POOKIE’S ADVENTURES WHILE SLOGGING THROUGH THE GREAT PANDEMIC OF 2020.

It was a balmy night in the Enchanted Forest. Naida and I sat in our respective recliners facing the TV. I was naked but for the swim trunks I had worn all day and Naida was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. We were attempting to find something to watch until it was time to sleep. In other words, to sleep with our eyes open before having to close them. We decided on something called Night Club Scandal a 1937 movie starring John Barrymore. Its opening scene showed Barrymore standing over the body of his wife whom he had just killed. Naida soon fell asleep in her chair and I went back to reading my latest novel leaving the movie flickering in the background and the 1930s patter rumbling in my ears. John Barrymore was caught in the end, I think.

That night, I suffered the second of the horrid dreams that kept me awake and moaning most of the night, the first of which I wrote about here a few weeks ago. Throughout my life, I always fought back, sometimes effectively and sometimes not, against the threats posed in the nightmares but not during these last two. Two weeks ago it was stark terror and fear that immobilized me. Last night it was absolute helplessness first at the destruction of my home and happiness and then from the exhaustion from the need to fight off the creeping hands searching my body as I began to try to restore my life.

In the morning, I tried to figure out what was causing these dreams. It seemed appropriate to set my mind to it, after all I had little enough to do otherwise. My first thought, as one might imagine, was that these dreams were harbingers of the inevitable arrival of death. In the past, when confronted with these night time stories, I could fight against them because tomorrow was another day and my fears could be confronted. But, at my age, Mister Death no longer seems satisfied to leave too many more tomorrows for me to wrestle with my fears. At first this bit of infantile self psychoanalysis seemed to fit the bill. Then, I remembered that I had taken a swig of NyQuil before going to bed on each of the evenings.

Dextromethorphan (DMX), one of NyQuil’s three active ingredients, has mind-altering effects. Lots of kids use it to get high and drugstores often prohibit people from purchasing too much of it at a time. So, perhaps, that may be the cause and not that silly existential pseudo-psychiatric stuff. But, I seem to recall taking NyQuil on other nights without similar effects. Then again, my previous nightmare occurred on the first day of the last Central Valley heatwave and yesterday the most recent one began. Could my overheated imagination merely have been a response to my overheated body? As I have written often whenever I have rambled off into some adolescent level philosophical speculation, who cares? Anyway, although the cause of the dreams may remain a mystery, trying to solve that mystery at least allowed me to spend my time writing this and avoid watching The Great Escape for the umpteenth time.

Speaking of heat waves, it was in the mid-90s at 10 AM this morning when I left the house to swim in the pool. The swim was enjoyable after which, I went for a long walk through the Enchanted Forest. In New York where I grew up, temperatures in the 90s were often accompanied by humidity in the 90s also. To anyone walking along the City’s sidewalk death appeared imminent before one could walk the distance from one telephone pole to the next. Here in the Great Valley the air is bone dry. Walking in the Enchanted Forest shaded by the giant trees, I felt like I was covered in a warm blanket on a cool evening. It was delightful. There was a slight breeze. I decided to sit for a while on one of the benches along the path in order to enjoy the comforting warmth of the air and the beauty of the forest.

My view from the bench in the enchanted Forest

Pookie at Rest

(Naida wanted me to make sure I point out that my hair is not white. It is actually quite dark. Its blond hue is only an effect of the sunlight. As one can tell I wear my hair in a popular Age of Quarantine style called the Albert Einstein Do.)

That evening, we watched a Nina Foch festival on TCM — yes, Nina Foch. At about 10:30 the temperature outside had dropped to 95 degrees. Cool enough to take the dog for his evening walk.

The next day, it was over 100 degrees outside when I woke up at about 10:30 in the morning. I had missed my slotted pool time so I spent another hour or so lying in my bed playing with my iPhone until the dog came upstairs started barking at me to let me know that I should stop lazing around and begin my day — a day that promised even less interest than usual.

