need for extra cash, I quit because I was handicapped for the job. I was attentive, sure, but I couldn't balance a tray on my shoulder, because my spine is curved like a backwards S. Not that I could lift it particularly high to begin with, especially with tall stacks of crockery and slop wavering with every shaky motion. 

I recalled how, on my last shift that summer, at the convention center across the river, I pitifully asked an old black man named Furman to help me lift a tray off of the double X shaped tray stand between crowded round tables of drunk Marines and their tattooed, ball gowned wives. I wondered how many times he had done this. How many times he would do it again. And what he would rather be doing, and if he would ever get to do it.

I thought I saw Furman at the luncheon today. 

His face, like that of the other servers, was awash with an air of wishing-I-were-invisible-y'all-just-let-me-complete-my-tasks-so-I-can-go-on-the-hell-home-already: set the table, serve the table, clear the table, pile the plates and dump the remnants in an upside down metal room service lid, then carry the cumbersome plastic and cork tray past the double doors into the steamy, chaotic hotel kitchen, over to the conveyor belt sink. 

I nodded to Furman in hopeful recognition, but he looked through me with glazed, milky eyes, probably counting the minutes until this ordeal would be over and the time card could be submitted to his manager. 

I couldn't blame him. I would have done the same thing. 

With my plates cleared and fingerprints left on my water glass, I left the banquet hall to go wash the smell of luncheon off of my hands in the lobby's ladies room. 

I examined the bloody cuticles and jagged hang nails that have resulted from two days of washing my hands with the stale metallic stench of industrial soap. I inhaled the aroma of musty wallpaper and bleached Formica counter tops, examined my ragged hands and the crunchy paper towels.

The Marriott is as bad as the downtown Civic Center, I thought, wrinkling my noise at the 

memory of many a sunny day spent in service at that dilapidated, barely tolerable building. 

Just another local mesothelioma monolith left to rot. 

I am not a spoiled person...

...but damn...

Later today while on my way home and free from the confines of the conference, I saw an old black man admiring a shiny root beer brown sedan with gleaming silver rims and bumpers that sat on the edge of the road and straddling an uncut yard that doubled as a parking lot. I hoped that it was Furman, or someone like us, who just wanted to enjoy the finer things, even for a short time, during our time off from work.

help me :)

Oh! Didn't it feel good
We were sitting there 
Talking
Or lying there 
Not Talking
Didn't it feel good
:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7JWsWZaBqI

~ "Help Me," Joni Mitchell

love song

God I love this song so much! Dreamy, 'romantical,'  and well written....one of my favorite love songs... I plan to slow dance to this at some point with someone special, and to have it played/sang at my reception...no pun intended, but I 'associate' this song with me and my own heart, my love...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSogoOge6TQ

~ "Never My Love," The Association

a smile

no ordinary love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WcWHZc8s2I&list=PLCYh1qlR3qpFng7kydbvE-R5s-ccNPRYR

live in it

I'm not telling you to make the world better
because 
I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. 

I'm just telling you 
to live in it. 

Not just to endure it 
not just to suffer it 
not just to pass through it
but to live 
in it. 

To look at it. 
To try to get the picture. 
To live recklessly. 
To take chances. 
To make your own work and take pride in it. 
To seize the moment. 

And if you ask me why you should bother to do that
I could tell you 
that the grave's a fine and private place
but none I think do there embrace. 

Nor do they sing there
or write
or argue 
or see the tidal bore on the Amazon
or touch their children. 

And that's what there is to do 
and get it while you can 
and good luck at it. 

~Joan Didion

story

Think about the story you’ve been telling yourself
Rewrite the story of your past
Start to write your new story

haim sisters forever

the sisters speak the truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEwM6ERq0gc&list=PL5AB2RLfmnSXgAjYDAkpz5wOKZ2Vmj5Ed

~ "Forever," Haim

theme music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyRIwOs-iuc

~"Dreamers," Savoir Adore