Apparently, the SF Bay area had an East-Coast type of lightning storm that drove its citizens out into the night with their smartphones to photograph, post on social media and record for all time the singular event of the lightning displays. We East-Coasters were somewhat blasé about night time spectacles of lightning and thunder having experienced them on almost a weekly basis every summer. I loved them — the crashes of thunder so loud it would shake the house and the tingling on your skin as the flash of lightning tears through the sky. All the sounds and lights of a war among the gods without the slaughter. The next morning in the silence, as you read the morning newspaper, there was the inevitable story about some guy trying to get a last round of golf in before the storm broke getting fried on the fairway by a bolt of lightning. Ah, those were the days.

 

 

One of the images posted on Facebook

(It looks to me a bit like a skeleton with a sword confronting a dragon)

The lightning storm passed over the Enchanted Forest last night, the dog crept under the bed and shook in fear, and Naida, unable to sleep with the noise and flashes of lightning laid in bed and stared at the ceiling. I slept through it all. Too bad, I would have liked to have experienced it. A welcome break to six months of social distancing — even the end of the world would be a welcome break.

The next day was even warmer with a lightly overcast sky. Naida accompanied me to swim. Then I left to visit with HRM in the Golden Hills. He cooked me a lunch of pasta and meat sauce. That night, we watched the opening night of the Democratic Convention and cheered Michelle Obama. Let us hope this pandemic inspired unconventional convention marks the beginning of a new way to hold political conventions.

Two days have gone by. The temperature remains in the 100s. Today, the air quality was worsened by the annual burning of California. We have watched two more days of the Democratic Convention. The fear that our democratic republic is at risk was palpable. After the convention ended and the commentators and pundits signed off, we turned to TCM which was featuring the movies of Dolores Del Rio. I skipped it and went to bed.

The next day air quality was worse (AQI 253. Hazardous). Now and then I would look up from my computer screen and stare out at the sickly yellow aspect of scene outside through the sliding glass doors of the studio. I skipped swimming again due to the effect on my throat and lungs of the air now polluted with the smoke and ash particles from the nearby fires.

A few well forgotten days later, the Air Quality Index appeared low enough for Naida and I to go outside and chance an early morning swim in the pool. It was delightful. After my session in the massage chair, shower, lounging around in bed and a brief nap, it was 3:30 before I returned downstairs for lunch. That, I consider, is an ideal way to spend a morning.

Well, that about does it for this post. Not too much excitement to mark these days of our quarantine. That’s most likely the reason why I spent most of my time these past few weeks writing. We, all of us I imagine, are destined to sit here in our homes watching with horror and disgust on electronic media the passing of perhaps the most consequential, challenging and dangerous time in the history of our species. And, for most of us, we feel helpless to do anything about it except to vote for people we do not really know in the hope that they somehow may be able to draw us back from the precipice.

Nevertheless, no matter how grim or not our future may appear remember always to enjoy your days. We have few other options.

Ciao

Read Full Post »

POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN SOCIAL DISTANCING:

It has been a week or so since I have written here last. The only thing of note during that time was my trip to SF for my immunotherapy infusion and visit with my doctors. They indicated that I have responded well to my treatments so far — a tepid bit of cheer to say the least, but an appreciated one nonetheless.

I have tried to replace spending my time writing here every day with increased reading — mostly of trashy novels. My goal, for no reason but bragging rights with myself, was to read one book a day, a goal I mostly succeeded in reaching. I had decided to bury myself in comic fantasy novels because I could think of no other genre that would get me farther from self-quarantine with less effort. Two of the novels I chose simply because their covers were decorated with cartoons leading me to conclude their content was suitable for 12 year-olds. Upon reading them, however, I was surprised to discover they were perhaps more suitable for 17 year-olds.

One book told the tale of a bureaucrat from DICOMY (Department in Charge of Magical Youth) tasked with preparing a report about an orphanage located on a small island off the coast of Britain owned by a Sprite who also doubled as a cook, housekeeper and sometime teacher at the orphanage. The orphanage director was a mysterious man who would turn into a phoenix (a bird of fire) when agitated. In the course of the novel, the man from DICOMY and the director fall in love. He quits his department job and moves into the orphanage to be with the director-phoenix. There were only six orphans in all living at the orphanage, a sprite; a gnome (female) who was obsessed with gardening (of course); a boy who when frightened would turn into a small pekinese dog and begin yapping and peeing all over; a wyvern; a blob with two eye stalks who liked to hide under beds; and, a five-year-old boy who was the Antichrist. In the end, they all lived happily ever after except for the ferryboat captain.

The second book turned out to be the first novel in one of those never-ending series that continues on until the author dies or the public refuses to buy any more of his stupid books. It tells the story of a young man sailing a boat somewhere in the Bahamas who gets caught in a massive storm. During the storm, while trying to save a dog on another boat also caught in the same storm, he cracks his head on something and falls off the boat where he would have died except that he is somehow transported to another world where he lands on an island populated by beautiful women who appear somewhat reptilian (you know a few brightly colored scales on their otherwise uniformly beautiful human bodies) and all of whom want to have his baby. He happily complies with their request but, what makes this different from other books of this type is that in-between couplings he actually has adventures — like fighting and killing in great numbers orcs and wargs and many, many other creatures as well as conquering other islands peopled with women representing other species (deer and raccoons so far) who have similar designs on his reproductive organs as did his original reptilian fan club. I then read the following 4 books in the series that the author has written so far.

I could have taken mind-altering drugs to get me through the rest of this time of social-distancing but fearing the possibility of adverse drug interactions with the ten or so medicinal drugs I am now digesting, I decided I could just as well destroy my mind with books. I am not one who believes reading is only the road to enlightenment. It may also be the pathway to benightedness.

One delightful evening we went for a walk through some paths in the Enchanted Forest we had not explored before. The bright evening sunlight filtered through the trees left patches of darkness among the vibrant greens and browns of the late spring landscape. We came upon a large meadow with some benches. It was time for photographs.

Naida, Boo Boo the Barking Dog, and the meadow.

Pookie, Boo Boo and the Blue Hydrangeas

On other days on other walks, we came across the “decorated” duck statue.

And, on an early evening stroll, we came upon this:

One day, actually on several days, I drove into the Golden Hills and visited with Hayden. He has been working helping Dick to build the elaborate garden (flowers, vegetables, trees, paths, and terraces) around the house and also reflooring the deck outside of his man-cave bedroom.

On one of those days, I mentioned to him how pleased and proud I was with the empathy he shows his friends and how much it seems they depend on that. He thought about that a moment or two and then told me a story.
One of his friend’s mother had been murdered and his father imprisoned for tracking down the murderer and beating him to death with a lead pipe. After this, the friend had taken to adopting gang appropriate clothing, hairstyles, and mannerisms and behaving aggressively toward everyone. He became a loner. Hayden said:

“He was trying to act tough but he was just another skinny white kid trying to look tough. So, I took him aside and said to him, ‘You’re doing that because you think you don’t have any friends. Well, you’re wrong. You have us.’”

Now the friend has forgone all the tough-guy stuff and has become mostly a sweet-tempered kid if a bit edgy. I call the group of friends “The Scooter Gang” because of their current preoccupation with scootering. I know full well in a year or so I will have to change the name to “The Fast Car Gang” or something like that. Although they are at times considered a slacker group, their cohesion and support of one another has not left them isolated in school by teachers and other students. Instead, they are, due to their kindness and cohesion, actually a social force that others enjoy and respect. I believe HRM is the reason. Of course when, in the next year or two, the frontal lobes of their brains and the resulting ego insanity flourishes and later when they first experience the forces of society limiting their ability to indulge their desires, all this kumbaya stuff may come crashing down along with whatever else may support their egos.

Speaking of automobiles and teenagers, in that same conversation I pointed out to HRM that his current obsession with automobile driving and engineering is similar to those other students in school obsessed with things like quantum theory or late 19th Century American literature that many call “nerds.” He could, I told him, be considered an “automotive nerd.” He seemed happy with that.

Several more days have gone by. Naida feverishly pounds away at the computer working some time as much as ten hours in a day on volume two of her memoir. It promises to be a barn burner. I cannot wait to read it.
My daughter just informed me that she just left her job with the US State Department responsible for microbial resistance. That is tracking viral and other threats to the country and thereby hopefully keeping us safe. She will now work for AID in a similar but senior position where she will continue to try to keep us all safe.

 

Read Full Post »

TODAY’S QUOTE: Leonard Melfi.

“We’ll keep a crystal vase near our pink and blue pillows, and after we wish and then after we kiss, we’ll lower our faces to the very brim, the very delicate edge of the crystal vase, and then we’ll let the syrup flow from our eyes into the gentle crystal vase. And every Christmas and every Easter and every other holiday known to man, we’ll feed the syrup to our seventeen children, and they will remain children forever. Their imaginations will be in full bloom forever…and they will never die. Everything will be forever…”
-Leonard Melfi from TIMES SQUARE.

Melfi, the well known off-Broadway playwright, an old friend who I last saw in the mid-sixties when we got very drunk in a friends apartment in Greenwich Village and believed in our boozy stupor that we had solved a notorious mass murder of the time only to discover a few years later we were utterly wrong. He died alone in 2002 at Mount Sinai Hospital of congestive heart failure due in part to his alcoholism. His body was misplaced and discovered four months later in a potter’s grave in Queens. His brother had him exhumed, flown to his home town of Binghamton NY, and following a funeral service and Catholic mass buried in his family plot. He would have appreciated the melodrama. Alas, nothing is forever.

Read Full Post »

BOOK REPORT: Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna (An Auntie Poldi Adventure Book 2) by Mario Giordano.

.

I have just finished reading the second installment in the series of my current book crush, The Adventures of Auntie Poldi. Although the books purport to be detective stories, I, frankly, do not recall in either of the two novels of the series I have read so far who was killed or why. Nor can I claim they are great or even good literature. So, what attracts me to these books?

Perhaps it is the magnificently exuberant and shameless bit of overwriting with which the author begins his novel:

“Although in the past few months Poldi had temporarily thwarted death thanks to solving her handyman Valentino’s murder, her romantic encounter with Vito Montana (Polizia di Stato’s chief inspector in charge of homicide cases), her friendship with her neighbours Valérie and sad Signora Cocuzza, my aunts’ efforts and, last but not least, her own love of the chase, we all know the way of the world: peace reigns for a while, the worst seems to be over, the sun breaks through the clouds, the future beckons once more, your cigarette suddenly tastes good again, the air hums with life and the whole world becomes a congenial place pervaded by whispers of great things to come. A simply wonderful, wonderful, universally familiar sensation. And then, like a bolt from the blue, pow! Not that anyone has seen it coming, but the wind changes. Fate empties a bucket of excrement over your head, chuckling as it does so, and all you can think is “Wow, now I really need a drink!” And the whole shitty process starts again from scratch. So it was no wonder my aunts became alarmed when Poldi still had no running water after two weeks and Lady was murdered. No doubt about it, the wind had changed and the ice was growing steadily thinner.”
Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna (An Auntie Poldi Adventure Book 2). HMH Books.

 

Or perhaps, it is Auntie Poldi herself, a lusty sixty-year-old German woman who had married a Sicilian immigrant to Bavaria and who after his death retired to her husband’s ancestral town on the slopes of Mt Etna there to “drink herself to death with a view of the sea.”

Poldi wears a wig, dresses usually in brightly colored caftans, enthusiastically and vigorously enjoys sex, and as the daughter of a Bavarian chief of detectives is compulsively drawn to solving crimes, photographing cute policemen in uniform and bedding dusky and hunky Sicilian detectives (well one in particular).

On the other hand, Poldi was a woman of strong opinions as well as strong appetites. As she explained to her nephew whom she had appointed to be the Watson to her Holmes:

“I’ve never been devout,” she explained later before I could query this in surprise because I knew that Poldi harbored a fundamental aversion to the Church. “I’m spiritual but not devout, know what I mean? I’ve never had much time for the Church. The mere thought of it infuriates me. The males-only organizations, the pope, the original-sin malarkey, the inhibited cult of the Virgin Mary, the false promises of redemption, the proselytism, the misogyny, the daft words of the psalms and hymns. Mind you, I’ve always liked the tunes. I always enjoyed chanting in the ashram, you know. I screwed every hippie in the temple of that Kali sect in Nevada, I’ve meditated in Buddhist monasteries, and I believe in reincarnation and karma and all that, likewise in people’s essential goodness. I don’t know if there’s a god and if he’s got something against sex and unbelievers, but I can’t help it, I’m Catholic. It’s like malaria: once you’ve got it you never get rid of it, and sooner or later you go and make peace with it.”
Giordano, Mario.Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna (An Auntie Poldi Adventure Book 2). HMH Books.

Or on even another hand, perhaps it is the authors alter ego, Poldi’s 34-year-old unmarried nephew, the narrator in the books, a self-described but inept author who works at a call center in Bavaria. He has been attempting to write the great Bavarian novel for years now but seems to have only recently gotten inspired to write the first four chapters the last of which he enthusiastically describes in a blaze of overwriting:

“I was in full flow. I was the adjective ace, the metaphor magician, the sorcerer of the subordinate clause, the expresser of emotions, the master of a host of startling but entirely plausible turns of events. The whole of my fourth chapter had been completed within a week. I was a paragon of self-discipline and inspiration, the perfect symbiosis of Germany and Italy. I was a Cyclops of the keyboard. I was Barnaba. All I lacked was a nymph, but my new Sicilian styling would soon change that.”
Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna (An Auntie Poldi Adventure Book 2). HMH Books.

He found himself periodically called to travel to Sicily and reside in an attic room in Poldi’s house whenever the Sicilian relatives believed Poldi was skating on the thin edge of reality or whenever Poldi herself demanded his return because she felt she needed someone to beguile and complain to.

Or perhaps, it is the denizens of my beloved Sicily, like the three aunts fascinated and often shocked by, and at times participants in, Poldi’s escapades. Or her partners in crime, so to speak, sad Carmina and the local priest. Or, Poldi’s French friend, Valerie her forlorn nephew’s love interest who Poldi steadfastly refuses to allow him to meet.

“For Valérie, like Poldi, happiness possessed a simple binary structure, and the whole of human existence was suspended between two relatively distant poles. Between heaven and hell, love and ignorance, responsibility and recklessness, splendour and scuzz, the essential and the dispensable. And within this dual cosmic structure there existed only two kinds of people: the deliziosi and the spaventosi, the charming and the frightful. Rule of thumb: house guests, friends and dogs are always deliziosi, the rest are spaventosi. At least until they prove otherwise.”

“‘You see,’ Poldi told me once, ‘Valérie has understood that happiness is a simple equation. Happiness equals reality minus expectation.’”
Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna (An Auntie Poldi Adventure Book 2). HMH Books.

 

Or perhaps, it is just that I am a child of Sicily, have lived as well as visited there many times and loved that large rocky Island whose citizens have suffered almost two thousand five hundred years of continuous occupation by a host of invaders— Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Germans, French, Spanish, Bourbons, Nazi’s, and even British and Americans. Where the inhabitants were considered so irrelevant by their foreign overlords their cities, unlike the rest of Europe, were built without defensive walls. Where the people are reticent with strangers but boisterous and generous with friends and family, where Bella Figura reigns supreme, the cuisine extraordinary, people speak in gestures and revel in the mores of their medieval culture and where “Being Sicilian is a question of heart, not genes” (Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna, An Auntie Poldi Adventure Book 2. HMH Books.)

Whatever, the reasons for my own enjoyment of the books, Pookie says you should check them out, after all, as Auntie Poldi says: “Moderation is a sign of weakness.” (Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna (An Auntie Poldi Adventure Book 2). HMH Books.)

Read Full Post »

Joey’s Mystery Novel: Dominion

My partially completed but never to be finished novel, Dominion, can be found at, https://papajoesfables.wordpress.com/dominion-an-unfinished-and-never-published-novel/. Below is one of the draft chapters in which the main protagonist, Vince Biondi, is confronted by San Mateo County Sheriff Megs Polan.

JOEY’S MYSTERY NOVEL: “Dominion.” When Vince Meets Megs.

Chapter whatever:

Vince took into the office washroom the overnight suitcase he always kept available in his office in case he had to make a sudden short business trip or pulled an all-nighter like this one. He washed as best he could, shaved, changed his clothing and returned to his office just as Ray arrived to accompany him to the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office. Ray had obviously been called by Ike and was dressed in what for him passed for business attire, pearl button earrings, a military-style camouflage jacket, matching camouflage pants and neon green Crocs on his feet.

When they arrived at the Sheriff’s office, they were immediately ushered into the office of Sheriff Megan (Megs) Polan, former beauty queen, bodybuilding champion and a rising star in local Republican politics. Vince and Ray sat in chairs across the hygienically clean desk behind which Megs sat enthroned like a medieval duchess. Her still super toned body so filled out her tan uniform that it looked painted on. She had curly auburn hair that hung down to her shoulders and the steely blue eyes of either a stone cold killer or paranoid schizophrenic. She did not rise to greet them or speak but leaned across her desk and pushed a transparent evidence bag containing a small piece of paper towards them. As she bent forward, Vince caught a glimpse of cleavage struggling to escape the casually unbuttoned shirt. He also noticed the large black pistol riding high on her hip. Vince disconcerted that he found himself turned on, covered his embarrassment by dropping his eyes to the proffered evidence bag and studying its contents.

Inside the bag was a piece of paper torn from a small spiral bound notebook and on it, written in a shaky hand, was the message, “If anything should happen to me, call Vincent Biondi,” along with Vince’s personal mobile phone number.

“So Mr. Biondi,” Megs intoned in her surprisingly whiskey edged voice, “what can you tell me about this note and what may have happened to Mrs. Stephanie Coign last night?”

Read Full Post »

Louis from my 1964 Diary:

I have taken most of the following from one of two diaries that have survived the many disruptions and along with copies of “The Fred Harris for President Handbook” that I wrote for that ill-fated quixotic campaign in the 1970s and my daughters PhD thesis from Harvard have lain mostly unopened and unread, a few feet from the many beds I have occupied over the past 40 years. I was prompted to open them after writing the previous post about Louie, who I have not seen since 1964, in response to discovering on Facebook that Louie was living apparently happily as an artist in Taos, New Mexico.

Thursday, February 20, 1964.

LANFORD WILSON, JEAN-CLAUDE VAN ITALLIE, H.M. KOUTOUKAS, ROSALYN DREXLER, IRENE FORNES, LEONARD MELFI, TOM EYEN, PAUL FOSTER, 1966, photo by GLOAGUEN. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Tonight was very interesting. Lou called and invited me to see his new apartment in the Village. I went there. It is a hovel. He told me all about how nicely he intended to fix it up.

An interesting young man named Leonard Melfi arrived. He is a young playwright, currently writing plays for Cafe La Mama.

We spent the next several hours drinking and talking. Lou described at some length his overactive sex life, including his current affair with a young actress and also the four other women he had gotten pregnant.

Leonard and I then went off on a discussion about the Janet Wylie murder that occupied the headlines of the NY newspapers for almost a year. We both closely followed the news reports about the killing. He had known Janet and appeared to have additional information not reported in the papers. We decided that the murderer was most likely the third roommate. The police, however did not consider her a suspect.

He and I discussed our fascination with murders and the process of identifying the murderer. Much more exciting than solving other types of puzzles we agreed.”

Monday, April 27, 1964, I wrote:

“This weekend the police produced a suspect in the Janet Wylie murder. His arrest upended all the theories Leonard and I had developed. He was the only remaining option unaccounted for in our theories. The murder was a completely random event. The suspect was someone who just wandered in and surprised the girls. Although when we were developing our theories we touched on this possibility, we rejected it as just too far-fetched.”

Note:

La Mama Theater by David Shankbone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Leonard Melfi was one of the most important American playwrights of the 1960s when experimental theater was the rage. His works were originally performed at Ellen Stewart‘s La Mama. He became a raging alcoholic and died alone in a SRO hotel on NY’s Broadway and 93rd Street on October 24, 2001.

Janet Wylie and her roommate, Emily Hoffert, two young professionals, were murdered in their Upper East Side apartment by an intruder on August 28, 1963, in what the press called The Career Girls Murders. The suspect taken into custody referred to above was a black man, George Whitmore. It later turned out, investigators erroneously arrested and forced a false confession from Whitmore. Richard Robles a young white man was ultimately apprehended in 1965 and charged with the crime. Nevertheless, Whitmore was imprisoned for many years until he was eventually released. Robles, now 68, was convicted and remains in prison.

Read Full Post »